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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77082 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                       THE RUSSIAN ROAD TO CHINA
+
+
+
+
+   [Illustration: A MAID OF OLD MUSCOVY (From a painting by Venuga)]
+
+
+
+
+                           THE RUSSIAN ROAD
+                               TO CHINA
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           LINDON BATES, JR.
+
+
+                  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+
+                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+                       HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+                     The Riverside Press Cambridge
+                                 1910
+
+
+
+
+                 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY LINDON BATES, JR.
+
+                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+                         _Published May 1910_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     I. THE PATH OF THE COSSACK              1
+
+    II. THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY          25
+
+   III. IN IRKUTSK                          71
+
+    IV. SLEDGING THROUGH TRANSBAIKALIA     114
+
+     V. IN TATAR TENTS                     173
+
+    VI. THE CITY OF THE REBORN GOD         220
+
+   VII. RUSSIA IN EVOLUTION                273
+
+  VIII. THE STORY OF THE HORDES            322
+
+    IX. CHINA                              364
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  A MAID OF OLD MUSCOVY                               _Frontispiece_
+    From a painting by Venuga
+
+  YERMAK’S EXPEDITION TO SIBIR, ATTACKED BY THE TATARS             8
+    From a painting by Surikova
+
+  CHURCH OF ST. BASIL, MOSCOW                                     20
+    Ivan the Terrible blinded its architect that he might never
+    duplicate the masterpiece
+
+  BRIDGE OVER THE IRTISH                                          38
+
+  ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY                                38
+
+  DINING-CAR SALOON--VIEW OF THE LIBRARY                          46
+
+  CITIES OF NEW RUSSIA--TIUMEN, TOMSK, PERM                       50
+
+  ISLAND OF KALTIGEI, LAKE BAIKAL                                 68
+
+  VILLAGE OF LISTVIANITCHNOE, LAKE BAIKAL                         68
+
+  THE ANGARA RIVER, IRKUTSK                                       76
+
+  THE CATHEDRAL, IRKUTSK                                          76
+
+  A CHAPEL IN IRKUTSK                                             86
+
+  BOLSHOISKAIA, IRKUTSK                                           86
+
+  THE BAZAAR, IRKUTSK                                             90
+
+  THE ICE-BREAKER, YERMAK--LAKE BAIKAL                            98
+
+  THE ORGANIZERS OF THE CHITA REPUBLIC                           108
+
+  BAIKAL STATION                                                 116
+
+  THE HIGHLANDS OF TRANSBAIKALIA                                 116
+
+  SLEDGING SOUTHWARDS                                            126
+
+  SIBERIAN TYPES--PEASANT, VILLAGE STOREKEEPER                   136
+
+  PEASANT TYPES                                                  150
+
+  A CHICKOYA GIRL                                                164
+
+  A TROITZKOSAVSK STUDENT                                        164
+
+  A WAYSIDE TEMPLE                                               178
+
+  A MONGOL BELLE AND HER YURTA                                   186
+
+  A ZABAIKALSKAIA BURIAT                                         186
+
+  A MONGOL “BLACK MAN”                                           206
+
+  TEMPLE OF GIGIN, URGA                                          222
+
+  TEMPLE IN THE URGA LAMASERY                                    228
+
+  A PROSTRATING PILGRIMAGE                                       234
+
+  A GRAND LAMA                                                   244
+
+  CHINESE MANDARIN                                               256
+
+  GIGIN, THE LIVING BUDDHA                                       256
+
+  CHINESE ARCHWAY, URGA MAIMACHEN                                262
+
+  THE GREAT WALL                                                 270
+
+  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW                                            282
+
+  RUSSIAN TYPES--DRAGOON, CONSTABLE                              292
+
+  STREET SCENES IN MOSCOW                                        302
+    (The Tverskaia Gate, Loubianskaia Place)
+
+  RUSSIAN TYPES--PEDDLER, POLICEMAN                              316
+
+  THE MIRACLE OF ATTILA’S REPULSE                                332
+    (From the painting by Raphael in the Vatican)
+
+  ON THE ROAD TO THE MING TOMBS                                  342
+
+  THE GLORY IS DEPARTED                                          360
+
+  THE BRIDGE AND TABLETS IN PEI-HAI                              368
+
+  HSUEN-WU GATE, PEKING                                          374
+
+  PEKING, WHERE THE ALLIES’ MAIN ASSAULT WAS MADE                380
+
+  SUMMER PALACE OF THE EMPEROR                                   388
+
+  MAP OF ASIA, SHOWING ROUTE FROM MOSCOW TO PEKING               392
+
+
+
+
+THE RUSSIAN ROAD TO CHINA
+
+I
+
+THE PATH OF THE COSSACK
+
+
+An ancient way leads across northern Asia to the Chinese borderland.
+The steel of the great Siberian Railroad harnesses now the stretch
+which mounts the Urals, pierces the steppes, winds through the Altai
+foothills, and by cyclopean cuts and tunnels girdles Lake Baikal. From
+Verhneudinsk southward, it has remained as an ancient post-road leading
+through the Trans-Baikal highlands to the frontier garrison town of
+Kiahta. Over the Mongolian border at Maimachen, it has narrowed into a
+camel-trail threading the barren hills to the encampment of the Tatar
+hordes at holy Urga. Thence it strikes across the sandy wastes of Gobi,
+and passes the ramparts of the Great Wall of China, on its way toward
+Peking and the Pacific.
+
+Through five centuries this road has been building. Cossacks blazed its
+way; musketoon-armed Strelitz, adventuring traders, convicts condemned
+for sins or sincerity, land-seeking peasants, exiled dissenters,
+voyaging officials--all have trampled it. Hiving workmen under
+far-brought engineers have pushed the rails onward, bridging the chasms
+and heaping the defiles. Following it eastward, unpeopled wastes have
+been sown to homesteads, hamlets have grown into cities. To the very
+gateway of China it has led the Muscovite. It is the path of Slavic
+advance.
+
+The way scarcely passed Novgorod in the early sixteenth century when
+the great family of the Stroganovs, a “kindred in Moscovie called
+the sonnes of Anika living neare the Castle of Saint Michael the
+Archangel,” began the fur-trade with the Samoied tribesmen from
+Siberia, who paddled down the Wichida River to barter peltries
+with the Russians. The prudent merchant Anika, looking to a more
+permanent source for those valued furs than the irregular visits of
+the aborigines, planned to anticipate his brother traders in their
+purchases. He sent east with a band of returning Samoieds some of
+his own henchmen carrying, for traffic with the inhabitants, “divers
+base merchandise, as small bels, and other like Dutch small wares.”
+The agents returned to report what impressed them most. There were
+no cities. The Samoieds were “lothsome in feeding,”--even a Russian
+frontiersman might shrink from the cud of a reindeer’s stomach as
+food,--and knew neither corn nor bread. They were cunning archers,
+whose arrows were headed with sharpened stones and fishbones. They were
+clad in skins, wearing in summer the furry side outward and in winter
+inward. They willingly gave sable-skins for Dutch bells.
+
+A series of trading expeditions began, which made the Stroganovs so
+enormously wealthy that “the kindred of Anika knew no ends of their
+goods.” Indeed, they gained so much by this exploitation that they
+began to fear the application by the Czar’s agent of a monetary test
+of patriotism. So, by a stroke of finance not unknown in modern days,
+there was arranged the Russian equivalent for carrying five thousand
+shares of Metropolitan. A block of small wares for the account of the
+Czar’s brother-in-law, Boris, was added to the stock in an especially
+important expedition among the Samoieds and Ostiaks. The adventurers
+got far inland. They saw men riding on elks, and sledges drawn by
+dogs. They returned with wonderful tales of marksmanship, and, more
+important, brought back enough furs to give Boris a dividend, in
+gratitude for which he secured to the Stroganovs the grant of an
+enormous tract of land along the Kama River and a monopoly of the trade
+with the aborigines.
+
+The Stroganovs grew and thrived. They scattered trading-posts and
+factories along the river-highways and sent many parties into the
+interior to barter. In the half-century following old Anika’s
+expedition, they had carried the Slavic way to the Urals.
+
+In the summer of 1578, when Maxim Stroganov was ruling over the family
+estates along the Kama, one Yermak, heading a fugitive band of
+Cossacks, tattered and spent, with dented armor and drooping ponies,
+straggled into camp and offered service. With great delicacy Maxim
+forbore pressing too closely his inquiry into their antecedents. It
+might have wounded Yermak’s susceptibilities to avow that his chief
+lieutenant, Ivan Koltso, was under sentence of death for capturing and
+sacking a town of the Nogoy, and that the immediate cause of his advent
+was an army of Imperial Strelitz, which had driven his band from the
+Volga District for piracy and highway robbery.
+
+The situation on the far side of the Urals, where the skin-hunting
+tribes had been conquered by a roving horde of Tatars under Kutchum
+Khan, was at this time interfering sadly with the Stroganovs’ fur
+business. Eight hundred Cossacks, furthermore, of shady character and
+urgent needs were undesirable neighbors. So the prudent Maxim, not
+particularly solicitous as to which of the two might be eliminated,
+offered Yermak a supply of new muskets if he would go away and fight
+the Tatars. They were not pleasant people for the Cossacks to meet,
+these former masters of Moscow. But behind were the soldiers of Ivan
+the Terrible. With a possible conquest before, and the Strelitz behind,
+Yermak gladly chose to invade the Tatar territory, which is now western
+Siberia.
+
+Up the Chusovaya River the little expedition started in 1579,
+damming the stream with sails to get the boats across its shallows.
+Penetrating far into the mountains, the band reached a point where a
+portage could be made across the Ural water-shed. Then they headed down
+the Tura River into Siberia. Here the invaders met the first army of
+the Tatars under Prince Yepancha, and with small loss drove them back.
+Yermak made his winter camp on the site of the present city of Tiumen.
+
+Next year the advance began once more. The Khan of the Tatars, Kutchum,
+was alive to the seriousness of the incursion, and prepared to ambush
+the Cossack flotilla as it descended the Tura. At a chosen spot chains
+were stretched across the stream, and bowmen were stationed on the
+banks to await the coming of Yermak and overwhelm with arrows his
+impeded forces. The Tatar sentries above the ambuscade signaled the
+coming of the boats; all eyes were turned intently upstream. Then
+Yermak’s soldiers fell upon them from the rear, to their total surprise
+and his complete victory. Straw-stuffed figures in Cossack garments had
+come down in the boats; the men themselves had made a land-circuit and
+had struck the enemy unprepared.
+
+In defense of his threatened capital, Sibir, the old Khan rallied once
+more. He assembled a great army, thirty times that of the Cossacks.
+For the invaders, however, retreat was more perilous than advance.
+Yermak went on, and in a great fight on the banks of the Irtish, again
+prevailed. With his forces reduced by battle and disease to some three
+hundred effectives, he entered Sibir on October 25, 1581. A few days
+later the Ostiak tribes, glad to escape their Koran-coercing masters,
+proffered their allegiance, and the Cossack saddle was on Siberia.
+
+But how precarious was their seat! Southward were the myriads of the
+unconquered hordes of Tatary; only one of the score of their khans had
+been vanquished. As thistledown is blown before the wind, so could
+Yermak’s oft-decimated band have been swept away had once the march of
+the Mongols’ main division turned northward. Girding him round were the
+self-submitting Ostiaks, loyal for the moment to those who had won them
+freedom from the old proselyting overlord, but not long to be relied
+upon once the weight of Cossack tribute--the fur-yassak--began to be
+felt.
+
+But what the Tatar hordes had not, what the Ostiak hunters had not, the
+three hundred Cossacks had--a man. This man, starting his march as the
+hunted captain of a band of outlaws, could conquer half a continent.
+Then over the heads of his employers, the mighty family of Stroganov,
+over the heads of governors of provinces, of boyars, of ministers
+to the throne, he could send by his outlaw lieutenant, Ivan Koltso,
+loftily, imperially, as a prince to a king, his offer of the realm of
+Siberia to Ivan Vasilevich.
+
+Ivan the Terrible, Czar of all the Russias, he who had blinded the
+architect of St. Basil, lest he plan a second masterpiece; he who had
+tortured and slain a son, hated less for his intrigues than for his
+unroyal weakness, responded imperially. Over the long versts Ivan’s
+courier carried to Yermak a pardon, confirmation as ruler of the
+newly-won realm and the Czar’s own mantle, an honor accorded only to
+the greatest, the boyars of Muscovy. Following the messenger eastward
+there plodded three hundred musket-armed Strelitz to bear aid to the
+Cossack garrison. Sorely now were these reinforcements needed, for
+the Ostiak tribes flamed into rebellion against King Stork. With
+Kutchum’s Tatars, they returned to the attack and besieged Sibir. Once
+again, though hemmed about by the multitude of his enemies, the valor
+of Yermak saved his cause. In a totally unexpected sally, in June,
+1584, the Tatar camp was surprised, a great number massacred, and the
+besiegers scattered.
+
+The whole country, however, save only the city of Sibir, was still in
+arms. Engagements between small parties were constant. Ivan Koltso,
+striving to open a way for a trader’s caravan, fell with his fifty, cut
+down to the last man. Yermak, marching out to avenge him, was himself
+surprised near the Irtish. With Ulysses-like adroitness, he and two
+followers escaped the massacre and reached the river-bank, where a
+small skiff promised safety. Leaping last for the boat, Yermak fell
+short, and, weighted with his armor, sank in the river that he had
+given to Russia. The two Cossack soldiers alone floated down to their
+comrades.
+
+One hundred and fifty, all that were left of them, started their long
+homeward retreat. Far from Sibir, they met a hundred armed men sent by
+the Czar. Great was the spirit, not unworthy of the dead leader, that
+turned them back, to march to a site twelve miles from Sibir, where
+they built their own town, now the city of Tobolsk.
+
+In the years that followed, their nomad enemies drifted south,
+leaving those behind who cared not for their old khan’s quarrels. The
+phlegmatic Ostiaks returned to their hunting and to their feasts of
+uncooked fox-entrails. The long fight had rolled past, leaving the
+Slavic way undisputed to the Irtish.
+
+Well it was, for no more of the Strelitz marched to the aid of the
+garrisons. Russia was in the throes of civil war and invasion,--the
+long-remembered “Smutnoe Vremya,” time of troubles. Boris Godunov, once
+favorite of Ivan the Terrible, became the real ruler in the reign of
+the weak Feodor. On the death of this prince, with the heir-apparent
+Dimitri suspiciously slain, he had mounted the empty throne, and a
+pretender, claiming to be Dimitri miraculously escaped, had risen up
+in Poland, gained the support of the king, and marched against Boris.
+Though the Polish army was routed, Boris succumbed shortly after to a
+poison-hastened demise.
+
+[Illustration: YERMAK’S EXPEDITION TO SIBIR ATTACKED BY THE TATARS
+(From a painting by Surikova)]
+
+Dimitri attacked the new czar, captured Moscow, and was crowned in the
+Kremlin by the Poles. A revolution followed within a year, in which
+the pseudo-Dimitri was slain. Meanwhile the Poles were devastating
+Russia more cruelly than had the old Tatar conquerors. At length Minim
+the butcher of Novgorod led a popular revolt, which in 1613 carried to
+the throne Michael, the first of the Romanovs.
+
+Through all these years, despite the fact that anarchy and chaos
+rioted over Muscovy, despite the fact that no troops came to aid in
+the advance, the Cossacks still pressed their way, contested by the
+scattered bands of Tatars, and farther on by the Buriats, the Yakuts,
+the Koriats. After these fighters and conquerors came the traders and
+colonists, with their families, following along the road that had been
+won. The valleys of the great Siberian rivers, which so short a time
+before had been the grazing-grounds of the Tatars, became dotted now
+with the farms of the new-come settlers. The advance guards of the
+fur-traders, with blockhouses guarding the portages, and clustering
+wooden huts and churches, pushed south and east as far as Kuznetz, at
+the head of navigation on the River Tom, and to the foot of the Altai
+Mountains. North and east the trade-route was advanced to the Yenesei,
+twenty-two hundred miles inland. As many as sixty-eight hundred sables
+went back to Russia in 1640, together with great quantities of fox,
+ermine, and squirrel-skins.
+
+The quaint volumes of “Purchas his Pilgrimes,” published in 1625,
+tell of some of the early explorations. A band of Cossacks dared the
+upper Yenesei, which “hath high mountains to the east, among which
+are some that cast out fire and brimstone.” They made friends of the
+cave-dwelling Tunguses in this region, who were themselves stirred
+to explore, and went on far eastward to another river, less than the
+Yenesei but as rapid. By faster running the Tunguses caught some of
+the inhabitants, who pointed across the river and said “Om! Om!” The
+old chronicler diligently records the speculation as to what “Om! Om!”
+could mean. Some thought that it signified thunder, others held it a
+warning that the great beyond teemed with devils. These unfortunate
+slow-running natives died, “probably of fright,” when the Tunguses, in
+a spirit as naïvely unfeeling as if they were collecting curios, were
+taking them back to be exhibited to their friends the Cossacks. How
+far these Tunguses had pierced cannot be told. In one of the dialects
+of the Yakuts who live beyond Baikal, “ta-oom” or “tanak-hoom” means
+“greetings.” Had the Tunguses and the Cossacks who followed them
+arrived at the Yakuts’ country? Or was the river on which passed “ships
+with sails” and beyond which was heard the booming of brazen bells
+the Amur? Were those the junks and temple-gongs of the Manchus? _Ni
+snaia_,--who knows?
+
+In 1637 the Cossacks reached and established themselves in Yakutsk. In
+1639 by the far northern route they pierced to the Sea of Okhotsk. In
+1644 a party reached the delta of the Kalyma, and curiously speculated
+upon the mammoth tusks which they found. In 1648, on the Cellinga
+River beyond Lake Baikal they built Fort Verhneudinsk. Had their tide
+of conquest now rolled southward, up the Cellinga Valley, the Russian
+Eagles might to-day be flying over Peking. Only the Kentai Mountains
+were between them and prostrate Mongolia, enfeebled by the internecine
+warfare of her rival khans. From Mongolia, the road, worn by so many
+conquerors of old, leads fair and clear to the Chi-li Province and the
+heart of China.
+
+But they passed this gateway by, those old Cossack heroes, as the
+railway builders have passed it by, to press with Poyarkov to the
+Pacific; to conquer, with Khabarov, the Amur; to meet in desperate
+conflict the whale-skin cuirassed Koriats of the coast; to battle with
+the Manchu in conflicts where “by the Grace of God and the Imperial
+good fortune, and our efforts, many of those dogs were slain”; to fight
+until but an unvanquished sixty-eight were left of the garrison of
+eight hundred in beleaguered Albazin.
+
+The current of conquest passed by this door to China, but the swelling
+stream of commerce searched it out. In 1638, the Boyar Pochabov,
+crossing Baikal on the ice, broke the first way to Urga, the capital of
+the Mongolian Great Khan, and gained the friendship of the monarch. In
+the interests of trade, the deputies of the Czar Alexei Michailovitch
+followed up the opening with an embassy in 1654 to the Chinese Emperor
+himself. Over steppe and mountain and desert the mission wound its
+weary way to Kalgan, the outpost city beside the Chinese Wall, and then
+on to Peking, bearing to the Bogdo Khan, the Yellow Czar, the presents
+of Chagan Khan, the White Czar.
+
+From the Forbidden Palace at Peking were started back, four years
+later, return presents, including ten _puds_ of the first tea that
+reached Russia. With the presents came a message that drove flame into
+the bearded cheeks of the Czar and set his Muscovite boyars to grasping
+their sword-hilts. “In token of our especial good-will we send gifts in
+return for your tribute.” Thus, the Chinese Emperor.
+
+The answer of the Czar started another legation plodding across a
+continent, and the retort was thrown at the feet of his Yellow Majesty.
+It was a summons forthwith to tender his vassalage to Russia. The
+Czar’s gauntlet had been hurled across Asia. But all it brought was
+beggary to the traders who had begun to press along the newly-opened
+route to a commercial conquest of the East.
+
+Soon Russia regretted the fruitage of her challenge. In 1685 Golovin’s
+embassy left Moscow, and, arriving two years later at Verhneudinsk,
+opened negotiations with Peking. A Chinese commission then made its way
+north, and at Nerchinsk, August 27, 1689, was signed the famous treaty
+closing to Russia her Amur outlet to the Pacific, purchased with such
+desperate valor at Albazin, but granting to a limited number of Russian
+merchants trading privileges into China.
+
+A lively traffic at once sprang up. Long caravans, silk- and tea-laden,
+crossed the Mongolian deserts, the Siberian steppes and hills, and the
+forested Urals, taking the road to Europe. A little Russian settlement
+was founded at Peking, and a traders’ caravansary was built. The church
+constructed by the prisoners of Albazin, who had been so kindly treated
+by the Manchus that they at first refused the release which the treaty
+brought, gave place to a larger edifice erected by popes from Russia.
+
+Soon, however, the Russians again offended the Celestial Emperor. In
+their riotous living, the quickly enriched merchants disquieted the
+sober Chinese. The Siberians over the frontier gave asylum to a band
+of seven hundred Mongol free-booters, whom it was urgently desired to
+present to a Chinese headsman. So commerce was forbidden anew, and
+most of the reluctant merchants left their compound. Some stayed and
+assimilated with the Chinese, retaining, however, their religion; and
+for years a mixed race observed in Peking the rites of Greek Orthodox
+Christianity.
+
+It may seem strange that rulers so energetic as Peter the Great and
+some of his successors took no steps to resent by force of arms the
+arbitrary acts of the Chinese Emperor. But much was going on in
+Russia; Peter was occupied with his invasion of Persia, and Catherine
+was without taste for a distant and doubtful campaign. The garrisons
+scattered over the enormous area of Siberia were numerically too weak
+and too poorly equipped to do more than hold their own. So, when
+commerce was once more interdicted and the merchants banished, recourse
+was had to diplomacy. In 1725 the Bogdo Khan relented enough to receive
+Count Ragusinsky with a special embassy from Catherine the First, which
+arranged the second great agreement with China, called the Treaty of
+Kiahta.
+
+By it the frontier cities of Kiahta in Siberia, and Maimachen, facing
+it just across the line in Mongolia, were established as the gateway
+to Chinese trade. The treaty provided for the extradition of bandits
+and for a perpetual peace and friendship between the high contracting
+parties. Ever since, the citizens of Kiahta have alternately blessed
+and blamed Ragusinsky,--blamed him because, in the fear lest any stream
+flowing out of Chinese into Russian territory should be poisoned, he
+settled the boundary city beside a Siberian brook so inadequate that
+Kiahtans have suffered ever since for lack of water, with the river
+Bura only nine versts away in China; blessed him because of the great
+prosperity the treaty brought to their doors.
+
+The tea carried by this highway became Russia’s national drink. Great
+warehouses arose, built caravansary-wise around courts. Endless files
+of two-wheeled carts rolled northward, bearing each its ten square
+bales of tea, or its well-packed bolts of silk. The merchants grew
+wealthy in the rapidly swelling trade.
+
+A great Chinese embassy, headed by the third ranking official of
+the Peking Foreign Office, made its way to Moscow to keep permanent
+the relations of the two empires. Similarly, a Russian embassy was
+established in the rebuilt compound in Peking, where a new church
+arose, whose archimandrite gained a comfortable revenue by selling
+ikons and crucifixes to the many Chinese converts he had baptized.
+
+Catherine the Second’s edict opened to all Russians the freedom of
+Chinese trade. Its volume, large before, became now even greater. In
+1780 the registered commerce at Kiahta had risen to 2,868,333 roubles,
+not to mention the large value of the goods taken in unregistered.
+
+Tea, a pound of which, if of best quality, cost two roubles in those
+days, silks, porcelains, cottons, and tobacco, went north, exchanged
+for Russian peltries, for cloth, hardware, and, curiously enough,
+hunting-dogs.
+
+An English merchant, who had penetrated to Kiahta in that year, gives
+an amusing account of the mutual distrust with which the barter was
+conducted. The Russian going over the frontier to Maimachen would
+examine the goods in the Chinese warehouse, seal up what he desired,
+and leave two men on guard. The Chinese merchant would then come to
+Kiahta, and do the same with the Russian’s wares. When the bargain was
+struck, both together carried one shipment over the border with guards
+and brought back the exchange.
+
+In growing prosperity, undisturbed, the Kiahta caravans came and went,
+while elsewhere history was warm in the making.
+
+Napoleon marched to Moscow, to Leipsic, to Waterloo. The Kiahta
+caravans came and went. The St. Petersburg Dekabrists rose for
+Constantine and the Constitution. The Kiahta caravans came and went.
+The Crimean War saw the Russian flag flutter down at Sevastopol. Even
+as the Malakoff was stormed, a Russian army marched into Central Asia
+to seize the Zailust Altai slope, which points as a spear toward
+Turkestan and India, and a Russian navy sailed under Muraviev to occupy
+the forbidden Amur. The Kiahta caravans came and went.
+
+At length a railroad, pushed year by year, reached the Pacific. One
+branch cut across the reluctantly-accorded Manchurian domain to
+Vladivostok; another struck southward to Dalny and Niu-chwang. The
+Russian Eagles perched at Port Arthur and nested by the far Pacific.
+
+The camel-commerce of the old overland road across Mongolia shrank
+now as shrinks a Gobi snow-rivulet under the burning desert sun. The
+meagre Kiahta caravans became but a gaunt shadow of the mighty past.
+Only an intermittent wool-export and a dwindling traffic in tea to
+the border cities remained of the great tribute of the Urga Road. As
+trade vanished from their once busy warehouses, the Chinese merchants
+were troubled. Perhaps to prayer and sacrifice the God of Commerce
+would relent? So a scarlet temple rose on the hill by Maimachen.
+Prosperity came suddenly once again, a new trade rolled north over the
+historic way. The Mongol cart-drivers returned from far Ulasati. The
+camel-trains, that had scattered south to the trails beyond Shama,
+gathered back as antelopes herd to a new spring in the desert.
+
+The God of the Red Temple, the God of the Caravan, had sent the
+Japanese. As the Amban’s executioner strikes off a victim’s hand, so
+had the Nipponese lopped away the railroad reaching down to Dalny and
+Niu-chwang--the road that was breaking the camel-trade a thousand
+versts beyond, on the old route by Maimachen and Kiahta. Against the
+Russian control of the Pacific the Japanese had hurled all their
+gathered might. By battle genius and efficiency the Island soldiers
+won, and athwart the front of Slavic empire they set their desperate
+legions. Far more was lost to Russia than men and squandered treasure,
+far more than prestige and power of place. The enormous stakes, even
+in the port of Dalny, in the forts of Port Arthur, in the East China
+Railway, were but incidents. The real tragedy of the war was that the
+vital terminus of her continent railroad was alienated, and that her
+civilization was barred back indefinitely.
+
+The soldiers and statesmen who carried Russia’s power across a savage
+continent had sought out many inventions. But by whatever means
+each successive territory was won, its maintenance had been by the
+warrant that the Slavs had gone not lightly, adventuring to conquest,
+but as an earnest host clearing a way for the homes and the hearths
+of their race. The colonist had followed the Cossack; cities and
+villages, railways and telegraphs, had risen behind the armies. The
+dawn of the twentieth century saw a mighty expanse of Siberia redeemed
+from a desolate waste to a land of farms and villages, of mines and
+industries; a native population, once hardly superior to the American
+Indian, not, like him, displaced and exterminated, but raised side
+by side with the settlers to a more equitable place than is held by
+any other subject people in Asia. The Russian advance had brought
+the establishment of the volunteer fleet plying from far Odessa to
+Vladivostok, and the completion of the greatest railway enterprise
+the world has ever seen. It had opened from Europe to the Far East
+a land-route more important to more people than the water-route
+discovered by Vasco da Gama. The fruition of a nation’s hope was lost
+when the Eagles went down at Port Arthur.
+
+For those who feast at Russia’s cost the reckoning is long.
+Predecessors not unfamed are worthy of remembrance: the Tatars who
+lorded it four hundred years, the Poles whose kings caroused in the
+Kremlin, the great Emperor, with his Grande Armée, whose stabled horses
+scarred the walls of St. Basil, the Turks, the Swedes,--all conquerors
+of yesterday. But long years must take their toll of life and gold
+before Russia can carry the entrenched lines along the Yalu, and
+reënter the redoubts hewn in the sterile hills around Port Arthur. The
+spoils to the victors for the present are unchallenged. The Russian way
+to China is not now through Manchuria.
+
+But the ancient road of the Kiahta caravans is still unblocked. Here
+is the shortest route from Europe to the East. Here, through the
+defiles and the broken foothills of the Gobi Plateau, lies the future
+redemption of the great unfettered land-route to North China. The
+Chinese are themselves advancing to anticipate it. They have already
+built into Kalgan. To this trading-centre across the pale, a Russian
+railway may yet pass and her colonists make fruitful the unpeopled
+wilds of Mongolia.
+
+In the cycles of progress old paths are reworn. Pharaoh’s canal from
+the Mediterranean to the Red Sea was swallowed up under the sands of
+three thousand years when the Genoans won a way across the Isthmus.
+Their track was left unsought when the Portuguese showed the route for
+ships around the Cape. Yet to-day the Strait of Suez is thronged with
+reborn commerce.
+
+The first American highway to the Western Reserve was superseded by
+the better avenue of the newly built Erie Canal, yet came to its own
+again beneath the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio. So, far to the
+westward of Japan’s outpost, the age-old caravan road, with a shadowy
+fantastic history dim as its dun trail across the desert, may rise to a
+resurrected glory as a new road to China.
+
+Its greatness is of yesterday and of to-morrow. Unto to-day belongs the
+quaintness of the cavalcade that passes to and fro along its track.
+Over the frozen snows of winter and the rocky trails of summer there
+plod horse and ox and camel, sleigh and wagon and cart,--a broken line
+of men and beasts. Russian posts thunder past with galloping horses,
+three abreast. Bands of Cossacks convoy the guarded camel-trains of
+heavy mail for China. One meets troops of boyish recruits, singing
+lustily in chorus on the tramp northward, and Mongol carts and
+flat-featured Buriats on their little shaggy ponies, sleepy wooden
+villages, forests, steppes, swamps, frozen river-courses, mountain
+passes.
+
+Through the kaleidoscope of races and peoples one moves in a
+world-forgotten life, a procession of the ages.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. BASIL, MOSCOW (Ivan the Terrible blinded
+its architect that he might never duplicate the masterpiece)]
+
+On the threshold of Siberia the traveler has turned back in manner, in
+ways of thought, in government, in everything, to the past. Go into one
+of these cities,--you are in the Germany of 1849, with the embers still
+hot of the fire lighted by the republican movement of the young men
+and the industrials. The seeming chance of victory has passed them
+by. The iron hand is over all. One hears of Siberian Carl Schurzes,
+fugitives to America and to Switzerland, of the month-lived Chita
+Republic, of the row of gallows at Verhneudinsk, of the bloody assizes
+at Krasnoyarsk.
+
+It is as if one lived when citizens gathered in excited groups in the
+Forum to discuss the news from Philippi; or as if, from the broken
+masonry of the Tuileries, there stepped out into breathing actuality
+the five hundred Marseillaises “who know how to die,” fronting the
+red Swiss before the palace of Louis, the King. Here is the reality
+of friends in hiding, of files of soldiers at each railway-station,
+of police-examined passports without which one cannot sleep a night
+in town, of arms forbidden, meetings forbidden, books forbidden,--all
+things forbidden. Here as there men thought that the new could come
+only by revolution. Yet one can see, despite all, the germs of
+improvement and the upward pressures of evolution.
+
+Move further toward the frontier towns, where the relayed horses
+bring the weekly mail,--you have gone back a hundred and fifty years.
+You are among our own ancestors of the days of the Stamp Act. Did
+the General Howe who governs the oblast from his Irkutsk residency
+overhear the school-boys of Troitzkosavsk as they chant the forbidden
+_Marseillaise_, he, too, might say that freedom was in the air. These
+Siberian frontiersmen shoot the deer with their permitted flint-locks
+as straight as the neighbors of Israel Putnam, and with spear and gun
+they face the bear that the dusky Buriat hunters have tracked to its
+lair.
+
+Our Puritans are there, rugged, red-bearded dissenters, “Stare’
+Obriachi,” Old Believers, they are called, who came to Siberia
+rather than use Bishop Nikon’s amended books of prayer. Yankee-like,
+outspoken, keen at a trade, are these big Siberian sons of men who
+dared greatly in their long frozen march. The grants to Lord Baltimores
+and Padroon Van Rensselaers are in the vast “cabinetski” estates of the
+grand-ducal circle, engulfing domains great as European kingdoms.
+
+Go into one of the villages of the peasants transplanted in a body by
+the paternal Government. Here are the patient, enduring recruits for
+the army, brothers to the toilers over whose fields the Grand Monarch’s
+wars rolled back and forth. Though steeped in ignorance and overwhelmed
+by the incubus of communism, they are capable of real and splendid
+manhood, and will show it when their world has struggled through into
+the century in which we others live.
+
+Go to a mining-camp in the Chickoya Valley. It is California and the
+days of ’49. Histories as romantic as those of the Sierras are being
+lived out in its unsung gorges,--tales of hardships, of grub-stakes, of
+bonanzas in Last Chance Gulches.
+
+When the bumping tarantass rolls across the Chinese frontier into
+Mongolia, it enters a kingdom of the Middle Ages flung down into the
+twentieth century. Feudal princes, lords of armies weaponed with spear
+and bow, tax and drive to the corvée their nomad serfs. A hierarchy
+of priests whose divine head lives in a palace at Holy Urga, sways
+the multitude of superstition-steeped Mongols, and receives the
+homage of pilgrims wending their way from Siberia, from the Volga,
+from Tibet, from all Mongolia, to their Canterbury of Lamaism. In
+prostrate devotion the penitents girdle the Sacred City before whose
+hovels beggars dispute with dogs their common nourishment, and in
+whose compounds princes of the race of Genghis Khan, with armies of
+retainers, live bedless, bathless, lightless, in the felt huts of
+their race. Squalid magnificence and good-humored kindly hospitality
+are linked to utter brutality. Sable-furs and silks cover sheepskins
+worn until they drop from the body. Here and there among the natives a
+Chinese trading caravansary, alien, walled, peculiar, stands as of old
+the Hansa-town, with merchant guilds and far-brought caravan goods.
+
+A way of adventure and strangeness, where the years turn back, is this
+old road of the Golden Horde, leading down past the ancestral homes of
+the Turks to the Great Wall.
+
+The Cossack sentries at Kiahta look Chinaward. They have become an
+anomaly, this hard-riding, fierce-fighting soldier class. The plow has
+metamorphosed into myriad farms the plains along the Don where once
+their ponies grazed. Mining-cuts score the hills in the Urals where
+once they hunted. Villages of Slavonic peasants rise along the Amur.
+The sons of the old warriors grow into peaceful farmer-folk, differing
+in name alone from their blue-eyed neighbors. Soon they must disappear
+in all save picturesquely uniformed Hussars of the Guard, and as a
+memory, chanted by young men and girls in the Siberian summer evenings
+when Yermak’s song is raised. The task of the Cossack, to lead in the
+conquest of kindred native races and to weld these through themselves
+into Russia’s fabric, is nearly done.
+
+Down the ancient road lies a last avenue of advance. Eastward is
+Manchuria, where artillery and science grappling must decide the day
+with Japan. Southward is India, where England’s guarded gateway among
+the hills can be opened only from behind. But into Mongolia Fate may
+decree that the yellow-capped Cossacks, drafted from Russia’s Mongol
+Buriats, shall lead once more the nation-absorbing march of the White
+Czar. For another memorable ride, the Cossacks, who on their shaggy
+ponies led the long conquering way across the continent, may yet mount
+and take the road to China.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY
+
+
+How long to Irkutsk? Seven days now, seven years when last I
+came.” The bearded Russian standing in the doorway of the adjoining
+compartment in the corridor-car of the Siberian Express gazes
+thoughtfully at the fir-covered slope, whose dark green stands in
+sombre contrast to the winter snows. The train is slowly climbing the
+Ural Range, toward the granite pyramid near Zlatoust, on opposite
+sides of which are graven “Europe” and “Asia.” Neighbors with easy
+sociability are conversing along the wide corridors, exchanging stories
+and cigarettes, asking each other’s age and income in naïve Siberian
+style.
+
+Regarding the burly occupant of the next stateroom one may discreetly
+speculate. From sable-lined paletot and massive gold chains you hazard
+that he voyaged with the traders’ slow caravans in the days before the
+railway--that he was a merchant.
+
+“A merchant? _Optovi?_ No, I did not come with the caravans.”
+
+From the triangle of red lapel-ribbon, the rank-bestowing decoration,
+you venture a second guess.
+
+“Perhaps the _gaspadine_ made the great circuit to oversee the local
+administrations? He was a government inspector--_Revizor?_”
+
+“_Chinovnik niet navierno_,” he answers. Most decidedly he was not an
+official. The suggestion causes him to smile broadly. “I was with the
+convicts,” he says.
+
+Beside the line of rails curves the old post-road winding like a ribbon
+through the highlands.
+
+“It was by that road we marched. Seven years of my life lie along it.”
+
+The train swings through a cleft hewn in the living rock, steep-sided
+as if the mountain had been gashed with a mighty axe. It rumbles around
+the base of an overhanging crag while you look clear down over the
+white valley, with the miles of rolling green forest beyond.
+
+“Was not seven years a long time for the march?” you venture.
+
+“For a traveler, yes; for convict bands not unusual. We went back and
+forth, now northward a thousand versts as to Archangel, now west as
+to Moscow, now south as to Rostov. Again and again our troop would
+split, and part be sent another way. New prisoners would be added, from
+Warsaw, Finland, Samara. New guards would take charge. Some groups
+would go to the West Siberian stations, some east to the Pacific and
+Sakhalin. I, who was written down for ten years at the Petrovski Works
+beyond Baikal Lake, with a third commuted for good behavior, had
+finished my term before I got there.”
+
+“Why did they wander so aimlessly?”
+
+“It seems truly as a butterfly’s flight, but you others do not know the
+way of Russia. Very slowly, very deviously she goes, but surely, none
+the less, to her goal. We each came at last to our place.”
+
+A match flares up and he lights another cigarette.
+
+“Shall we not go to the ‘wagon restoran’ for a glass of tea?” you ask.
+
+Along the broad aisles you walk, past the staterooms, filled with
+baggage, littered with bedding, kettles, novels, and fur overcoats.
+Everything is in direst confusion, and the owners are sandwiched
+precariously between their belongings. On the little tables which are
+raised between the seats, they are playing endless games of cards,
+sipping tea and nonchalantly smoking cigarettes the while. You pass the
+stove-niches at the car entrances, heaped to the ceiling with cut wood.
+The fire-tenders as you pass give the military salute. You cross the
+covered bridges between the cars, where are little mounds of the snow
+that has sifted in around the crevices; and a belt of cold air tells
+of the zero temperature outside. At length the double doors of the
+foremost car appear ahead, and crossing one more arctic zone over the
+couplings, you can hang your fur cap by the door and salute the ikon
+that with ever-burning lamp looks down over the parlor-car. Now you can
+sit on the broad sofa set along the wall, or doze in the corner-rocker
+under the bookcase, or sit tête-à-tête in armchairs over a miniature
+table. Ladies here, as well as men, are chatting, reading, and smoking,
+for this combination parlor, _fumoir_, and dining-room is for all,
+not a resort to which the masculine element shamefacedly steals for
+unshared indulgences.
+
+“_Dva stakan chai, pajolst_” (two glasses of tea, please), your friend
+says to the aproned _chelaviek_, a Tatar from Kazan.
+
+“_Stakan vodka_,” you add; for you are willing to contribute twenty
+kopecks to the government revenues if this beverage will help out the
+memoirs of your friend, the convict.
+
+“_Say chass_,” replies the waiter, which means, literally, “this hour,”
+figuratively, “at once,” actually, whenever he chances to recall that
+your party wants a glass of tea and another of vodka. When at length
+the refreshments have come, your companion gets gradually back to the
+reminiscences.
+
+“Were your comrades many on that march?”
+
+“Twenty-six from my school in Odessa,” he says. He tells of the tumult
+in the Polytechnic Academy, when he was a boy of sixteen studying
+engineering; of the barricade which the students threw up; of the
+soldiers sent against it; of an officer wounded with a stone, and
+the sentence to the mines. He tells of the journey, day after day,
+the miserable company trudging under the burning suns of summer and
+shivering under the biting cold of winter, ill-fed and in rags. He
+recalls how this friend and that friend sickened and died; how a
+peasant-woman gave him a dried fish; how one of the criminals tried
+to escape and was lashed with the _plet_ until he fainted beneath its
+strokes.
+
+“We were a sad procession. First came the Cossacks on their ponies,
+with their carbines and sabres. Then the murderers for Sakhalin, and
+the dangerous criminals in fetters; a few women next; then we, the
+politicals; last, more soldiers marching behind. Far to the rear
+came carts and wagons with the wives and families of the prisoners,
+following their men into exile. Slowly we went, scarcely more than
+fifteen versts a day, with a rest one day out of three, for the women.
+In winter we camped in stations along the road.”
+
+From the comfortable leather armchairs they seem infinitely distant
+and dream-like, these tales from the dark ages of Siberia. The
+speaker seems to have forgotten his auditor and to be talking to
+himself, and soon he relapses into silence. He sits holding his glass
+of lemon-garnished tea, like a resting giant with his shaggy beard
+and mighty chest. The drag of the brakes is felt through the train.
+“_Desiet minute stoit_” (ten minutes’ stop), somebody calls out.
+Suddenly, with an effort, the man across the table rouses from his
+reverie, and looks about the car, when the broad smile comes back and
+he says earnestly:--
+
+“You must not think of that as the true Siberia. It was all long
+ago--thirty-five years. And you see I who became a _kayoshnik_,
+a gold-seeker, have prospered, and work many mines. I am glad now
+that they sent me to Siberia. And many others prosper who came with
+the convicts. The old dark Siberia dies, but our new Siberia of the
+railroad lives, and grows great.”
+
+He rises resolutely and shakes your hand with a vise-like grip.
+
+“_De svidania!_” (Till we meet again.)
+
+You rise with the rest, draw on your fur cap and gloves, work into the
+heavy fur-lined overcoat, and clamber down to the platform. A little
+wooden station-house painted white is opposite the carriage door. It
+has projecting eaves and quaint many-paned windows. In front of it is a
+post with a large brazen bell. On the big signboard you can spell out
+from the Russian letters “Zlatoust.” This is the summit station of the
+pass that crosses the Urals. Around are standing stolid sheep-skinned
+figures, bearded peasants just in from their sledges, which are ranked
+outside the fence. Fur-capped mechanics, carrying wrenches and hammers,
+move from car to car to tighten bolts and test wheels for the long
+eastward pull. Uniformed station attendants are here and there, some
+with files of bills of lading. As you walk down the platform among
+the crowd, you come upon a soldier, duffle-coated and muffled in his
+capote, standing stoically with fixed bayonet. Forty paces further
+there is another, and beyond still another, all the length of the
+platform, and far up the line. What a symbol of Russian rule are these
+silent sentries! And what a mute tale is told in the necessity for a
+guard at every railroad halting-place in the Empire!
+
+You stroll along toward the engine. Huge and box-like are the big steel
+cars, five of which compose the train. Two second-class wagons painted
+in mustard yellow are rearmost, then come the first-class, painted
+black, next the “wagon restoran” and the luggage-van, where the much
+advertised and little used bath-room and gymnasium are located. The
+engine is a big machine, but of low power, unable to make much speed;
+and the high grades and the road-bed, poor in many places, additionally
+limit progress. It is apparent why the train rarely moves at a rate
+greater than twenty miles an hour.
+
+At first you do not notice the cold. But now that you have walked for
+a few minutes along the platform, it seems to gather itself for an
+attack, as if it had a personality. You draw erect with tense muscles,
+for the system sets itself instinctively on guard. The light breeze
+that stirs begins to smart and sting like lashes across the face. The
+hand drawn for a moment from the fleece-lined glove, stiffens into
+numbed uselessness. As you march rapidly up and down the platform, an
+involuntary shiver shakes you from head to foot. A fellow passenger,
+remarking it, observes:--
+
+“It is not cold to-day, in fact, quite warm. _Ochen jarko._”
+
+You walk together to the big thermometer that hangs by the
+station-door. It is marked with the Réaumur Scale, and your brain is
+too torpid for multiplications. But the slightly built official, known
+as a government engineer by green-bordered uniform and crossed hammers
+on his cap, is inspecting the mercury also.
+
+“Eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit,” he says. “Quite warm for
+January. It is often thirty-five degrees below zero here in the Uralsk.”
+
+It gets colder at the suggestion. The three starting-bells ring, and
+everybody scrambles into the compartments.
+
+The express rolls onward down the Urals. You stroll back to the warm
+dining-room and idly watch the groups around. Across the way is an
+elderly mild-looking officer, whose gold epaulettes, zig-zagged with
+silver furrows, are the insignia of a major-general. He smokes endless
+cigarettes in company with another officer lesser in degree, a major,
+decorated with the Russo-Japanese service-medal, smart of carriage
+and alert of look. By the window beyond is a young German, gazing
+meditatively at the hills and the snow through the bottom of a glass
+of Riga beer. A rather bright-mannered dame, with rings on her fingers
+and long pendants in her ears, chats vivaciously in French with a
+phlegmatic-looking personage in a tight-fitting blue coat which buttons
+up to his throat like a fencer’s jacket. A quietly-dressed gentleman,
+evidently in civil life, is reading one of the library copies of de
+Maupassant.
+
+Outside, cut and tunnel, hill, slope, and valley, green forest, white
+drifted snow, and bare craggy rocks, the Urals glide past. The little
+track-wardens’ stations beside the way snap back as if jerked by a
+sudden hand, and the telegraph-poles catch up in endless monotony the
+sagging wires.
+
+The Tatar waiter goes from place to place, clearing off the ashes and
+the glasses, and getting ready for dinner. There is a table-d’hôte
+repast, the Russian _obeid_, a meal which starts with a fiery vodka
+gulp any time after noon, and tails off in the falling shadows of the
+winter sunset with tea and cigarettes. Or, if one wishes, he may press
+the bell, labeled in the Græco-Slavonic lettering, “Buffet,” and dine à
+la carte.
+
+“Il vaut mieux essayer le repas Russe,” says the quiet reader of de
+Maupassant, joining you.
+
+He is duly thanked for the advice, and we beckon to the aproned waiter.
+At once the latter passes the countersign kitchenward to set the meal
+in motion, and puts before us the little liqueur-glasses and the bottle
+of vodka. While we still gasp and blink over this, he has gotten
+the cold _zakuska_ of black rye-bread and butter, _sardinka_, salty
+_beluga_, and cold ham, and has started us on the first course. Then
+comes in, after the omni-inclusive _zakuska_, a big pot of cabbage-soup
+which we are to season with a swimming spoonful of thick sour cream.
+The chunky pieces of half-boiled meat floating in it are left high
+and dry by the consumption of the liquid. The meat becomes the third
+course, which we garnish with mustard and taste.
+
+“Voyons!” the Frenchman observes. “Of the Russian cuisine and its
+method of preparing certain food-substances one may not approve.
+Frankly it calls for the sauce of a prodigious appetite. But
+contemplating the _obeid_ as an institution so evolved as to fit into
+the general scheme of life, it finds merit. The Russian meal is a guide
+to Russian character.”
+
+“What signifies this mélange of raw fish, eggs, and great slices of
+flesh, and mush of cabbage-soup?”
+
+“Not that the Russian has no taste. It is that he sacrifices his finer
+susceptibilities to his love of freedom. A regular hour for meals
+would seem to him a sacrifice of his leisure and convenience to that
+of the cook. The guiding principle of the national cuisine is that all
+dishes must be capable of being served at any time that the eater feels
+disposed.”
+
+This is a problem to put to any kitchen, we allow. Napoleon’s chef
+met it by relays of roasting chickens. But one cannot keep half a
+dozen fowl going for each household of the one hundred and forty
+million inhabitants of Russia. Thus sturgeon is provided, and sterlet,
+parboiled so that it tastes like blotting-paper; and the filet
+that is called “biftek,” and the oil-sodden “Hamburger,” that is
+dubbed “filet.” These can be started at nine in the morning, and be
+removed at any time between that hour and nine at night, without any
+appreciable change in taste or texture. The cook of the restaurant,
+like his brethren of the Empire, has laid his professional conscience
+sacrificially upon the national altar of unfettered meals. If the
+_obeid_ is not a triumph in culinary art, it is at least a signal
+example of domestic generalship.
+
+We have advanced without a hitch to roast partridge, with sugared
+cranberries, which our friend washes down with good red wine from the
+Imperial Crimean estates. We get through a hard German-like apple-tart,
+and reach the last item of cheese.
+
+When the mighty meal is over, we order tea, light cigarettes, and lean
+back in the armchairs to chat and note how our neighbors are getting
+through the time.
+
+At the far end of the room a Russian has joined the French lady and
+her escort. They are celebrating some occasion that requires heaping
+bumpers of champagne. The babble of their conversation is in the air.
+It seems to refer to the comparative appreciation of histrionic talent
+in Rouen and Vladivostok!
+
+Somebody is being treated to a dressing-down in the latest Parisian
+argot. “Ces sont des betteraves là-bas!” one hears scornfully above the
+murmurs.
+
+Across the way some Germans are engaged with beer-schooners. One of
+them gets excited and brings his fist down upon the table. “Arbeit in
+Sibirien nimmer geendet ist; they always want more advice about their
+gas-plants.”
+
+In the lull that follows the explosion, a gentle English voice floats
+past from the seat behind us. “And so I told him that the station had
+nearly enough funds, but we needed workers, more workers.” It is the
+English medical missionary on his way to Shanta-fu, discussing China
+with the American mining-engineer, bound for Nerchinsk.
+
+The piano, under the corner ikon with its ever-burning lamp, tinkles
+out suddenly, and a man’s voice starts up--
+
+  You can hear the girls declare,
+  He must be a millionaire.
+
+He misses a note every now and then, which does not embarrass him in
+the least. Caroling gayly to his own accompaniment, he forges ahead.
+The crowd in the armchairs around the room, consuming weak tea or
+strong beer, and smoking, all join with an untroubled accord and
+versatile accents, French, English, and Russian, in the blaring chorus,
+“The man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”
+
+The train rocks faster on the falling grade; little by little the
+mountains drop away; gradually the mighty forests become dwarfed into
+scattered clumps of straggly birches, and the great trees dwindle into
+bushes; lower and still lower fall the hills, until all is flat. As far
+as the eye can see are the snow-covered wastes, treeless, houseless,
+lifeless. The lowest foothills of the Urals have been passed. It is the
+beginning of the great steppes.
+
+Slowly the daylight wanes. The gray darkness deepens steadily; it
+seems to gather in over the gliding snow, and the peculiar gloom of a
+Siberian winter’s night closes down. At each track-guard’s post flash
+with vivid suddenness the little twinkling lanterns of the wardens of
+the road. Involuntarily conversation becomes less animated and voices
+are lowered; the spell of the sombreness is over all.
+
+Soon the electric lamps are lighted, and from brazen ikon and sparkling
+glasses flash reflections of their glitter. Curtains are drawn,
+which shut out the enshrouding blackness. The piano begins tinkling
+again; the waiters come and go with tea and liqueurs; the babble of
+conversation rises; and the idle laughter is heard anew. Darkness may
+be ahead, behind, and beside, but within there is light--enjoy it.
+
+The train slows for a halt. Station-lamps shine mistily through the
+brooding night. Lanterns bob to and fro on the platform as fur-capped
+train-hands pass, tapping wheels and opening journal-boxes. At each
+door a fire-tender is catching and stowing away the wood which a
+peasant in padded sheepskins is tossing up from his hand-sled below.
+It is Chelliabinsk, whose old importance as the clearing-house of the
+convicts has been passed on to the new city of the railroad. Here the
+just completed northern branch, linking Perm to Petersburg, meets the
+old southern line from Samara and Moscow.
+
+A short stop and the train moves on again. The day is done and
+gradually each saunters into his own warm compartment, which the width
+of the Russian gauge makes as large as a real room. One can read at
+the table by the window, under the electric drop-light, or, propped
+in pillows, one can stretch out luxuriously on the easy couch that is
+nightly manoeuvred into an upper and lower berth. Practically always
+after crossing the Urals, the number of passengers has so thinned out
+that each may have a stateroom to himself.
+
+Presently you push the bell labeled, “Konduktor.” A uniformed attendant
+appears standing at the salute. “_Spate_” (sleep) is sufficient
+direction. The sheets and pillows are dug out and the transformation of
+the couch into a bed is effected. “_Spacoine notche_” (good-night) he
+says, and you fall asleep to the rhythmic throb of the engine.
+
+During the following hours the train enters the Tobolsk Government,
+the oldest province of Siberia, whose 439,859 square miles of area,
+nearly four times as large as Prussia, extend roughly from the railroad
+northward to the Arctic Ocean, and from the Urals eastward so as to
+include the lower basin of the Ob-Irtish river system. This ancient
+province has seen much of Siberia’s history, whose predominant features
+have been two, growth and graft.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE OVER THE IRTISH]
+
+[Illustration: ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY]
+
+Out of evil, somehow, in a marvelous way has been coming good. In the
+earliest days, with what smug satisfaction did the Stroganovs find
+that the native inhabitants would trade ermine for glass beads! Yet
+the fruit of their sharp dealing and purchased protection and special
+privilege was the expedition that won Sibir, founded Tobolsk, and
+opened to Russia the way into northern Asia. The imperial commissioner
+who came to Tobolsk shortly after Kutchum Khan’s overthrow, to collect
+the yassak tribute of ten sable-skins for each married man and five for
+each bachelor, was detected culling the choice skins for himself, and
+substituting cheap ones for his master. But his agents had sought out
+the paths and extended the Russian Empire far into the northern forests.
+
+By despotic oppression the inhabitants of Uglitch town, condemned for
+testifying to the murder of Dimitri, the Czarevitch, came here into
+exile in 1593, carrying with them the tocsin-bell that had tolled alarm
+when the Czar wished silence. But they, together with the deported
+laborers settled by the same arbitrary will along the Tobol River,
+started the permanent settlement of the new realm.
+
+A succeeding functionary called on the natives for a special tribute
+of ermine for the Czarina’s mantle. He collected so many bales of it
+that the taxed began to wonder at the stature of the “Little Mother,”
+and sent a special deputy to Petersburg. The legate discovered that the
+Empress was as other women, and on his disclosures the official was
+unable to save his own, let alone the ermines’ skins. Yet while the
+governor was plundering the fur-merchants of Tobolsk, the frontiers
+were extending, until by 1700 they reached eastward to Kamchatka and
+Lake Baikal, southeast to the Altai foothills at Kuznetz, and north to
+the Arctic Ocean.
+
+At Tobolsk in 1710 Peter the Great established the capital of his
+reorganized province of Siberia. Prince Gagarin, whom he appointed
+its first governor, found here a systemless extortion unworthy of an
+efficient statesman. With the thoroughness of genius he built up in
+the unhappy province a regular organization of rascality. His pickets
+patrolled the roads into Russia, to prevent the escape of those who
+might carry the tale of his oppression. He arranged with high officials
+at Court that any petitioners who evaded this frontier net should be
+handed over to an appropriate committee. Thus fortified, he began
+collections of as much as could be wrung from his luckless subjects.
+Every traveler paid Gagarin’s tariff, every farmer sent him presents of
+stock, every trapper forwarded the best of his catch. The fur-trader’s
+donations and the merchants’ loans were assisted into Gagarin’s
+warehouses by thumbscrew and thonged knout.
+
+While these things passed in Tobolsk there came periodically to
+Petersburg delegations of outwardly contented citizens attesting the
+wisdom of their governor. They brought to the Czar and the Grand
+Dukes, in addition to the punctiliously rendered tax yassak, gifts of
+especially fine furs. Such was the completeness of Gagarin’s control
+that not an echo of the true state of affairs reached the ears of the
+astute Peter.
+
+At length, in 1719, Nesterov, the Minister of Finance, was privately
+approached by some Tobolsk merchants and was supplied with evidence
+sufficient to hang half the officials in Siberia. In a dramatic
+presentation the Minister furnished this to the Imperial Senate,
+showing so bad a case that Gagarin’s own agents in the ducal circle
+rose up against him. The Czar sent Licharev, a major of the Guard,
+to Siberia, to proclaim in every town and hamlet that Gagarin was a
+criminal in the eyes of the Emperor. As this messenger approached
+Tobolsk, official after official came out to turn state’s evidence,
+trying to assure his personal safety. The highways to Russia were
+guarded by Peter’s own troops, with orders to seize all outgoing
+travelers who might be transporting Gagarin’s accumulated spoil, which
+with commendable prudence the Czar had allocated to himself.
+
+When Peter was in England he had remarked casually to an acquaintance,
+“In my realm I have only two lawyers, and one of these I intend to
+hang as soon as I get back.” It was particularly unfortunate for
+this ex-governor that the remainder of the legal profession did not
+feel himself called upon to explain to Peter the Gagarin campaign
+contributions. No one ever needed an attorney more. He was under trial
+before an imperial judge who did not know a technicality from a tort,
+and whose preliminary procedure was to order a reliable gallows.
+
+For some score of years subsequent to Gagarin, the governors of Siberia
+were, in any event, moderate. The province grew apace, increased by
+exiles, by land-seeking colonists, by raskalniks,--nonconformists of
+the Greek Church, self-called “Old Believers,”--who preferred to come
+to Siberia rather than follow Peter’s orders and shave off their beards.
+
+Then Chicherin the Magnificent came. His life was a round of
+celebrations. Wonderful stews he concocted for his sybaritic revels.
+At _obeid_ an orchestra of thirty pieces supplied the music. Artillery
+in front of the residency saluted him with salvos when he drove out.
+In Butter-Week all Tobolsk drank the spirits which their governor
+bountifully provided. It is hardly necessary to say that the money for
+these entertainments did not come from Chicherin’s private purse: the
+city merchants groaned over forced loans and benevolences; and at last
+their cry reached the throne, and Chicherin too was removed.
+
+With his passing, the Tobolsk Province fell to less spectacular
+rulers, but under good and bad it grew steadily, until in 1860 there
+were a million inhabitants within its borders, a population which
+at the present time has risen to a million and a half. Some forty
+thousand of these are exiles; some eighty thousand raskalniks; and
+forty thousand Tatars, who feed the flocks where their ancestors once
+bore sway, living peacefully side by side with the Russians. Some
+fifteen thousand are descendants of the Samoieds and Voguls with whom
+the first Stroganov from the adjoining Russian province of Archangel
+traded his wares. Some twenty thousand are Ostiaks whose forebears were
+alternately allies and enemies of Yermak.
+
+The capital city, Tobolsk, on the Tobol River hard-by its junction with
+the Irtish, has grown from a precariously held camp of two hundred and
+fifty fugitive Cossack soldiers to a city of thirty thousand. Tiumen,
+the easterly city on the Tura River, another of Yermak’s camps, has
+grown into a great distributing-centre for produce brought by the
+river-highways. From the railway line northward as far as the city of
+Tobolsk extends a farm-belt, a continuation of the black-earth region
+of great Russia. The fertility of the land may be judged by the number
+of villages met as the train speeds on, and the large proportion
+of enclosed fields on both sides of the track. Some of the finest
+agricultural soil in the world lies here, such soil as composes the
+prairies of Minnesota and Dakota. Three million head of live stock
+graze in the district, which has a yearly production of ten million
+hundredweight of wheat alone, four million of rye, and nine million of
+oats. Five million more settlers may live and thrive, and the harvest
+will feed the ever-growing cities of Europe when Siberia comes to be
+the new granary of the old world. The stress and turmoil of Tobolsk are
+passed. Happy the people who have no annals!
+
+Gradually, as the train rolls eastward beyond the Ishim River Valley,
+the farm country opens out into the unfenced prairie of the Great
+Steppe. The clustered wooden villages that flanked the line through
+Tobolsk appear less and less frequently, till at last we seem to glide
+over an immense white sea, frozen into perpetual calm and silence. Here
+and there a gray thicket of stunted trees and bushes, here and there a
+grove of naked-limbed birches, mutely exhibit Nature’s desolation.
+
+As the sullen landscape bares itself, one thinks of the prison
+caravans tramping these wastes; of the early neglected garrisons which
+Elizabeth’s favorite General Kinderman proposed to victual on crushed
+birch-bark and relieve the Crown of their expense; of all the misery
+and the wrong that the steppes of Siberia have symbolized. No sign
+of man’s handiwork or of Nature’s kindliness is seen,--only the cold
+snow and the bare birches, while regularly as the ticking of a clock
+the telegraph-poles and the verst-spaced stations snap back into the
+wastes. The dominant reflection is not, how great is the achievement
+which has mastered these steppes! but, how infinitesimal is all that
+man has done in this ocean of untrodden snow! Hour after hour we are
+driving on. Yet never is there passed a landmark to conjure into
+imagination a picture of progress. One moves as in a nightmare, where
+he runs for seeming ages, hunted forward, yet can never stir from the
+spot. The horizon-bounded circle of vision is as the ever-receding
+rim of a giant dome, the rails ahead and behind bisecting its white
+immensity. Above, the vast bowl of the blue sky dips and meets it,
+imprisoning us. Where are the fields and villages; the bustling
+activity of human life that tells of man’s mastership? Hour after
+hour passes without a change in the drear monotony of the landscape;
+for miles on miles not a trace is seen of human dominion. Grim Nature
+spreading her shroud over plain and pasture is despot here, and Winter
+is ruler of the Siberian Steppe.
+
+One could ride due south a thousand versts, through Golodnia the
+“hunger steppe” to the borders of Turkestan, and find the same
+monotonous plain, snow-covered save where the dryness of the south
+has thinned its fall. One could ride from the Caspian Sea due east
+to China, with each day’s march a counterpart of the rest. Five
+hundred thousand square miles of area are covered with grass and
+gaudy flowers in the spring, with low brush and green reeds where
+the salt swamp-lakes receive the tribute of snow-fed streams. In
+midsummer the growing grass scorches under a heat of 104°. In winter
+snow is everywhere,--in feathery flakes that the midday sun does not
+soften during whole months of a cold which is a ferocity. Thirty to
+forty degrees below zero is not unusual, and the land is swept by
+bitter winds that pierce like daggers through doubled furs and felts.
+Yet there dwell on the central plateau of Asia a million people,
+and one million cattle and three million sheep are scattered over
+the tremendous range. As the herds have become hardened through the
+centuries and survive in measure despite the severity, so also have
+the men. From the train-windows now one may chance to see infrequent
+straggling herds of long-horned cattle, lean and gaunt, scratching away
+the snow in search of food. Mounted on little shaggy ponies are figures
+buried in skins, who keep guard over them.
+
+One detects a new type among the crowds at the stations,--flat faces,
+round eyes, square thickset bodies. Here on the borderland, the old
+race has fused with the Slav and has become metamorphosed. The sons
+of the Tatars, whose very name was distorted into that of a dweller
+in Tartarus by those who feared their fierce valor, have become
+shopkeepers, train-hands, waiters, and butchers, who come to sell meat
+and milk to the chef of the wagon restoran. Sometimes, at the stops,
+figures, gnome-like in enveloping red capote and grotesquely padded
+furs, hold their ponies with jealous rein, staring curiously at the
+locomotive and passengers.
+
+[Illustration: DINING-CAR SALOON, VIEW OF THE LIBRARY]
+
+Looking long from the windows at this steppe, a drowsy hypnotism steals
+over the mind--a dull stupor of unbroken monotony. It is better to do
+as the Russians--pay no attention whatever to the landscape outside,
+but make the most of the life within the moving caravansary,--cards and
+cigarettes and liqueurs, tea and endless talk, with yarns that take
+days for the spinning.
+
+The uniformed judge, passing by, joins you. He is traveling to a
+new appointment with his swarming family of children, shawl-decked
+females of unknown quality and quantity, the household bedding, and
+the ancestral samovar, all crowded into one stifling compartment. He
+discusses volubly the confusions of the Code, and propounds a unique
+theory of his own as to Russian jurisprudence, to the effect that all
+the best laws of other nations have been adopted, with none of the old
+or conflicting enactments repealed. The general drops into the circle.
+He is interesting when one has pierced the crust, but dogmatic. At
+every station the soldiers of the garrison, not on sentry-duty, jump to
+one side, swing half-around, and stand at the salute until he passes,
+to the huge inconvenience of the porters. He would undoubtedly vote the
+Democratic ticket to repay Mr. Roosevelt for putting Russia under the
+alternative of stopping the war perforce, or forfeiting sympathy, when
+Japan was said to be breaking under the strain.
+
+“Russia was beaten this time. What of it? _Nietchevo!_” says the
+general.
+
+“_Nietchevo_,” we echo, as we sip our tea.
+
+“But the Japanese are wily insects,” observes his companion, the young
+service-medaled major. “I was in Vladivostok when our prisoners came
+back. They tried to get money for the checks the Japanese had given
+them. That was how the big mutiny began. You know, when our men were
+taken captive, the Japanese treated them very well, much good food,
+vodka, let them write home all about it, and gave them enormous pay,
+six yen, three dollars a month, charging the expense all up to the Czar
+for after the war. When at last the prisoners were to be released, the
+Japanese promised every man double pay, twelve roubles. But they gave
+them the money? No, the insects gave them each an order payable by the
+Russian commander in Vladivostok. So the transports came, and these men
+were sent ashore with these checks in their hands, and they went up to
+the commandant of the city, and asked for their cash that the Japanese
+had promised. What money did the commandant have for them? What could
+he do? He ordered them to go away. So they stood and discussed on the
+street-corners. And more men still came from the transports. Then they
+said, ‘We will ask the general of the forts.’ So they marched to the
+forts in a big crowd, and the general he also told them to go away. For
+a long time they talked and they persuaded the sailors to help them. So
+they went again to the forts, and the sailors shot at the forts, and
+the general ordered the artillery to shoot. But the artillery would
+not, so the men broke in and killed the officers and got arms and went
+back to the city commander. Him, too, they killed, and all Vladivostok
+was in mutiny for two weeks. Not an officer dared show himself. General
+Orlov persuaded them to let him into the town. Then many were shot, but
+at last the city was quiet. The Japanese are very sly insects.”
+
+His story ends and the two officers go back to join their families. The
+train throbs on across the steppe.
+
+The German gas-plant drummer, with his new Far Eastern outfit, is
+gathering from the missionary doctor details of treaty-port life,
+which are being treasured up as valuable reference data. The French
+fur-merchant dips back into his library copy of de Maupassant.
+
+The rigor of the outside scene seems at length to be changing. A few
+scattered houses appear, and trees and fenced fields, and villages,
+with curling smoke rising from the chimneys. Men and children are
+walking about, and finally we come to the Irtish River, over which the
+train rumbles on a half-mile bridge. Spires and gilt domes are visible,
+dark wooden houses, and bright white-painted churches with green roofs.
+Droshkies and carts are passing in the streets, and presently we draw
+up to the station of Omsk, the second city of Siberia.
+
+The junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway with the Irtish River, which
+is 2520 miles long and open from April to October, would of itself
+make Omsk a centre of great strategic importance. But in addition to
+this main river-highway, which is navigated by some hundred and fifty
+steamers, there are affluents by which one can sail from the Urals
+to the Altai, from the Arctic Ocean to China, and these lines of
+communication centre here.
+
+From Omsk, following the Irtish down past Tobolsk, one can steam
+by the Obi to Obdorsk, within the Arctic Circle. Indeed, a regular
+grain-export service was planned via the Kara Sea to London by an
+ambitious Englishman. It failed after some promise of success, because
+of the ice-packs in the Gulf of Obi. From Omsk, following the Irtish
+upstream, steamer navigation extends as far as Semipalatinsk, in the
+Altai foothills. Smaller craft may go nearly to the Chinese frontier.
+
+By the Tobol and Tura rivers, Tiumen, in the Ural foothills, may be
+reached, four hundred and twenty miles from Semipalatinsk. By ascending
+the Obi, a boat may go fourteen hundred and eighty miles east from
+Tiumen to Kuznetz on the Tom; through a canal from an Obi confluent the
+Yenesei River System may be entered, and from it by a short portage the
+Lena System. In all twenty-eight thousand miles are navigable by small
+craft, and seven thousand miles by steamer. Omsk is the pulsing heart
+of this mighty interior waterway system.
+
+[Illustration: TIUMEN TOMSK PERM CITIES OF NEW RUSSIA]
+
+The train leaves the station, which is at a distance from the town, and
+once more we are en route. The eye rests gratefully upon the ribbon
+of cultivated fields which follow the Irtish down. But we reënter the
+steppe, and again the desolation settles over all. In hours of
+looking, not a habitation is seen, not an animal, not a tree,--only
+the same white billows. This Barbara district in the Tomsk Government
+has an area of fifty thousand square miles. Kainsk, some seven hundred
+versts from Chelliabinsk, is the centre. The section, though covered
+with the fertile black earth of the adjoining regions, is, owing to
+lack of drainage and adequate rainfall, arid and almost untilled.
+
+The round-faced civilian from the compartment further up, whose
+familiarity with the country has made him a welcome accession, joins us
+at the window. He looks out over the level plain of the Barbara Steppe
+with manifest satisfaction.
+
+“You admire the landscape?” we ask satirically.
+
+He smiles. “We got big money when the line went through here. I made my
+first fortune then.”
+
+He sighs at the memory of old times, and tells of the railway-building
+days when the Czar had given the order for a road across the continent,
+and the soldiers of fortune, of whom he was one, had gathered to the
+task.
+
+“Not a kopeck had I when the Dreyfus brothers made their big
+speculation in Argentine wheat and went down, leaving us young clerks
+stranded in Kiev. You know Kiev? Great pilgrimages come there to see
+the bodies of Joseph and his brethren, all preserved just as when they
+died. We heard by accident of a grading job under a big contractor out
+here. None of us knew anything about construction, but three of us
+grain-clerks wrote a letter saying we would put the work through, and
+started. We had just enough money to get to Samara. In Samara was a
+merchant much esteemed, whom I went to see. He went on our bond, never
+having seen us before, and gave us enough money to come. So it was in
+the old days. The country was flat as a board. We had but to lay down
+the ties and spike the rails. Thirty versts we made of this line. It
+cost us thirty thousand roubles a verst, but we got fifty thousand.
+Would that we might do that now again.”
+
+The contractor, his round jolly face glowing with the recital and his
+eyes shining through gold-rimmed glasses, is entertaining a growing
+company, for the judge has stopped to gossip, and the railroad official.
+
+“I took my money and bought an estate in the country of the Don
+Cossacks,” the contractor is saying. “I paid ten per cent to the
+Government for taxes when I bought the land. I had to pay no more taxes
+then all my life, but my heir would pay taxes, or, if I sold, he who
+bought would pay. So it was done in the Hataman Government.”
+
+“It is just,” says the judge. “Why should they, who get the property,
+not pay taxes?”
+
+The contractor shrugs his shoulder and continues: “For five years
+I farmed, and though I had a German overseer, I did not prosper.
+So I went to one of the cities of Russia and thought to put in a
+tramway. The men of the city said, ‘Are all the horses dead? He of the
+spectacles is mad.’ Yet by importunity I got them to give me the right
+to make a tramway. There were in Petersburg then many Belgians, with
+much money, wishing to give it away. So I went to them and said, ‘Here
+is a great franchise, but who will build the line and gain the riches?’
+
+“‘We will, we will,’ said the Belgians.
+
+“From them I got a hundred and eighty thousand roubles clear, and an
+interest. I sold the interest quickly to other foreigners, Frenchmen,
+and went away. Yes, the tramway was built, and the people crowded to
+ride on it as I had said. But when it was going well, and the profits
+were yet to come, the people said, ‘Shall foreigners oppress our city?’
+So the town bought the tramways for what they said was the cost, and
+the Belgians went away. And they did not come back to Russia. Thus were
+many railways and tramways built and taken. The foreigners will not
+come back now, and Russians too do not enter these pursuits, lest the
+Government come after them later. It is _hudoo_ (bad).”
+
+“But is it not worse that these men should make a tramway and draw vast
+money from the people?” says the railroad official. “For me, I think
+the Government should do it all.”
+
+“_Ni snaia_, I don’t know,” says the contractor. “But I who bought
+stocks with the Belgians’ money (foolishly thinking that the business
+which I knew not was safe, while that which I knew was shaky), I will
+not give again to the stock-people the money I shall make from the
+oil-fields of Sakhalin, where I go now.”
+
+“But,” says the railway chinovnik, “does not the State do these things
+better? Look you at this very railway. For years any who wished might
+have built into Siberia. An Amerikanski, and Collins, an Angleski, came
+proposing railroads, but all things slumbered. Then in 1891 the Czar
+ordered the road to be built, and in ten years we had laid the eight
+thousand versts to Vladivostok. I read that the line of Canada, where
+too there are steppes and highlands as ours, took ten years for but
+half the distance. We made two versts a day for all the years, and they
+but one. Who other than the Government could spend a billion roubles
+for a line that will bring money returns only in the far future?”
+
+“Ah, you chinovniks, you say, lo, we do all this! But it was such as
+I built that road, and because you gave us big money. And is not the
+money to support it now got from the peasants’ taxes while so many
+clerks and operators waste time in the offices? I have seen a third
+as many men as at Omsk do the same work. And your trains go as the
+water-snails, twelve versts an hour for freight, twenty versts an hour
+for the mail-trains, thirty-five versts for the express. One can go
+eighty versts in Europe.”
+
+“Truly, truly, but why go so fast? It costs more for fuel, and the
+track has to be made straight. What good does it do you to come in
+sooner? If a man is in a hurry to get somewhere, can he not take an
+earlier train?”
+
+The group mulls over this knotty point of logic, which is complicated
+by the fact that our own train is twelve hours late. They cite
+hypothetical men with varying sorts of engagements, and then lightly
+switch to talk of the nourishing properties of beer, the utility of
+agricultural machinery, and the old tiger battue of Vladivostok.
+
+The birch groves become more frequent now, pines begin to appear, and
+at last the country has become forested. Several of the passengers
+bestir themselves for departure, gathering multitudinous bundles, and
+making the circuit in demonstrative hand-shaking farewells.
+
+“We come to Taiga, whence they go to the stingy town of Tomsk,” the
+government engineer observes.
+
+“Why do you call it the stingy town of Tomsk?”
+
+“I will tell you. Tomsk, before the railroad came, was the biggest,
+finest, and wealthiest of our cities. She was the capital of the
+great Tomsk Gobernia, with three hundred and thirty thousand square
+miles of area, and a million and a half people. The Tom brought the
+big river steamers to her wharves. In the city she had sixty thousand
+inhabitants, increasing every year; a university, Stroganov’s Library,
+a cathedral, fine public buildings. The merchants were rich; the miners
+came down from the Altai; all things were prospering. When the railway
+was ordered, the engineers came through to locate the line. All they
+asked was a hundred thousand roubles. But how stingy were the people of
+Tomsk! They had given two million roubles for their university, where
+the students made speeches and got sent to the Yakutski Oblast, yet
+they would not give a hundred thousand roubles to the engineers. ‘Give
+fifty, give even forty thousand,’ said the engineers. But the people of
+Tomsk said, ‘Are we not the seat of government for all western Siberia?
+Have we not Yermak’s banner in the cathedral? Are we not Tomsk? You
+must bring the railway here anyway.’ But if the engineers had done
+that, who could say where it would have ended? All the other cities
+would begin to make excuses. So the grades to Tomsk became suddenly so
+bad that the line had to be run away south here, eighty-two versts. The
+station where one changes was named, in mockery, Taiga, ‘in the woods.’
+The merchants flocked out begging the engineers to come back to Tomsk.
+They offered all that had been asked and much more. They hung around
+the office and wept over the blue-prints. But how can a professional
+man change his plans and sacrifice his reputation? One cannot do such
+things. So Tomsk was left, and her trade now falls far behind that of
+the other cities, Omsk and Irkutsk. We in Siberia smile at her and call
+her the stingy city of Tomsk.”
+
+“We have, too, another jest, of the Tomsk Czar,” chimes in the judge.
+“There appeared one day there a stranger calling himself Theodore
+Kuzmilch, who bought a little house which he never left save to do
+some act of charity. For years he lived; then, when he died, the house
+was turned into a chapel because of his good deeds. Many years after
+his death, a merchant started the tale that this was the Czar Alexander
+I, who did not die in the Crimea, but left a false body to be carried
+to Petersburg and entombed in state. He had, it was told, not really
+died, and, disappointed at his powerlessness to help his people, had
+come, self-exiled, to Siberia. But we others laugh at this tale of
+Tomsk as an imperial residence.”
+
+The twenty minutes’ stop at Taiga ends, and the train renews its
+journey through the forests.
+
+With rolling hill and long-stretching forests, the watershed bounding
+the eastern limits of the Obi Basin is crossed near Achinsk, and the
+drainage-basin of the mighty Yenesei River, one million three hundred
+and eighty thousand square miles in area, is entered. It just fails
+to equal in length the Mississippi-Missouri System. Including the
+administrative territory “Yeneseik” of the East Siberian Gobernia,
+the river sweeps from the Chinese borderland north beyond the Arctic
+Circle. In the far south, where it rises among the Minusink Mountains,
+the valley country is like the Italian Alps, mild and very fertile.
+Iron-mines of prehistoric antiquity are found in these valleys, relics
+of the old Han Dynasty of China.
+
+Of the twenty million bushels of grain produced throughout the
+Yeneseik territory, nearly a third comes from the Minusink oasis. The
+railroad pierces the central plains, farmed in the most favorable spots
+only, and capable of enormously extended cultivation.
+
+Through alternating forest, field, and plain the train moves on, and
+crossing the three thousand-foot Yenesei bridge, enters the city of
+Krasnoyarsk. When we pull out, the engineer, who has been chatting with
+the erstwhile contractor, observes, “This town was a main hotbed of the
+great strike. They are well in hand now, but we had our time with them
+in 1905. Even I knew nothing of what had been prepared.”
+
+He goes on to tell the most curious tale of the organized strike
+movement which introduced the disturbances subsequent to the
+Russo-Japanese War.
+
+“On September 15 at noon, no one knows by whom or from what station,
+a signal of dots and dashes was tapped off. Each telegraph-operator
+answered the message and passed the word to the next, standing by until
+it was repeated back. Then, leaving all things in order, he stepped
+from the operating-room into the railway-station. With a motion he
+gave the countersign to the ticket-sellers, and each, as he received
+it, shut his desk, and walked out. The word went to the engineers, and
+each, at the signal, drew his fires and left the engine and its train
+forsaken on its tracks. Every postman put away his mail, closed the
+safe, and left his office; every diligence-agent locked his doors. From
+Astrakan to Archangel, from Warsaw to Vladivostok, the electric summons
+went, and the whole realm of Russia was paralyzed.
+
+“With two thousand roubles, offered by the Governor-General of Poland,
+before them, and ten bayonets on the tender behind, an engineer and a
+fireman were secured to run one coach, containing a terrified prince,
+from Warsaw to the frontier. In the south, a few cars were started by
+soldiers, but beyond such rare instances, for three weeks not a train
+was moved. More than this, not a telegram was transmitted, not a letter
+delivered. Everywhere was black silence, as if all the Russias had been
+swept from the face of the world.
+
+“‘More wages, and the constitution,’ was the slogan of the strikers.
+The official cohorts met the issue courageously, with bribes and
+bayonets, and little by little got the upper hand. Force and money were
+used unstintingly to win the operators needed and break the front of
+the strike. A few, who, contrary to the expectations of their mates,
+had remained loyal to the officials, were finally secured and protected
+by the soldiery. As in time one train after another was manned and
+moved, the men who had stayed away lost heart, knowing but too well
+what would be the fate of those who were left outside the breastworks.
+First singly, then in crowds, they returned, and the great strike was
+broken.”
+
+“Here in Krasnoyarsk there was revolutionist rule for a while as well,”
+the manager remarks. “The troops were driven out, and we had to wait
+for reinforcements. Yet when I came to my office there were sixty
+thousand roubles in the safe, not a kopeck of which had been touched.
+Some of the best employees were condemned. I was very sad, and the
+service was very poor when they marched away.”
+
+“What became of them?” we ask.
+
+In a low voice he answers, “They went to the Yakutsk.”
+
+Everybody is silent for a moment.
+
+“Where did you say?” inquires the missionary.
+
+“The Yakutski Oblast,” answered the chinovnik.
+
+In Europe people talk of the rigors of Russia’s winter. In Russia
+of the cold of Siberia. In Siberia, along the railway, when the
+thermometer gets down into the forties and the sentries pick up
+sparrows too numb to fly, they say, “It’s as cold as the Yakutsk.”
+
+“One starts to the Yakutsk by the steamer-towed prison barge, following
+down the Yenesei from Krasnoyarsk,” the engineer continues. “For the
+first thousand versts northward the way is through a mighty forest
+region. The interior is almost as unknown as when the Samoieds were
+its sole inhabitants. Marshes covered with trembling soil, to be
+crossed only on snowshoes, alternate with thickets, called _urmans_, of
+larches, cedars, firs, pines, and beeches.”
+
+“It is not alluring,” we observe.
+
+“The cold of the winter seems largely to arrest decay, and the fallen
+trees, remaining unrotted, form a nature-made _cheval de frise_,
+impossible to traverse save along the hunters’ trails. Another thousand
+versts up the Upper Tunguska River, at whose limit of navigation is
+a crossing into the Lena System, and the Yakutsk Province begins;
+eastward to the coastal range overlooking Behring Sea, and northward
+to the Arctic Ocean, a million and a half square miles of desolation,
+extends this exiles’ oblast. Prison-stations are located in the
+forsaken tundra country beyond the Arctic Circle, where scattered
+clumps of creeping birches and dwarf willows struggle to maintain
+existence in the few unfrozen upper inches of ground, congealed
+perpetually beneath to unmeasured depths. Here, where the average
+winter temperature is eighty below zero, come the exiles deemed most
+formidable.”
+
+“How long do men last in the Yakutski cold?” we ask the engineer.
+
+“Oh, sometimes a strong man will outlive his sentence and return. The
+friends of our strikers ask me sometimes about one or another, but we
+have heard nothing of them since they marched away in chains. May fate
+keep us from that road!”
+
+The theme is not enlivening, and soon we go forward into the
+observation-car.
+
+After crossing the Kan River at Kansk, the railroad turns abruptly
+southwest, through the hilly country of the Irkutsk Gobernia, and
+climbing into the highlands of the Altai, enters the watershed of the
+Angara. The drainage-basin of this river equals the combined areas of
+Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. It is as
+well adapted to agriculture as parts of the best provinces of Central
+Russia in the same latitude.
+
+The train pulls next into the station of Nishneudinsk. A booted
+peddler is making his way down the platform, with knives, combs, caps,
+and cheap knick-knacks. He stops to show us something special, a
+miniature of multicolored minerals, glittering from a hundred crystal
+facets. The Russian engineer picks out the flaky quartz, the iron
+pyrites,--“fools’ gold,” as they called it in old Nevada times,--green
+porphyry, iridescent peacock ore of copper, and some black crystals
+like antimony, which show here and there. Malachite, serpentine, topaz,
+and numberless other minerals are in the mass, which glitters in
+kaleidoscopic changes. A small piece of gold ore tops the pile.
+
+“Cabinetski?” asks the engineer.
+
+“Da, da,” assents the peddler. “Cabinetski.”
+
+“It comes from one of the domains of his Imperial Majesty’s Cabinet,”
+explains the engineer. “Stretches of forest, belts of fertile river
+valley, fur districts, hundreds of thousands of square versts, the
+best mines in these Urals which produce sometimes yearly seven million
+roubles, the entire Nerchinsk region, producing six million roubles,
+are ‘cabinetski,’” he remarks. “Even I, Ivan Vasilovich Poyarkov, am
+‘cabinetski’!”
+
+He explains the origin of the term, going back to the old days when
+princedoms went to the courtiers of Catherine. Always for a great
+enterprise it was necessary to have a friend at Court. So the rich
+merchants and miners would form, with powerful members of the inner
+circle at St. Petersburg, alliances such as that made by the Stroganovs
+with Boris. Gradually, as time went on, the protected were swallowed
+by the protectors, until one by one the various estates had passed
+into the hands of the nobles of the Imperial Court. The mines in the
+Altai, which Demidov had opened up, were taken over in 1747 by the
+Emperor, those in the Zabaikalskaia Oblast at about the same time. With
+the passing of the years, what had been graft and expropriation was
+transmuted into vested interest, until now it is the established right
+of the Imperial Cabinet, or the Grand Dukes, to receive the revenues
+of these vast domains. In the mining regions their perquisite is from
+five to fifteen per cent. Save for the tax, however, miners are free to
+operate upon the ducal estates, and many are thus engaged.
+
+A fur-capped station-agent clangs the big bronze bell, waits a moment,
+and then clangs twice. The passengers climb back into the box-like
+steel cars of the express. The third bell sounds, and the train starts.
+We sit down beside the engineer and the conversation takes up the
+“cabinetski” again.
+
+“We have great traditions. One Governor, Neryschkin, of the
+‘cabinetski’ mines at Nerchinsk, marched to fight the Czar. In 1775 he
+was appointed chief of the mineral belt in the Zabaikalskaia Oblast.
+He sat for eleven months at home with closed shutters. Then, on Easter
+Sunday, singing a devil’s hymn, and with a fat female on either side,
+he drove to church and ordered the service amended to suit a rather
+bizarre taste. He organized a series of glittering shows at the Crown’s
+cost, gave free drink to the populace, and throwing out many of his
+subordinates, appointed convicts in their stead. When he had used up
+all the tax-money in his keeping, he drew up cannon before the house
+of the rich merchant Sibirayakov, the operator of the mines, and made
+him hand out five thousand roubles. Finally he got together an army of
+Tunguses and the peasants, to march against the Czar. He was caught on
+the way and sent to Russia for punishment. It is the great honor of our
+service to be governor over the ‘cabinetski’ mines. Perhaps I shall
+rise there some day. Perhaps not. But I shall not march against the
+Czar.”
+
+The forests of birch and pine and fir, and the hills, as the car drives
+eastward, close in again. The crests of mid-Siberian mountains lift
+their snowy heads, and the train climbs up and up toward the great
+central Lake Baikal, and the city of Irkutsk, 3378 miles from Moscow,
+and further east than Mandalay.
+
+When, on this seventh day, the train is winding up the Angara Valley
+toward Irkutsk, one may mentally look back over the country that has
+been traversed and estimate somewhat the meaning of the railway. The
+Urals formed the first landmark. As in the dominion of the blind the
+one-eyed man is king, so after the monotony of the plains, the Ural
+Mountains seem great and worthy of the name given by the old Muscovite
+geographer, the “Girdle of the World.” By actual measurements, however,
+in their seventeen hundred miles of length, no peak rises over six
+thousand feet. Coming eastward from the Urals the line has cut through
+the southwestern corner of the old Tobolsk Government, has skirted
+the northern border of the steppe, has bisected the Tomsk Province,
+and after crossing the Yenesei River in Yeneseik has entered Irkutsk
+Province, and traversed the central highland region nearly to Lake
+Baikal.
+
+Many who journey this way will have as their first impression, when the
+long winter ride draws to its close, a feeling of depression, almost
+of discouragement, so few are the settlements, so desolate seems all
+Nature. They see the single line of rails, without a branch or feeder
+in the mighty expanse from Chelliabinsk to Irkutsk, save for the stub
+put in for the ungenerous outlanders of unlucky Tomsk. They calculate
+that for a territory forty times the size of the British Isles, and
+one and a half times as large as all Europe, the inadequacy of a
+railroad less in total mileage than the Chicago, Milwaukee and St.
+Paul, is manifest. Statistically-informed bankers sometimes shrug their
+shoulders at the mention of the Trans-Siberian. “Every year a deficit,”
+they say. “Gross earnings but twenty-four million roubles,--one sixth
+of the Canadian Pacific Railway; one tenth of the Southern Railway.
+_Hudoo_ (bad)!” One hears expressed not infrequently in Russia the
+opinion that the railway is a sacrifice justified politically by
+Russia’s need for a link to the Pacific, but ineffectual to secure
+prosperity and advancement to the isolated land of mid-Siberia. It
+is deemed, like the Pyramids, a monument to colossal effort and
+achievement but of little service to mankind.
+
+Their statistics are correct. But it is to the greater honor of the
+road that much which it has accomplished will never appear in credits
+on the account-sheets. Where the white stations of the Siberian
+Railway stand now were once the wooden prison-pens with their guarded
+stockades. Murderers and priests, forgers, profligates, and university
+professors, highway robbers and privy councilors, all together have
+tramped this way. It is its past from which the railroad has raised
+Siberia, the past of neglect and exile that this steam civilizer has
+banished to the far Yakutsk.
+
+Closer study gives, too, a better appreciation of the railroad’s
+economic significance. The line holds a strategic position as truly as
+does the Panama Canal. Though in Siberia proper there is the enormous
+area of nearly five million square miles, so much of this is in Arctic
+tundra, impassable swamp, forest, or barren steppe, that the really
+habitable and arable land narrows down to a tenth of this, which lies
+in general between the parallels of 55° and 58° 30’ north, and is
+contained within a belt some thirty-five hundred miles long and two
+hundred to two hundred and fifty miles broad.
+
+When it is noted that the tillable area of one hundred and ninety-two
+thousand square miles in Tobolsk and Tomsk, mostly along the Obi
+System, the stretch of twenty thousand miles in the steppe, and that of
+one hundred thousand in the Yeneseik and Irkutsk governments of eastern
+Siberia, are all in immediate proximity to the railroad, whose course
+is generally along the 55th parallel, the economic value of Russia’s
+great enterprise takes a different perspective.
+
+Its vantage is still more emphasized when the element of the north and
+south watercourses is considered. One after another the great Siberian
+rivers are crossed,--in the Tobolsk Gobernia, the Tobol, the Ishim,
+the Irtish; in the Tomsk Gobernia, the Obi and the Tom; in Yeneseik,
+the Yenesei; in Irkutsk, the Angara. Each of these reaches far up into
+the agricultural zone that lies north of the railroad, bringing the
+harvests to its cars by the cheap unfettered water-avenues. Thus, to
+the part of Siberia that is capable of extensive development, the
+railroad is even now in a position to give great aid.
+
+It is from such natural factors as these, not from financiers’ figures,
+that one must weigh the potentiality of this great line. Its direct
+value is enormous, its indirect commercial services greater yet.
+It may best be compared to a mighty river system such as that of
+the Mississippi. The latter’s traffic has never directly returned a
+dollar of the millions that have gone to maintaining its levees and
+training-walls and channels. Yet indirectly the return and the value,
+as an asset to the American people, are so great as to be incalculable.
+From its controlling position in relation to the cultivatable land and
+the interior watercourses of Central Siberia, as well as in relation
+to the far eastern artery, the Russian railway is an empire-builder as
+important as has been the Nile.
+
+The results already achieved are noteworthy. The city of Omsk, where
+the railroad and the Irtish River lines meet, has risen from a
+population of thirty-seven thousand in 1897 to seventy thousand in
+1908. Further east, Stretensk has sprung from a town of two thousand
+people ten years ago to over twelve thousand to-day. Irkutsk has
+climbed from sixty to over eighty thousand since the railroad opened.
+
+[Illustration: ISLAND OF KALTIGEI VILLAGE OF LISTVIANITCHNOE LAKE
+BAIKAL]
+
+The rural population has increased even as that of the cities. At the
+beginning of the seventeenth century, all Siberia contained but two
+hundred and thirty thousand souls; at the end of the eighteenth,
+one million five hundred thousand; at the end of the nineteenth, five
+million. Now, with the railroad-induced immigration, it approaches the
+seven million mark. The Steppe Government alone has risen in fifty
+years from five hundred thousand to one million five hundred thousand,
+and the Tomsk from seven hundred thousand to two million five hundred
+thousand.
+
+More in importance than its present utility is the fact that the
+railway holds the key to Siberia’s future. The arable territory of
+the belt is equal to that of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio,
+Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas
+combined. This land is generally well-watered, in a climate suitable
+to grain-raising, and it is, as has been shown, in its whole extent,
+adjacent to river and rail transportation.
+
+While such farming districts of the United States have some fifty
+inhabitants to the square mile, the most densely populated gobernia,
+Tomsk, has but six, and the Yeneseik but six tenths of one.
+
+An immense further area will yield to clearing and to irrigation, as
+has been demonstrated in the great results secured from five hundred
+versts of canals in the Barbara Steppe. Coal and iron are available in
+many places, and timber in the greatest abundance grows in the northern
+district.
+
+From a summary of these elements one may glean an idea of the Colossus
+sleeping beneath these snows. At a normal rate of increase, fifty
+million souls should populate Siberia at the close of the twentieth
+century. The agency of their coming and existing will be primarily
+the line of rails across the continent. Despite the eight hundred
+million roubles expended, with only far-off hopes of profit, the faulty
+road-bed, the light rails, the steep grades, and crawling trains, the
+glory of Russia is still “The Great Siberian Railway.”
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IN IRKUTSK
+
+
+The train pulls slowly up to the white station-house at Irkutsk. A
+swarm of porters, _nasilchiks_, white-aproned, with peaked hats, and
+big, numbered arm-tags, invade the carriage. They seize each piece
+of luggage and run with it somewhere into the crowd outside. You,
+encumbered with your heavy coat, laboriously follow. Irkutsk station,
+more than any previous one, is crowded with passengers and Cossack
+guards. Train officials are shouting instructions, and every few paces
+a sentry is standing his silent watch. This is the transfer entrepôt
+for all through traffic, as well as the depôt for the largest and most
+important city of Siberia.
+
+Threading the press on the platform, you struggle with the outgoing
+human current, and in time reach the big waiting-room of the first
+class. It likewise is crowded with a mass of people, and its floor
+is cumbered with heaping mounds of baggage. One of these hillocks is
+constructed from your impedimenta, which are being guarded now by a
+porter, apparently the residuary legatee of the half-dozen original
+competitors within the car. The man takes the long document that
+witnesses your claim to two trunks, and departs. Upon you in turn
+devolves sentry duty for the interminable time during which those
+trunks are being culled out from the baggage-car.
+
+It is an exasperating wait, but the fundamental rule for Russian
+traveling is, “never separate from the baggage.” The parcel-room here
+at Irkutsk held for six months a suit-case left by a friend to be sent
+to this traveler. The officials would not give it up to its owner or
+to any person save the forwarder, though he, oblivious to sequels, had
+gone on to San Francisco.
+
+Like the rest, now, you camp, with the baggage in front of you, on the
+waiting-room floor. It is a very country fair, this station. At the
+far end is a big stand crowded with dishes, on which are cold meats,
+potato salad, heaps of fruit and cakes, sections of fish from which one
+may cut his own slices, boxes of chocolates, and cigarettes. All are
+piled up in heaping profusion. One can get a glass of vodka and eat
+of the _zakuska_ dishes free, or while waiting he may buy a meal of
+surprisingly ample quantity and good quality at the long tables that
+run down the centre of the room. Most of the Russians order a glass of
+tea, and with it in hand sit down till such indefinite future time as
+the luggage situation shall unroll itself.
+
+We move our baggage and join the tea caravan. Across the table is a
+slight, brown-faced man, with an enormous black astrakan cape falling
+to his ankles, and wearing a jauntily perched astrakan cap on his head.
+“One of the Cossack settlers,” a friend from the train remarks. Beyond
+are half a dozen tired-looking women, with dark-gray shawls over their
+heads. Near them are men with close-fitting _shubas_, or snugly-belted
+sheepskin coats, fur inside, and rough-tanned black leather outside.
+Beside the lunch-stand are a couple of young men with huge bearskin
+caps, short coats, and high leather boots tucked into fleece-lined
+overshoes.
+
+A general at one of the little side tables is talking volubly to a
+plump dame with furs, which are attracting envy from many sides. The
+lady merely nods between puffs of her cigarette, and sips her tea.
+A large fat merchant waddles past, wrapped in a paletot made of the
+glistening silvery skin of the Baikal seal. The room is stifling,
+full of smoke, and crowded with people. Yet no one seems to feel the
+discomfort, even to the extent of taking off the heavy outer coats,
+which, with the thermometer at twenty degrees below zero, they have
+worn on the sleigh-ride in, from across the river.
+
+Your friends of the train, save those whose possessions were comprised
+in their multitudinous valises, are all here, fur-coated likewise and
+sipping tea, waiting, without a thought of impatience, for the baggage
+to be brought out.
+
+At last appears your _nasilchik_. “They are got,” he cries, and
+balances about himself, one by one, your half-dozen pieces of luggage.
+Through the noisy, gesticulating, thronging passengers and heaped
+belongings, he shoulders and squirms a way to the door and into the
+anteroom.
+
+A couple of soldiers are good-naturedly hustling out, from the
+third-class waiting-room opposite, a little leather-jacketed and very
+dirty mujik.
+
+“I did not owe seven kopecks. I cross myself. I am not a Jew,” he
+loudly proclaims.
+
+“_Nietchevo_,” says the soldier. “Out with him just the same!” The
+peasants and crowd loafing alongside grin appreciatingly, as the mujik
+is escorted, collar-held, through the great doors.
+
+The porter and yourself follow. A plunging line of sleighs, backed up
+against the outer platform of the station, extends far up and down
+the road. Their _isvoschiks_, leaning back, are shouting for fares.
+In sight are your two trunks. “How much to the Métropole?” you call.
+The legal fare across the river to the hotel is a rouble, but the
+Governor-General of eastern Siberia couldn’t tell how much it would be
+if you didn’t bargain beforehand. “_Piat rubla!_” “_tree rubla!_” come
+hurtling from all sides.
+
+It is for you to walk down the line calling in the vernacular, “fifty,
+seventy kopecks!” One of the drivers will eventually shout a fare which
+you feel able to allow, and the porter, who has been watching the
+bargaining process with keen interest, gives him the two trunks. The
+_isvoschik_ retires then behind the stormy hiring-line, and you renew
+the process for a second vehicle. The sleighs are just big enough for
+one person to occupy comfortably. Two can squeeze in if they be thin
+enough or economically minded. But a second sleigh is needed now for
+the hand-baggage, and a third for one’s self. At length the arrangement
+is completed. The porter bows low at the donation of fifty kopecks,
+“for vodka”; then, “Go ahead! all ready!” you call, and with a flourish
+the procession of sleighs dashes out of the station purlieus.
+
+The road to the town mounts first a low hill parallel to the river.
+As the horses climb toward its crest the panorama of the city and
+stream, hidden previously by the railroad structures, unrolls. Like a
+great band of white, the frozen Angara sweeps to the left and right.
+Beyond it stand out boldly the clustered domes of the cathedral, their
+surmounting crucifixes glittering in the sunlight. At your feet are the
+sections of the pontoon bridge, which in summer spans the river but in
+autumn is disconnected, the parts being moored to the shore, lest the
+drifting ice from partly frozen Baikal cut and destroy their woodwork.
+
+A dark streak crosses the frozen river, with dots moving, as small
+apparently as running ants. The deceptive snow has made the distance
+seem much less than it is in reality. The streak is a road, and the
+seeming insects are the sleighs that pass and repass on the frozen
+river-trail. Between scattered wooden houses our cavalcade rides down
+to the bank, and at length onto the smooth white sheet. It is like
+skating. The big horses on our sleigh are imported from Russia, and
+trot splendidly, overtaking one after another of the citizens with
+their little shaggy Siberian ponies. The heaped snow is on either side.
+The cold air is bracing, almost welcome, until it begins to eat its way
+in.
+
+It is a fair drive, this, across the river--a full verst to the
+northern bank. We mount the incline that leads up the slope, and come
+to the first log houses of the poorer quarter of Irkutsk town. Gaunt
+dogs bark feebly, and slink away on either side. The street is almost
+deserted; the houses give no sign of life.
+
+Suddenly we come into a square crowded with people, gay with life and
+motion, and motley in colors. It fairly buzzes with talk and cries and
+chaffering. Low-built booths face every side of the open _piazza_. We
+catch a glimpse of one stocked with hardware. Opposite it stands a
+little shrine within which are dimly visible pictured saints and the
+Madonna, before which are scores of burning tapers. Our _isvoschik_
+takes off his hat as he drives past, and reverently makes the sign of
+the cross. He crosses himself also as he passes the white church of
+St. Nicholas with its green roofs and gilded crosses, and he removes
+his cap to the long-haired and dark-robed pope that he meets, for the
+Siberian pays much reverence to his Church.
+
+[Illustration: THE ANGARA RIVER THE CATHEDRAL IRKUTSK]
+
+The residences improve from the log cabins of the outskirts, and grow
+into the two-storied whitewashed structures of the main thoroughfares.
+The streets also have an interesting procession of people. The big
+troika of some high official glides past, with coal-black horses and
+a coachman padded out into a liveried Santa Claus, after the style of
+St. Petersburg. Officers of the garrison sweep by in their light-gray
+overcoats. Shoals of sleighs and sledges are going to and fro. At
+almost every corner, armed with a sabre and revolver, stands a police
+officer.
+
+As one drives along he reads the Russian letters on the placards and
+the names on the stores. Many here are Hebrew, for the Siberians of the
+cities are more tolerant than their European cousins. Irkutsk has a
+very large and prosperous Jewish merchant community, and sent her Dr.
+Mendelberg to the Duma. Irkutsk has had its representation cut down,
+they say, _post hoc_,--perhaps _propter hoc_.
+
+The driver, who has kept his horses at a moderate trot from the
+station through the town, suddenly cries out to them, and swings and
+snaps his lash till they break into a gallop. “We always come in
+handsomely,” says the city native who is with you, as the sleigh pulls
+up triumphantly at the door of the Hôtel Métropole.
+
+A swarm of attendants greet you at the portal, a tall uniformed
+concierge, half a dozen aproned porters, a waiter or two, a page,
+and behind them the Hebraic Hazan, our host. Each porter seizes a
+parcel and the concierge leaves his post by the front door to lead the
+procession up the broad red-carpeted stairway. With a rattle of keys he
+swings open the door to a salon big enough to give a ball in, and whose
+ceiling is six good feet above one’s head. The average New York flat
+would rattle around in it. The concierge advances to its centre and
+bows. Then he goes on through to another room, almost its duplicate in
+size, with a forlorn-looking washstand and a screen across one corner.
+
+“But the bedroom, where do we sleep?” you ask.
+
+“_Sdiece, gaspadine_,” he says, “right here”; and he conducts you to
+the screen.
+
+Raised about eighteen inches above the floor is a little wooden
+platform-like structure, about the size of a cigar-shop showcase. A
+dingy mattress is rolled up at one end of it. As you ruefully feel
+its straw texture and survey the planks which it is to cover, the
+hotel-keeper pushes in to tell you that sheets will be put on at once
+if the _gaspadine_ has not his own. “_Chass! Chass!_ If only the rooms
+suit the _gaspadine_, everything will be arranged.”
+
+The porters silently deposit their loads and depart with their twenty
+kopecks each. The manager goes out, doubtless to gather his sheets.
+Only the concierge stays expectant after he has received his tribute.
+You throw your heavy overcoat over one of the armchairs and begin to
+open some of the bags. The concierge still stays and looks on. You
+begin to segregate laundry, and locate brushes and tooth-powder. The
+concierge still stays and looks on. You get out some slippers which are
+an improvement upon the heavy snow-boots. The concierge still lingers.
+
+“The room is accepted,” you say finally.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he answers. “_Haracho_, but for the police, I want, please,
+your passport.”
+
+To show your passport, true enough, is no more of an incident than to
+take out your handkerchief. But to be obliged before you have been ten
+minutes in a place to produce a paper for the police telling of your
+age and infirmities, the color of your eyes, the number of your arms
+and legs and children, seems tiresome.
+
+“Must all give in their passports?” you inquire.
+
+“All, all,” he answers. “I am punished if one person stays here
+overnight without showing it.”
+
+He takes the document, visibly impressed with its flying eagle and the
+big red seal, and bows his way out.
+
+Now one can stroll around one’s suite and take in some of the details.
+There are electric lights with clusters of globes in the big pendant
+electrolier of the parlor, and drop-lamps for the massive writing-desk
+in the corner! The armchair by the high-silled window is a good place
+to read in. Too bad one cannot look out on the shuttling sleighs of the
+street below, but the cold has thickly frosted the double windows. Here
+is a big sofa, plush-covered, and half a dozen armchairs surround the
+polished table, whose top is scarred with a multitude of rings--from
+the hot tea-glasses, one deduces.
+
+Mentioning tea, why not have some? There ought to be a bell somewhere.
+Unfortunately there is not a bell. In looking for it one finds that
+Siberian housekeeping does not include any dusting of the heavy
+red hangings which flank the doors and windows. An imperious cry
+resounds in the corridor. “_Chelaviek!_” It is followed by a patter
+of footsteps. So this then is the custom of the country. You open the
+door, and in the tone described in books upon elocution as “hortatory,”
+cry out into the dim distances of the corridor, “_Samovar, chai!_”
+Somewhere down the line a voice answers, “_Chass, chass!_” and you
+retire to wait and hope.
+
+Curiously battered the furniture looks when you inspect it closely.
+Here and there a flake is chipped away from the varnish, and cuts or
+dents show in the paint. Have sabre fights, perhaps, taken place here,
+or raids on assembling revolutionists? Certainly in the generations of
+occupants, life has been, in some fashion, tumultuous.
+
+There is a fumbling at the door-knob, and, without any preliminary
+knocking, a waiter comes in with a nickel samovar, an empty teapot, and
+a glass. He puts them down on the battered table and walks out. The big
+kettle hums away pleasantly as the red charcoal in its hollow interior
+glows from the upward draft. The preparations seem all made, save for
+the tea. Perhaps the _chelaviek_ has gone to get it. You let your eye
+rove around to the little ikon far up in the corner, and the sleighing
+and wolf-shooting etchings on the walls. But after a time this becomes
+tiresome. Has the secret gendarmerie descended on the waiter among his
+teapots and trays? Has he forgotten the matter entirely, or what? The
+corridor-call seems to be the only recourse. Once again you go out.
+“_Chelaviek!_” and from some region he comes trotting up.
+
+“Where is that tea?”
+
+“Oh, _chai_,” he says, illumined. “Has the _gaspadine_ not his own?”
+
+“Most decidedly the _gaspadine_ has not his own,” you retort. “The
+_gaspadine_ does not carry pillow-shams or bales with him. He is not a
+draper’s establishment or a grocer’s store.”
+
+“_Nietchevo_,” says the waiter, amiably; and runs off, to return with
+a saucer of tea-leaves, and another containing half a dozen lumps of
+sugar.
+
+“Your pardon, generally the _gaspadines_ have their own”; and he leaves
+you to the brew and your meditations.
+
+Well, it is pleasant, after a long train-ride, to stretch out in a big,
+if battered, armchair, and sip glasses of anything hot. The little
+teapot, full of a very strong decoction, is perched on the top of the
+samovar over its chimney. For a fresh glass you pour out a half-inch
+of the strong essence, throw in the sugar, and from the samovar’s
+spigot fill the glass with hot water. It is thus just the strength
+you personally prefer, and always hot. The samovar, by a judicious
+regulation of the draft, can be kept for hours exactly at the boil. It
+is a fine institution, but cannot be transplanted to a country where
+hot charcoal embers are not constantly available.
+
+Comfortably ensconced and sipping one’s tea, one can leisurely, Russian
+fashion, think of the most amusing method of passing the time. It is
+getting on toward evening; for the day fades early here. To-morrow is
+soon enough to look at things and distribute letters of introduction.
+The beverage has also blighted the appetite. Perhaps a light supper
+and an early couch would be wise. The latter in the far room looks
+singularly unpromising, but, “_Nietchevo!_” It is rather early for
+dinner or supper, but what of that? As an elusive New York politician
+used to say to each of the office-seekers who came to ask his influence
+for nominations, “If you want it, there is no reason why you should not
+have it.” We will try another summons of the waiter.
+
+Up he comes with the bill of fare printed in Russian and alleged French.
+
+Perhaps some eggs would be good. You decide upon them to begin with,
+and you will have them poached.
+
+“_Gaspadine_,” he says, “the eggs to-day cannot be poached. Will you
+not have an omelette instead?”
+
+On second thoughts we will not have eggs at all this time; we will have
+a sterlet, a small steak, and a compote. He goes off to the nether
+regions again. A long time passes, but at length he returns with the
+sterlet, its chisel-shaped nose piercing its tail in true Siberian
+style. White creamy butter and Franzoski kleb, white bread, round out
+the course. The steak is excellent and the canned fruit is satisfying,
+eaten beside the singing samovar in the great room of the main hotel of
+Irkutsk. Half a dozen letters pass the next hours until it is time to
+sleep. They are written on the big desk beneath the drop-light, with a
+glass of tea at one’s elbow in warm cosy comfort.
+
+The place is rather warm, and without any apparent source of heat, for
+there are no registers or gratings of obvious instrumentality. A search
+of elimination, like the game in which one is warm, warmer, very hot,
+leads at length to a rounded corner of porcelain built into the wall,
+of which only a curved segment shows in an angle of the room. Further
+inspection reveals that it is a big cylindrical stove fed by somebody
+in the hallway, and so arranged as to warm two adjoining rooms.
+
+In mitigation of the fire-tender’s zeal, we decide to open a window.
+Perhaps with an hydraulic jack this might be possible; but to manual
+labor it is not. A single pane of the inner window, however, swings
+back, and then we can open a similar pane in the outer window, leaving
+a hole as big as the port of a ship. It is sufficient in this weather.
+Some further corridor-shouting, produces, in due time, sheets and
+blankets, and presently we lie down on the straw mattress in the little
+wooden-bottomed box called a bed. “_Spacoine notche_,” the attendant
+calls, and without trace of irony.
+
+It is one thing to go to bed, another to sleep. Tales are told of
+powder-circled couches which the invaders, surmounting these ramparts
+by climbing walls, dropped upon from above. There is a legend that
+there are some people whom they do not bite. “_Nietchevo!_” Is it not
+Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia? Why then complain of parasites?
+
+Furthermore, a brass band has started up somewhere in the immediate
+neighborhood the tune of _Viens poupoule!_ to which there echoes a
+popular accompaniment of tapped glasses and stamping feet. Perhaps
+one had better get up and see things after all,--“Needs must when the
+Devil drives.” We dress again. An exploring expedition reveals the
+big dining-room on the floor below full to the doors with uniformed
+officers, long-haired students, and assorted civilians. All are
+drinking and smoking. On a stage at one end of the room thirty
+short-skirted damsels are singing and dancing in chorus, to the great
+approval of the audience. As the curtain rolls down on an act, the
+_ci-devant_ dancers descend to their friends on the floor. Corks pop,
+and sweet champagne flows. The call goes up for “_Papirose!_” and more
+cigarettes and more bottles come thick and fast.
+
+Soon there is an air of subdued expectancy, and eager looks are
+directed to the curtain. Somebody near by leans close and whispers for
+your enlightenment, “All-black man!” Out comes an old Southern Negro,
+who sings to the wondering Russians a Slavonic version of the “Suwanee
+River,” between verses delivering himself, with many a flourish, of
+a clog-dance. Johnson is the man’s name. How he drifted so far from
+Charleston he hardly knows himself. He followed the music-halls to
+‘Frisco, and somebody, for whom he “has a razor ready,” told him he
+would make his fortune in Vladivostok. He kept getting further and
+further into the interior, picking up the language as he went, and
+turning his songs into the vernacular. Poor chap, the pathos he puts
+into the “Suwanee River”! He is thinking, in frozen Irkutsk, of the old
+Carolina homestead, and is singing and dancing his way back.
+
+A girl in peasant dress takes the stage after “Sambo.” She is singing
+some song that is running its course across northern Asia. The lassies
+at the tables and the men join in. Glasses clink and heels tap. The
+miners who have made their stake, the prospectors who hope to, the
+sable-merchants of the Yakutsk, the wool-dealers from Mongolia, all
+meet here as the first place where the rigors of the hinterland can be
+compensated. It is very gay--very, very gay.
+
+In the years after the ukase of Paul I, ordering that all officers
+who had made themselves notorious for lack of education or training
+should be sent to the Siberian garrisons, it may be imagined what a
+Gomorrah grew up under the Russian banners. Modern celebrations are by
+comparison mild and temperate, as the cold beyond these double windows
+is mild and temperate to that outside the Tunguses’ huts, in the
+Yakutsk Province. But it is fairly impressive, nevertheless.
+
+Even in a Siberian hotel, the world goes to bed sometime. By four
+o’clock the music has stopped, and the traveler is tired enough to
+sleep on even the populous plank-bottomed bed. Thus do all things work
+together to weave the “web of life.”
+
+It is nearing noon when one wakes to eat a combination of breakfast and
+lunch, and plan for the day. The Post-Office and the Bank are the first
+material objectives. One must register so that mail may be delivered.
+We go down and join two companions of the road. With careful directions
+from the porter, the party prepares for the half-mile walk to the
+Post-Office. The preliminaries are formidable in themselves. First the
+felt goloshes must be pulled over the shoes; then the big fur overcoat
+must be swung on and carefully buttoned down its length. Finally a fur
+cap, like a grenadier’s, with ear-flaps is tied, and great fleece-lined
+gloves are donned. The droshky-drivers assembled before the hotel seem
+to take it as an insult to their profession that we elect to walk, and
+two or three follow along outside the curb until the group reaches the
+corner and turns into the main street, Bolshoiskaia.
+
+[Illustration: A CHAPEL BOLSHOISKAIA IN IRKUTSK]
+
+There is an air of placid quiescence at this noon hour. The policeman
+at the nearest corner is ruminatingly handling his sabre-hilt,
+and watching the sleighs go by. Here and there a woman, with the
+ubiquitous gray shawl over her head, passes, with a preoccupied air.
+Sheepskin-clad mujiks are driving along, with sledge-loads of firewood
+or stiffly-frozen carcasses, on their way to the bazaar markets. The
+shop-windows attract our gaze. Here is one with the word “_Apteka_”
+over the door, which is to say, Apothecary. Benches are set in front of
+it, on which one may sit and watch the people pass, as in the chairs
+before a New England country tavern. Further along is a solidly built
+white department store, the Warsawski Magazine, wherein one can get all
+manner of apparel,--shawls of the latest Irkutsk pattern, towels and
+soap, and--most important--blankets for the trip into the interior. We
+stroll in for a moment. An individual looking like a stalwart Chinaman,
+with long braided queue, shoulders his way past us to buy some cloth.
+
+“He is a Buriat of the tribe north of Irkutsk,” explains one of the
+shop-girls, very close herself in type to those seen at Wanamaker’s in
+Manhattan.
+
+Near-by the imposing magazine is a low one-story booth occupied by
+a watchmaker. Beyond that is a walled enclosure with lofty gates,
+as befits a school. Still further is the yellow and green sign of a
+government liquor-_traktir_. The name is said to be derived from the
+French word _traiteur_, which was current in the days when Napoleon
+and Bourrienne were planning conquests in their Parisian poverty.
+
+As we turn up a side street, the shops for the poorer people appear.
+Gaudy pictures, of packages of tea, vegetables, and sugar-loaves,
+illuminate the walls, to tell the unlettered that groceries are
+sold within. Saws and hammers and vises are painted on the walls
+of the hardware-shops. Loaves of bread, crescent rolls, and rococo
+wedding-cakes decorate a bakery; boots and high-heeled slippers, a
+shoemaker’s booth. The street is an open-air gallery of rude frescoes.
+
+Presently we come to residences, some of cement-covered brick, with
+high enclosing whitewashed walls and iron gates, some wooden, with
+their rough-hewn logs unpainted save for the brilliant white sills and
+window-frames.
+
+At length, far from the town’s busy district, the Post-Office is
+reached. The building is thronged. Two soldiers are loading their
+saddle-bags with the mail for the regiment. Women are collecting
+money-orders. A crowd waits at the window of the girl who sells stamps.
+In rushing industry she makes the calculating beads of her abacus
+fly across the wires. Everybody is far too occupied to register a
+voyageur’s name,--excepting always the half-dozen soldiers posted in
+different parts of the room and leaning stolidly upon their bayonets.
+We venture to ask one of them which is the registry window.
+
+“_Russisch verstehe ich nicht_,” is the answer.
+
+A Siberian post-guard knowing no Russian and answering in German seems
+extraordinary.
+
+“Where are you from?” we inquire in his native tongue.
+
+“Courland,” he answers,--“Courland by the Baltic.”
+
+This city of Irkutsk gave trouble in 1905. If it gives trouble again,
+the garrison will be safe.
+
+The registering at length is done and we turn to go out. A tattered
+figure, bearded and haggard, with rags bound on his feet, opens the
+outer door.
+
+“Will the _gaspadine_ help a man get back to Russia?”
+
+Your companion looks closely at him.
+
+“A convict! very bad people.” He adds: “There is a murder every day
+here, and one cannot safely go out at night. Very bad men!”
+
+With the contradictory charity that is so typical of the Russian, he
+fumbles in his pocket and gives the unfortunate a fifty-kopeck piece.
+
+We go now to the great market-place and the bazaars. Here where we
+enter is a row of hardware-shops. In the first booth a string of
+kettles hangs down, and knives, spoons, candlesticks, and hammers
+are suspended so as to catch the eye. The proprietor stands outside,
+chatting with a passer-by and the tenant of the adjoining booth.
+Further on are stationers, with tables of cheap-covered books. The
+wall of one is decked with chromos of galloping Cossacks, led by a
+long-haired pope with a crucifix. The soldiers are sabring fleeing
+Japanese, and red blood is lavishly provided. On the opposite wall are
+glittering brass and silver ikons, and lithographs of ancient martyrdom.
+
+Row upon row of red felt boots hang in the next line of booths, and
+in still another--the wooden-ware bazaar--are bowls and spoons, and
+platters of high and low degree. Further on a dozen women are grouped
+around one of their class, who is bargaining for a huge forequarter of
+beef, a full _pud_ weight by the big lever scales that are balancing it.
+
+“_Dorogo! dorogo!_” (Too dear, too dear!) she cries. “I will give eight
+kopecks a pound.”
+
+The market-woman protests that she will be beggared at less than eleven
+kopecks.
+
+A half-_sotnia_ of little Buriat Cossacks come riding by, clad in their
+puffy leather _shubas_. Yellow-topped fur caps are their only uniform
+garment, and across their backs are hung the carbines. They make merry
+at the haggling women. Two swing off their shaggy ponies, and begin in
+turn to bargain in broken Russian for some paper-wrapped sweetmeats.
+They close the deal finally, tuck these away, toss themselves back into
+position, and ride off. Further along, half a dozen men cluster around
+a fur-cap seller. He is a merry fellow, and there is much noise and
+banter and gossiping. Such is the bazaar, the Forum of old Rome set
+down in a Siberian city.
+
+[Illustration: THE BAZAAR, IRKUTSK]
+
+A short further stroll, and the party is at your other objective, the
+Bank. You take leave of the rest and enter. At the door, a grandly
+uniformed porter helps you off with the outer husk of furs, and motions
+you into the outer office, with its half-dozen clerks bending over
+sloping desks. One of these takes your card, and returning leads the
+way to a capacious sitting-room, with armchairs scattered here and
+there, pictures on the wall, magazines of many nations on the centre
+table. The American typewriter, which alone betrays that this is an
+office, is on a little table at one side. A tall military-looking
+man, gray-mustached and grave in manner, is seated beside the window
+reading some documents. He rises as you enter, and greets you, and
+for some minutes the conversation in French is upon general themes.
+Presently you go down into a side pocket and get out letters of
+introduction. One is from the Petersburg headquarters. He looks at the
+signature--Ignatieff.
+
+“You are his friend?” The polished worldliness falls away as a cloak
+that is thrown off. “Splendid!” he says. “Welcome to our city. We
+must have tea.” He pushes a bell, and a page, red-bloused and wearing
+brightly polished jack-boots, appears. “_Chai_, Alexis,” he orders.
+“And how did you leave Ignatieff?” he begins eagerly. “Does he still
+drive his black stallions? It is two years that I have not seen him.
+When I was in Petersburg last winter, he was in Paris, and when I was
+in Paris, he was at Nice. One is very separated from his friends here.
+One might as well be a convict.”
+
+You answer all his questions, and begin to feel as if you were
+at a little family party. Presently, in the midst of the double
+conversation,--for the Russians seem to talk and listen at the
+same time,--the boy comes in with a big samovar, and the other
+accompaniments. The banker makes the brew in the china pot. From this
+each of us serves himself as the compound conversation moves on.
+
+“You have not yet seen the sights of Irkutsk?” he observes at last. “I
+will get my sleigh and show you around when we have finished.”
+
+“It is the middle of the day. I cannot break into your work like that,”
+you protest.
+
+But he rings a bell for the red-jacketed boy. “Order my sleigh.--We
+have the finest city in Siberia,” he continues; “eighty thousand people
+now, and growing always. And trade has come with the railroad as we
+had not dreamed before. In the days when they used to bring the tea
+overland from Kiahta, the sledges from Baikal would carry as many as
+five thousand bales daily. We thought when this began to be shipped
+through by the railroad that it would hurt the city. But there was so
+much other traffic that the loss was hardly felt.”
+
+“The sleigh is ready,” the boy announces.
+
+“May I have the honor?” he says, with his easy grace.
+
+He leads the way to the coat-rack, and is received with the deepest
+bows by the uniformed worthy, who solicitously helps him on with his
+coat and overshoes. Then with a stereotyped motion the man holds
+out his hand for the tip. Though this servant is at the door of the
+banker’s own office and presumably upon his pay-roll, the incessant
+tribute is his perquisite. It is usual throughout Siberia for wealthy
+Russians to scatter small silver everywhere along their path--to
+friends’ servants, to house-porters, to beggars on the street. The
+most profuse miscellaneous generosity prevails. Riding to-day with
+the Russian banker is like watching the progress of a mediæval prince
+dispensing his largesse.
+
+At the entrance to the bank is the sleigh, skeleton-framed and
+high-built, unlike most of the sleighs of Siberia. Three big black
+horses, with the snake-like Arab head that characterizes the best
+Orloff strains, are hitched to it, troika-fashion, the centre horse
+under a big bow yoke, the outside animals running free. The coachman
+has the square pillow-hat, and the enormous wadded corpulence of Jehu
+elegance.
+
+It is an interesting ride in which we move slowly up the Bolshoiskaia,
+receiving, so far as the banker is concerned, neighborly greetings from
+most of the sleigh-riders, and respectful salutes from the foot-passers
+on the sidewalks. A nice social distinction our host draws in returning
+the formal salute for uniformed officials, the cordial wave of the hand
+for intimate friends, a nod for the humbler acquaintances: but none go
+unrecognized.
+
+Something like the Roman’s idea of showing his city by turns up and
+down the Corso, is this Siberian’s. We do halt, however, and look at
+the big Opera House and the Geographical Society’s Museum and the
+many-domed Cathedral,--buildings which in no city would be other than
+sources of satisfaction. After an hour of driving in the piercing cold,
+one’s conscience begins to prick. The banker, even though absent from
+his affairs, does not appear to feel either business or atmosphere. At
+length we are brought at a gallop to the doorstep of the hotel.
+
+“To-night we dine at eight. Adieu.” With a bow he draws the bearskin
+robes about him, and the black horses bear him swiftly around the
+corner.
+
+An acquaintance from the train is in the hallway as you climb stiffly
+up the steps.
+
+“Has the drive been a bit cold?” he asks. “Come in and have a _stakan_
+of vodka.”
+
+“Is that not rather heady for a between-meal tipple?” you suggest.
+
+“This is Siberia. When you run with the wolves, you must cry like a
+wolf,--but tea, too, is good.”
+
+You mount the stairs together, to the scene of last night’s orgy, and
+order a couple of glasses of tea.
+
+It is a strange anticlimax to find the room so deserted. At three
+this morning it was a good imitation of the traditional “Maxim’s.”
+At four in the afternoon it is simply a crude wooden hall, with the
+stiff-backed, plush-seated chairs ranged in bourgeois regularity at the
+discreetly covered tables. Only the shuffle of somebody practicing a
+new step on the stage behind the curtains suggests the double life of
+this innocent-looking hotel dining-room.
+
+A couple of glasses of tea attack the cold in strategic fashion, from
+the inside, and are better than the external reheating method. We sip
+in silence for a while.
+
+“I am going to drive over to the Banno and have a Russian bath,”
+observes your companion. “I do not like the tin tub they bring around
+here at the hotel. Are you impelled to come along?”
+
+“Is there attendance and room for two? I’m not minded to sit around and
+wait.”
+
+“Room for five hundred,” he says, with a long sweep of the hand.
+“Everybody goes there. It is one of the institutions of the city.”
+
+As you are now warm enough to consider a further drive, you go down
+to assist in bargaining for a sleigh to make the tour to and from the
+Banno.
+
+A big brick building a verst or so away, with a number of private
+equipages and a stand for public sleighs and droshkys, is our
+destination. A beggar-woman opens the double doors and gets her service
+percentage from each passer.
+
+“How much is given in this part of the world to beggars!” you remark.
+
+The Russian smiles. “It is a part of religion to give. At every big
+family affair,--a wedding, a christening, a funeral,--we distribute
+money and gifts to the poor.”
+
+In the entresol of the bath-house, a big tiled anteroom, there are
+marble-topped tables, around which men and women are smoking and
+reading papers. One can dine here, even; but this comes after the
+bath. A ticket at the _kontora_ gives, for a rouble, the privilege of
+a preliminary boiling and a flaying by one of the naked attendants. A
+start is made by washing you with infinite thoroughness, section by
+section, the attendant continuing on each spot until told to stop or
+advance to the next. An unfortunate foreigner, in Irkutsk, had his
+head shampooed seven times in succession before he could recall the
+cabalistic word necessary to direct the man’s attention elsewhere.
+
+One is scrubbed and rinsed, and is then conducted up onto a wooden
+platform, running along under the ceiling. Here, while the first
+inquisitioner dashes water on a steamer-oven below, the second scrapes
+the victim with new pine branches. One remembers an Irkutsk Russian
+bath at least as long as the smarting and the cold he gets from it
+endure.
+
+Back at the hotel one can dig out his rather crumpled dress-suit in
+preparation for the evening’s entertainment. Later, he gathers in
+another sleigh, and sets out for the home of the banker.
+
+In Irkutsk nobody relies on house-numbers to find his way. Even Moscow
+has not yet advanced to this refinement of civilization. If the
+driver does not know the route, he stops to ask passers-by, “Where
+is So-and-So’s house?” Again and again you are taken to the abode
+of somebody else with a name more or less similar. Then the driver
+will say, quite nonchalantly, “_Nietchevo!_”--ask the next person he
+encounters for directions, and start anew. You leave abundant margin of
+time, and usually arrive sooner or later.
+
+Our host of to-night is, happily, well known throughout the city. So
+the driver whips up to a gallop and rushes down the snowy streets. It
+is not a long ride to the big arched doorway of the white two-storied
+plaster-covered house, in front of which the driver pulls up with
+a flourish. You ring a bell at the side of the door and wait. The
+_isvoschik_ has taken a station beside the curb, has folded his
+arms, and is nodding on the box, apparently prepared to camp there
+indefinitely. “Eleven o’clock, return,” you say. “_Haracho!_” is his
+drowsy answer, given without moving. The horses have drooped their
+heads; they too are settled for repose. The tinkle of a piano comes
+from within, but minute after minute goes by, the bell unanswered, the
+_isvoschik_ immovable on his little seat. Other pulls of the bell are
+at last of avail: the door slowly opens. A final objurgation to the
+coachman that he is not wanted until eleven o’clock falls on sealed
+ears. You go in through the massive doorway.
+
+In the antechamber a gray-bloused attendant helps you off with wraps
+and goloshes, then silently disappears through a rear door, leaving
+you standing there unannounced. The vestibule is cumbered with coats
+and hats on the wall-hooks, overshoes helter-skelter on the floor, and
+canes and umbrellas in the corner. It is like a clothing establishment.
+Beyond the curtained doorway on the right are lights, and the sound
+of the piano is louder. This seems the most promising direction for
+exploration, so--forward!
+
+Beyond the portières is a splendidly lofty room, like that of an
+Italian palace, brilliantly lighted with electricity. Many-paned
+windows run high up, starting from the level of one’s breast, and
+long heavy hangings half-conceal them. To the right of the door is a
+mahogany grand piano, at which, oblivious of the world, the host is
+diligently thumping away at _Partant pour la Syrie!_ with inadvertent
+variations, singing carelessly as he plays. Beyond him, in an imposing
+armchair of German oak, like King Edward’s throne in the Abbey, is
+a lady, propped with many cushions. She is slender and darkly clad,
+and is conversing with a young man in uniform, who sits very straight
+on a dainty gilt chair of the Louis XVI epoch. A low lacquered table
+before them is gayly painted with geisha girls and eaved pagodas.
+It holds a massive brass samovar encircled by a row of beautifully
+colored tea-tumblers of the sort that one sees on exhibition in the
+glass-factories which front the Grand Canal at Venice. The chorus comes
+from the banker at the piano:--
+
+  Amour à la plus belle;
+  Honneur au plus vaillant.
+
+[Illustration: THE ICE-BREAKER, YERMAK--LAKE BAIKAL]
+
+There is no use of paltering and waiting to be announced, so we enter
+the room. The performer hears the steps on the polished floor and
+swings round on the stool. “Ah, voilà!” he says, and rises to introduce
+you to his wife.
+
+“A moi le plaisir,” she says, smiling. “Mon frère, Ivan Semyonevich,”
+presenting you next to the young officer, who rises abruptly and clicks
+his heels as he takes your hand.
+
+You are motioned to a replica of the little chair, and your host
+returns to his piano, this time to play with immense satisfaction in
+your honor a hazy memory of some bygone variety show: “There’ll be a
+hot time in the old town to-night.”
+
+“A friend is very welcome,” says Madame Karetnikov, when he finishes.
+“We do not see many from the world here in Siberia.”
+
+“The life, however, is interesting, is it not?”
+
+“O monsieur, I, too, was interested at first, but there are so few
+people of the world here, and we see them all the time. C’est affreux!
+I give you a month to change that opinion.”
+
+“You give a month, Irina; I give a week,” growls her brother.
+
+“If it were not that we get away during the spring one would perish
+of ennui,” the hostess adds. “But Japan is not far. We go there or to
+Europe every year. Perhaps soon we shall get a transfer to another
+branch.”
+
+“You bankers have hopes,” observes the brother, “but what of us poor
+officials of the Justice Department! We are chained to the bench like
+old galley-slaves, and all we get is three hundred roubles a month and
+a red button when we are seventy.”
+
+As the macerated song floats anew from the piano, the hall-door opens
+and there is dimly visible in the anteroom a curious much-encumbered
+figure, with a gigantic sheepskin hat and short blue reefer coat. He
+divests himself of these, and of a long woolen inside muffler, and,
+brushing back his long hair, comes into the room. His blue tunic is
+resplendent with brass buttons and he wears jack-boots. A light down is
+growing upon his upper lip. He is nineteen or twenty.
+
+“Good-day!” says our host, hailing him in English.
+
+“Good-day, uncle!” he replies.
+
+He presents himself before Madame Karetnikov, who holds out her hand,
+which he formally kisses.
+
+“_Zdravstvouitie_, Valerian!” says the official, shaking the young
+man’s hand.
+
+Then you are introduced with explanations.
+
+“Valerian here is in his last year at the Irkutsk Realistic School,
+studying preparatory to engineering.”
+
+The status of science in Siberia becomes the theme, and the newcomer
+infuses considerable local color into his pictures.
+
+“Does the professor in drawing suit you now, Valerian?” the banker
+inquires presently. Then he adds to you: “They all went on strike
+because the old professor of drawing had a method they did not like.
+The authorities had to replace him before any of the students would go
+back.”
+
+“The new professor respects our rights,” says Valerian soberly, not
+liking the levity of his elder.
+
+Soon, from an adjoining room, come in the children of the host,--a very
+pretty girl of the age at which misses wear short dresses and braids;
+and a little boy of about eight. The boy very respectfully kisses his
+mother’s hand and is introduced to the stranger, but finds a superior
+attraction in his father at the piano.
+
+The girl, Marie Pavlovna, sits down beside her cousin Valerian. Lacking
+the stock football amenities of a happier land, and half-embarrassed,
+half-superior in the status of a budding young man, Valerian is not
+much of a conversation-maker. Marie Pavlovna, too, is seen but not
+heard. She is evidently the typical product of the French system of
+sex-segregation and cloistered study, which keeps girls abnormally
+uninteresting until marriage, perhaps to make amends subsequently.
+
+“I think we had better go in and eat. It is half-past eight,” says the
+host.
+
+“Si tu veux,” replies his wife; and we stroll out into a big
+dining-room, at one end of which is a heavily-freighted oak sideboard.
+
+As we approach this, the host opens a far door, and shouts down into
+the darkness:--
+
+“Obeid, Dimitri.”
+
+We turn to the _zakuska_ sideboard. The official reaches for the
+vodka-bottle, and the little silver egg-like glasses.
+
+“Vodka will it be, or do you prefer cognac?”
+
+The various guests choose their tipple. With the gulp of a mountaineer
+taking his moonshine, the banker swallows the twenty-year-old French
+brandy, of the sort that gourmets protractingly sip with their coffee.
+The little boy slips out to his particular region of the house. The
+hostess takes her seat at the foot of the table, and the gentlemen pass
+and repass, bringing her assorted _zakuska_ dishes as at a ball. Caviar
+from the Volga, Thon mariné from Calais, sprats from Hamburg, Columbia
+River salmon, are spread out and attacked by the rest of us, standing,
+free-lunch fashion. One by one the men finish and straggle to their
+places at the table.
+
+Three menservants, with gray blouses and baggy silk trousers falling
+over their topboots, appear now, one with a huge tureen of bouillon,
+another with the little silver bowls, and a third with a plate of the
+_piroushkies_ that accompany the soup. Madame Karetnikov deals out
+the consommé for the whole table, and also for little Paul and his
+governess in some outside quarters. Every one begins to eat, without
+waiting for the hostess or for anybody else.
+
+“It is hard work managing a big family like ours,” she allows, in reply
+to your question about the domestic problem. “We always have seven or
+eight, and one can never tell how many friends will come in to dine
+with us.”
+
+She casts a solicitous eye over the table, to see that no one has been
+neglected, and then serves herself.
+
+“One must keep the men well fed,” she observes. “Remember that, Marie,
+when you get married.”
+
+Marie at the far end of the table nods assent.
+
+“But you must not think of marrying until you are told,” adds the
+banker.
+
+She nods assent to this, too.
+
+“Don’t mind him, Marie,” says the official. “He thinks he is living in
+the time of the Seven Boyars. Take my advice. Pick out the man you want
+and go for him. You can’t fail.”
+
+“Such ideas to put in a girl’s head!” says his sister, smiling.
+
+The soup-course is nearly over, when suddenly the banker ejaculates,
+and jumps up to welcome some new arrivals.
+
+“Ah, father!”
+
+He runs to a sturdy benignant-looking old man, and kisses him on both
+his white-bearded cheeks, then does the same to the little old mother.
+
+“Come in, come in; we are just beginning.”
+
+At once the table is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The old lady
+is steered to a chair at the head, and the rest are pushed along to
+make room. The father makes his way, under similar escort, in the
+direction of the vodka-bottle.
+
+“No French brandy for me!” he says, and puts the fiery Russian liquid
+where it will do the most good. He, too, goes to the far end of the
+table.
+
+The student tells in a low voice that the newcomer is a veteran of
+Sevastopol, was once the personal friend of Czar Alexander, the
+Liberator, and was decorated by him for gallantry at Plevna.
+
+“What a splendid old Russian he is!” one thinks, noting all the
+kindliness and courtesy of his honored age, and the grip of a bear-trap
+in his hand. Yet there is an indescribable air of melancholy about him,
+as if a great sadness were being bravely and uncomplainingly faced. A
+remark from the hostess turns you to her.
+
+“Father is one of the Colonization Commission. We are all very much
+interested in hearing about his discussions with the settlers!”
+
+“Colonization for the settlers or for the exiles here?” you ask.
+
+“It is the government assistance for the voluntary emigrants, not for
+the unfortunate ones.”
+
+“But the latter must be a problem in themselves?”
+
+Madame seems embarrassed.
+
+The student leans over and in a low tone whispers: “His youngest son,
+the brother of Vladimir, is in hiding, is under sentence of death. They
+don’t speak of him here.”
+
+“He has just come from the Governor,” adds Madame Karetnikov, “who is a
+great friend of his. The Governor has heard from Petersburg that they
+may bestow the cross of St. Stanislaus.”
+
+“That is the autocracy here, which you do not know in your country,”
+adds the student, in a low voice. “He is an intimate friend of the
+Governor and two of his sons are officials, yet his last son is beyond
+pardon. The old man himself knows not where he is. Yet they decorate
+the father. He still believes in the Emperor.”
+
+“Do not let my nephew talk politics to you,” says the hostess, rather
+anxiously.
+
+Valerian is silent.
+
+A supplementary tureen of soup makes its appearance, and the two
+newcomers are served with it. The rest of the party have advanced to
+boiled sturgeon, with a thin sauce, compensated by Russian Château
+Yquem from the Imperial domain in the Crimea. Roast beef follows the
+fish, with the old general and his wife at length even with the rest.
+
+Then come duck and claret, and finally dessert and champagne. The toast
+of the evening is drunk to the old general, who brightens as the meal
+advances. In the big reception-room, Turkish coffee is brought, which
+is poured from the brazen ladle and served in exquisite little cups
+without handles.
+
+“We got them in Damascus on one of our trips,” says the host.
+
+Conversation goes round the table. The official is in eager talk
+with Madame Karetnikov about a common friend in a smart Petersburg
+regiment, who has got badly in debt.
+
+“He ought to apply for a transfer to the Siberian service. The officers
+get more pay, and it costs less to live,” she is urging.
+
+“But for Serge we must consider how much greater is the cost of
+champagne here,” retorts the official.
+
+“We can marry him to Katinka, and make her father get him a promotion,”
+the sister suggests. “I think he ought to have left the army and gone
+into the contracting,--every contractor I know is as rich as sin and
+goes to Monte Carlo.”
+
+So the conversation rambles on. Cigarettes are passed. The hostess will
+not have one.
+
+“I used to smoke, but it is so common now,” she explains. “Every
+peasant’s wife hangs over her oven with a cigarette in her mouth. Even
+a vice cannot survive after it has become unfashionable.”
+
+The host comes up to show you his curios.
+
+“This Alpine scene is one of Segantini’s. We got it in Dresden before
+he had earned his repute. I am very proud of my wife’s discrimination.
+The statuettes are from a little sculptor in the Via Sistina in Rome.
+Rien d’extraordinaire. The vase came from the Imperial Palace in
+Peking. I bought it from a Cossack for fifty kopecks. I have been told
+it belongs to the Tsin Dynasty, and is better than those they have in
+Petersburg Hermitage.”
+
+So you are shown the spoil of two continents in connoisseur purchases.
+
+“Hardly to be suspected in Irkutsk,” he allows, complacently.
+
+Every year host and hostess visit the Riviera, taking a turn at Monte
+Carlo and Nice and Cannes. The banker speaks English, French, German,
+and Italian fluently, and half a dozen other languages passably. His
+wife acknowledges only French and Italian.
+
+The conversation turns to the idealism of Pierre Loti’s description of
+the road to Ispahan. The banker has followed this road himself, and he
+has a much less poetic memory of it. The veteran--his father--is not up
+in French or English, but he has a good knowledge of German left from
+academy times. In this language he tells of the old days of the serfs
+and of the Crimea. He talks with the kind frankness of age that does
+not need self-suppression to prompt respect. When the guests rise to
+leave, and the buoyancy of the entertainment is passed, his cloud comes
+back. His voice has just a touch of bitterness as he says good-bye.
+
+“I am glad we can welcome to our country a man traveling for pleasure.
+So many who come are here under less pleasant auspices.”
+
+“_De svidania_,” you say at last to everybody, and out you go into the
+midnight frost. The droshky-driver is still there waiting. He has slept
+since you entered, unmoving through the hours. “_Gastinitza_,” you
+direct; and he drives to the hotel through the bleak starlit night.
+
+Valerian comes a few days later to visit us, and volunteers to be our
+guide for Irkutsk.
+
+“If I miss a few days at the Academy, what matter? I shall improve my
+English,” he explains.
+
+Valerian is typical of the student class, all ideal and aspiration.
+He has gathered the heat of the epoch, and has concentrated it upon
+his philosophy. He is saturated with the French Revolution. Does he
+mention Danton, for example, it is with intentness of loyalty for the
+great Mountain speaker, which makes one almost think that the year
+is 1792, and that the place is sans-culottic France; “debout contre
+les tyrans!” He sings fiercely with his comrades, to the tune of the
+_Marseillaise_, the Russian revolutionary anthem, ending it with a
+swirl. “For the palace is foe to our homes!” America he considers one
+of the free nations, but he has reserves. Though he is not at one with
+our political system, yet he thinks that all learned about it is a
+great gain.
+
+“Your land is free politically,” he specifies, “but it is not yet
+emancipated from capital,--it is not free socially. You have an
+industrial feudalism and a proletariat. So will it not be when we have
+won our revolution.”
+
+Many are his anecdotes of the uprising of 1905, whose tragic drama will
+never be fully pictured and whose history is to be gleaned only from
+the mouths of cautious witnesses.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORGANIZERS OF THE CHITA REPUBLIC]
+
+“We rose at Irkutsk, many of us, students and workmen, but General
+Müller had a strong garrison of troops here. We tried them, but they
+would not come over. They shot down our men and dispersed all the
+meetings, and now he is Governor in the Baltic Provinces. They say
+that when he was drunk, he would shoot accused men in his own railway
+carriage; “the butcher!” we of the Cause call him. At Tomsk and
+Krasnoyarsk the city was held for weeks by our party. The railway men
+would not run troop-trains and the Government was paralyzed. Chita was
+held by a Revolutionary Committee of Safety. We manned the entrances
+with artillery. We took turns watching, and ran the whole city, not
+touching the money in the Treasury. But we were few, and word came
+that the insurrection was everywhere broken. Müller was marching from
+Irkutsk, and Rennenkamp came back with the troops from Manchuria. He
+promised moderate terms to all but the leaders. The townspeople were
+afraid, and rose against our men. Many were taken. Many fled away and
+got to Japan and America. Some were shot and some were sent to the
+Yakutsk. So it was crushed, and our great chance was gone.”
+
+“Will it come again?”
+
+“_Ni snaia!_ The workmen are ready. The intellectuals are ready. The
+peasants back in Russia cry for land. Perhaps they too will be ripe
+next time, and the soldiers will be with us. In any case Siberia has
+seen the red flag float over the Chita Republic.”
+
+Many-faceted is the life in a Siberian city. In numerous ways it
+seems feverish and abnormal, for it represents the young blood of a
+capable race struggling upward, and knowing that in much its battle
+is desperate. The towns have hardly yet got settled methods; they are
+outgrown villages where men of all stamps, who have become enriched
+in the new land, come for the pleasures or the benefit of a less
+monotonous existence. The traditions of peasant origins survive in the
+conditions and general civic neglect.
+
+Irkutsk, once its novelties have become familiar, has lost its charm.
+That it is provincial is no discredit, but its amusements are of the
+grosser order, unredeemed by wit. Every evening the tawdry dining-room
+at the hotel echoes the songs and noise of the revelers. The same
+circle attends the theatres. The students discuss hotly the rights
+of man and the Valhalla prepared for all martyrs, and calm simple
+wholesome life seems to be reserved for the workaday world which moves
+on its slow toilsome upward way in silence.
+
+There is, however, to-night an unwonted stir at the Hôtel Métropole.
+The corridors are thronged. A Russian friend points out the notables.
+The blue-uniformed official yonder with the gray mustache and the row
+of glittering orders on his breast is the Governor-General. Half a
+dozen members of the local bar, in frock-coats, pass through. In the
+dining-room a young lieutenant, dashingly clad in long maroon coat
+with the row of silver-topped cartouches and the clattering sabre of
+the Emperor’s Cossack Guard, is being deferentially entertained by
+officers of the garrison. Three officials are taking champagne with
+two beautifully gowned women, Parisiennes even to their long pendant
+earrings. The hotel-pages in fresh red blouses and high boots pass here
+and there with messages. The waiters, with intensified deference, glide
+among the crowd in its many-colored uniforms and glittering war-medals.
+
+“Who has arrived?” we ask, surveying the scene.
+
+“A member of the Imperial Cabinet.”
+
+The announcement of his name has a personal interest and memories of
+earlier stays in Russia.
+
+The Minister’s life has been a romance indeed. Disagreeing with his
+family through liberal ideas, he went in 1862 to Birkenhead as a
+locomotive engineer, to the United States, to Argentine, and returning
+to Russia worked up from a very small government position to be chief
+of all the Russian roads, railways, and telegraphs, and Minister of
+Ways and Communications in the Czar’s Cabinet. His brain threw the line
+of rails over half a continent. On the outbreak of the Japanese War he
+was called from his retirement to the colossal task of bringing to the
+front across the width of Asia half a million men, their artillery and
+arms, their food, their transport, all on the one line of rails. He has
+served under three Emperors and is life-member of the Senate.
+
+You send a card in through one of the attachés. In a few minutes there
+is delivered to you the Prince’s card, across which is written: “At
+noon.”
+
+At the hour appointed you mount to the apartment overlooking the
+Bolshoiskaia. Guards at salute, staff in brilliant uniforms,
+secretaries and callers in full dress,--the antechambers are full. You
+pass through to the furthermost room.
+
+In a nest of books and maps, with blue-prints outspread on floor and
+chairs and sofas, is an elderly man in a plain frock-coat, without a
+ribbon or a button to hint his honors. He is vigorous, hearty, simple,
+almost unchanged from your earlier acquaintance, his keen flashing eyes
+hinting ever a reverse side to the great repose of his manner.
+
+Personal questions occupy the first minutes, but presently we are into
+larger themes, and you begin to feel subtly the man’s power. He has
+come on a special tour, to inspect, with his own practiced eyes, the
+projected double-tracking of the Siberian Railroad. Every brakeman
+and locomotive engineer, every traffic superintendent and division
+manager along the route knows he could step down from his private car
+and handle the levers and give them directions. His mind is a very
+vortex of ideas, and his range of conversation reflects world-wide
+interests. The talk gets to the American political situation and the
+race-problem. Later it shifts to the Japanese War, and he tells of some
+of his experiences getting the troops into Manchuria. A mention of the
+overland road to China awakens reminiscences.
+
+“It was long before the railroad that I went over that route first,” he
+says. He tells of his months-long horseback ride beyond Baikal before
+the railroad went through, inspecting the trade-route and the prospects
+of the country. By and by the conversation has got to the special
+problems of the Slav. With the straightforward frankness of a great
+nature which wishes the best for his country, he tells of the Russian
+aspirations from the standpoint of those who are facing the problems of
+the nation in their fact and practice.
+
+“I too,” he says, “was once for changing much in a little time, and
+worked to free the serfs and to start the elective Semstvos throughout
+the Empire. Alas! so much that they want is possible to no government!
+One cannot by enactment abolish want or bring all men to a _niveau_.
+We are trying to give every man the chance to rise, unchecked by any
+administrative barrier. But one sees as he lives longer that all which
+one wishes cannot come at a _coup_. Great changes, great improvements,
+I have witnessed, but they have not come by violence. We must keep
+order, and hand on to our sons an undivided Empire of the Russias.”
+
+You leave this patient builder of the new order alone amid his maps
+and studies in the idle Sunday city. As you descend the steps, a
+black-capped student passes the door. He is humming the forbidden
+_Marseillaise_.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SLEDGING THROUGH TRANSBAIKALIA
+
+
+The sledge-route that leads to the Chinese frontier goes southward
+from Verhneudinsk across the territory of Transbaikalia. In old days
+one reached its starting-point by traversing the frozen Lake Baikal in
+sleighs, muffled in furs against the sweep of the terrible winds, with
+plunging ponies at full gallop.
+
+Now, after mighty effort and at monumental cost, the line of the great
+railroad has been driven through the last obstacles that blocked an
+open way, and trains carry the traveler through the deep cuts and
+tunnels that pierce the barrier crags around the Holy Sea.
+
+It is not the express that one takes at the Irkutsk station to reach
+the ancient fort, but the daily post-train, the servant of local
+traffic. Luggage-cumbered passengers crowd into the cars wherever
+there is a place. A few, and these mostly officials, establish
+themselves in the blue-painted first class. Many press into the yellow
+second class--merchants, lesser chinovniks, tradesmen, popes, and
+children on their way to the city schools. Swarms pour into the green
+wooden-benched third, where the thronging tousle-headed emigrants
+patiently huddle closer to give room to newcomers. Next to the engine,
+with its big smokestack, is the mail-wagon, on whose sides are painted
+crossed post-horns and the picture of a sealed letter. Behind this,
+with a sentry on guard, is the baggage-car. The sinister compartment
+of drawn shutters and barred windows is for the prisoners. In this
+princes or artel-workers, their identity unsuspected, can be run across
+a continent to their unknown places of exile.
+
+The post-train starts from Irkutsk occasionally on time. In general,
+along the local line the time-table is about as reliable a guide as the
+calendars sold to the mujiks, with weather prophecies for each day of
+the year. Fifteen miles an hour is mean speed. Stops may be for minutes
+or for hours. One settles down therefore in the attitude sacred to a
+yachting cruise,--foie gras and bridge, if it is calm; double reefs and
+pilot-bread if it blows up. The high heavens alone know when we are to
+get in, and nobody cares. It is not unpleasant withal to sprawl over
+a great broad couch, and as the train crawls forward watch the white
+highlands slowly unroll, the towering cliffs and peaks with spear-like
+pines driving up through the snow, and the icy lake below.
+
+For meals, one dashes out during the station-stops, and before
+the third bell gives warning of the start, devours meat-filled
+_piroushkies_ and swallows lemon-tinctured tea at the long
+buffet-tables decked with hollow squares of wine-bottles, and beer
+from the seven breweries of Irkutsk. If one has a teapot he can get
+boiling water from the government-furnished samovar, and milk from the
+peasant-women who stand in booths hard-by. He can add salt fish and hot
+fowl, together with rye-bread and butter, and then consume his rations
+at leisure in the compartment. At night the seats are let down, and one
+sleeps in fitful naps among the hills of baggage. When morning comes,
+an hour-long procession forms to take turns at the wash-bowl with its
+trickle valve, in a towelless, soapless, and cindered lavatory.
+
+We leave Irkutsk at ten in the morning, and reach Verhneudinsk at seven
+next day, covering in twenty-one hours the 446 versts. Here is the last
+of the railroad. With troika, sledge, and tarantass, by highway and
+byway, over frozen rivers and camel-tracked trails, we must now follow
+the old road into the heart of Asia.
+
+The post-station that serves as point of departure for the sledge
+journey lies some distance away, at the edge of the town. An
+_isvoschik_, after due bargaining, proceeds to transfer thither us and
+our dunnage-bags.
+
+As we ride through the town, just waking for the day, the streets, the
+lamps, the telegraph-wires, the comfortable houses,--each and every
+symbol of civilization takes on a new significance now that it is to
+be left behind. On the parade-grounds the recruits are at the morning
+drill, shouting lustily in unison, “_Ras, dva, tre!_” to keep the
+step. We pass the barracks, the shops with their brightly illustrated
+signs, and ride under the wooden yellow-painted Alexander Arch.
+
+[Illustration: BAIKAL STATION]
+
+[Illustration: THE HIGHLANDS OF TRANSBAIKALIA]
+
+Soon we reach a street of low log houses, and a lofty boarded enclosure
+is ahead. At its gateway is swinging a black signboard, painted with
+post-horn and the Czar’s double-headed eagle. “_Postava Stancie_,”
+is inscribed over the lintel. Between the black and white-striped
+gate-posts we swing into the courtyard. To the left stretches a low
+log house. To the right, along the wall, are ranked sledges. In front
+are the stalls. Grooms, whip in hand, stand around in the courtyard,
+muffled against the cold.
+
+“Is the _gaspadine_ going on?” one of them asks.
+
+On the reply, “Yes, at once,” he scurries off to start harnessing, and
+you shoulder open the low felted door of the post-house and enter the
+big waiting-room.
+
+“Three horses?” asks the young black-mustached agent within.
+
+“Yes, a troika sledge.”
+
+He turns to the book of registry attached to the rough table by a long
+cord fastened with a big red seal, and begins to write.
+
+“The name?” he asks. It goes down.
+
+“The destination?”
+
+“The Chinese frontier at Kiahta.”
+
+“Your first relay-station is Nijniouboukounskaia, twenty-seven versts.”
+
+The fare is set out in a printed placard posted up on the wall; as is
+the price of a samovar, fifteen kopecks, and all the other items that
+the traveler may require.
+
+The agent hands you the slip: “One rouble, eighty-two kopecks, for two
+persons, the _gaspadine_ and his courier”; something under three cents
+a passenger-mile.
+
+As you wait for the harnessing of the post-sledge, the courier
+overlooks anew the bags and counts out again the parcels. As light as
+possible must be the impedimenta. Now is the last chance for change.
+
+The big station-clock ticks on. The agent moves about in the warm dusky
+silence of the house. The courier straps tighter the dunnage-bag.
+
+“Look that your furs are snugly fastened,” he says.
+
+There is trample of footsteps by the door. A fur-clad, ruddy-faced
+driver stumbles in, makes the sign of the cross before the ikon on the
+further wall, and beckons to you.
+
+“Ready!” he says.
+
+Three shaggy ponies stand hitched to a wooden sledge, not high like
+those of city _isvoschiks_, but low and shaped like a wide bath-tub.
+The bottom is cushioned with hay and you are to sit some six inches
+above the runners. The bells hanging from the big arched _duga_ over
+the centre horse jingle as he frets. The side horses, that will run
+loose between rope-traces, look around at the _yamshik_ who stands
+by. He holds in his mittened hands four reins of leather, twisted into
+ropes--two for the centre trotter, one each, on the outside, for the
+gallopers.
+
+You climb into the nest of rugs and furs superimposed upon your
+baggage! The _yamshik_ leaps to the precarious perch that serves as
+his seat. The whip falls, and with a bound the horses are off. Always
+one starts at top speed, however bad the way. Always one finishes at a
+gallop, however jaded the horses. It is the rule of the Russian road.
+
+With bells jingling, the driver shouting to clear the way, and a white
+cloud rising behind, the sledge skims out between the log houses
+which flank the straggling street. Dogs bark and the idle passers-by
+stare. Fur-covered pigs scramble up with a squeal, and scurry from
+their resting-places in the road. Girls, with shako-capped heads, peer
+through the windows. Little chubby boys, in big brown felt boots, cheer.
+
+Soon the uttermost houses of the town are left, and emerging we plunge
+into the country road through open fields, dazzlingly, blindingly
+white. The trotter’s legs seem to move too fast, as if seen in a
+cinematograph. The gallopers, free of all weight and held only by the
+two traces which fasten them, outrigger fashion, swing on like wild
+ponies of the steppe. Crude and massive as the sleigh may look, its
+burden is almost nothing on the hard compacted snow. The horses in the
+rush through the bracing air seem to be the incarnation of the wind. A
+rut in the glistening road does not produce a disjointing shock, for,
+as a huntsman’s bullet glances from the skull of a wild boar, so the
+sleigh glides into the air and swiftly down again at a long low angle.
+It is a fact of “flying.”
+
+The cold is intense. After an hour of riding you have learned a
+certain lesson which adds to your experience. Whether the traveler
+shall make this winter journey equipped with full camp-kit, portable
+stove, folding-forks, thermos bottles, and shell-reloading tools, or
+Tatar fashion, with a rifle and a haunch of mutton, is important but
+not vital. Let him make sure, however, that the huge all-enveloping
+sheepskin overcoat is at hand to supplement the coats beneath, and
+that a shaggy sleeping-rug is provided in addition to the blankets.
+One obstinate newcomer started with the insistence that a mink-lined
+Amerikanski overcoat, with two heavy rugs as lap-robes, would be ample.
+After an hour on the road, he turned into a peasant’s hut to thaw out
+upon boiling tea, while the driver went back to the town to buy the
+hairiest robe and coat obtainable. These were thenceforth worn on top
+of the initial outfit. Siberia for a midwinter sledging journey exacts
+this tribute of respect.
+
+For versts the winter road follows down along the river between
+towering pinnacled rocks, where in summer eagles nest. The cliffs are
+vividly spotted with orange and green lichens; below they are fretted
+with the scourings of ice brought down in the spring freshets. All
+along beside the road are the familiar pine-saplings planted in mounds
+by the villagers to guide the way. In the vast monotony and drifting
+snows travelers would be lost but for these landmarks. Along the
+fertile river valleys hamlets are thick. A cluster of houses is met
+every six to ten versts. Presently the road leaves the river and bends
+to the left, cutting across fields. When it quits the bank, it climbs
+sharply a five-foot ascent. The driver does not even slacken speed.
+At the turn he swings the sure-footed ponies suddenly, and takes the
+slope, letting the outrigger bring up against a stiff clump of bushes.
+There is a crash, the sleigh has caromed off at right angles, nothing
+has befallen, and we are on again.
+
+Verst after verst of plateau goes by, with rounded rolling hills
+of dimpled snow, treeless, houseless, a barren waste. Then comes a
+crest so steep that the horses can only toil up it at a walk, and the
+passengers must climb beside them. The forest closes in as the height
+is mounted,--white leafless birches and dark green pines. The light
+snow is seamed with rabbit-runs, and here and there are the far-spaced
+tracks of deer or wild goats.
+
+A mound of stones and a small pole with a Buddhist prayer-flag--for
+here is the ancient home of the Buriats--mark the top of the ascent.
+There is a moment’s halt while you climb in and the driver tightens
+the saddle of the centre horse; then down the giddy descent we sweep,
+in full gallop once more. The pines flash past, and you hold your
+breath in fear of the smash that must come should a horse fall, should
+a trace break, should a side rut swing the sledge over. One is,
+however, so close to the ground that an overturn is usually harmless,
+save to the clothes and the nervous system, both of which are at a
+discount in Siberian sledging. Then too the outrigger arrangement is
+such that the craft turns a quarter of the way over and slides on the
+supplementary runner until it rights.
+
+The cold is intense. One wipes away the snow from his fur collar, and
+the dampness on the handkerchief has caused it to become frozen stiff.
+It is a crackling parchment that goes back into the pocket. Eyeglasses
+are unwearable, for the rising vapor from one’s breath is caught and
+frozen on them in an opaque film. Fingers exposed but a moment become
+numb and useless, and uncovering the hand is an agony. Gradually as
+you ride, through the great felt boots, the triple flannels, the
+camel’s-hair stockings, the fur-lined gloves, the coats and rugs,
+the cold begins to bite. You have become fatigued and depressed of a
+sudden. The driver points to your cheek, where the marble whiteness is
+eating into the flesh, and bids you rub it with snow. An involuntary
+shudder grips and shakes you relentlessly from head to foot.
+
+It is time to stop. If you try to go on beyond the next station you
+will, if the gods are lenient and you do not freeze, get out nerveless
+and trembling, not for hours to rally strength and energy. The chill
+will cling, however hot the post-house oven. Even now you are weak,
+beaten down, querulous, in a sudden feeble old age. The shudder means
+that the human animal is near his endurance limit.
+
+On an urgent call, with special preparations, you may travel for a
+hundred hours, night and day, without halt save for change of relays.
+Physically, it is possible to fight cold for a time. You can run along
+in all your furs beside the horses, you can beat your arms together,
+and rub nose and cheeks to keep the blood in motion. You can drink
+copious glasses of scalding tea in the post-houses, and live by
+stimulants on the road. Through ceaseless vigilance and resolution
+you can keep from freezing, even while intense fatigue creeps on and
+vitality is going. But the persistent awful shudder is Nature’s red
+lantern. Run past it if you must,--it is at your peril.
+
+Dark against the snows, now a low-lying village comes into
+sight,--Nijniouboukounskaia,--and among its first log houses is one
+bearing the post-horn signboard. A cry rouses the jaded horses to
+a gallop, and covered with snow, the sledge sweeps into the yard.
+Steaming and frosted white, the animals stand with lowered heads.
+Stablemen run to unharness them. Stiff with cold and muffled like a
+mummy, you clamber out, and on unsteady legs mount the steps to the
+felted door of the posting-inn. In the big bare room, beside the warm
+oven, robes and overcoats can be thrown off. A red-capped girl loads
+the samovar with glowing brands from the fire, and sets it humming for
+tea. Brown bread is produced and eggs, and a great bowl of warm milk.
+With these, and the contents of your bag of provisions, can be eked out
+a welcome _obeid_.
+
+For the night’s rest one need not seek a bed. There is never a spring
+to ease the bones from Verhneudinsk to Kiahta. There was discovered
+just once on the journey--at Arbouzarskie--an iron skeleton, bearing
+to a spring bed about the relation that the three-toed Pleistocene
+prairie trotter holds to a modern horse. The post-keeper had carefully
+hewn with his axe five pine planks to cover the gaunt limbs of it. The
+voyageur slept on the soft side of these timbers. Bed and board are
+synonyms in Siberia.
+
+For a couch there is to-night the narrow wooden law-provided bench,
+or--a less precarious perch, and equally resilient--the sanded floor.
+For bedding, one has one’s own blankets and coats. What if the shoulder
+slept on numbs with one’s weight, or the corner of the soap-box in the
+traveling-bag, serving as a pillow, dents the tired head! One draws off
+felt boots and some of the outer layers of clothes, rolls the sheepskin
+about one, covers the head with a blanket, and sleeps like the forest
+bears in their winter dens.
+
+Just before daybreak is the best time to start, so that one can cover
+the most road possible while the sun is up. At ten or eleven, an
+hour’s stop for lunch is advisable, and then on again until sundown.
+It is better not to travel after nightfall, as the cold is so much
+more intense. We dedicate the evening to hot tea, and then turn to the
+blankets and the bench.
+
+The stretch between Verhneudinsk and Troitzkosavsk, officially rated
+at two hundred and eighteen versts, is really somewhat longer. A
+run of average record took from 4:20 P.M. Tuesday to 11:30 A.M.
+Thursday--forty-three hours and ten minutes. This included all
+relaying, seven hours a night for sleeping, dinner and breakfast halts,
+two accidents (an overturning and a broken runner), and one calamity--a
+Siberian who snored. The actual driving-time, over a road for the most
+part hilly, was twenty-two hours, five minutes, or just about ten
+versts per hour.
+
+Horses stand always ready, with special men at hand to harness. Drivers
+swing on their shaggy greatcoats, and with almost no loss of time one
+is out of the shadowed courtyard and on the road again in the dazzling
+whiteness of the winter day.
+
+In traveling “post,” however, with relayed sleighs and big empty
+guest-rooms, one does not become acquainted with the life along the
+way. One has only hurried glimpses of slant-eyed Buriat tribesmen, of
+galloping Cossacks, trudging peasants, post-agents, girls who carry in
+samovars and silently steal out, rosy-cheeked boys on the streets,
+and women at the house-windows. To know the people and see their daily
+life one must get away from the beaten highroad, strike out from the
+government-regulated inns, and blaze one’s own path into the interior.
+
+First, you get a low passenger-sledge, long enough to admit of
+stretching out, and without too many projecting nails on the inside;
+then, three good ponies of the hardy Cossack breed, that are never
+curried or taken into a stable through the bitterest winter. The best
+animals procurable are none too good for climbing the passes away from
+the river-courses. The whole outfit can be bought for three hundred
+roubles in any of the interior towns.
+
+For drivers, there is a class of _yamshik_ teamsters, who spend their
+lives guiding the sledge-caravans which carry the local traffic. One
+of these men, Ivan Kurbski, can guide you through a whole province,
+and lodge you every evening with some hospitable friend or recommended
+host. Whether he has himself been over all the changing by-paths in
+the wilderness of the Zabaikalskaia Oblast, or whether he mentally
+photographs the directions of his friends regarding each village, is an
+unsolved mystery.
+
+[Illustration: SLEDGING SOUTHWARDS]
+
+When the day’s journey is done, Ivan will drive slowly down the crooked
+street of the village he has settled upon for the night’s repose,
+looking keenly for landmarks visible only to him in this country, where
+every village and every house is mate to all the rest. Sometimes he
+will ask a question of one of the innumerable urchins. But generally
+he seems of himself to hit upon the desired domicile. Day after day
+he will take you the sixty versts, lead you to the village stores to
+replenish the supply of candles or sugar, bring you surely to food and
+shelter at night, and take off all the burden of care for the outcome
+of each day’s journey.
+
+If for the third member of your personal suite you can get an old-time
+servant to keep the guns clean, build the camp-fires when midday tea
+is to be taken out of doors, bring in the baggage and rally the best
+resources of each halting-place, you are doubly lucky. You will be
+sedulously tended, and be treated partly as a prince, partly as a
+helpless baby.
+
+Of this order is Jacov Titoff. Not the smallest personal service that
+he can render will you be permitted to do for yourself. The telling
+of unpleasant truths will be carefully avoided, however certain the
+ultimate revelation. Though honest beyond question, he pays you the
+naïve compliment of relying upon your generosity in all the little
+matters that concern provisions and petty luxuries. He will open the
+package which he is carrying back from the _torgovlia_ to extract
+matches and cigarettes for his own delectation, and will rifle
+unstintingly the reserve of canned _sardinki_. He cheerfully freezes
+himself waiting for deer, and stumbles up miles of snowy mountain
+in the beats. He is always in good humor, and without complaint for
+whatever comes. He is ready anywhere, at any time, to sleep or drink
+vodka.
+
+Thus outfitted and manned, take your place, muffled in furs, and seated
+on the felt sleeping-blankets. Guns are at your side, the bag of
+provisions is in front, your own little ponies paw the snow. They start
+off now, trotting and galloping beneath the _duga_. The air is frosty,
+clear, and thrilling as wine; the snow is feathery and uncrusted, as
+when it fell months back; bells are jingling, and the driver is crying
+his alternate endearments and curses upon the shaggy ponies. Down the
+long rock-flanked river valleys, amid birch and pine forests, you will
+skim, by unwonted paths, through out-of-the-world villages, to see in
+their own homes the red-bloused peasants, the women spinning at the
+wheel, the peddlers and priests, the traveling Mohammedan doctors, the
+rough Buriats, miners and merchants, along the white way.
+
+The smooth main road is left now for newly broken sledge-trails across
+fields and over snow-covered marshland. Every available river is
+utilized as a highway, for along its winding length the path, smooth
+and level, is marked like a boulevard by the evergreen saplings planted
+by villagers to guide the winter traveler. One can pierce the districts
+flanking the Chickoya’s gorges, reachable at other seasons only by
+breakneck climbs. And one can see the real Siberia.
+
+On this first night of his incumbency, Ivan Kurbski lodges us with
+friends. He leaves us for a moment while he enters the yard by the
+wicket-gate to make due announcement, and the ponies hang their tired
+frost-covered heads. Your own bows under an equal fatigue. But the wait
+is very brief. Soon the big double gates of the log-stockaded courtyard
+open. The horses of their own accord turn in, and swing up to the steps
+of the house. You are handed out like an invalid grand duke, and are
+welcomed at the threshold, with a hard hand-shake, by a red-bloused
+peasant who ushers you up the steps, across the low-eaved portico, and
+through the square felt-padded door into the big living-room.
+
+As we all enter, Ivan and Jacov, caps in hand, bow and make the sign
+of the cross toward the grouped ikons high up in the corner opposite
+the door. The saints have guarded you on the way--are not thanks
+the devoir? Then you, as head of the party, must salute, with a
+“_Zdravstvouitie_,” your host, the old _Hazan_ father of the peasant
+who, wearing a gray blouse sprayed with vivid flowers at breast and
+wrists, sits on a bench beside the window. Now you may sit down beside
+the massive table on the other bench, which is built along the whole
+length of the log walls, and survey the curious world into which you
+have fallen.
+
+A woman of middle age, clad in bright red, is busy with a long hoe-like
+instrument pushing pots into a great square oven six feet high, ten
+feet to a side, and spotlessly whitewashed. To her right, in the
+room beside the oven, is a girl of fifteen or sixteen, rolling brown
+rye-dough on a little table, in perilous proximity to a trap-door
+leading into some dark nether region. An old bent woman gravitates
+between the two. Glancing up, one meets the wondering eyes of three
+sleepy blinking urchins, who peer down in solemn interest from a big
+cushion-covered shelf, two feet beneath the ceiling. Looking about to
+locate the muffled sound of crows and clucks, one discovers, beneath
+the oven, a corral of chickens, pecking with perky bills at the
+whitewash for lime. On the floor is sitting a little girl crooning some
+endless refrain to a baby in a sapling-swung cradle.
+
+“The _gaspadine_ will take _chai_?” asks the patriarch. From the
+woman’s room beside the oven the girl brings a samovar. She sets it on
+the floor, beside an earthenware jar standing near the door, and dips
+out the water to fill it. Then with tongs she takes a long red ember
+from a niche cut in the side of the oven, and drops it down the samovar
+funnel. Round loaves of frozen rye-bread are brought out and set to
+thaw. A plate of eggs is produced from the cellar. One rolls off as
+the girl passes, and falls to the floor. Instinctively you start. Not
+so the others. The egg has dropped like a stone and rolled away. But
+it is quietly picked up and put to boil with the rest. It is frozen so
+solidly that there is not even a crack on the shell.
+
+Jacov meanwhile is making earnest inquiry of the “old one.”
+
+“How are your cows, Dimitri Ivan’ich? Your horses, are they well? And
+your sheep? All well? And have you had good crops? Is there still
+plenty of pasture-land in this village? _Good!_ GOOD!--and how is your
+wife?”
+
+Poor withered wife; she is bustling around looking after the children,
+and trying to help her daughter-in-law. Not so the “old one,” the
+ancient man of the family to whom these courteous questions are
+addressed. The patriarch stopped his labors at fifty, and sits
+slumbering away his second prospective half-century in honored
+idleness. “Everybody works but father!”
+
+The samovar is humming now, and the table is decked with a
+homespun-linen cloth ready for the _obeid_. The first formality, as
+dinner is about to begin, must be observed. The various members of the
+family turn, one after another, toward the ikons, reverently crossing
+themselves. Then the host produces a bottle of a colorless liquid,
+shakes it up and down, and brings the bottom sharply against his palm.
+The cork shoots out, and he pours into a little glass a drink of the
+national beverage, vodka, which one is supposed to swallow at a gulp.
+
+Every time a guest enters, a bottle of vodka is brought out, costing
+49¼ kopecks, half the average day-laborer’s pay in this district. On
+feast-days the visitors go from house to house drinking,--and these
+_prasdniks_ number some fifty-two days in the Russian year. Every
+business deal is baptized with vodka. Every family festival, the
+return of a son from the army, the marriage of a daughter,--all are
+vodka-soaked. As one passes through villages on a saint’s day, he
+may meet a dozen reeling figures and hear the maudlin songs from the
+courtyards where the men have gathered. The part played by vodka in the
+people’s life is appalling.
+
+In the house now, all, beginning with the “old one,” partake of this
+stimulant, solemnly gulping down their fiery potions. Then the family
+sits down in due rank and order, the “old one” in the cosiest corner,
+with the samovar convenient to his hand. You, as the guest, are beside
+him on the bench that lines the wall, then comes Jacov, next the son,
+then Ivan Kurbski the _yamshik_, and on stools along the inner side of
+the table, the grandmother and assorted infants. The mother alternates
+between the table and the oven.
+
+The samovar is tapped for tea as the first course of the evening. For
+all who come, tea is the obligatory offering, in a cup if the visitor
+be familiar, but for special honor in a glass with a ragged lump of
+sugar hammered from a big cone-shaped loaf. This one nibbles as he
+drinks, for sugar is a luxury, not to be used extravagantly. The brown
+rye-bread, which has been thawed at the gaping oven-door, is next
+brought out, and raw blubber-like fat pork, in little squares, eaten
+as butter, and boiled potatoes, and the boiled eggs, curdled from the
+freezing.
+
+At Little Christmas, the _prasdnik_ day which comes in early January,
+_pelmenis_, or dumplings, egg-patties (grease-cooked), and meat will
+be served, with cranberries and white bread. In Butter-Week everybody
+gorges on buttered _blinnies_, or pancakes, garnished with sour cream.
+Even a substance showing rudimentary traces of a common ancestry with
+cake may be produced.
+
+As the shadows of the northern evening close down, a piece of candle
+is lighted to-night in our honor. Generally the burning brands for the
+samovar, propped in a niche cut at the height of a man’s shoulder in
+the outer edge of the oven, throw the only light. Presently the candle
+is used up and the brands give a fitful flame, leaving the corners
+black as Erebus.
+
+From the baby’s cradle comes now a plaintive cry, and one of the little
+girls goes over to dandle it. Up and down, to and fro, for hours
+together she works, singing her monotonous lullaby. The children, who
+have been lifted down from their eyrie above the oven, play on the
+sanded floor. The men remain oblivious and smoke their pipes, letting
+fall an occasional word, which comes forth muffled from their great
+beards.
+
+Ox-like, all sit for a while, sipping occasional cups of tea. Then the
+woman and the girl go out and get wood, remove the pots from inside the
+oven, and build up a roaring fire. The children are rolled up for sleep
+in their little blankets on the floor. The men reach for their furs and
+felts. They go to the left of the oven, the women to the right, and
+the children are between, making a long row in front of the fire. Soon
+all are sunk in heavy sleep. The little girl alone sits up to rock the
+baby. As you doze off in the genial warmth of the newly-stoked oven she
+is still crooning her lullaby in the dim fitful light of the firebrands.
+
+Through the long night all lie like logs. Toward morning, as the oven’s
+heat dies down and the bitter cold creeps in, sleep becomes uneasy. One
+stirs and then another. Finally the woman rises and wakes the girl, and
+they go out into the cold for wood and water. Presently the men bestir
+themselves, get up, and wait for their tea. The rising sun of another
+day casts its rays through the windows.
+
+As the sleepers one by one arise and stretch, their blankets are folded
+by the watchful woman of the house, and thrust up on the children’s
+shelf. Some of the men go across the room and let the water from the
+little brass can in the corner trickle over their hands. Some do not do
+even this.
+
+For the outlander of washing proclivities, peculiar problems are
+offered by a country of no wash-bowls, no soap, only occasional towels,
+and the tea samovar as the only source of hot water, a copious draft
+on which not only postpones breakfast but compels some of the women of
+the family to go out and chop ice for a new supply. Necessity evolves
+the tea-tumbler toilet method as our solution. You borrow one of the
+precious tea-glasses from the old woman, fill it to overflowing with
+warm water from the samovar, and prop it up on the window-sill. The top
+inch of water is absorbed into a sponge which is put aside for future
+use. Into the remaining two and a half inches a soaped handkerchief is
+dipped, with which one washes one’s face, touching tenderly the spots
+recently frozen. The reserved sponge will do to rinse off the detritus
+of this first operation. Two and a quarter inches of water are left, of
+which half an inch may be poured over the tooth-brush. With an inch and
+three quarters left, one has ample to lather for a shave, as well as to
+wet the nail-brush which is to scrub one’s hands that will be rinsed
+with the sponge. Half an inch remains finally to clean the brushes and
+razors. “There you are!” With two glasses one may have a bath.
+
+When the breakfast of rye-bread and tea is ended, the men go out to
+their various winter tasks, of which the most serious is felling trees
+in the forests, cutting them up, and getting home the wood. The women
+keep stolidly at their cooking, cleaning, child-tending, and turn to
+the spinning-wheel and hand-loom when other work does not press.
+
+In the weeks that follow, each night brings us to a different home,
+but never to a changed environment or atmosphere. This type of life is
+found, not only among the Trans-Baikal peasantry, but throughout all
+Siberia. The log houses down the long straggly village streets look out
+upon the same wooden-walled courtyards,--the women peering from their
+little windows as the sleighs jingle past. The same ikons with burning
+lamps look down as you enter; the same whitewashed oven and shelf and
+cradle are there as you push open the felted door. The women of each
+district wear the same traditional costume. The bearded host produces
+the same vodka. One of the most impressive sights, when one drives out
+before dawn into the frosty air, is to see at almost the same moment
+from every chimney the black smoke roll upwards, then dwindle to a
+thin gray streak. Each woman has risen and heaped green wood into the
+cooking-oven. It is as if one will actuated simultaneously all the
+people.
+
+At places the master of the house has a trade, shoemaking or saddlery,
+and the big living-room is littered with pieces of leather and waxed
+cord as he stitches. Sometimes there are hunters in the family, and
+ancient flintlock muskets rest on the antlered trophies. The men gather
+together occasionally to drive deer. But in general, as the winter is
+the men’s idle time, a little wood is cut, the cattle are seen to, and
+for the rest, talk, tea, and tobacco, until it is time to eat and sleep
+once more. The women on the other hand seem to be always occupied, but
+they are not discontented.
+
+[Illustration: PEASANT VILLAGE STOREKEEPER SIBERIAN TYPES]
+
+The customs and institutions which bind together the household group
+are unique. In all families the _Hazan_ is supreme. To him first of
+all, strangers pay their respects. To him every member of the household
+comes for advice as to whom he or she shall marry, and which calf
+shall be sold. Howsoever hard of hearing he may be, there is related
+to him all the events of the neighborhood with infinite minuteness. He
+is the repository of all moneys earned by logging for a neighboring
+mine-owner, or for bringing out to the railroad the sledge-loads of
+rye. As head of the family he can summon a forty-year-old son from the
+merchant’s counter in Krasnoyarsk, or his nephew from the fur-traffic
+in Irkutsk, and bid him return to his peasant hut. If a grandson wishes
+to go to Nerchinsk to seek his fortune, the “old one’s” consent must
+be obtained before the youth receives his passport. It is all at the
+patriarch’s sovereign pleasure.
+
+We come one day upon a vexatious example of this ancestral authority. A
+report reaches us, by chance, of a hibernating bear’s hole some fifty
+versts away, which one of the peasants has located. The host, noting
+our interest, asks:--
+
+“Would the _gaspadine_ like to hunt him?”
+
+There is no question on this score, so the peasant is quickly brought
+to the hut. Numerous friends crowd in with him, for one person’s
+business is everybody’s business in these primitive communities. For a
+liberal equivalent in roubles the man agrees to act as guide, and the
+start is to be made early next morning. All is arranged and he goes out
+with his body-guard to make the necessary preparations. By and by there
+is a stir. Our sledge-driver comes in with a long face. Then half a
+dozen peasants add themselves to the family quota in the hut. Soon more
+come, until the stifling room is as populous as a Mir Assembly. They
+are all talking at once, and there is a great hubbub. At length one
+voice louder than the rest seems to call a decision for them all. They
+turn backward again, and with many gesticulations bustle through the
+felted doors into the snowy streets, and through the village to a house
+which they enter in a body as if with intent of sacking it. Instead
+they bring out and over to our hut a slight bearded old man, bent with
+the weight of many winters--the father of the peasant guide.
+
+Humble but resolute, he faces the assembly.
+
+“No, I cannot consent that he lead the _gaspadine_ to the Medvetch Dom.”
+
+“But assure the ‘old one’ that his son will only point out the den and
+then go away.”
+
+The “old one” answers:--
+
+“The bear does not come to steal my pigs. Why should I get him shot?
+Besides, a bear chewed up three Buriats last year. It would be sad to
+be devoured even for the _gaspadine’s_ fifty roubles.”
+
+The reward is doubled, and forty kopecks’ worth of vodka produced. Many
+advisers give aid, and one suggests that “the son may mount a tree one
+hundred _sagenes_ from the mansion of the bear!”
+
+But still the father refuses. “No, I will not allow him to take out his
+horse and hunting-sledge.”
+
+The son, whose half-dozen full-grown children are looking on, shakes
+his head dolefully. A big eagle-nosed peasant, of hunting proclivities,
+comes in.
+
+“I will give my hunting-sleigh if he will go,” he calls.
+
+But the shrill voice of the “old one” rings out again, “I do not
+consent. I do not consent. My son shall not go to the mansion of the
+bear.”
+
+The guide shrugs his shoulders. We have hit the ledge of Russian
+authority. No one will budge. The old man has his way.
+
+As is the management of the household, so is that of the village. While
+the _Hazan_ rules over the common property of the family (_izba_),
+the village elder (_Selski Starosta_) is guardian over the grouped
+households which make up the Mir. As the household goods belong to no
+one individual, but are common property, so the land farmed by the
+villagers is a joint possession whose title rests with the commune. The
+family is held for the debts and behavior of all of its individuals;
+and similarly, with certain limitations, the village community is
+answerable for the taxes and discipline of each of its members.
+
+On a humble scale it is the spirit of socialism incarnate. Within the
+commune no capitalistic employers, no wage-taking worker-class, no
+castes exist, and no individuals are born with special privileges. No
+distinctions of rank or fortune lift some above their fellows. The
+manner of living is the same for all. Each head of a family has a right
+of vote, and elects by the freest, simplest means his own judges and
+village rulers. The land, the source of livelihood, is divided among
+the producers by their own unfettered suffrage.
+
+The chief man of the community--he who drums out the voters to the
+Mir, lists those who do not work sufficiently on the pope’s field,
+and reports the toll of taxes to the Government--is simply an elderly
+peasant clothed with a little brief authority. There is no household
+in the average village which is looked up to as more genteel than the
+rest. No such distinctions as prevail in America will reveal that such
+a farmer’s family is musical and well-read, such another has traveled
+to Niagara Falls, such a third has blue-ribbon sheep. In Russian
+peasant circles all is equality, almost identity.
+
+Here is presented the best example in the world to-day of an applied
+system based upon the communistic as opposed to the individualistic
+theory. It is therefore of more than local interest. Most apparent
+of all results is the economic stagnation which has accompanied the
+elimination of special rewards for special efforts. The man, more
+daring or more far-sighted than his fellows, who would take for himself
+the risk of a new enterprise, who would mortgage his house to buy a
+reaper, or would seek a farther market, is fettered by his plodding
+neighbors. His financial obligations, if he fail, fall on the others of
+a common family, whose members have a veto on his freedom of action.
+His own and his neighbor’s fields by the allotment are proportioned
+in extent to the old hand-labor standard. A machine has few to serve
+until the fields are readjusted to a new standard. While technically
+a man may buy or rent lands outside the commune and may introduce a
+new rotation of crops or agricultural tools, actually the inertia of
+the peasants bound to him by the brotherhood of the Mir weighs the
+adventurous one hopelessly to the earth. Who can persuade an assembly
+of bearded conservatism-steeped “old ones” to buy for the Mir the
+costly new machines? Perhaps, with the visible demonstration of profits
+which private enterprise could make under an individual régime, the
+doubting elders might consent. But who is there to show them when every
+village checks back the swift to the lock-step of the clod?
+
+Nor is it simply in material things that communism manifests its
+lotus-fruit in these country hamlets. Ignorance, unashamed, broods
+over them one and all. What a dead level is revealed by the fact that
+one peasant in a populous village on the Chickoya, our guide upon a
+shooting-trip, could not tell time by a watch, and had never seen such
+an invention.
+
+Some instances are related where the more ambitious men of a Mir have
+clubbed together to bring in a teacher at their own expense. The
+Semieski, or “Old Believers,” big, red-bearded, obstinate men, settled
+in Urluck in the Zabaikal, who dissent from the sixteenth-century
+revisions of Bishop Nikon, will not send children to Slavonic schools
+and may have schools of their own. But these cases are rare. There
+is among the peasantry almost no education and comparatively little
+desire for it, yet how far this sentiment is from being a racial
+or national failing the crowds that come to the city universities
+bear ample witness. In one of the villages a teacher from Chita is
+established in the side room of a peasant’s house, wherein one night
+we sojourn. He has been appointed by the Commissioner of Schools
+of the Cossack Government. He is of a good Nerchinsk family and is
+brother to an elector of delegates to the second Duma. He is one of
+the “Intellectuals”--the student class which forms almost a caste
+by itself. A free-thinker, keenly interested in the rights of man,
+a Social Democrat by politics, he goes shooting on Sunday with some
+peasant cronies. He plays Russian airs on his _balilika_ and gets the
+peasant’s daughter to dance for the guest. He produces specimens of
+antimony and chalcopyrite, and discusses the geological probability of
+finding silver or platinum ores in these districts. Photographs of the
+amateur-kodak variety are along the walls, and on a table in the corner
+are a mandolin and a pile of books. We pick up a volume,--“L’Évolution
+de la Moralité,” by Charles Letourneau. The young owner, who consumes
+a prodigious number of Moscow cigarettes, tells of the indifference to
+education among the people.
+
+“Here we have a school in a big village, with two other communities
+near by. There are easily five hundred households,--with how many
+children in each, you can see. Yet we have but thirty boys at school.
+What can we do?”
+
+He is discouraged, this single “Intellectual” of Gotoi. Profoundly
+solicitous for the future, an idealist, boundless in hopes for the good
+of his race, he sees the younger generation submerged at the threshold
+of opportunity by the inertia of the old.
+
+“‘What good will it do for him to read?’ ask the peasants, when I urge,
+‘Send your boy to the school.’ What can I say? The boy comes from my
+class after two years, and goes out with the men. He has no money to
+buy books if he wants them. No newspapers come to the village, no
+printed matter whatever, save that on the pictures which they buy in
+the fairs. In a few years all I have taught is forgotten. The darkness
+is over these villages. One must lift them despite themselves.”
+
+Beyond the range of the village communes, no people show a more eager
+zeal for knowledge and study. In the cities almost all of the younger
+generation can read and write. The school-boys, with their big black
+ear-covering caps, smart blue coats, brightened with rows of brass
+buttons, and knapsacks of books, are one’s regular morning sight.
+“Realistic” and “Materialistic” schools are established in many towns.
+
+The apathy of the rural element is to be laid at the door of the system
+which hinders those within the confines of the communes from reaping
+the fruits of special sacrifice and effort. No one attempts to raise
+himself in the Mir, where the dead weight of those bound to him is so
+hopeless. If any boy, brighter than the rest, follow some lodestar,
+it must be to a city. The aspirant must bury ambition, or leave the
+drudging Mir with its toll of taxes and recruits. He will not study law
+before the wood-fire as did Lincoln in his log cabin.
+
+The cloud of deadening communism over their lives utters itself in
+the words continuously on the peasants’ tongues. It is the northern
+equivalent for that buttress of despotism--“_mañana_.” The possibility
+of the Russian condition is “_nietchevo!_” If the red cock (_krasnai
+petuk_) has crowed and has left the forty householders with charred
+embers where stood their homes, “_nietchevo!_” They build it up of wood
+and straw, with the oven chimney passing through as before. Does a
+raging toothache torture, “It is the will of God,--_nietchevo_!” If the
+weary day’s climb sees a gameless evening, “_nietchevo!_” If the son is
+frozen in the troop-train, “_nietchevo!_” If the Little Father send to
+Yakutsk the other one who has gone to the city, “_nietchevo!_” Is the
+unrevised tax for a family of ten men pressing down upon three, “It has
+got to be borne,--_nietchevo!_” It is this bowing to fate as a thing
+begotten of the gods, when it is a force to be fought here on earth;
+the long-taught submission to evil, when evil is to be conquered, to
+limitation when opportunity is to be won,--it is this spirit which is
+holding rural Russia still in her Dark Ages.
+
+The origin of the present village-system goes back to the time of
+serfage, when the overlord held his dependents herded together for
+easy ruling. That it extended to unfettered Siberia, where the rewards
+of individual effort were so obvious, cannot be laid entirely to old
+custom or government compulsion. Nor is it to be explained by the early
+necessity for protection against wild beasts or hostile natives. The
+same dangers threatened the pioneers of our own country. Perhaps the
+Russian spirit of gregariousness lies at the root of the fact that in
+the Czar’s domains the peasant lives away from his fields to be near
+his neighbors, while our people live away from their neighbors to be
+near their fields. Whatever the cause, the outcome is that practically
+the whole rural population, even in the most thinly settled districts,
+is gathered into villages, and owns the lands in common.
+
+The system makes enormously for homogeneity, welding, solidarity. The
+people are a “mass.” Units are lost in unity. Nothing save Nature’s
+imprint and law of individuality, that decree under which every created
+thing is some way different from every other, keeps the Russian peasant
+from quite losing his birthright. The commune, vodka, and resignation
+are the incubi of Siberia. In the towns and cities gather the energetic
+natures that have climbed out and above them. What these have done,
+their allied people--the peasants--can do. Beyond the horizon of the
+latter’s narrow lives lies still the borderland of possibilities. One
+cannot doubt the vigor of the stock, nor the certainty of its rise.
+This quality of rugged worth is the basis of all the great advance that
+the pioneers and the city populations have made. It is only in the
+Mirs, frozen fast in their lethargy of communism, that resurrection
+seems such a far-off dream. The way is long for the peasants of
+Siberia--long and toilsome. But their vast patience is allied to as
+vast a courage, and both will lift them into the larger day.
+
+The measure passed by the last Duma, decreeing the division of the Mir
+lands in severalty, and private ownership of property, will be one of
+the most momentous and far-reaching enactments ever legislated for a
+people. It should end for rural Russia the stagnation, and open an era
+of mighty endeavor and achievement.
+
+There are many races here among the serenely tolerant Siberians,
+undiscriminated against and uncoerced. While one of the Orthodox may
+not abjure the state religion without severe punishment, those born to
+an alien faith are unmolested by official or proselyting pope. “God has
+given them their faith as he has given us ours,” is the Russian rule.
+
+This medley of races beneath the Russian banners gives to one’s
+earliest contact the conception of a heterogeneous disorganized jumble
+of nations and peoples. But closer acquaintance impresses upon one
+the dominating and surviving qualities innate in the Slav, whose
+unalterable solidarity is beneath and behind the kaleidoscopic types
+of aboriginal tribes and exiled sectarians. By race-absorption, like
+that which has evolved Celts, Danes, Saxon, and Norsemen into English;
+British, Dutch, Swedes, Germans and Italians into Americans, the Slav
+is dissolving, transmuting to his own type and moulding to his own
+institutions the varied peoples.
+
+Though the heterogeneous blood adds to the total of Siberian country
+life, it is the Slavic race that determines the permanent order of
+this great land. Primarily too it is the peasantry who shape its
+destiny. Their possibilities are the limit of Russia’s ascent. Their
+condition is therefore of far deeper than sightseeing interest to the
+student. Unlike the picturesque peasantry of Holland, here they are the
+foundations of the state, forming not an insignificant minority but
+ninety per cent of the population.
+
+Somewhat of a new spirit flickers here and there in Siberian hamlets.
+The peasant is superior to his Russian brother. The traditions of
+serfdom were broken by his severance from the old environment, and
+wider lands give him an abundance unknown save in a few favored parts
+of Europe. The political exiles have through the centuries added an
+upsurge of independence and personal self-consciousness, which is
+markedly higher than the Oriental humility of Occidental Russia.
+
+The influence of the criminal, as distinct from the political convict,
+is felt primarily in the cities, such as Irkutsk and Vladivostok, to
+which the time-expired men drift. The convict element is always met
+with. It has been customary to billet a condemned, who was not wanted
+at home, upon some out-of-the-way village, giving him a passport for
+its confines alone. The victim might have been a Moscow professor or
+a locomotive engineer, but in the Mir he must farm the land given
+him. Naturally such seed as this planted in Siberian hamlets does not
+produce the traditional peasant faith in God and the Czar so faithfully
+preached by the popes.
+
+Another influence making for upheaval is the returning recruit. We
+are in a peasant house when a _soldat_ comes back to the family from
+his service. If he has not brought any great burden of salary, he has
+accumulated tales enough of the outer world to hold in breathless
+excitement the circle of friends and relatives which gathers at once
+when the tinkling sleigh-bells and the barking have announced to the
+village his return.
+
+Far down the street is heard the jingle of his sledge. It brings every
+girl to her peep-hole window, and every boy from his sawing to the
+courtyard door. At the gateway where the newcomer turns in, he is
+heralded by the commotion of the household guardians, wolf-like in
+appearance and nature. Everybody within the important house runs to the
+door. The village knows now which family is making local history. The
+arrival is accompanied already by two or three men who have recognized
+him as he descends. He tramps in with military firmness of tread,
+head erect. Before he greets the grandfather even, he makes the sign
+of the cross to the holy ikons, and, bowing down, touches his lips
+to the floor. Then comes the respectful kiss to the old man, next to
+the mother, while the younger brother, soon to go to service himself,
+stands awkwardly by, and the little children look half-dubiously at a
+form scarcely known after his four years of absence.
+
+Then there is a scurrying of the grown and half-grown daughters to
+prepare _chai_ and to produce the _pelmenis_ and brown bread. The
+villagers drift in one by one, cross themselves, and speak their
+greetings, until the little house is packed, and as hot as the
+steam-room of a _banno_. The vodka-bottle is out and everybody has
+settled down for an indefinite stay. The soldier’s tales of war and
+garrison duty and government and revolution hold the family and the
+audience breathless through the long evening. As you drop asleep, the
+hero is still reciting and gesticulating. The guests in departing will
+be careful not to stumble over you, so _nietchevo_.
+
+In one of the houses where we put up, a shop adjoins the big
+living-room. It has dingy recesses from which hatchets and the commoner
+farm utensils can be produced, shelves of homespun cloth, and gaudy
+cottons for the men’s blouses, and beads for the women’s bonnets.
+Here, as in the country-stores of our own land, during the long idle
+winter days there is always a crowd and endless discussion of the
+village events,--the health of each other’s cows, births, marriages,
+deaths, drafts into the army, taxes. Even in this remoteness something
+of the echo of great Russia’s struggle is heard over the shopkeeper’s
+tea-cups. We hum, unthinking, a bar of _Die Beide Grenadier_, in which
+a refrain of the _Marseillaise_ occurs.
+
+A peasant looks quickly up. “It is not allowed, that song,” he says.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“That is the song of the strikers.”
+
+“But the _gaspadine_ is a foreigner. He may sing it.”
+
+“Yes,” says the peasant, “he may sing it, but I may not. Would that I
+might!”
+
+One meets quaint characters in this inland journeying--veteran soldiers
+of the Turkestan advance; “_sabbato_ sectarians,” who keep Saturday
+holy rather than Sunday; austere “Old Believers,” traveling peddlers,
+teamsters who have tramped beside their ponies over three provinces.
+One comes upon peripatetic Mussulman doctors, in snug-fitting black
+coats and small black skull-caps, who show their Arabic-worded
+road-maps and much-thumbed medical works bound in worn leather. Beside
+their plates at table the kindly hostess puts piles of leathery bread,
+unleavened, and made without lard in deference to their caste rules.
+
+[Illustration: PEASANT TYPES]
+
+A shop in one village is kept by a Chinaman, who, lettered like most
+of his race, seems a far shrewder and more intellectual person than
+the uneducated Russian peasants. He invites the stranger to drink
+tea that his special caravan brings, and presents Chinese candy with
+the courtesy of a grandee. When, in reciprocity, the traveler buys
+sugar for his _chai_, he receives it wrapped in paper covered with
+hieroglyphics and exhaling the faint unmistakable Chinese odor.
+
+Going always southward, one begins to meet more and more frequently
+the villages of the Mongol-descended Buriats. “_Bratskie_” (brotherly
+people), the Russians call them, for despite the forbidding aspect
+that flat Mongolian features, high thin noses, yellow-brown skins, and
+big squat bodies give them, no more peaceful, harmless, and hospitable
+people exist. They are great and fearless hunters, unexcelled riders,
+and though still only on the threshold of civilization, are rapidly
+moving to better things.
+
+All phases of the advance from the nomad to the agricultural stage may
+be studied among them. The pastoral Buriats, decorated like the Chinese
+with queues, ride around after their flocks. Their villages lie far
+away from the lines of convoys, unmarked on the Ministry map, which one
+is supposed to be following. Each family occupies a little windowless
+wooden hut, some fifteen feet in diameter. In front of it is planted
+a pole, carrying at the top a weather-faded pennant, the colors of
+which in Buriat heraldry indicate the tribe and name of the occupant.
+Behind the hut are stacks of hay and a wooden corral with sheep and
+horses. Beside it stands the summer tent, of felt, looking like a great
+inverted bowl. It is empty in winter, save for a shrine with grotesque
+pictured gods, fronted by offerings.
+
+In the homes of these least advanced Buriats we loiter no longer than
+we must. The wooden house which shelters them is hermetically sealed,
+and is crowded with people and animals. Fenced off in a corner of
+the first that receives us is a corral of thirteen lambs, which at
+uncertain moments begin to bleat suddenly in unison, producing, with
+startling effect, a prodigious volume of sound. When one has been
+roused from sleep half a dozen times a night by this chorus, he is
+strongly inspired to move on. The men are out during the day looking to
+their flocks. The women spend a good part of their time sewing furs or
+making felt. They are very unclean, and it is a decided relief to get
+out of their homes, to which the cold compels one to have recourse on
+a long journey. In spring, with great and understandable relief, these
+semi-nomads take to their felt tents and move where fancy and pasturage
+dictate.
+
+One grade higher are those Buriats who have learned some rudimentary
+farming from the Orthodox. You will see the men threshing on a level
+floor beside the corral. They are dressed in long blue or magenta
+fur-lined cloaks and colored cone-shaped hats. Other Buriats are
+permanently resident in the Slavonic settlements, and send their
+rosy-faced children to school. They mix with the Russians, subject to
+almost no disabilities, and their better classes contract inter-racial
+marriages, which seem, to an outsider, at least, completely happy and
+successful.
+
+It is no small thing, this which Russian rule has done for the Buriats.
+A people whom any other nation would spurn in racial ostracism, perhaps
+would eliminate, live side by side with the good-natured Slav in
+perfect accord, progressing in civilization and material well-being as
+high as the individual can aspire to and attain.
+
+They are ruled by their own chiefs, whose sway is tempered by the
+benevolent supervision of the general government. They are represented
+in the Duma by men of their own selection. They freely worship the
+Buddhist Burhan in their lamasery near Cellinginsk, without pope to
+preach or missionary to proselyte. Their easy citizenship is unharassed
+by money taxes, and their only obligation is Cossack service in the
+army. But Cossack service to a Buriat is what a picnic is to a boy.
+Riding around on horseback, rationed by the Government, visiting a
+city with real tobacco and vodka sometimes attainable, sleeping on a
+straw-stuffed mattress with no tethered lambs to murder sleep, when
+they are used to a sheepskin on the dirt floor,--all this is luxury of
+blissful memory, during the years of the reserve. The net result is
+that the Buriats are entirely content. They are progressing all along
+the line, and are being made useful to the nation, not by unpayable
+taxation, but by the service which they are so especially fitted to
+render.
+
+As one nears Chinese territory, by the lower waters of the Chickoya
+River, the villages of Slavic colonists who hold their land on
+tax-paying peasant tenure, have given place to the Buriat tribesmen
+and to the _stanitzas_ of the Cossack guard that occupy the pale of
+land flanking the frontier. Within this border-belt, every village
+_stanitza_ holds its quota of Cossacks. These soldiers are for the
+most part descendants of the levies from the Don region, transplanted
+to the Trans-Baikal by the Government’s despotic hand in the
+eighteenth century, and since then forming an hereditary military
+caste. Many of them are bearded Slavs, indistinguishable, save for
+their accoutrements, from their more peaceful neighbors. Others
+are of a peculiar cast of countenance, due to the mixture with the
+Asiatic tribes in ancient times, when the hunted people fled to their
+ancestors’ asylum, the territories beyond the Volga and on the Don.
+There is great variation in type among the imported Cossacks. Most are
+Orthodox, but a very large number are “Old Believers,” or Semieski. In
+all the houses now hang the yellow cap and the uniform coat, which must
+be ever ready against the call of duty. Arms are in the corners of the
+rooms, and everything has a military look, in marked contrast to the
+peasant homes. Crude, highly-colored prints of Japanese defeats, which
+circulated broadcast in Russia during the war, share the attention
+usually devoted exclusively to holy ikons. Portraits of Generals
+Linevitch and Kuropatkin, and Admiral Alexiev, are tacked to the
+walls. In one house we saw hanging a prized silver watch, one of those
+distributed by General Rennenkamp among the soldiers of his command.
+
+One of our Cossack hosts is an old man, Orthodox, and of Russian
+origin, but with some ancient Asiatic blood, for only a stringy beard
+grows on his kindly, wrinkled face. With reluctant pride he tells of
+his three sons away on service, leaving but himself and two daughters
+at home. With frank happiness he shows you his medals. Every soldier at
+the front received a round brass service-medal; his, however, a silver
+cross with St. George and the Dragon on it, is given for valor. He will
+not drink the vodka he offers you,--rheumatism. But in order that you
+may smoke some alleged tobacco that greatly interests him because he
+gathered it himself by the roadside, in Manchuria, he starts up his
+pipe despite the dust-induced coughs that it begets. He is a kindly,
+loquacious old man.
+
+Another Cossack, privileged to the broad yellow top on his cap and
+the yellow stripe on his trousers, is, for the time, our guide and
+gun-carrier. His flat strongly-mustached face is open and ingenuous. He
+tells of his _sotnia_ in Manchuria.
+
+“I was with Mitschenko at the front during the war, in his great
+raid,” he says. “Ten of our _sotnia_ of a hundred were killed, forty
+wounded. We got behind the Japanese and burned four hundred of their
+wagons. We had two hundred rounds of cartridges, and more when we
+wanted them. But food often not, and meat sometimes not for two months.
+We had thirty Buriats in our hundred, but the Verhneudinsk Polk were
+almost all Buriats.”
+
+In one house where ikons, oven, bench, and stockade reveal the Slav
+peasant’s home, the mirrors are shrouded for their forty days’
+veiling. It is a place of death. The owner was a full-blooded Buriat
+married to a Russian woman. In silent grief she plods through her
+mechanically-executed duties. Their son, in red blouse, is in prayer
+beside his father’s body. They have pressed us to remain. The advent
+of strangers seems to distract their thoughts a little. From outside
+comes a hail, and heavily there dismounts from his pony an old grizzled
+Buriat Cossack. He has ridden two hundred versts to pay this last
+respect to his friend.
+
+His military training makes the Cossack a little less gentle than the
+average peasant. When off duty, hen-roosts near a garrison are in
+some danger. For the rest, he is naturally brave, generous, and will
+share the chicken he has just ridden forty versts to lift. He will
+give his pipe to be smoked, and will behave with a thoughtfulness and
+courtesy that is not found in finer circles. His children have the free
+unrepressed air which speaks of genial home kindliness and sympathy.
+His wife is far from being a mute drudge.
+
+Assuredly this is not the Cossack of legendary fame, the “implacable
+knout” of the czars. It requires almost courage, in the face of the
+savage of literary tradition, to assert that the Cossack is other than
+a dehumanized monster of oppression. Why then did he cut down with
+utter ruthlessness the helplessly frozen grenadiers of the Grande
+Armée? Why will he massacre indiscriminately men, women, and children
+on his path from Tien-tsin to Peking? Why will he beat with his knotted
+whip the striking girl students of Kiev? Who shall tell? To a certain
+extent he is callous to suffering because of a defective imagination.
+He will ride his best horse to death if need be. Loving it, he will yet
+leave it out in weather forty below. He is cruel, often, because he
+has not the substituting gift needed to translate another’s suffering
+into terms of his own. He is valorous because, even so far as regards
+himself, he cannot think beyond the immediate privation into the future
+of imaged dread, so he goes fearlessly into unpondered peril. He
+offends the traditional ideas of humanity and civilization in killing
+people, because of his failure to recognize a wider radius of sympathy
+than circles his own tribe. But if the tribe circumscribes his idea,
+the nation circumscribes the sympathies of others who make tariffs to
+crush an extra-national industry and raise armies to destroy a foreign
+liberty. But if outside the Cossack’s recognized circle, you are to
+him beyond the pale, in his home, you are, _ipso facto_, a member of
+the tribe, a brother in whose defense he will gayly risk his life, and
+spend his substance.
+
+The deeds that are recalled to the Cossack’s discredit often fall for
+judgment really to those who plan and issue the orders which loyalty
+makes him obey. Where his allegiance has been once given, there it
+remains. His _hataman_ is more than a superior officer; he is the chief
+of the clan, the head of all the tribe, and the subordinate is united
+to him by the traditions of centuries of mutual dependence. Where other
+than blood-kin officers are put over the Cossack he mutinies, as when,
+in Manchuria, Petersburg-schooled lieutenants were drafted and raised
+to command. But give him his own rightful chief, then if the Cossack is
+told to do something it is done. He will cross himself and jump from
+the tower, as in Holland did Peter the Great’s guardsman at the word of
+the chief to whom he had given his loyalty.
+
+The savage valor of the warriors in Verestchagin’s picture, _The
+Cossack’s Answer_, is typical of the spirit of these soldiers.
+Surrounded by battalions of the foe, fated to annihilation when the
+summons to surrender is rejected, the leaders, laughing uproariously in
+approval, hear their _hataman_ dictate the insulting reply that dooms
+them all. If one would ride to China he can have no better guards and
+comrades than the Cossacks.
+
+We are close to the border now, climbing the last crest which separates
+the Chickoya from the Cellinga Valley, our toiling tired ponies white
+with frost. All day the long sweep of the hills has been taken through
+heavy snow. The landscape is barren, desolate, and lifeless save for
+the occasional sight of a distant Buriat horseman. The sun is slowly
+sinking.
+
+The crest at last! The driver points with his whip to the dark masses
+of houses below, wreathed in the curling smoke of the evening fires.
+Here and there is a brilliantly painted building or tower, and sleighs
+and horsemen are passing in the streets. “Troitzkosavsk!” he says. He
+points further ahead to another more distant town, whose most dominant
+features are the great square tea-caravansaries and a mighty church,
+green-domed, with a gilded far-glimmering cross. The huddled houses
+end sharply toward the south, as if a ruler had marked off their limit
+in a straight stretch of white. Along this pale are little square
+sentry-boxes, striped black and white. In the evening sun a distant
+glint of steel flashes from the bayonet of a pacing sentry. “Kiahta!”
+the driver says. Then, across the white strip where a wooden stockade
+girds a settlement of gray-walled compounds, fluttering with tiny
+flags, gay with lofty towers and temples flaunting their red eaves, he
+points a third time: “Kitai!” (China).
+
+He picks up the reins, and lifts the whip; “Scurry!” he cries to the
+horses. The ponies leap forward, throwing their weight against duga
+and collar, and we sweep down the hill toward the nearest Russian town,
+Troitzkosavsk, four versts from the border.
+
+As we come down to the main road hard-by the town, officers of the
+garrison drive past with their spick-and-span fast trotters, city-wise,
+as one sees them in Irkutsk. Behind rolls a Mongol cart driven by a
+burly Chinaman. A Buriat, come to town to replenish his supply of
+powder and ball, follows on his shaggy pony.
+
+Down a long street, flanked first by log cabins with courtyards and
+fences like those in the peasant villages, then by stucco-plastered
+houses, cement-walled government buildings, and great whitewashed
+churches, we pass and reach the centre of the town. Then we turn up a
+side street to the house of a mine-owner, to whom we are accredited.
+
+Nicolai Vladimirovitch Tobagov meets us at the door of his log house,
+clad in gray flannel shirt and knee-boots. A not unnoteworthy product
+of Siberia is this man,--squarely built and yet wiry, with nervous
+strength expressed on his bearded face. He is self-made, risen
+from the masses. A peasant-boy, he started life as assistant to a
+surveyor, learning to read and write by his own efforts. During this
+apprenticeship he studied his chief’s books on geology, by the light
+of the brands for the samovar in the peasants’ houses where they were
+billeted nightly.
+
+He located placer gold in a number of spots, at a time when the oblast
+was a lawless “no man’s domain,” without any legal means in existence
+for acquiring title to property. Guarding in silence his secret, he
+waited years, until at last a mining-law was enacted for the oblast
+where his prospects lay. When this law ultimately made private
+ownership possible, he started in to realize. A friend lent him the
+money for a mill, which he constructed, according to book-descriptions,
+on the model of those in California. At first it failed to work, and
+broke again and again. His riffles were set too steeply. They had let
+the gold scour away, and his neighbors reported that there was no
+gold to collect. But he fought it through to victory, returned every
+borrowed kopeck with interest, bought new machines, and prospered; till
+now, besides controlling several mines, he possesses a great domain in
+the river valley, some hundred versts away, with fields of wheat and
+rye and hay-meadows.
+
+When the visitor has stamped the snow from his felt boots and emerged
+from his shaggy bearskin coat and hooded fur cap, he enters the main
+room, with its walls of great logs bare of ornament and showing the
+scorings of the axe, but clean as new-planed wood can be. Between
+the chinks straw and moss are packed to keep out the cold. Two great
+benches flank the sides of the room. Not a picture, not an ornament,
+not a curtain, not a drapery, not a shelf, breaks the plainness
+of the log wall, but here and there are hung guns and rifles. In
+essentials this large house does not greatly differ from the typical
+peasant’s dwelling. But a copy of the “Sibir” newspaper lies on the
+table, and photographs of the female members of the family are added
+to the many reproductions of relations in military dress, which the
+photographer has touched up with brilliant dashes of red, to pay
+tribute to the coat-lining, and white to indicate the gloves. Lamps
+replace the lowly tapers, and they burn before more gorgeously gilt
+ikons. The windows are double, with cotton-wool and strips of colored
+paper between. This is a great improvement on the single ice-crusted
+window, with its perpetual drippings down along the sill. There are
+the little sheet-iron stoves, whitewashed after the tradition of the
+oven; chairs with backs, as well as the square stools; and small rooms
+curtained off from each other. A clock hangs on the wall, and there are
+carpets on the floor. A large table stands at one end, on which is the
+ever-boiling samovar, which is nickel instead of brass.
+
+We are made acquainted with the wife of the host, a stout matron of
+fine domestic proclivities. Though of humble origin, she has discarded
+her peasant shako and bandana-handkerchief headdress for a bonnet, and
+dispenses, as to the manner born, many luxuries. On the other hand,
+she has lost the robustness which keeps her peasant sisters fresh and
+hearty. Sewing-machines, and beds, and servants, must exact toll even
+in Siberia. Her boys are clean-cut and intelligent. They go to school
+and are the future “Intellectuals” that are seeding Siberia. Sixteen
+children--eleven Nicolai Tobagov’s own, five adopted in open-hearted
+generosity--sit down to four very solid meals a day in the big hall.
+Ivan Simeonski, _optovie_ and _argove_ merchant, and Nicita Baeschoef
+the lieutenant, traveling west on furlough, are stopping in this
+friendly house, and many other guests are here. The hospitality of the
+household is conducted on a scale of patriarchal magnificence.
+
+Before our furs are fairly off, the host has called aloud for _obeid_.
+One’s first formality is, as usual, to salute the ikons and the guests.
+One’s second is to escape the scalding vodka, seventy proof, and then
+begin with the _zakuska_ of ten cold dishes on the side table. There is
+black caviar from the Volga, though the rapid diminution of the supply
+has raised the price to ten roubles a pound. There is red caviar from
+the Chickoya, cold mutton, cold sturgeon, sardines, ham, and sliced
+sausages made at home. The latter must be abundantly and appreciatively
+sampled, because they have been specially prepared under the direction
+of the _souprouga_ herself. One stands before the _zakuska_ and dips
+from dish to dish. Next, the guests take the square wooden stools and
+draw up to the great table, where the plates are set for the real
+dinner. Each one helps himself to the smoking soup, which is passed
+in the tureen. As this is being ladled, a plate of round balls comes
+by, the delicious _piroushki_, dough-shells filled with hashed meat,
+always served with soup. We have entered upon a typical Siberian meal,
+with the boiled soup-meat eaten as the second course, and madeira,
+champagne, claret, and rum, indiscriminately offered. A perfect babel
+of conversation goes on, and one is pressed to try this, try that, try
+each and everything of the long menu, under the watchful eyes of the
+kindly host and hostess.
+
+At all times of the day the samovar is left simmering, ready for
+any one of the multitudinous household to brew tea, and constantly
+replenished _zakuska_ dishes deck the sideboard. Guests, attendants,
+children, and friends come and go in the utmost freedom. Such is the
+_Hazan’s_ life.
+
+In another part of the building there stuffs to repletion an army of
+dependents. Servants, artisans, drivers from the caravans which pass
+up from China by the road below the house, a whole other below-stairs
+world is here. Twenty caravan teamsters, _karetniki_ or _isvoschniki_
+of the sledges and carts that fill the ample courtyard, huddle in the
+back rooms for tea. An old bespectacled maker of string-net doilies,
+who reads Alexander Pushkin’s poems, is working out a week’s board in
+the room where the chickens are kept. The housewife does not disdain,
+either, to find a place for the traveling _sapojnik_, who will put
+leather reinforcements on the felt boots which have been worn
+through at the heel. It is a large easy way of living, this of the man
+who holds a leading place in the border city.
+
+[Illustration: A CHICKOYA GIRL]
+
+[Illustration: TROITZKOSAVSK STUDENT]
+
+A mixture of crudeness and culture, of luxury and hardship, of Orient
+and Occident, runs through the quaint fabric of frontier society, with
+its medley of races and types. Fine avenues flanked by stuccoed houses
+pierce the main city. Back of them lie the log houses of the plainer
+citizens, while the outskirts are occupied by the felt huts of the
+Buriats and Mongols. Students in uniform elbow Cossacks of the Guard,
+and maidens from the seminary brush the Mongol wood-choppers.
+
+“Téatre?” suggests one evening the twenty-year-old son of your host.
+Of course the invitation is accepted. At eight o’clock you put on your
+felt boots, and tramp down past dark-shuttered log houses and the
+silent white church into the field, where stands a barn-like building
+placarded with the programme. The young guide secures seats at the
+ticket-counter of rough lumber. Seventy-five kopecks they are, each.
+With them are handed out eight numbered slips of red paper. Then
+together you break a way to the front rows, through the crowd of burly
+Cossacks of the garrison, bearskin-capped students, citizens with shiny
+black boots, and here and there a husky stolid-faced Buriat. Keeping
+hat and coat on, as does every one else, we find seats on the rough
+benches wheresoever we like or can; for nothing is reserved save the
+elevated perch of the musicians, where a four-piece orchestra drones
+out a monotonous Russian march. What a fire-trap! is the first thought.
+To each of the posts that sustain the rafters is fastened a lamp
+shedding an uncertain light on the hangings of bright-red cotton cloth,
+in dangerous proximity to which, utterly disregarding the “no smoking”
+signs, stand the crowd of forty-kopeck admissions, rolling and smoking
+perpetual _papirosi_.
+
+As the impatient audience begins to pound and stamp, a bell rings, and
+the curtain rises on two comic characters busily engaged in packing for
+a hurried departure from their lodging. The stage has become a room,
+with red-cotton-covered walls and bright green curtains. A merchant
+comes with a bill for comestibles six months due. He is quieted with
+extravagant tales of forthcoming change for a hundred-thousand-rouble
+note. The landlady enters, and the shoemaker’s apprentice with a pair
+of mended boots. Both are likewise cajoled and bullied away. The Jewish
+money-lender is more difficult, but at length, to the manifest delight
+of the audience, he, too, is staved off, and the pair draw the vivid
+green curtains and go out through a window for parts unknown, amid much
+glee and applause.
+
+We now go out to the “buffet” and contribute to the dangers of
+conflagration by smoking an offered cigarette. We also add to the
+theatre’s income by buying a glass of hot _chai_ for ten kopecks.
+Something special is in the air for the next act. The audience is
+buzzing and moving in eager expectancy. We return to our seats. The
+curtain rises upon a double row of two-_pud_ (sixty-four-pound)
+weights, such as are used at the bazaar to sell frozen beef. Amid a
+thunder of stampings on the plank floor one of the escaping debtors
+of the last act, dressed in tights, comes out from behind the green
+curtains, and lifts one of these above his head. Then he poises one
+with each hand. Finally a wooden harness is adjusted to his body, and
+sixteen weights (or about half a ton), are heaped upon him by the
+jack-booted Buriat stage-attendant on one side, and the defrauded
+merchant of the first play on the other. It is the most unspectacular
+performance possible, this athletic test, but it takes the place of a
+football match in Siberia. The applause is ferociously appreciative.
+
+More _chai_ and cigarettes, and we come back to hear a very pretty
+girl, dressed in the peasant’s costume of Little Russia, head a chorus,
+and to see a boy in red blouse and boots dance the wild dervish whirl
+which the peasants of tradition are supposed to execute. The boy is
+in the midst of his performance when there is a tumult among the
+forty-kopeckers under the musicians’ eyrie. The latter, being human,
+try to watch what is going on below and play jig-music at the same
+time, and sharps and flats fly wide of the mark till the sounds become
+frightful. Everybody jumps up on his bench to see a peasant having a
+turn with a Buriat, and further trouble brewing with a Cossack who has
+got upset in the mêlée. There is a chaos of tossing hats and brandished
+fists, and the two armed soldiers who are on guard as policemen press
+in, with gruff shouts to make them way. The tumult finally goes out the
+door and into the street, and we turn back to the poor dancer still
+trying to beat out his stunt.
+
+The curtain rises next on the manager, who has been up to date
+weight-lifter, escaping boarder, and part of the peasants’ chorus. He
+is seated at a table, looking very ordinary in his street clothes.
+Behind him is another table covered with an assortment of crockery,
+mirrors, spoons, vases, pieces of cotton cloth, and a big striking
+clock. He calls for a volunteer from the audience for some unknown
+purpose, and a little rosy-cheeked uniformed Buriat schoolboy, who
+has been peeking behind flapping curtain between the acts, responds.
+The boy reaches into a box and pulls out a slip of paper. The manager
+reads a number from it, “_Sto piatdeciet sem_.” An eager voice from the
+rear answers “_Jes!_” The stage-attendant takes a glass tumbler from
+the table and carries it solemnly to the man who has answered. Your
+host nudges until you comprehend that you are to excavate the eight
+theatre-slips, which you do, to find that two only are seat-tickets.
+The rest are numbered billets, and you are liable at any moment to
+receive a perfumery-bottle or a candlestick from the lottery which is
+in progress. The scene now takes on an imminent personal interest
+shared with the banked forty-kopeckers behind. A breathless strain
+accompanies the drawing of the numbers. It mounts to a climax as the
+big musical clock is approached. The fateful billet is at last drawn
+in intense silence. Every eye is fixed on the reader. Not a Cossack
+speaks, not a Mongol moves.
+
+“_Dvesti tri!_” and a sharp “_Moi!_” tells that the clock goes to
+ornament the table of a burly peasant, who grinningly receives it. The
+tense breaths are let out, the forms relax, and the crowd straggles to
+the door, lighting cigarettes and pulling down caps. The drama is over.
+Next morning at eight a soldier visits your host with a message from
+his chief.
+
+“Bring to the police-station the passport of the stranger seen with you
+at the theatre last night.”
+
+A town droshky will take one the few versts to Kiahta, where in the
+Geographical Society’s museum is the celebrated sketch of the Dalai
+Lama made at Urga by a Russian artist, when the young Tibetan monk
+had fled before the English expedition to Lhassa. Here, too, are ore
+samples and reconstructed Mongolian tents. But it is hard to look
+at fossil rhinoceros-heads and at stuffed sabre-toothed tigers and
+musk-deer when the camel-trains are passing and China is a verst away.
+A courier is necessary now, for resourceful Jacov and driver Ivan are
+strangers beyond the border. Perhaps our host knows of a man acquainted
+in Mongolia? He will inquire. Next day there presents himself a slight,
+bearded, intellectual man, Alexander Simeonovich Koratkov, usually
+called, for short, “Alexsimevich.” Bachelor of forty, educated in
+the Troitzkosavsk “Realistic” school. He speaks, as well as Russian,
+Mongolian, English, French, German, and some Chinese. He has translated
+for the English engineers who were brought in to work the Nerchinsk
+mines. He is deeply read in Buddhist mythology and sociology. Will he
+go down into Mongolia with you? Yes; and so it is arranged.
+
+Provisions are cheap and abundant in the Siberian towns. Sixty kopecks
+buy a pound of caravan tea, seventeen kopecks a pound of sugar, the
+sort that comes in a cone like a Kalmuck hat. It is a luxury by warrant
+of public opinion, so much that it has, of note, been served on baked
+potatoes. Before the Buddha pictures of the Buriats, a few lumps may
+be the choicest offering. Flour costs six kopecks a pound. Beef, if a
+great pud-weight forequarter is bought at the market, twenty kopecks.
+Frozen butter will cost twenty-five kopecks per pound. Eggs, of the
+Siberian cold-storage variety, forty-eight kopecks a dozen. For thirty
+kopecks one gets a piece of milk as big as one’s head. But do not try
+to go beyond the native produce, for canned goods, coffee, or sardines.
+It is bankruptcy speedier than buying bear-holes. A big magazine will
+sell pâté de foie gras, imported from France, at two roubles the tin;
+while beneath the Chinese caravansaries’ arcade, bales of tea will be
+sold at a few kopecks a pound. One gets cigars in a glass-covered box,
+with the government stamp, for a rouble and a half, and they will be
+worth about as much as the strings of twisted tobacco-rope which the
+Mongols carry off as their single cherished luxury.
+
+And now for transportation. The sledge can serve no more, for the snow
+goes bare in places along the caravan trail. We must have a tarantass,
+and in time one is produced for inspection. A cask sawed in half,
+lengthwise, is the image of its body, a lumber-cart the model of its
+clumsy wheels and framework. To the tarantass is hitched the trotter,
+with his big bow yoke to bring the weight of collar and shafts on his
+back rather than against his neck. At each side of him, with much such
+a rig as is used to tow canal-boats, are made fast the two galloping
+horses.
+
+When one goes beyond the post-route with his own equipage he has,
+fastened under the driver’s seat and behind his own, bags of oats and
+hay, which must serve as emergency-rations for the horses against the
+days in which none can be secured along the often deserted trail.
+Personal provender must be likewise stored away, bags of bread, frozen
+dumplings to make soup with, tea, sugar, milk-chocolate, milk, candles,
+cheese, matches, kettles, and whatever else one can think of, or
+that the ingenuity of Alexsimevich can devise. Hay is piled into the
+tarantass bottom to supply the want of springs.
+
+A driver who knows the trails has been found, André Banchelski, a tall
+Siberian, of timbering and hunting antecedents, who has a small stock
+of Mongol idioms regarding the price of hay and the location of water.
+He has reached a very good understanding with Katrinka, one of the
+household dependents, and Nicolai is taking an interest in him.
+
+To-night we go to sleep on Nicolai’s plank couch, ready for the march
+of the next day. All is ready. To-morrow we cross the Chinese frontier.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN TATAR TENTS
+
+
+The shaggy ponies, white with the frost of the morning, stand harnessed
+to the tarantass; André in his belted sheepskin _shuba_, whip in hand,
+is perched on the bag of oats; Alexsimevich sits in a greatcoat of
+deerskin, with only a nose and a triangle of black beard visible. The
+host, in his gray surtout, and the red-bloused drivers of the sledges
+scattered in the courtyard, all have left their samovars to see the
+start. The children of the family peep from behind the mother with her
+gray shawl-covered head. They group at one side, under the eaves of the
+doorway, while Josef, one of the household servants, swings back the
+ponderous gates. The reins are drawn in, the whip is lifted, the horses
+are leaning forward into their collars, when the cry of “André!” comes
+through the opening doorway.
+
+From behind the gathered onlookers, who turn at the sound, runs out
+Katrinka, dressed in her best red frock. “André!” she cries. He pulls
+back the starting horses, and Katrinka lifts up to him a little bag
+embroidered with his initials in blue and red. “For your tobacco.”
+
+He looks down into her eyes and smiles. “_Spasiba_ _loubesnaia_,” he
+says, and pushes it into the breast of his shuba.
+
+“_De svidania_, André!” she whispers, then runs back, confused.
+
+The teamsters laugh, pleased and amused as big children at her blushes,
+and her brother shouts a commentary from the gateway. “_Vperiod!
+vperiod!_” says the interpreter. He has reached forty now without
+falling before the charms of any Siberian girl, and he does not
+sympathize. “On! on!”
+
+The horses swing out of the great gateway into the snowy streets, with
+“Good-bye! Good road!” called in chorus after us.
+
+At a slow trot the lumbering carriage rolls through the quiet town,
+misty in the cold of the morning. The row of shuttered shops, with
+their crude pictures of the wares within, are opening for the day.
+The little park with the benches, which are trysting-places of summer
+evenings, cushioned now with six inches of snow, and the low log houses
+beyond, loom up and retire rearward, as we pass. The white church and
+the fenced cemetery of Troitzkosavsk are left behind, and we are on the
+broad paved road by which a sharp trot of half an hour brings us to
+Kiahta.
+
+Its scattered houses now in turn begin. The big tea-compound, of four
+square white walls, flanks us and is gone. The officials’ residences
+and the barracks of the garrison appear and vanish behind. The street
+opens out into a big square, where, shimmering against the white
+ground, stands the great church of _Voskresenie_, the Resurrection.
+On its green dome, lifted high in appeal and in promise, gleams the
+gilded cross. In white and green and gold Russia raises inspiringly
+the symbols of Slavonic faith before the doors of the heathen empire.
+As we pass the white Russian church, the litany of the popes and the
+answering chant of the choir come faintly wafted from within. But even
+as the Christians sing, the clash of distant cymbals and the roll of a
+far-off prayer-drum meet and mingle with the echoes. On the hill across
+the border, in vivid scarlet against the snow, with painted walls,
+sacred dragon-eaves, and flapping bannerets, flames a Chinese temple.
+
+Here now is the borderland of empires. The neutral strip is in front,
+a hundred _sagenes_ broad. The Cossack sentries stand at ease before
+their striped boxes, which face toward Mongolia. Far to the east and
+far to the west are seen stretching the long lines of posts marking the
+boundary. The outmost sentry, as the tarantass rolls across the strip,
+hails you with a last “_De svidania!_” (God speed!)
+
+Past the Chinese boundary-post, covered with hieroglyphic placards and
+shaped like the lotus-bud, we drive, and in under the painted gateway
+of the gray-plastered wall. No Männlicher-armed Chinese regulars,
+like those that in Manchuria throng to hold what is lost, guard this
+half-forgotten road. No sentry watches; no custom-officer bids the
+strangers stop. Through the open gate we ride into the narrow street of
+the trading city of the frontier--Maimachen, the unguarded back door to
+China.
+
+In life one is granted some few great impressions. None is more
+striking than that experienced in passing beneath the shadow of this
+gabled gateway. Behind are kindred men, the manners of one’s own kind,
+police, churches, droshkys, museums, theatres, the whole fabric of
+European civilization. From all these one is cut away in the moment of
+time taken in passing the neutral strip. Two hundred yards have thrust
+one into the antithesis of all western experience, into an utterly
+strange environment, where the most remarkable of the world’s Asian
+races lives and trades, works and rules.
+
+Everything which is made sensually manifest by sight, by sound, by
+scent, by action, is weirdly alien. You three in the tarantass are as
+men from Mars, isolated, and moving among people foreign to your every
+interest and experience. The solitary strangeness of your little party
+in the tarantass, started into a forbidding land, the first confronting
+vision of the eternal Orient--these are the things for which men travel.
+
+As you go slowly down the narrow lane-like street, you catch glimpses
+of banner-decked courtyards seen through great barred doors in the
+gray mud walls. Here and there a sallow blue-coated Chinaman, with
+skull-cap and queue, passes by, his folded hands tucked into his long
+sleeves, fur-lined against the cold. Chinese booths and shops are open.
+Waiting traders, seeing yet invisible, behind the many-paned paper
+windows, look outward through the peep-hole.
+
+In the city square a halt is made before a Chinese store, for a last
+provisioning. At the entrance half a dozen Russian sledges are drawn
+up. Here can be had the supply of small silver coins indispensable for
+the road, canned goods of European origin, and a bottle whose contents
+may be less like medicine than is vodka. Though the goods come all
+the way from Peking on camel-back, they are much cheaper than the
+tax-burdened provisions over the border in Russia. Indeed many of the
+main Chinese stores, with their surprising stocks of wines and pâtés de
+foie gras, candies, and Philippine tobacco, are supported by Russian
+inhabitants of Kiahta and Troitzkosavsk. It is amusing to watch the
+enveloping of champagne-bottles in sleigh-robes, and the secreting of
+cigars beneath fur caps for the return journey.
+
+We stroll a little way down the street, among the Chinese booths for
+native wares, where sturdy shuba-robed Mongol tribesmen are bartering
+sheepskins for blue cotton cloth, metal trinkets, quaint long-stemmed
+metal pipes, and wool-shears with big handles. They are probably
+getting deeper in debt, as usual, to the wily traders. We pass the
+haymarket in the shade of a ruined temple, where the Mongols have
+heaped their little bundles of provender.
+
+All the while one has an eerie undefined sentiment that something is
+lacking. It is not that the houses which face the narrow main street
+are low and poor, that the gray mud-walled compounds are grimly
+unwelcoming with their closed iron-studded gates. It is not that the
+small stocks of goods in the shops tell of a vanished prosperity, now
+that the bulk of the tea-trade has left. It is not anything material,
+but an oppressive indefinable feeling that something is lacking. Only
+when Alexsimevich makes a chance remark, do you realize consciously
+what it was you instinctively felt, “It is queer to be in a city where
+there is not a woman or child.”
+
+Some have explained the exclusion law which controls the situation by
+the self-sufficiency of the Chinese, who wished no real settlement of
+their people here,--the fruit of a pride deep-rooted as that underlying
+the custom which brings every corpse back to China for burial. Others,
+by the desire to avoid transmitting to the Empire the diseases that are
+rife in Mongolia. Whatever the basis, the regulation is in full force
+to-day. At one time merchants in Maimachen kept their wives across
+the border in Russia, which under a subterfuge was not technically
+forbidden. But the ability to hide behind a technicality is a blessing
+enjoyed especially in democracies. It did not go with the chief of
+police, who came down for a squeeze which made it more profitable to
+pay the women’s fare home than to continue to offend.
+
+[Illustration: A WAYSIDE TEMPLE]
+
+Associating with the native Mongol women is here precluded by the fact
+that there are no settlements near by from which the Chinese might get
+indigenous consolation. A deserted tract lies behind the town. Only
+camel-drivers, wood-cutters, and sellers of cattle come into Maimachen,
+and they leave at night. For though the Mongols, in their pointed hats,
+pass along the streets, none may lawfully live within the stockaded
+walls, and none keep shop beneath the carved eaves of the houses which
+flank its narrow streets. This is the prerogative of Chinese traders
+from beyond the far-off Wall.
+
+The spectacled merchant Tu-Shiti, who has become prosperous from the
+sale of Mongol wool, retakes for a visit, every two years, the long
+camel-trail to Kalgan and China. The tea-trader, Chantu-fou, drinks
+his wares alone. The slant-eyed clerks and booth-keepers trotting down
+the streets in their skull-caps, hands tucked up the sleeves of their
+blue jackets, plan no theatre-parties or amity balls, or sleigh-rides
+in the biting air, as over the way in Kiahta. The seller of sweetmeats
+will never be told to be sure and inclose the red and black New Year’s
+card. There is no red-cheeked Chinese boy to smile as he munches your
+sugar; to puzzle over your ticking watch as at Kotoi, or to tease the
+tame crane in the courtyard. Not a girl appears on the narrow streets.
+It is the sentence passed upon the generations of Chinese who have
+gone to Mongolia, that no woman of their race shall pass the Wall. And
+so it must remain, for never a home will be founded till China, the
+unchanging, shall change.
+
+Back and forth through the thoroughfares go the little men with the
+queues flapping against their backs and their sallow uncommunicative
+faces. Are they thinking of the time when they will have made their
+little fortunes and can get back to China to enjoy them? As they wait
+for customers in the little booths, do they plan the homes which none
+of their blood may ever possess in Mongolia? When they sleep on their
+wooden platforms, do they dream of faces in the Kingdom of the Sun?
+Never will one know. Around the thoughts of the Chinaman arise the
+ramparts of his isolation. What he believes, what he hopes, what he
+dreams are not for you. The soul of China is behind the Wall.
+
+The tarantass rolls out of the quaint weather-worn gateway of the
+woman-less city of Maimachen. “How much they miss!” says André,
+filling his pipe from the new pouch. “How much they escape!” retorts
+Alexsimevich.
+
+When in hot haste Pharaoh ordered out his great war-chariot to pursue
+the rebellious Children of Israel, and thundered through his pyloned
+gateway with plunging horses urged by the shouts of his Nubian
+charioteers, he must have experienced, despite contrasts, much the same
+physical sensations as those which we feel when the tarantass starts in
+full gallop across the level plain to the distant range of mountains;
+but where Pharaoh’s robe was white with dust, ours is white with snow,
+and the sun, which baked his road, makes ours endurable.
+
+The horses leap free under the knotted lash of the Siberian driver.
+With the rumble of low thunder the ponderous wooden wheels bound over
+the rutty road, hurling the springless tarantass into the air and from
+side to side. You brace yourself with baggage and hold to the sides,
+but toss despite all, like corn in a popper. The hay on which you sit
+shifts away to one side, leaving the bare boards to rub through clothes
+and packs. A sudden splinter makes you jump like a startled deer beside
+the way. In this noisy tarantass, down the narrow road grooved with
+the ruts of the Mongol carts and sledges that have gone northward, you
+tumble and groan and bump and roll out across the open country.
+
+There is a wide plain from Maimachen. It climbs into the first
+barrier-range and the forest belt of Mongolia, whose plateau is the
+third terrace in the rise of land from the low frozen flats of the
+Northern Lena to the Roof of the World,--the Himalayas of the south.
+The northern city of Yakutsk is at a very low elevation, only a few
+feet above the sea. Irkutsk on the fifty-second parallel is 1521 feet
+in altitude, Troitzkosavsk on the fifty-first is 2600, Urga on the
+forty-eighth 3770, Lhassa 11,000 feet.
+
+Far to the northwest, Mongolia is a forested fur region; far to the
+south is Shama--the desert. Here at the north and east the forested
+belt of the Siberian highlands south of Baikal breaks off almost at the
+boundary.
+
+Snow is over everything, but thinly. It has been worn away on the road,
+leaving brown patches over which the tarantass, mounting the long
+slope with horses at a slow trot, lugubriously thuds. A long stretch
+of straggly trees and stumps tells of Kiahta peasants going over the
+border to cut wood where no timber-laws limit. Up and up we go, the
+way steeper every _sagene_,--afoot now and the horses leaning and
+pulling at the traces. Finally silhouetted against the sky appears a
+rough pile of stones. At its top bannerets are waving from drooping
+poles. It is the Borisan on the summit of the pass to which every
+pious Mongol adds an offering, until the pile is many feet high, with
+stones, sticks, pieces of bread and bones. Some throw money which
+no one save a Chinaman will commit the sacrilege of touching; some
+give a Moscow paper-wrapped sweetmeat, some a child’s worn hat or
+yellow-printed prayer-cloths waving on their sticks and fading in the
+wind;--everything is holy that is given to the gods.
+
+A piercing wind, searching and paralyzing, meets the tarantass
+beyond the crest at the southern border of the forest: it is Gobi’s
+compliments to Baikal, the salute of the great desert to the great
+lake. The horses stumble through the drifted snow, scarcely able to
+walk. The driver, blinded, half-frozen, keeps to the general direction
+of the obliterated trail. Barely one verst an hour is made, until,
+under the shelter of the bald white range of hills, the road reappears
+and the wind is warded off.
+
+A rolling plain between the heights is the next stretch of the way. The
+afternoon sun, dimly bright, creeps haloed through the lightly falling
+snow. Deep in the mist appears a dark moving mass. It grows, focuses,
+and takes shape into a shaggy beast of burden, and camel after camel
+emerges from the haze, loaded with square bales of tea.
+
+“Ask if there is shelter near,” you shout to the muffled head of the
+interpreter.
+
+“I will ask,” he replies. Then to the caravan leader: “_Sein oh!_” he
+cries in greeting.
+
+The foremost camel stares stonily as its Mongol driver twitches the
+piece of wood which pierces its upper lip, and the whole train stops.
+
+“_Gir orhum beine?_”
+
+“_Ti, ti, orhum beine!_” comes the answer. “It is close at hand.”
+
+Forward the caravan slowly paces, each camel turning his head to stare
+as he passes out into the mist again. One of them has left a fleck of
+blood in each print of his broad spongy foot which the driver will
+cobble with leather at the next halt. Along their trail you drive
+southward. The mist is clearing as you rise, and the sun shines down
+on the snow which has crystalized in little shafts an inch high. These
+spear-shaped slivers have a brightness and a sheen of extraordinary
+brilliance, and like prisms show all the colors of the rainbow. They
+cast a gleam, as might a mirror, a hundred yards away. It is as if upon
+the great white mantle had been thrown haphazard treasuries in rubies
+and emeralds and diamonds and opals,--myriad evergrowing rivals of
+Dresden regalias. The sun goes down with its necromancy. Beyond, the
+soft blanket enfolds the rolling hills. It drapes the rocks and weaves
+its drooping festoons about the barren mountain-sides.
+
+“Mongol _yurta_!” calls André, turning to point out with his whip the
+low dome-shaped hut, black against the darkening sky. On its unknown
+occupants we are to billet ourselves, sheltered by the rule of nomad
+hospitality. As the tarantass nears the wattled corral, the watchful
+ravens stir from their perches. The picketed camels turn to stare. A
+gaunt black hound stalks out, with mane erect and ominous growls.
+
+“_Nohoi_,” cries out Alexsimevich, to the inhabitants of the hut; then
+adds to you, “Very bad dogs! It is a Mongol proverb: ‘If you are near a
+dog, you are near a bite.’”
+
+Beneath an osier-built lean-to a woman is milking a sheep, with a lamb
+to encourage the flow. She calls a guttural order to the dog, which
+slinks back. Then she comes to the wattled fence, while the sheep
+which has been getting milked escapes to a far corner of the yard. The
+woman’s head is curiously framed by a triangular red hat, and silver
+hair-plates, which hold out like wings her black tresses. The shoulders
+of her magenta dress are padded up into epaulettes two inches high. She
+is girded with a sash.
+
+“_Sein oh!_” says Alexsimevich.
+
+“_Sein!_” she answers, and opens the gateway to the enclosure around
+the hut.
+
+André drives in among the sheep and cows, and you climb lumberingly
+down with cold stiffened limbs. André puts his whip upon the felt roof,
+for it is a deadly breach of etiquette to bring it into the house.
+
+“You go in,” said Alexsimevich.
+
+It is like entering a kennel, this struggle through the narrow
+aperture, muffled to the eyes in double furs and awkward felt boots.
+As you straighten up after the crawl through the entrance, a red glare
+from the fire just in front meets the gaze. Stinging smoke grips the
+throat; you choke in pain. It blinds the smarting eyes. You gasp and
+stagger. Then some one takes your hand and pulls you violently down
+on a low couch to the left, where in course of time breath and sight
+return. There is no chimney, nor stack for the fire of the brazier,
+which stands in the centre of the hut. One can see the open sky
+through the three-foot hole above. The smoke, finding its way toward
+this aperture, works along the sloping wooden poles which form the
+framework of the felt-covered tent, filling the whole upper section
+with its blinding fumes. To stand is to smother. Sitting, the head
+comes below the smoke-line.
+
+With recovered vision, one can look around within the hut. The couch of
+refuge, raised some six inches above the floor, is the bed by night,
+the sitting-place by day. Against the wall at the left hand, and
+directly opposite the door, is a box-like cupboard, along whose top
+are ranged pictures of grotesque Buddhist gods, before whom are little
+brass cups full of offerings, millet or oil, in which is standing a
+burning wick. Beside the door is a shelf loaded with fire-blackened
+pots and kettles. Branches of birch for fuel are thrown beneath. On
+the far side of the room, three black lambs, fenced off by a wicker
+barricade, are huddled together, quietly sleeping.
+
+[Illustration: A MONGOL BELLE AND HER YURTA]
+
+[Illustration: A ZABAIKALSKAIA BURIAT]
+
+Seated beside the fire close by is the girl of nineteen who has just
+saved you from asphyxiation. The long fur-lined working-dress, common
+to all ages and sexes of Mongols, is buttoned on her left side with
+bright brass buttons, and is belted in with a sash. She has not the
+padded shoulder-humps, nor the spreading hair arrangement, which
+gave to her mother, who welcomed us, so weird an appearance. Her
+complexion is swarthy like an Indian’s, not the Chinese chalky yellow,
+and she has red cheeks and full red lips. Her eyes are large and black.
+The rest of the party have stayed a moment outside to ask about hay and
+water. You have made this solitary and awkward entrance. The girl has
+no more notion than a bird who the strange man of another nation may
+be, who has stumbled into her home. But it does not trouble her in the
+least. For a moment she looks you over calmly, with a smile of amused
+curiosity, rolling and wringing with her fingers a lambskin which she
+is softening. Then composedly she bids you the Mongol welcome, “_Sein
+oh!_” and holds out her hand. Her grip is as firm and frank as a
+Siberian’s.
+
+Now Alexsimevich comes tumbling through the door, and next André. Both
+are used to these huts, and artistically stoop below the smoke-line.
+All our impedimenta--blankets, furs, pots, kettles, bread-bag,
+rifles--are heaped in a mound within the space between the couch and
+the tethered lambs. The girl has not stirred from her work.
+
+“They are friends of yours then, Alexsimevich?” you ask.
+
+“No, no, I never saw them,” he answers. “Any one may take shelter in
+any _yurta_ in Mongolia.”
+
+A small head suddenly makes its appearance from the pile of rugs on the
+sofa opposite on the women’s side of the tent. There emerges, naked
+save for a bronze square-holed Chinese _cash_ fastened around her
+neck, a little slant-eyed three-year-old. The water in the small cups
+offered to the _dokchits_ has long been ice, and one has full need of
+one’s inner fur coat and cap in the hut, where the entrance, opening
+with every visitor, sends a draft of air, forty degrees below zero,
+through from the door to the open hole which serves as chimney. And
+still this tot can step out naked and not even seem to feel it.
+
+“The child’s name?” asks Alexsimevich.
+
+“Turunga,” replies the girl.
+
+“And your own?”
+
+“Sibilina,” she says, and smiles.
+
+Turunga carefully inspects you, and solemnly accepts a lump of sugar
+which she knows what to do with, even if it is a rare luxury offered
+to gods. She sits down, in an evidently accustomed spot on the warm
+felt before the brazier, to play with the scissors-like fire-tongs,
+carefully putting back the red coals that have fallen out on the
+earthen platform.
+
+The tarantass-driver, having piled up your impedimenta, excavates from
+its midst the bag of rye-bread, which he sets to thaw. He gets next the
+little bag of _pelmenes_, the meat-balls covered with dough-paste which
+you carry frozen hard. The mother comes in from under the _yurta’s_
+flap, and, placing a blackened basin over the brazier, puts into it a
+little water and scours diligently with a bundle of birch-twigs. She
+brushes out this water on the earthen floor near the entrance. This is
+the picketed lamb’s especial territory, to which the felt rugs before
+the couches and the altar do not extend. A big bag of snow which she
+has brought from outside is opened and the chunks are piled into the
+basin, where, while one watches, it melts down into water.
+
+“_Boutzela! boutzela!_” she cries soon, holding a lighted sliver
+over the basin to see by: “it boils.” Into the Mongol’s pot go our
+_pelmenes_, to brew for a few moments. An accidentally trenchant
+description of Siberian _pelmenes_ was given on the quaintly-worded
+French bill of fare in the hotel at Irkutsk: “Meat hashed in bullets
+of dough.” They come out, however, a combination of hot soup and
+dumplings, very welcome after the long cold day’s drive across the
+plains, the frozen marsh, and the rolling hills. The wooden Chinese
+bowls from the bazaar at Troitzkosavsk are filled now with our
+hostess’s big ladle, and the application of warmth inwardly gradually
+thaws the outlying regions of the body.
+
+But there is trouble in camp. Turunga is moved by the peculiar passions
+of her sex and her age, curiosity and hunger. It does not matter in the
+least that she has home-made _pelmenes_ every two or three days--she
+wants these particular meat-balls. The little mouth begins to pucker
+and the eyes to screw up. No amount of knee-riding by the mother takes
+the place of the _pelmenes_. We fill a heaping ladleful and André
+furnishes his own bowl. The mother receives it, holding out both her
+hands cup-fashion as is the etiquette, and Turunga is satisfied.
+
+The mother looks kindly to the stranger and smiles at André, then
+throws more sticks of the precious firewood on the embers. André has
+caught, likewise, the not unadmiring glance of the young maid. The girl
+who waits in Troitzkosavsk is not the only one who appreciates our
+six-foot Siberian hunter.
+
+The dog barks in the yard, but without the menace which hailed us, and
+the crunch of a horse’s hoofs sounds on the frozen ground outside. The
+flap opens, with its inrush of freezing air. Stooping, there enters a
+typical Mongol, squat of figure, round of head, with broad sunbrowned
+face and a short queue of black hair. He wears a funnel-shaped hat,
+magenta-colored, and is enveloped in a long _shuba_, with brass buttons
+down one side like a fencer’s jacket. About his waist is a sash with
+jingling knives and pouches. He is the head of the family, come in from
+herding his horses. He turns back the long fur-lined cuffs which have
+protected his gloveless hands, and stretches out both his arms for you
+to place your hands over his. It is the man’s ceremony of welcome. Then
+he produces a little porcelain snuff-bottle. This must be received
+in the palm of the right hand with a bow. It is to be utilized, and
+passed back. If the herder is out of snuff, the bottle is offered just
+the same and you must appreciatively pretend to take a pinch. Such is
+etiquette.
+
+The soup is gone now; the pot, cleaned out for the tea, is again on the
+boil and the leaves are thrown in. André has borrowed a hatchet from
+his host, and has chopped off a piece of milk, which goes in as well.
+
+It is in order to ask the new arrival, Subadar Jay, to pass his
+wooden cup for some of the beverage. He takes it and the lumps of
+sugar without a word of thanks. The Mongol language has no expression
+to signify gratitude. Silence does not, however, mean that he does
+not appreciate. The dozen pieces of Mongol sandal-sole bread which
+he gives you later are worth two bricks of tea in open market, and
+this current medium of exchange--caravan-brought tea--is worth sixty
+kopecks the brick. No small gift, this bread, to an interloping
+stranger who is brewing tea by his fire, and camping unasked on his
+bed. A Tibet-schooled lama knows the Buddhist maxim, “Only accomplish
+good deed, ask no reward.” But the unlettered Mongol layman knows its
+practice.
+
+Little Turunga has played naked before the fire long enough now; she
+is caught up; her reluctant feet are put into the boots with pointed
+upturned toes, and her body into a miniature sheepskin “daily,” such as
+her mother and father wear. The little girl is as smiling and shy and
+coquettish as any child of white skin and complex clothes.
+
+“Will you sell Turunga for a brick of tea?”
+
+“No, no,” says the mother, gathering the little one quickly up into
+her arms, while the rest of the family smile at the offer and her
+solicitude. “No, no, not even for ten bricks!”
+
+Everybody laughs, Turunga with the rest, in a child’s instinctive
+knowledge that she is the centre of admiring attraction.
+
+Far more petting than the Russian babies get is lavished on the
+little Mongols. Perhaps the much smaller families (only two or three
+children to a hut) allow more attention per capita. The mother hands
+Turunga over to her father,--unheard-of in Siberia,--and he plays with
+the child, giving her pieces of sheep’s tail to eat from his mouth,
+answering her prattle or baby-talk and endless questions. At night,
+about eight o’clock, the mother takes the child to the couch and they
+both go to sleep, Turunga cuddled warmly under her mother’s _shuba_.
+
+Meanwhile we men sit cross-legged by the fire and talk of many
+things,--of the pasturage for the sheep, of the snow on the road, of
+the beauty of the housewife’s silver headplates, of water and roads,
+of whether or not the Mongol _dokchits_ on the altar are like the Gobi
+wolves that hate Chinese.
+
+It is interesting to note how some of the words used (few, however)
+have a familiar sound--although there is said to be no common ancestry
+with the Indo-Germanic tongues; perhaps it is only the instinctive
+sound-imitation which makes the Mongol baby cry “Mama” to its mother,
+as does the child in Chita and in Chicago. “Mine,” for instance, is
+_mina_; “thine” is _tenei_. A horse or mare is _mari_. The word for “it
+is,” “they are,” is _beine_, a fairly respectable form of the verb “to
+be” in Chaucer’s English.
+
+The grammar is delightfully simple. In the vernacular there is no
+bothering about singular or plural. “One hut” is _niger gir_; “two
+huts,” _hayur gir_. “Milk” is _su_, and apparently the word for “water”
+was formed from it--_ou su_. If one wants to know whether it is time
+to throw in the meat-balls he says, “_Ou su boutzela?_” with a rising
+inflection (“Water boils?”) and the answer is, “_Boutzela_.” The “moon”
+and a “month” are _sara_, and the years go in cycles of twelve. If one
+wants to compliment the host on the excellence of the sandal-shaped
+bread which he hands out, loaded with gray chalky cheese (_hourut_),
+one says, “Bread good be” (_Boba sein beine_); this gives him great
+pleasure.
+
+Some of the written numbers are somewhat like ours: 2 and 3 are nearly
+the same, but they have fallen forward on their faces; 6 has an extra
+tail. When the teapot overturns, they say “_Harlab!_” to relieve
+their feelings. There is no word for “so good,” “farewell,” or “much
+obliged.” These are just squeezed into the heartiness of the final
+“good” (_sein_). So when one leaves, he holds out both arms, palms up,
+for the host to put his own upon, and says loudly, “_Sein oh!_”
+
+A not unbarren amusement is to study out one’s own derivations for some
+much-explained words. _Tamerlane_ is often given as meaning “the lame.”
+Why does it not rather come from _temur_ (iron) and mean “man of iron,”
+as the ruler of the Khalka tribe was called Altan Khan, the golden
+king? The Amur River has _khara-muren_ (black water) usually given as
+its derivative root. Why not the Mongol word _amur_, which means simply
+“quiet”?
+
+In the hut to-night, while we are comparing mother tongues, the
+brazier-fire has burned to red brands. The girl reaches into a basket
+beside the door for pieces of dried camel-dung, and puts them on, that
+the embers may be fed and live through the night. These _argols_ do not
+smoke; she may close the chimney-hole with the flap of felt, and the
+hut will be kept somewhat warm through the night. The Mongols prepare
+for sleep: they take off their boots, and slip their arms from the
+sleeves of their fur _shubas_, in which they roll themselves up as we
+in our blankets. But how hardened they are to the cold! A naked arm
+will project and the robes become loose, but they do not wake.
+
+We keep on all our inner clothing and roll ourselves about with skins
+until we are great cocoons. André gives a good-night look to his
+horses; then he, too, lies down. With our heads beside the altar of the
+gods, we sleep, in the Mongol’s _gir_.
+
+How cold it is in the morning when we wake! The embers have burned to a
+gray ash; the iciness of the waste outside has gripped like an octopus
+the little hut, and sucked its precarious warmth through the night-long
+radiation. The chimney-hole is open again, and the mother is starting
+a blaze with her few pieces of birch firewood. André has gone out to
+harness the horses. He has left the door flap a little wrinkled, and
+the wind whirls through it and up the chimney, keen as a scimitar.
+
+Alexsimevich is getting out the tea-bowls and the bread. You put a
+reluctant hand from under the blankets and seize your fur cap. Then
+you disengage the inner fur coat from its function of coverlet, and
+struggle, sleepy-eyed, into it. If you have the moral courage to take
+off these friends in need, and the inner coat and sweater, to get a
+bowlful of snow-water, and hunt among the baggage for soap and a towel,
+all at five o’clock in the morning of this freezing weather, then you
+have full license to call the Mongols dirty degraded heathen. If,
+however, you sit and shiver, and promise yourself that you will bathe
+at Urga, it is elementary fair play to be discreetly silent about the
+little failing of your hosts. You will rejoice, too, in open admiration
+of courage, when you find, as you sometimes will, a clean-shaven
+well-groomed lama, or a washed and combed village belle, on the road to
+the sacred city.
+
+“Ready,” says André. You finish a goodly portion of rye-bread and
+several bowls of Alexsimevich’s tea, while he is carrying out the
+luggage and making a pyramid of it in the tarantass. You put both
+hands out to shake those of Subadar Jay, of his wife, and Sibilina. You
+give a last chunk of sugar to little Turunga, and crawl out under the
+tent-flap. The family calls “good-bye” from the gateway as you climb
+in. Then up the hill you start, for the next day’s ride.
+
+It is slow to travel by this schedule. One can advance by day and rest
+by night, but daylight travel and night sleep, while most comfortable
+for a man, are the least efficient for a horse. If progress be the
+aim, one must adopt the teamster’s system. This involves a start at
+midnight, and eight hours of travel at a slow trot,--six to seven
+versts per hour. Then, at eight in the morning, a halt for the ponies.
+One hour they stand in harness, before getting their quarter _pud_ of
+hay; after which comes water, and finally, seven and one half _pfunde_
+of oats. Four hours of halt are involved, in which one can roll up in
+his blanket and sleep. Then off again for eight hours of trot, and
+another four hours of halt at eight in the evening. So the watches go,
+with some hundred versts made daily.
+
+Noon to-day finds us climbing the hills on foot, to stretch our cramped
+limbs and ease the horses, as in old times the English tourists climbed
+the St. Gothard on the way to Italy. We are chilled, and racked by the
+jar of the road, and glad of even strenuous freedom. Presently we get
+on again, and ride down the far slope. It is the camel-boat of the
+steppe, this tarantass.
+
+A solitary gnarled tree shows in the waste of snow--the one seed
+that lived, on the barren waste, of all that the Siberian winds had
+brought. An eagle is watching from its upper branches. Further on are
+higher hills, with trees growing on their northern declivities alone.
+No foliage can stand the sun, which steals the moisture and bakes the
+rocks on the southern slopes. As we pass one of these isolated groves,
+the bald trees are seen to be packed with old nests; for the birds
+from miles around come hither, as the only refuge for their eggs. Deer
+watch us, standing ten yards off; for these Mongols are poor hunters
+and their religion sanctifies life. A lama may not kill even a fly: it
+might be his own father, transmigrated into this form for insufficient
+piety. A big white hare starts through the trees, stops, and runs
+again. Thousands of little marmots scurry to their holes in the plain
+at the alarm of the tinkling bells. A kite soars with a marmot writhing
+in his claws. Big gray jack-rabbits bound along the road ahead. A troop
+of partridges let us pass their wallowed holes six feet away. They
+peer up, their heads protruding from the snow, their yellow aprons
+glistening like shields, tame as guinea-fowl. At length we drive into
+Zoulzacha village.
+
+One becomes after a time somewhat of an adept regarding quarters.
+To-night the village gives a chance. The most promising exterior is
+selected, and driving up, we prepare to enter. Cold and cumbersomely
+muffled, you worm under the felt hut-flap, and see through the pungent
+smoke of the brazier a dim figure seated to the left of a veiled altar.
+Bowed over a red-beaded rosary, he is chanting in a low voice, a weird
+oft-repeated phrase. He ceases as you struggle in, becomes silent, and
+looks up. “_Amur sein!_” he salutes in quiet greeting, and motions you
+to a place on the low sheepskin-covered couch, to the right of the
+altar, opposite him.
+
+The open smile of his welcome shows white teeth hardened by the tough
+biscuit of his daily diet. You note next, with the pleasure born of
+seeing anything good of its kind, the light color and unwrinkled
+features of this young man of twenty-five. The gaze of his brown eyes
+is direct and frank. He is clean-shaven, his hair is close-cropped,
+and he has the appearance of a well-groomed horse. In contrast with
+the smoke-blackened, hardship-wrinkled faces of the older Mongols, his
+is as a drink from a clear mountain spring after stale drafts from a
+long-carried canteen. His color is that of an athlete trained under
+the suns of the running-track. His features are defined, the nose not
+so flat, the eyes larger than the usual Mongol type. His expression is
+earnest and sincere as he now stands up in his robe of rich orange,
+trimmed and girdled with red.
+
+He welcomes the guests without question,--it is the rule of Mongol
+hospitality, but you feel for the first time what an intrusion it is
+for your great Russian tarantass-driver to shoulder his ponderous way
+into the home of a stranger, loaded with your bearskin rugs and rifles
+and bags of bread, and to pile them loutishly on the native’s couch. At
+the other huts wherein you have lodged, this sentiment has not come so
+strongly. Poor places they were: the hardship-lined faces; the soiled
+and ragged robes of the women, the threadbareness of the heaped-up
+sheepskins on the couch, all these revealed that your two-headed eagle
+of silver was needed, and your coming a windfall. But here are no sheep
+fenced in, making one feel that standards are superfluous. The fuel is
+put away in a basket, the bright fire-irons are ranged in a row. The
+couch of polished wood is orderly, and the skin-rugs on it are folded
+in their places. The little chests of drawers are brightly polished,
+and the yellow cap, with its lining of fox-fur, on one of them is new
+and clean.
+
+But most of all, in the proprietor himself is there an air of freshness
+and cleanliness, of youth and vigor, and of self-confidence. When you
+burst into a place like this, covered with snow and muffled up in furs,
+disturbing the master of the house at his prayers; when your driver
+lays the uninvited mattress down in the warmest place, a man cannot
+but feel like a thrice-dyed barbarian bounder, even if the home be a
+fifteen-foot felt hut open at the top, and situated on the borders
+of the Gobi Desert. So feeling, the first impulse is to let the host
+know that you are not quite, of intent, what you are by accident,--a
+big hulking foreign savage. So you hastily think over what you can
+give to put yourself less at a disadvantage. The prized reserve of
+milk-chocolate comes to mind. “Will the host have some?” you ask.
+
+“_Da blagodariou!_” he answers in Russian, to your surprise.
+
+With mixed gladness at having made good thus far in any event, and
+regret at the diminished store of this commodity, you take a little
+spoonful of the snuff which the host is now offering in a beautiful
+porcelain bottle, patterned in flowers. Then you come back with a
+cigarette. Most of these people know what cigarettes are, though some
+smoke them with their noses.
+
+“No, thanks!” and he points to his closely-cropped head.
+
+Alexsimevich, who has followed into the hut, explains: “You speak to a
+priest, he does not smoke.”
+
+A screen hangs before the altar opposite the door. You look
+hesitatingly at it. Without demur, the lama, at the visible interest,
+draws back the veil. There, in painted grotesqueness, is Janesron, the
+red god of Thunder, and bearer of the lightning sword. He glares down
+with his three eyes upon the sunken orbits of a sheep’s head, laid
+out as an offering. Black Gumbo, the six-armed good spirit, is also
+there, and both are surrounded by attendant demons. All are pictured
+artistically, the minute detail of Tibetan workmanship showing in
+their squat bodies. The polished wood of the frames is as finely
+wrought as a Japanese sword-hilt.
+
+On the box-top, beneath the gods, are set out in neat array the best
+of Mongol dainties. These are disposed in little polished brazen
+cups shaped like wine-glasses. There are raisins and dried plums,
+caravan-carried from the far-off Middle Kingdom, and lumps of sugar
+brought down from Russia in some trader’s pack. Millet fills one cup,
+water another; each symbolizing some ancient seizin. A wick, sunk in
+oil, flares in the centre, and casts a flickering, uncanny light upon
+the deities. Spread on a low seat, six inches above the felt rug on
+the floor, are rows after rows of _boba_, the gray Mongol biscuits, in
+shape like the thick soles of a sandal. As a centre-piece between the
+stacked loaves rests the brown roasted sheep’s head. It is the feast
+of the New Year that this unusual volume of offerings betokens. The
+old year of the Horse passes with the rise of to-night’s new moon. The
+leap-year--that of the Ram--will then begin. All the families in the
+_eimucks_ of Mongolia will feast on the grosser part of the offering
+which now lies in its ranked regularity undisturbed. For the present
+the priest takes light refreshments while waiting for his midnight rite.
+
+“Will you have some of the tea that has been brewed for you by the old
+mother while you were looking at the altar?” asks Alexsimevich.
+
+It has been made, not from the loosely-packed leaves, but from the
+hard tea-bricks. A chunk of this has been cast into the great iron bowl
+over the brazier when the fagot-fed fire has melted the ice and has
+brought the water to a boil.
+
+Solemnly you are presented a wooden bowl of tea, which you receive in
+both hands, and as solemnly sip. The evening meal is cooked and eaten,
+your sugar reciprocating the lama’s tea.
+
+As the evening wears on, amid the smoke of cigarettes and brass-bowled
+pipes, the lama brings out quaint paper slips of Buddhist prayers.
+
+“You are interested?” He will write for you a charm. “_O mani
+padmihom_,” he tells you. “The Buddhist prayer.”
+
+“Oh, thou jewel in the lotus-flower, hail!” says the interpreter.
+
+It is mighty, this ancient Buddhist prayer, which is murmured by so
+many millions from Japan to Persia, from Malay to Siberia. It is
+symbolic, esoterically, of much. The jewel is the soul, the lotus is
+Buddha, the prayer, a wish that the spirit be in them which was in
+_Saka-muni_, their Lord. On endless rosaries this prayer is told. It is
+on the lips of priests and women, it is carved around the stones which
+travelers throw upon the _obos_, the “high-places” of Old-Testament
+record. It is murmured by the pilgrims as they prostrate themselves.
+The disciplined body, the praying tongue, and the mind intent on sacred
+things, all incline the soul to the acquirement of merit.
+
+The lama draws now with his quick hand, trained to the Tibetan script
+of the Urga monastery-school, sketches of his temple, _Zoulzacha
+Soumé_, of his people’s summer tent of cloth, and winter hut of felt.
+He writes out the Mongol numerals, and explains the cycles of years, in
+answer to questions regarding the New-Year festival. He describes the
+puzzling element-and-animal system, by which the _chére mari_, or earth
+horse, is 1907, the _chére khoni_, or earth ram, is 1908, and so on
+through a sixty-year epoch.
+
+He quotes Mongol proverbs come down from old priests and rulers: “One
+may buy slaves, but not brothers,” and, in the spirit of Macchiavelli,
+“You can govern a State by truth as well as you can catch a hare with
+an ox-cart.”
+
+Now it is nearing moonrise. From his rolled purse the priest draws a
+small slip of paper ruled into a half-inch checker pattern, in every
+square of which there is a symbolic group of letters. The lama consults
+this. Then he brings from the chest beneath the altar a long narrow box
+in which are strips of faded paper thick as parchment. On these in red
+and black are traced quaint characters, written, as is our script, from
+left to right. The priest selects a dozen of his long sheets and puts
+them carefully on his couch. He touches the box to his forehead and
+restores it to its place. Then he turns and speaks to the interpreter.
+
+“The lama must make ready for the night of the New Year,” you are
+told; and as you look, off comes the red sash and yellow robe. The
+young priest stands up in his vivid blue jacket and walks to the
+entrance of the _gir_. From a cupboard he takes a towel, and from the
+fireplace, ashes. Pouring warm tea into a wooden bowl, he scrubs hands
+and face with the vigor of an athlete after a run. Then back to the
+cupboard he goes, and off comes the blue jacket for a clean new silken
+one. A rich yellow robe is donned. A bright silver knife is slung upon
+a new red sash which girdles his waist; and smart and erect as an
+officer of the Guards, the lama steps over, prostrates himself before
+his deities, then goes out into the night to his temple service.
+
+“Creeds are many, but God is one,” murmurs Alexsimevich.
+
+It is regrettable that the rule of lama celibacy prevents the
+arrangement of the usual kidnapping marriage-ceremony between this
+young priest of Zoulzacha, and Amagallan (blissfulness), the belle of
+the Odjick encampment. It is early in the first moon, Sara, of the year
+of the Ram, and holiday still reigns in Mongolia. Doubtless she, too,
+is a sooty Cinderella at other times; but to-day she is a reigning
+princess, dressed in the best that a father, owner of a hundred sheep,
+can furnish. A bright new blue coat, lined with fine white lamb’s-wool,
+is belted around her rather ample waist with a red sash. Her boots are
+of evident newness. But the triumph, the chef d’œuvre, is her pointed
+red hat made of the brightest Chinese silk. It is topped with a gold
+and black knot and is garnished with gold braid. The flaps, turned
+up at the sides and the back, are of a long silky dark-gray fur. A
+broad red ribbon fastened behind is brought forward and rests on her
+breast. She has a feminine eye to its brilliant contrast against the
+blue dress. Two long tassels of pearls, set in coral-studded silver
+earrings, frame a rosy, laughing face; for Amagallan is exhilarated
+with the consciousness of being very well-dressed.
+
+The presence of two young herdsmen in dark red and blue, and one lama
+of the first degree,--and consequently not estopped from the race,
+like a full-fledged priest,--bears testimony to the effectiveness of
+the costume and the girl. The wiles with which she distributes a smile
+to one, a dried Chinese plum to another, and a mild frown to a third,
+reveal even more the universal woman. Amagallan is not at all averse
+to adding to her string three masculine Russians. There are only two
+foreign nations in Mongolia, Chinese and Russians. Into the latter
+class come all stray visitants--Americans, Buriats, and Troitzkosavsk
+teamsters. The girl stands up now and greets this American with a frank
+hand-shake. She invites him to sit down with the rest. Since there is
+scriptural permission to eat meat offered to idols, the fact that the
+evening’s feast has stood at the feet of Buddha need not deter one from
+partaking of the little dumplings, gray cheese, and dried fruits.
+Amagallan hands them out on one of those sole-shaped biscuits, which
+serve as plates until one has eaten what is on them, after which they
+go down themselves. A fat sheep’s-tail is sliced for your benefit,
+while a coarse lump of dusky-looking sugar is an ultimate delicacy,
+eaten as candy. Muddy brick tea follows, of course. The Mongol bread is
+good, but it takes resolution to do one’s duty by the gray cheese, the
+resin-like desiccated milk, and the sheep-fat just seethed.
+
+A chatter of conversation goes on, the neighbors drift in and out,
+and those of our _gir_, as the evening wears on, make excursions to
+the other huts and exhibit and drink more muddy tea for politeness’
+sake. The hostess in each tent shakes your hand before feeding you.
+The formality makes you temporarily one of the tribe and family, to
+be treated with courtesy and hospitality. Thus you are taken into the
+social life of a simple affectionate people.
+
+We meet in one hut a traveling friar who has tramped sturdily from
+Tibet, pack on back and prayer-beads on arm, begging, praying, selling
+relics claiming to cure rheumatism, and the eye-diseases which the
+smoky huts induce. He carries on a pole an image of Gumbo and others
+of the _dokchits_, together with a hodge-podge collection of rosaries,
+strips of silk, bells, beads, pipe-picks, etc. These are jingled during
+parts of his prayer, where it is necessary to keep the god attentive.
+
+[Illustration: A MONGOL “BLACK MAN”]
+
+In one hut they are playing the age-old game of _tawarya_. A bag
+is produced containing hundreds of sheep’s-knuckles, colored blue.
+Everybody gets a handful. Then a girl holds out her fistful of them,
+and each man guesses the number. There is a rapid fire of shouted
+numerals,--“_niger, hayur, urbu, durbu!_” The one who guesses correctly
+gets the handful of knuckles. This person next holds out his fistful,
+and so it goes. It is an uproarious sport, interspersed with quite
+unnecessary grabbings of disputed handfuls,--part of the game that
+Amagallan is playing, even if not germane to _tawarya_.
+
+Finally through the darkness you make your way back to the _gir_
+in which you are billeted. The wreathing smoke from its dome is
+illuminated to-night by the beams from the fire below. It rises in
+dimly bright convolutions, beautiful in its small way as the great
+Northern Lights. You spread your felt on the floor of the tent and roll
+up in your rugs. The teamster needs a timepiece to regulate his hour of
+harnessing, for you must start at daybreak. Leave your watch for him on
+the altar of the _dokchits_. It will be safe in this hut by the desert
+of Gobi, among the remnant of the Golden Horde.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The days’ marches have taken us well up among the ridges of the Kentei
+Mountains. To the eastward is the peak which, despite the claims of
+Urga’s Holy Mountain and of a site near Tibet, has the best authority
+for being the burying-place of Genghis Khan.
+
+In 1227 the great conqueror died. The confused records tell of his
+body’s being taken northward to a mountain which was the heart of his
+empire, from whose slopes sprang the sources of the three great Mongol
+rivers,--the Tola, the Onon, and the Kerulon. Beside its sacred lake
+the Manchu Amban of Urga sacrifices annually to the Nature-spirits.
+It is both a survival and a memorial to the bloody sacrifice of every
+living being on the road to the grave,--a tribute which tradition says
+the guards of Genghis Khan’s funeral cortège offered to their departed
+chief.
+
+Huts are far apart in these highlands now, and the whistling winds
+pierce the very marrow. The tired horses can hardly crawl forward on
+the doubtful trail. Far up in the heights, beside an old caravan-route,
+superseded by a newly-cut artery of travel, we come very late upon an
+ancient wooden shrine.
+
+The worshipers have gone. They lived their time in a village near
+by, but with the exhaustion of pasturage for the flocks, under nomad
+necessity they moved. A new camel-road was tramped out by drivers, who
+must find shelter amid habitations. So in the shrine, long unpainted,
+the smiling Buddha presides now over his famished altar.
+
+Very, very old, very, very poor, is Archir the warden, who
+welcomes you. For forty years he has watched in his _gir_ by the
+dragon-gargoyled gate. The spear with which he stood to his post
+of old is blackened, and its red tassel is dulled and faded. A
+tattered fringe is along the edge of the felt door to his _yurta_, and
+holes are under its walls close to the ground. His pile of wood is
+pitifully small, and few are his sandal-sole biscuits. His _shuba_,
+sheepskin-lined, is blackened with the soot of years.
+
+Archir refuses courteously what he knows is a rare foreign delicacy,
+a Russian cigarette. “A lama,” he says, “may not smoke.” But his own
+hospitality is of the thoughtful kind which comes from the heart. He
+hands you a sheepskin softened by long massaging between his trembling
+old hands, that his own covering, not your coat, be burned by the
+sparks from the brazier. He notices that your tea-bowl is awkwardly
+held, and he brings a little table to put before you. He sees your
+driver fumbling for a match to light his pipe, and reaches him a coal
+with the fire-tongs. He clears his couch that you may sit in comfort.
+He offers you the first use of his fire for cooking.
+
+In the old days many came to pray to the smiling Buddha. The drivers
+of the tea-caravans from far-off China left their offerings of fruit
+and silk scarves. The herdsmen whose lambs had lived well through a
+bitter winter gave sheep fat of tail to the two yellow-robed priests
+who chanted and clashed the cymbals through the long days and into
+the nights. The little boys dedicated to the gods, shaven-headed,
+rosy-faced, crooned their lessons in the Tibetan tongue, sitting on the
+floor of the big blue school-gir beside the shrine. Every day pilgrims
+on their way to Urga stopped to pray in the _soumé_, and filled the
+tent of the young guardian with eatings of noodle-soup and drinkings of
+tea, with gossip and with song.
+
+But all is changed now in his little hut. The rule of non-marriage
+he keeps in the spirit, where so many lamas observe it only in the
+morganatic letter. This has left him alone in his old age, and
+pitifully solitary now that even the dwindling camel-trains, of whose
+tea-traffic the Manchurian Railway has robbed them, pass by no more.
+The priest is unfed even by pilgrims. These have gone with the rest to
+the routes of a better prosperity.
+
+Archir has seethed his evening meal of sheep-meat and flat pieces of
+dough. He has let the fire die down to embers, and has pulled the
+covering over the round hole. The freezing winds very soon make his
+hut so cold that one feels like a thin shaking uncovered creature even
+beneath the heaped furs. One’s ungloved hands grow numb as he lies by
+the brazier.
+
+In the morning we too depart, and like the Roman legionary beside the
+Vesuvian gate of Pompeii, the old priest waits, alone, unquestioning,
+uncomplaining, till a greater God than he of the _soumé_ shall send the
+summons of relief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The mountain-ranges, one after another, stretch their towering barriers
+across the path. They trend northeast and southwest, as in Siberia.
+First comes the Sharan Daba, the white range, whose pass leads down to
+the Iro River, rich in alluvial gold. The streams flow westward into
+the Cellinga, whose waters empty into Lake Baikal, and thence by the
+Angara River, into the far-off Arctic Ocean.
+
+Ridge follows ridge now, and valley follows valley,--narrow cuts, with
+shallow streams, and huts clustered upon their sides. Out from the
+almost deserted borderland, the Mongol encampments are not unfrequently
+pitched where there is water for the flocks. If any wood be near by, it
+is well, since then the dried dung can be reserved for the smokeless
+evening fire when the top hole is closed.
+
+When the steep mountain climb has been passed, it is as if a gateway
+had been opened through the constricting ridges. The broad valley of
+the Haragol stretches out. Down, down, we go, onto a plain, in the
+centre of which we come to an enclosure with a high mud wall and a
+peaked gateway, gaudily decked with red banners and vivid placards.
+Outside the mud walls of the compound, far and wide, are checker-board
+squares with irrigation ditches between. Huge stacks of hay and straw
+are piled up near the gate, the wonder and envy of the nomads, who
+never have more than the scantiest store. Within are booths facing the
+courtyard. A little temple occupies one corner. Two-wheeled carts are
+drawn up along the wall. Troughs and picket-poles are ranged in line,
+ready for the caravans.
+
+Now, around the tarantass, there gather from their threshing the
+dwellers of the compound,--coolies from the far-off Pink Kingdom, with
+puffy blue trousers and tight-buttoned jackets, flail in hand and metal
+pipe in mouth. They stare stolidly without comment at the frost-covered
+horses, the robes, and the bearded strangers. Expressionless they stand
+watching every movement. Alexsimevich asks a question; no one answers.
+We sit for a moment mutually expectant. Not one of the Chinese stirs or
+speaks.
+
+Then André swings down and leads the team through the gateway into
+the compound. Alexsimevich leads the search for shelter. We cross the
+courtyard to the building which serves for the lodging of travelers.
+Its walls are of mud, and a big adobe chimney projects up one side.
+Beneath low eaves a small window with white paper panes blinks like
+the sightless eyes of a blind man. We stoop, pushing open the crudely
+pivoted door, enter the smoky chamber, and the door swings back behind.
+
+We are standing in what seems an unreal world--a stage-scene or a
+cavern from the Arabian Nights. In front and on each side close in
+dark windowless walls. Behind comes a feeble light from the little
+paper-paned window. In the dimness, a flickering fire throws fitful
+gleams on dusky figures, idols, and wearing-gear hung on pegs driven
+into the wall.
+
+As your eyes become accustomed to the gloom, the details take shape. A
+clay stove is to the left. Fagots are heaped beside it, copper kettles
+rest upon its top, pigtailed figures are crouching around. In front,
+a platform, raised four feet above the clay floor, occupies the whole
+width of the room and extends back into the darkness. A group of men
+are seated, cross-legged, around a little brazier, smoking. Others are
+lying rolled in blankets.
+
+With our luggage André staggers in. No one stirs. Some of the group
+around the stove turn their heads to look, but that is all. André
+heaps the food-bag and blankets in a vacant spot on the _kang_. We
+make room on the stove for our pots to boil the water for tea. On this
+self-elbowed place amid the rest we sit cross-legged, propped against
+the clay wall. The smoke from the oven, led under the _kang_, warms it
+so that the outer coat can come off. A little tabouret some six inches
+high stands in a corner, and serves as a table for the repast.
+
+The shelter is far better, as comforts go, than any of the Mongol
+tents. The icy wind that sweeps the latter is barred off. There
+is a stove to replace the nomad’s brazier; a warm _kang_ instead
+of the floor to rest upon. But how different is the spirit of the
+hosts! There are no frank hand-clasps here, no interested gossip and
+inquiries of the adventures by the way. No generous bringing out of fat
+sheep’s-tails and snuff-bottles for the guests’ delectation. You cannot
+but have the feeling that these people are as indifferent to your
+existence as they are to the pariah dog that howls outside the walls.
+They are exclusive, non-welcoming,--these Chinese. They are strangers
+to the land, self-sufficing in their toilsomely cultivated rye- and
+wheat-fields, an isolated, womanless, working settlement.
+
+Despite the better quarters and comfort which these inns afford, one
+prefers to go to a Mongol tent and be among men more human, if less
+civilized. When the bread is thawed and the tea is boiled, we eat, pay
+the Chinaman who gave the wood, and with a sense of relief go out again
+to the tarantass and the road.
+
+For versts now the way is along the alluvial plain, seamed with
+irrigation-ditches and dominated by several of these walled Chinese
+factories. As the sun goes down, however, there appears a solitary
+building, and André gives a glad shout, seeing that it is built of wood
+and has windows and big centre chimney. “_Russky dom!_” he cries.
+
+A low mud wall surrounds the enclosure. Inside some quilts are hung in
+the air, that the cold may kill the vermin. A big black dog comes up,
+but unlike the scavenger beasts of the Mongol encampments, it signals
+welcome with friendly tail-waggings and good-natured barks, approaching
+at once as if accustomed to kindly treatment.
+
+The quilted door of the house opens. A booted figure appears with
+the familiar red blouse, and the Russian greeting hails you,
+“_Zdravstvouitie!_”
+
+“An Orthodox Buriat,” says Alexsimevich.
+
+We mount his wooden steps, shake his hand, and enter the big warm room.
+
+It is as if one were back in Siberia. The Buriat’s Siberian
+wife, in shawl and kerchief, is busy at the whitewashed oven.
+Brilliantly-colored comic prints detail the misadventures of the young
+recruit, with doggerel ballad rhymes beneath. Chickens peck beneath
+the stove, the samovar hums on the table, and figures sipping tea are
+grouped around it on the benches, or are lying on the floor enjoying
+the genial warmth.
+
+“Hail, Alexsimevich!” comes a voice; and a tall bearded Siberian,
+dressed in a Mongol robe, rises.
+
+“Aha, Vladimir Vassilivich!” answers our interpreter. “Good-day!”
+
+A volley of questions at once overwhelms him. The party has been long
+away from Kiahta, and we have the latest news.
+
+“A Kiahta merchant, my friend, and his son,” Alexsimevich explains.
+
+Overcoats are being doffed, mufflers unwound, and boots kicked off.
+The babble of talk continues. A place is made for us at the table,
+and glasses of tea, with immense slices of cheese and ham, are placed
+before us. When more tea and cigarettes have completed the repast,
+Alexsimevich paces up and down, relating with dramatic gestures the
+latest gossip from Troitzkosavsk.
+
+In the midst of his narrative, which all are following with great
+interest, there comes an incident of heightened vividness.
+
+“Sh--sh!” a warning signal sounds. One of the auditors points to a
+shape rolled in blankets, and lying on the bench.
+
+“_Gaspaja_” (a lady), they say.
+
+Alexsimevich completes his tale in a lower tone and with more artistic
+circumlocution.
+
+But it is the other side’s turn to tell a tale, for why, in the
+ferocious cold of midwinter, with--save for this one Buriat’s
+house--the Mongol huts only for nightly shelter, why does a lady come
+down here?
+
+The merchant explains: “She has twisted her knee-joint, and in Irkutsk,
+in Tomsk even, the Christian doctors cannot heal her. A lama tells us
+that warm sulphur-water will soften the sinews, and the bone can be
+brought back into place. We go to the warm springs of the Holy River. I
+have been there in old times, and I know the way.”
+
+With pathetic eagerness the party has gone to do the lama’s bidding,
+and bathe in the Mongol Jordan. Evening comes. The lady’s bench is
+pulled over close to the oven. The merchant and his son lie down beside
+it on the floor. Servants and drivers roll up at their feet, and all
+sleep, in amity.
+
+It takes resolution to awake at daybreak and leave the luxury of this
+shelter. But when horses are harnessed, riders must ride. The rising
+sun comes up over the white plain. The Buriat waves “good-bye” from
+his doorstep; the dog barks in farewell, and we lumber on southward.
+
+A sugar-loaf hill marks the end of the valley. We turn up now into the
+mountains, the driver somewhat in doubt as to the way. A boy of about
+fifteen years, a yellow-robed lama novice, rides by. Alexsimevich hails
+him to ask the road to Urga. A complicated explanation follows, hardly
+understood.
+
+“I show you,” says the boy.
+
+For a dozen versts he rides along on his pony beside us, chattering and
+laughing. When, after a devious trail, the pass is in sight, he starts
+off, and will not, at first, accept any present for his trouble.
+
+Valley follows valley now, the trail fairly well defined. Mongol huts
+give a chance for rest and for cooking. A welcome is bidden us in each,
+the nearest water is shown, and invitations to come back are freely
+extended.
+
+There is now one last range to cross, the Tologoytou, highest and
+steepest of all. Even the mounted Mongols, who have caught up with
+our toiling tarantass, swing off and climb afoot. Trees are on either
+hand, and the white wall-like face of the barrier passed in the morning
+seems a bare verst away. There comes a whole slope of boulders and
+rocks, jagged and broken, like the moraine of a glacier. And then, at
+long last, we reach the high-heaped Borisan at the summit, with its
+fluttering prayer-flags. The foremost Mongol throws on a rock, leaps
+upon his pony, and rides twice around the mound.
+
+“_Argila! argila!_” (bridles free! bridles free!) he cries, and trots
+down behind the crest.
+
+We, too, throw on a stone, and take the steep descent.
+
+Beyond the low rolling ridges below is the white of the Holy Mountain,
+topped with green foliage. Here one may not kill the thronging hare and
+deer and pheasants. As we gallop down, the _obos_, the white memorial
+monuments, take shape from the snow. In the dark-gray dimness of the
+city beyond, green and gold roofs become distinct, lighted by the last
+glow of the sinking sun. Huts cluster close now along the road, and the
+shadows of innumerable dogs pass and mingle and pass again, where the
+gray mud walls and houses begin to be continuous. In the dim twilight
+the tarantass thunders into the great wide way which ends in the main
+street of Urga.
+
+Two hundred feet broad is this street. Mud walls twenty feet high flank
+it. The gates to the enclosures are closed. The fast-fading light
+discloses hardly any passers-by. Save for a distant tom-tom there is
+deep silence brooding over the city. A great empty square is entered,
+where a few figures are passing in the distance. We approach one of
+these, who upon our question lurches up to the tarantass. He is a
+Russian clad in Mongol _shuba_, rather the worse for liquor.
+
+“I will show you,” he says amiably.
+
+Affectionately leading the horses, he reels down one dark alley,
+then down the next, until we come to a second broad street and to an
+enclosure with a lantern-lighted gate. A cry brings at length a stir
+within. The gate swings open.
+
+“The _Varlakoff_ house!” says the guide thickly.
+
+The tarantass is led in, and we stumble through the darkness into a
+Russian home of some pretensions. In the main room is a lamp and a
+table covered with a red cloth. A glass of tea is available and is
+quickly swallowed. Then, tired out, we roll up in our blankets, on the
+floor, and drop off to our first night’s sleep in Urga, the Holy City
+of Mongolia.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE CITY OF THE REBORN GOD
+
+
+The murmur of many voices pierces the blanket over your head.
+Sleepy-eyed in the warmth, you peer out from the chrysalis of coverings
+to watch the people moving about. Alexsimevich has extricated himself
+from the mound which he constructs nightly on the floor, out of
+luggage-bags, felt mats, rugs, and overcoats. Under all the heaped
+wrappings that he uses in the icy Mongol tents, he has camped and slept
+close up against the white wall of the oven. Truly the Siberian is
+brother to the salamander. He pulls on now his big felt boots and runs
+a pocket-comb through his beard.
+
+The wife of our host, come to the door for a survey, notes progress and
+returns to the female region. The Hazan Varlakoff, gray-bloused and
+wearing deerskin boots, enters next. He lights his first cigarette; his
+wife with the bowl of sugar and the plate of bread follows. She has
+gotten up earlier than her husband, so she is several cigarettes ahead,
+but he is cutting down the lead.
+
+Perhaps one had better get up one’s self. It is an easy operation
+here. “Getting up” consists in emerging from the rolled blankets and
+stretching. “Dressing” means pulling on boots. One can wash over in
+the corner, where the brass can lets out a trickling stream of cold
+water when the needle-valve underneath is pushed up.
+
+The samovar hums on the red cotton cloth of the table. Varlakoff moves
+along to make room. From the little pot of infused tea your glass is
+partly filled; then you place it under the spigot for hot water, and
+the beverage is ready for sipping. No lemons are here, as in Russia. In
+a few Chinese shops one can buy spherical citrons, but they are like
+unripe oranges, and are a luxury as great as pineapples in old New York.
+
+A wool-buyer from Kiahta reaches for the bowl of broken loaf-sugar,
+and holds it for you to choose the piece whose size pleases best. The
+housewife comes from the kitchen over by her oven-door, bringing some
+crestfallen cake which she has made in your honor.
+
+“_Kuchete! kuchete!_” she commands, arms akimbo, puffing contentedly on
+her cigarette.
+
+We revel in the luxuries of Varlakoff’s room; warmth such that we may
+take off the cumbersome outer coats; chairs to sit upon, instead of
+crouching cross-legged; hot samovar-made drinks, and a chance to wash
+in water. The latter is a privilege which can be appreciated only after
+a period of ablutions in lukewarm tea. We stretch out and bask and sip,
+and whiff _papirosi_ in epicurean idleness.
+
+As we luxuriate, one by one the neighbors of the Russian colony come
+in, to hear the news of Kiahta from Alexsimevich. The expedition has
+become part of the gossip-transportation system. Half the population of
+Kiahta must have sent messages here,--half the Russian traders in Urga
+have come to receive them. First, there is the general news dispensed
+into the expectant ears of the group at Varlakoff’s. Alexsimevich is
+for an hour the cynosure. Questions and answers flash back and forth,
+going off sometimes explosively like fireworks. Then follow the special
+events and the individual messages. At last these are all detailed.
+Now come invitations from various men to visit their houses “Will the
+_gaspadine_ come?”--“The _gaspadine_ must see the city.”--“_Da! da!_”
+echoes the group.
+
+Varlakoff goes out for his stick and overcoat. The wool-merchant gets
+into his fleece-lined _shuba_. He achieves the feat by the usual
+Siberian method. Putting the garment over his head, he pushes his arms
+through the sleeves, and gradually struggles and writhes up into it
+as one gets into a wet bathing-suit. Alexsimevich finishes his fourth
+glass of tea, lights one of the _Hazan’s_ cigarettes, and worms his
+way also into his deerskin greatcoat. Then out we go into the bright
+sunlight and the snow-covered streets.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF GIGIN, URGA]
+
+The houses of the Russian quarter of Urga were only glimpsed in the
+dusk of last night. We have daylight upon them now. Squat whitewashed
+buildings they are, with neatly paned windows and big square
+chimneys. Across the mounds and hillocks of a broad street is the
+one-storied Russian Club, where one may drink vodka, play billiards
+or cards, and while away the winter evenings. Further on is a row of
+shops. The bearded owners stand behind their counters, dressed in
+belted Mongol _shubas_ and Russian fur caps. The doors to all the
+shops are open, that the Mongols, perplexed with knobs, may not take
+their trade elsewhere. Enameled kettles are hanging in festoons down
+the walls. The shelves are crowded with bolts of vivid-colored cotton
+cloths to be sewed into _shubas_ by the Mongols who ride in to buy.
+There are big cases of sweetmeats, Moscowski caramels, acceptable
+offerings to the grotesque _dokchits_ on the family shrines. Russian
+monopoly tobacco is there, in stamped paper packets for the delectation
+of Muscovites and Buriats who have the taste and the means, and
+villainous South-China tobacco and snuff for native purchasers. One can
+get vodka almost as bad as that of Siberia, and far cheaper, for it is
+compounded by a local distiller who rejoices in an excise-less market.
+Foreign brandies and wines fill big walls of shelves.
+
+“_Zdravstvouitie!_” one of the merchants calls, hailing our party.
+
+“It is Vassili Michaeloff, old friend of mine,” says Alexsimevich. “Let
+us go in.”
+
+We enter and are led back into the private part of the house.
+
+“_Chai!_” shouts the host to somebody behind the oven.
+
+“_Haracho_,” comes the answer.
+
+We all sit down. If any purchasers drift into the shop, they can
+wait until we get through our visit, or they can go down the line.
+For wherever the Eagles are planted, the Russian joyfully drops his
+business to entertain a friend. At the call of “tea” the shovel goes
+into the ditch, the ledger onto the shelf, the pen into the potato. If
+“_chai_” interferes with business, cut out business. Nor does it matter
+in the least that we have just had breakfast; by the rule of etiquette
+we must be entertained. “Tea” consists first in a ceremoniously clinked
+toast drowned in vodka. Then appears the samovar in charge of the woman
+of the house, the glasses, and the sugar. Next follow the cigarettes.
+The talk is animated, for its local history absorbs each little world.
+The fact comes out that the cousin of Michaeloff has bought a new pair
+of horses for a hundred roubles. The price, the quality of the animals
+and of the man, all go into the crucible. Kiahta beer arrives as the
+conversation turns to the death of one Ivan Vladimiraef, which it is
+agreed was not unnatural, since he had reached the age of ninety-odd
+years. Still the provisions come. The good wife brings in a heaping
+plate of lard-impregnated Hamburger steaks, called “cotlet,” which
+Alexsimevich attacks as if his last meal were half a day instead
+of half an hour distant. Other bottles accumulate to help out the
+dwindling flagon of vodka. We enter upon Château Yquem, Pomeranian, and
+Caucasian claret. Then cakes are set out, and more tea, and finally a
+quart bottle of champagne.
+
+Alexsimevich stands to his guns like the 38th Siberians at Tien-tsin.
+But it is hard for any one of less rigorous training in this sort of
+thing to hold even the straggler’s pace at nine o’clock in the morning.
+Mentally we hoist the flag upside down, and wink at Alexsimevich as
+the outward and visible sign of the inward and spirituous distress. He
+takes the rest of the champagne in a last gulp, and with a series of
+thanks we gain the entrance to the shop, where two Mongols and a Buriat
+are waiting patiently, looking vacantly around at the crockery.
+
+We are shown ceremoniously to the door, shake hands, remark about the
+weather, give our compliments to the wife, and depart. When at the
+corner, we glance back. Vassili Michaeloff is still standing on the
+threshold; his three customers too are looking out leisurely at the
+people passing.
+
+“We have thrown his business out of gear,” we remark to Alexsimevich.
+
+He seems surprised.
+
+“There is plenty of time. Why should they mind waiting? _Nietchevo._”
+
+Another host is overjoyed to see us, for an engineering problem of
+great perplexity is, he tells us in due course, harassing his mind. No
+one in Urga can help him out, but perhaps we will.
+
+“The Chinese governor, the _Zinzin_, wants to make an automobile line
+from Kalgan,” the host announces. “I saw an iron bridge once, so I
+agreed to build him one over the Lara River. Have you ever seen an iron
+bridge? How shall I do it?”
+
+You allow that you have seen an iron bridge,--that you have even gone
+across one. You suggest that much depends on the river. “How wide is
+it, for instance?”
+
+“I have not picked out the place for the bridge yet,” answers the host;
+“but the river is somewhere between sixty and three hundred feet wide.
+Have some vodka?”
+
+“And how deep is the water?” you ask.
+
+“Well,”--after much thought,--“it is deep in the middle and shallow at
+the edges. Have a cigarette! Have some tea! If we build this bridge,
+the _Zinzin_ will give us a decoration. How much will the bridge cost?”
+
+“That depends upon what sort of bridge you build, and how long it is,
+and how much material you use!”
+
+Alexsimevich comes in.
+
+“You see, the more iron you use, the more the bridge costs,” he
+observes.
+
+“_Navierno! navierno!_ you speak sagely, Alexsimevich. That is what I
+told the _Zinzin_.”
+
+“It must have piers and abutments,” you venture.
+
+“But the _Zinzin_ does not like piers, because the water was not made
+to put such things into. Yet I said with you, one must always have
+piers. Here is brandy. Take a few sardines!”
+
+The problem certainly needs something special for its elucidation. You
+ponder, and Alexsimevich and the host breathlessly watch the hatching
+of your official pronunciamento.
+
+At last you deliver yourself.
+
+“Find out how wide and deep the river is. Then write to a
+steel-manufacturing company, to quote prices. They will send a
+blue-print of an automobile bridge of the specified length, together
+with the weight of the steel. You can buy pieces to build it at so many
+kopecks a pound, just like butter.”
+
+“Ah, my friend, you do not know how great a service you have rendered!
+What a providence is your coming! Pray, have some cognac! Will they
+send me a picture with piers,--a picture that I can show the _Zinzin_?”
+
+“Yes,--yes, indeed.”
+
+“I go to-morrow to tell him of this.”
+
+We are once more in the street and the banded escort is turning into
+still another Russian’s house. Their idea of sightseeing is apparently
+to take tea with every Russian in the place. A mild desire is
+registered to come in contact with some of the other people. The idea
+strikes them in the light of a strange new doctrine.
+
+“You wish to see Mongols?” one asks. Though surprised, they acquiesce
+amiably. “To-day they have holiday; you are favored. Go see the doings
+and make me visit later,” says the disappointed third host.
+
+Then the wool-merchant speaks.
+
+“Near by is the great temple of Urga, which few have seen, for it is
+one of the most holy places of the Lama faith. It is the temple of
+Maidari, the Future God. If the _gaspadine_ wishes to see it, I, who
+have bought wool from the uncle of the keeper of the gate, can gain
+admittance.”
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE IN THE URGA LAMASERY]
+
+For this we start. The Russian section, made up of shops with posters
+and signs in Slavonic letters, and homes with centre chimneys and
+little square panes of glass, is left behind. Through a long dark lane
+we come out into the main thoroughfare of Mongol Urga. The town is
+in festival for the New Moon. The streets are ablaze with color. Red
+posters are on every door and wall. The brilliant picture is framed
+by the snowy girding hills and the green trees of the Holy Mountain
+to the south. The tomb-like altars on the plain are dazzlingly white
+against the gray-plastered fronts of the houses behind. The gilded
+gargoyles of the temples flash in the sun. Down the main street, a
+hundred feet broad, go bevies of girls, their hair bedecked with the
+gaudiest ornaments of silver and pearl, their silken robes striped
+and banded in green alternating with yellow and blue and gold. Lamas
+stride here and there dressed in bright orange robes and hats, their
+silver knives hanging at their sides. Great shaggy-haired dromedaries
+swing past. Horsemen, robed in vivid scarlet and blue and magenta,
+dash at full gallop across the wide open _piazza_ in the centre
+of the town. A donkey-cart is driven slowly along, crowded with
+brightly-dressed girls. A squad of Chinese cavalry trot by in white
+jackets, red-lettered. Two of the Cossack garrison swagger past. A
+bearded Siberian trader strolls across, clothed in the dark Mongolian
+cloak which most have adopted, going toward the Russian quarter we have
+just left. A string of oxen plods by, drawing cartloads of wood.
+
+Walking on, we come to a long line of kiosks which a continuous
+procession of pilgrims in holiday attire is entering. In each booth
+is a cask-shaped prayer-wheel, a magnified model of those which women
+carry, twirling them in their hands as they walk.
+
+Along this main square of Urga, and girding her city stockade, are
+hundreds of these cylinders. All the day long, men and women are going
+in and out from one kiosk to another, turning. Some say that formerly
+one could enter a great Tibetan temple only after saying a prayer
+so long that even a Grand Lama’s memory could not carry it. So, for
+convenience, a cylinder with the written text was set up at the temple
+gate. By degrees it became the custom, without reading it, to rotate
+the petition for a blessing. Others say that the wheels are whirled in
+literal obedience to Buddha’s precept to “turn over and over his words.”
+
+Alternating with the wheels are stone shrines graven with Tibetan
+characters, before which, on wooden couches, silken-dressed women are
+abasing themselves in abject worship. A long line of pilgrims is doing
+the circle of the city. They stand, then drop prostrate in the snow.
+Rising, they move conscientiously forward to where their heads touched,
+and again lie prone, making thus a penitential circuit of the stockade.
+Most are in deadly earnest. Some, hired for a proxy service, steal
+forward a few inches on each prostration.
+
+Suddenly three distant guns boom out.
+
+“_Scurry, scurry toda!_” says the wool-merchant. “Quick, this way. He
+is coming.”
+
+You hurry forward to where a trail leads across the square. Afar off,
+in the direction of the Holy Mountain, is seen a band of galloping
+cavalry. The Mongols on horseback around you are drawing rein. The
+pilgrims are looking toward the approaching cavalcade. Brilliant red
+and yellow are the robes that flutter as the body-guard ride. Now a
+rumble of wheels is heard among the clattering hoofs. Preceded by
+twenty horsemen, followed by twenty more, rolls down a Russian droshky,
+with a yellow-robed lama driving. Propped among the multicolored
+cushions sits a clean-shaven, silk-robed man, with puffy cheeks and
+tired eyes. The European watch which he carries hangs in anomalous
+awkwardness at the breast of his robe; his leg is propped on the front
+seat, as if he were lame. Most turn their backs to him in Oriental
+honoring; many prostrate themselves in the snow; every horseman in the
+square has dismounted.
+
+“He drives from his palace beside the Holy Mountain to the temple on
+the hill beyond the city,” says the wool-merchant.
+
+“But who is it?” we ask, as the last galloper rides by.
+
+The Russian looks at us as an old Roman might, if in the Forum we had
+not recognized Cæsar.
+
+“That! That’s Gigin, the Living God! That’s Buddha come back to
+earth,--Gigin!”
+
+You stand a moment to take it all in. Then, despite your purpose of
+respect, a smile works to the front.
+
+At once the wool-merchant laughs gleefully. “Ask Varlakoff about the
+Buddha,” he chuckles. “Varlakoff sold him his ponies for ten thousand
+roubles. My friend showed him a picture of the ponies, little horses,
+you know, and Gigin told him to get them. They had to send to an island
+of Europe, Scotland. But Gigin was very pleased. He said Varlakoff was
+the only man who had never lied to him.”
+
+The expression of the wool-merchant was that worn according to
+tradition by the Roman augurs.
+
+“When there is not a holiday, the people have the market here in this
+square,” the merchant continues. “I was here in the bazaar with a
+friend last week, and we heard a commotion over by that prayer-wheel.
+We went up, to find that two of the Buddha’s lamas were borrowing a
+fine horse, worth three hundred roubles, which belonged to a Mongol
+woman. It was all she had, she told us, and it was being taken to the
+Living God’s stables. The woman was in great distress.
+
+“‘It is mine. I will appeal to the Consul,’ said my friend.
+
+“The Gigin’s men could not take a Russian’s horse, so they had to give
+it up. The Mongol woman came and wept on him, she was so glad. She
+brought a gift to my friend. Generally the Gigin returns such borrowed
+booty when he has used it a while, but often not. Anything that is new,
+the God will buy. These pilgrims, you see, bring him offerings. Kalmuks
+come all the way from the Volga, Manchus make pilgrimages, Buriats
+come down from north of Baikal, and tribesmen from Tibet. He has half
+a million roubles a year from his priests, and he does not care for
+anybody.”
+
+Becoming more and more steeped in celestial gossip, we go past the
+gray-plastered compounds piled high with wood and timber, a main export
+of Urga. Tall masts with logs suspended from them are the signs. We
+reach at last a big stockaded courtyard, the beginning of the monastery
+quarters.
+
+“Come, look in here!” says the guide.
+
+You peer through the gateway at six of the biggest bronze
+_burgoo_-kettles that ever existed outside an ogre’s kitchen. Each
+kettle can hold a couple of cows.
+
+“It is to feed the monks,” says your companion.
+
+The Mongols are going up to the vessels, with buckets suspended to the
+end of a milkmaid’s yoke. They dip up a load. The soup looks like gray
+tapioca pudding. What it is made of remains one of the secrets of the
+monastery, whose chef is stirring the mixture with an oar.
+
+A big stockade, enclosing tents and peaked _soumé_, from which the
+sound of chattering is heard, appears ahead. As we approach, a whole
+hive of boys swarm out and scatter in all directions. Some are in red,
+some in yellow, some wear ordinary Mongol caps, some wear high, yellow
+sugar-loaf fools’-caps, which fall over on one side. These are the
+novices in training for the lama hierarchy.
+
+The first-born of each family must by immemorial custom become a
+lama. In babyhood and boyhood one of these dedicated children is clad
+in yellow robes and is especially tended. “_Ubashi_,” he is called.
+When about ten years old the boy goes to school, at Urga. He becomes
+a _bandi_, or student of the prayers and of the Tibetan language. He
+runs about as those we have just seen, and at about twenty he becomes
+a _gitzul_, or first-degree lama. Now he shaves head and beard, and
+wears a brilliant yellow and red robe. Next he takes the more advanced
+examination and catechism, and becomes a full priest, or _gilun_,
+forbidden to marry, to kill, or to work. He may continue his curriculum
+in one of the departments of the lamasery, studying divinity, medicine,
+or astrology.
+
+In the divinity course a lama will memorize Tibetan prayers, and pore
+for years over the big holy books which lie within the chests of the
+lamasery chapels. He will repeat the creed over his beads, in rapt
+self-hypnotism, meditating in celestial holiness. He will pray down
+rain for the grass, and will exorcise glanders from the ponies.
+
+A priest taking the medical course will gain a knowledge of the
+innumerable herbs that grow on the Tibetan mountains, many of which
+are of great value as drugs, and are known only to these monastic
+seekers. Massage, warm sulphur baths, and waters, are part of his
+pharmacopœia. Mixed with genuine instruction in anatomy and medicine,
+he will be taught the incantations that cast out _tchutgours_, or evil
+spirits, the words of power to be written on rice-paper and rolled
+into a pill for the patient to swallow. He will learn what devil is
+responsible for the disease which has brought low the lusty herdsman,
+and the right order of image to make for allaying the infernal anger.
+He will be taught when the fever crisis is at hand, so that the
+cymbal-clashers, the drum-beaters, and the prayer-wailers may assemble,
+and by these holy noises and a transcendental counter-excitement, lift
+the patient over the fever-point.
+
+[Illustration: A PROSTRATING PILGRIMAGE]
+
+If he elects astrology, he will be instructed in casting horoscopes of
+unfailing value, in reading the stars, predicting their future stations
+and the coming of eclipses. He will be prepared to declare the reasons
+for visitations of murrain and to track the trail of straying camels.
+
+Divers are the paths of knowledge, but all may lead to the honor
+of Grand Lama, head of a monastery, or member of the college of
+_shabniars_, who form the Council of the Living God. And when the great
+reaper has called the high priest from his earthly glory, a whitened
+tomb will be raised to his memory just outside some town along the
+camel-trail, while his ashes will be moulded into briquettes and godly
+images, to rest before the gods in the shrine of some _soumé_.
+
+We have arrived at the gateway to the great temple. The wool-merchant
+disappears inside to work his pull. A young lama comes out to the
+door, smiles at the foreigner, and then goes in again, and you tremble
+lest your advent is being announced to some other than the one man who
+can supposedly be “fixed.” This is the most important temple of Urga,
+forbidden to foreigners, and seen through good fortune by a few only of
+the old residents. But every gate they bar to hate will open wide to
+love--and a ten-rouble note. The merchant comes back.
+
+“We can go in while the lamas pray,” he whispers.
+
+The uncle appears, with an expectant look on his face, and motions us
+in through the darkness to the anteroom of the temple sanctuary.
+
+From the chamber curtained off at one side comes a low swelling chant.
+
+“Service begins, you may see it from here,” the lama says, just above
+his breath.
+
+Your station is in darkness, but just the other side of the curtain
+are the lamas, and their apartment is lighted by windows. Two rows of
+benches extend the length of their chamber, leaving an aisle between
+them, reaching from the door to the altar. A score of priests in yellow
+robes, with red sashes slung tartan-fashion over a shoulder, are
+sitting on these seats facing each other. They are ranged evidently
+in the order of their ages. Two old _giluns_, fluent in the Tibetan
+litany, sit next the altar. Then come younger lamas, the _gitzul_, not
+yet full priests. Finally next to the door are _bandi_, ten or twelve
+years old, intense in youthful delight that their part in the ceremony
+is to pound as lustily as they can the big prayer-drums. The service
+begins with the chanting of a ritual in form not unlike the Slavonic
+litanies of Siberia. At appointed times it is necessary to call the
+god’s attention to the fact that something is going on in his honor.
+At once a most deafening clamor begins. The small boy with a drum is
+drowned out by his big brother, further up the line, who officiates
+upon a huge wooden cornet, and by his uncle with the conch-shell or
+the cymbals. The droning of prayers is like the buzz of hiving bees.
+There seem to be no responses, but all of them read together. Presently
+comes a sudden clamor, almost like a fire-alarm; then the crash and the
+droning suddenly cease.
+
+“It is over!” says the guide.
+
+The lamas file out by a further door, and we tiptoe in to inspect the
+holy of holies at the heart of the great lama sanctuary. In the dimness
+one sees first before him the table for offerings, on which are the two
+main sacerdotal instruments,--a silver bell and a silver handle like a
+carving-knife-rest,--and row after row of targets made of dough-paste,
+of brass cups filled with oil to serve the tapers, of millet, rice,
+currants. Behind this altar, towering far up into the hollow of the
+dome, is the bronze colossus of the smiling Buddha, Maidari, the Future
+God.
+
+Fifty feet in height, the figure is, cross-legged, with open, painted
+eyes. From Buddha’s hands hang long silken streamers. One of very fine
+quality is embroidered with the ten thousand gods.
+
+“This,” the priest whispers, “is a present from the Dalai Lama.”
+
+A great festival takes place in summer in honor of this god, who will
+rule a myriad years hence, when the race of giants descends to kill
+mankind and to people the earth with their own kindred. The Gigin’s
+elephant is brought out, and he himself takes the lesser dignity of a
+carriage in deference to Maidari. Even the gods of the present must
+honor the gods of the future.
+
+The Gigin’s throne is to the left of the statue. It has triple silk
+cushions. Around are twelve colossi of Buddha, some ten feet in height,
+and entirely gilt save for the red lips and the eyes. The hands are
+held in differing positions, folded, outstretched, pointing. Here and
+there a silk scroll is hung.
+
+The walls of the sanctuary are lined with shelves like a book-store,
+and these are loaded with statuettes of the ten thousand gods.
+
+We tiptoe back the way we came, and are soon in the street of the
+monastery. The uncle has seen us safely away. We betake our route from
+the Mongol toward the Russian section.
+
+“You saw the throne cushion of Dalai Lama?” the wool-merchant asks.
+“They have put it back now. Gigin kicked it out of the temple when
+Dalai Lama left. The Angleski drove Dalai Lama from Lhasa, and he came
+to Urga to visit Gigin, because here is the second great Buddhist holy
+place. Now Dalai Lama is very monkish, very austere, and always prays
+and fasts. But our Gigin”--here follows another expansive smile--“Gigin
+rode out with his Council, the _shabniars_, and took some of Pokrin’s
+best champagne in the cart, for they would not have it in Lhasa.
+Dalai Lama was very stiff. Gigin asked him, ‘Have a drink!’ Dalai did
+not understand, for drink is forbidden. Then he asked him again, and
+Dalai Lama refused rebukingly. They came to Gigin’s palace at the
+foot of the Holy Mountain, which is built like the Russian consulate.
+After the prostrations, Gigin said to Dalai that he had come far and
+few women were on the road and those mostly old and ugly. Dalai Lama
+refused that too. Cigarettes and snuff, and canned tomatoes he offered,
+but Dalai Lama refused them all. Then, in the Assembly of the Lamas,
+Dalai rebuked Gigin, and made him sit below his servants in penalty,
+for Dalai Lama is more of a god than Gigin. All the pilgrims came to
+offer gifts to Dalai Lama, and Gigin did not get his. For months Dalai
+Lama stayed here. Afterwards he went away to China. Gigin came to
+this temple then and kicked Dalai Lama’s throne, throwing it down. He
+celebrated in the summer palace when Dalai Lama left, for he was very
+happy.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mongol Urga is left behind, and we reënter the Russian town. A hail
+from one of the passers-by is not long delayed. “Will you have _chai_?”
+he questions. He is an alert-looking Russian, smartly clad in a _shuba_
+of green leather trimmed with sable.
+
+“Must we eat any more dinners to-day?” we inquire.
+
+“Only tea,” is the reply. It is not quite reassuring.
+
+“That is Pokrin, the one that sells to the Gigin,” the wool-merchant
+whispers. “Go with him: he can tell you some tales.”
+
+Obviously one must not miss the acquaintanceship of this modern
+Ganymede, cup-bearer of the many-bubbled French nectar and jugged
+ambrosia; so on we march to his compound.
+
+Pokrin was on his way to a business appointment; but no rendezvous will
+interfere with prospective _chai_. He hangs his coat back on its peg,
+bids his wife start up the samovar, and produces the vodka-bottle. Yes,
+his family is very well, and he is very busy buying hides. We talk up
+and down and roundabout numberless themes, and at last venture: “The
+Gigin!”
+
+“Ah, the Gigin was here to see me only a week ago.”
+
+We bow our recognition of the host’s great importance, and he is
+started; soon he buckles down into the story.
+
+“The Buddha came up in his carriage with his lamas riding beside him,
+and they tied their horses all around here in front. Then Gigin came
+in, walking softly because of his gout, and he said, ‘Let us drink
+together like friends, without quarreling.’
+
+“I brought out the drinks, and we sat down,--Gigin and I with the lamas
+around us. Gigin likes best the strong drinks,--not vodka, but cognac
+and sweet champagne. Very many bottles we drank, Gigin and I. And at
+last I fell asleep. But Gigin drank still. Then he too fell asleep. In
+the morning the lamas carried him to his carriage, and back he drove to
+the palace, with the people lying down in the street as he passed. All
+the next day I had a very bad pain in my forehead, and it felt large.”
+
+By non-Siberian standards Alexsimevich should be on the way to similar
+symptoms in the near future. For the purveyor to the Divinity has
+produced an assorted collection of his wares which are being sampled
+with due diligence. Cold meats and wheat-bread appear on the table with
+the samovar.
+
+“We must eat, or he feels badly,” whispers Alexsimevich, as he makes
+a sandwich, an inch and a half through, which is about the depth of
+brandy in the Siberian highball.
+
+Other neighbors drift in as the afternoon wears on. The talk turns to
+that greatest of local events, the Metropolitan Handicap of Mongolia,
+under the high patronage of the Living God. Things become decidedly
+stimulating, and the recitals lively. Everybody is living over the
+excitement, ejaculating and gesticulating. The child-quality in their
+minds keeps so vivid their impressions, that the scenes are projected
+almost as by a cinematograph.
+
+From hundreds of miles around, the herdsmen have assembled. The
+plain before the city is a riot of color, as the horsemen ride here
+and there. In the centre of the field is the gay pavilion for the
+yellow-robed bishops and cardinals from distant lamaseries, guests of
+the great Gigin.
+
+All through the morning, hundreds of riders and horses have been making
+for the starting-point, twenty _li_ (about seven miles) distant. The
+jockeys are the smallest boys available: young red-cheeked lamas,
+perched bareback on the shaggy racing-ponies. The monks, who are
+stewards of the course, have with much shouting finally, at the hour,
+lined them up in a long row, facing Urga. One thousand ponies have been
+reported as entering. It is a regiment of boys. A signal starts the
+whole cavalcade together. The thousand small jockeys shout at once. A
+thousand whips come down on flanks. Two thousand heels dig into the
+ponies’ withers. Over the irregular plain tear the racers, dodging
+around gullies, stumbling in marmot-holes, galloping helter-skelter
+amid furious yells. At length they come within sight of Urga. Crowds,
+mounted, have gone out to follow them in. The shouts redouble, the
+people become frantic; the riders yell at one another, and the horses
+are as wild as their masters.
+
+_Shabniars_ and cardinals get to their feet as the cavalcade appears.
+The Living God’s heavy eyes brighten up with interest. His chief
+soul-mate waves a jewelled hand and chatters excitedly with a lama
+of the guard. The foremost rider is close at hand now, the jockey,
+wriggling like an eel and almost on the neck of his pony, yelling and
+slashing. The field thunders behind. The leader nears the pavilion,
+his pony is on the fierce final spurt,--a last cut of the whip, and in
+triumph, amid the deafening roar of the populace, the winner passes the
+line. Many other riders come in at his heels, but most straggle off
+to either side of the course when they see that the finish is lost.
+The victor is caught up by the priests and is brought before Gigin,
+where he lies on his stomach in adoration. He receives a gift, and is
+pensioned for life. The horse’s owner receives a good price for the
+animal, which is added to the Gigin’s stable. The mule-cart of the
+Buddha is then brought up and he is loaded in. The yellow bishops mount
+their steeds, and back to his palace goes the Living God. Thus ends the
+great Urga race.
+
+There are other athletic tournaments during the season; most important
+of these is the championship wrestling-bout, which every year decides
+whether laymen or clergy are the better sportsmen. The Gigin’s pavilion
+fronts a ring, with dressing-tents on either side. From one emerges a
+layman. He advances by huge jumps and prostrates himself before the
+deity. Next, palms on the ground, like a great frog, he leaps into
+the ring. The chosen lama executes the same pass from the other side.
+They meet, jumping like game-cocks, with quick breaks. At length the
+clergyman gets a leg. In an instant he heaves up on it, and over goes
+the black man,--out! The whole assembled populace raises a stupendous
+howl. Bout succeeds bout, with differing champions and varying issues.
+Partisanship is intense. The clergy usually win in these matches, and
+have long held the championship.
+
+One guest tells to-night of the photographer who bribed a lama, and got
+the first photograph of Gigin. The tale runs that this man, a Russian,
+secured admission among a crowd of pilgrims, and snapped the god,
+unawares, among his entourage of priests. This photograph, enlarged
+and colored, is the one now hawked to the Mongols, and which they set
+up for worship among their other gods. The lama was beheaded, they
+say. That was several years ago, however: since then Gigin has been
+photographed at the races and elsewhere.
+
+At last we break away from the group and return to our lodgings at
+Varlakoff’s.
+
+[Illustration: A GRAND LAMA]
+
+We are informed next day that among the invitations so lightly and
+uncomprehendingly accepted was one to take dinner with the mayor of
+the Russian settlement. We are expected therefore toward evening. So,
+late in the day, we gird on our greatcoat and move out heavily. Down
+the street we fare forth to the house of the host. A fine well-fed
+man is this mayor, with the cordial grip and the slow smile of
+good-fellowship. He wears a very long beard. He has taken a fancy to
+the embroidered green and pink Chinese ear-tabs as a substitute for the
+big fur cap of his own people. The ear-tabs are about as appropriate
+to his burgomaster build as baby-blue ribbon on the tail of a fighting
+bull-pup. Otherwise, deerskin boots and hunting-coat, he is the real
+Siberian. In the mayor’s large sitting-room, along the wall against
+which the table stands, is a rank of bottles of divers heights and
+fatness, like recruits out for their drill. The samovar of shining
+brass leads the array. Four different-sized glasses stand at each
+plate, and the intervening area is covered with platters of sausages,
+cheese, bread, sprats of every conceivable variety, and a medley of
+cold _zakuska_ dishes.
+
+The mayor reaches for the vodka.
+
+“Please, none!” we blurt out.
+
+The mayor looks hurt. Then an idea takes form in his head, and he
+shouts something to his Chinese boy, who promptly shuffles through the
+door into the street.
+
+Out of the window we catch a glimpse of him turning into the
+establishment across the way, where Pokrin’s clerk sells the
+wherewithal to make a Russian holiday. The Chinese boy emerges with a
+bottle, and trots back across the street with the curious gait made
+requisite by the unattached thick-soled slippers. He shuffles into the
+dining-room and makes space for one more bottle. Whiskey! The mayor has
+bethought himself of the English label, and has sent for it, on the
+theory that not to drink, like not to sleep, is unbelievable.
+
+Evidently one must again sidestep, so _chai_ is besought and got down.
+Our virtue is rewarded, for the host smiles and is content.
+
+“Poor Pokrin!” he says presently, reminded of the man by the beverage.
+“He made over a hundred thousand roubles from selling things to the
+Gigin. But now he can’t think of any more things to sell. You saw the
+Gigin’s new droshky? But that isn’t like selling an elephant or an
+electric-light plant. Pokrin is down to pelicans and fountain-pens.”
+
+He shakes his head sympathetically, and reaches anew for the
+vodka-bottle. He goes on reminiscing, half-cynically, half-regretfully,
+of the past, while dinner to serve the appetite of a Cyclops keeps
+coming on.
+
+In the midst of the repast cries arise outside. A Mongol with a flow of
+language is heard calling aloud for “_Bulun Darga!_” (fat policeman.)
+
+“They are after me,” says the mayor resignedly.
+
+The Mongol comes hurtling in, pushing past the Chinese boy.
+
+“Fat policeman,” he cries; “Red Mustache and Long Nose and Blue Coat
+are drunk, and are disturbing my _gir_. Come quickly, O Lord, fat
+policeman.”
+
+The mayor sighs. “I go”; then he turns to us. “Will you accompany me?”
+
+“Gladly, if we don’t have to eat any more.”
+
+The mayor considers this a back-handed compliment to the amplitude of
+his hospitality and smiles.
+
+“_V period_, it is not far.”
+
+He puts on his huge greatcoat, draws on his ponderous boots, takes
+a heavy stick, and in vividly embroidered Chinese ear-tabs stands
+ready to follow the Mongol. We shoulder open the felted door. From the
+low-ceilinged recess between this and the outer door he produces two
+other big sticks, like pilgrim’s staves. These he hands to his visitors.
+
+“For the dogs!” he explains.
+
+The Mongol’s hut is soon reached. It is in frightful disorder, and
+vodka-bottles are strewn around. The mayor looks up in a little book to
+see if Krasni, young Agueff, and Pugachev are not, as he suspects, the
+men who in native nomenclature are called Red Mustache, Blue Coat, and
+Long Nose. He finds that he has rightly surmised.
+
+“I know them,” says the mayor. “They will come around to me in the
+morning. I will tell them to make the Mongol satisfaction. When they
+come back and say he is satisfied, I tell them to be good and to do
+this no more. _Nietchevo!_”
+
+The irate man is jollied along, and is told that it will be fixed up
+soon. Consoled and soothed by the protection of authority, he admits
+it was not so bad after all, and he bids us, as we leave, a grinning
+“_Sein oh!_”
+
+“Now,” says the mayor, “will you not come and see Urga at night?”
+
+He leads along an icy back street, black as a canyon, with the bulging
+mud-plastered walls, twenty feet in height, so close that a cart can
+barely pass between them. Not a light is seen save as a ray pierces
+the shuttered planking of some compound door. Distant clanging of
+cymbals and far-off echoes alone break the stillness. Out from the
+gloom of the street we come into the open _piazza_, half a verst wide.
+It is unshadowed, and less dark. Threading the heaped-up refuse we
+stumble on. The black crows, with lancet-like blood-red beaks, which
+search the heaps by day, are gone. The black cannibal dogs wake and
+growl as we approach.
+
+“They are afraid of a stick and don’t generally attack people. But,
+if several do come at you, crouch down and stay perfectly quiet,” the
+mayor counsels.
+
+He then tells of the Cossack who last year, passing by a dog that did
+not move aside, drew his sabre and struck the beast. As soon as the
+other dogs smelled the fresh blood, they became mad, and half a dozen
+came at him. He put his back against the wall and slashed among them.
+Many he cut and wounded, but more came and more, in an instant. Soon he
+was pulled down, for hundreds were upon him.
+
+A big black-furred brute looks insolently at us as we pass.
+
+“They do not bury the dead here, you know,” the mayor says. “The
+corpses are taken to the mountain northward outside the town, and are
+left. It is cold to-night. There will be death in the market-place
+where the poor lie shelterless. And the dogs wait beside them.”
+
+A little way off, where the prayer-wheel stands, is the twinkling
+light of a shrine. The new moon and the few brilliant stars are
+frigidly distant. They cast a pale white glow now on the dimly outlined
+walls and huts. A beggar, lying unseen, calls suddenly as we pass his
+heap of sodden hides. The six-foot Siberian hunter by our side cries
+out as he stumbles over and beholds a something, partly eaten, guarded
+by a great cannibal dog.
+
+If the thought of the rights of man has drowned sympathy with all that
+concerns the government of Russia, visit Urga at night, and the Cossack
+of the Russian Guard, swaggering along among the Chinamen,--this
+Cossack whom you have heard execrated as the “knout of the Czar,”--will
+look to you like a Highlander at Lucknow. The chance to absorb an
+unwholesome amount of tannin by way of a samovar, and to sleep on the
+floor beside the oven in the whitewashed house of Michael Varlakoff,
+will become a privilege more prized than any possessed by His Holiness,
+the Living God.
+
+The section of the Russian colony in which we have been lodging
+consists of five hundred-odd traders. They have drifted down from
+Siberia, and on the free ground of taxless Urga have established their
+shops of gaudy European cloths, enameled cooking-utensils, candles,
+and cutlery. These Russians, whose whitewashed many-paned houses fill
+a quarter of the town, have not the large interests watched by the
+English merchants, who dot the globe with their agencies. They are
+small Trans-Baikal shopkeepers, transplanted bodily. They build their
+houses in the Siberian way, and their wives toil personally at the
+oven. They wear blouses and felt boots as the house-dress, and keep the
+ikons in the corner. Prosperity is evidenced in the striking-clocks,
+the lamps, nickeled samovars, and curtained double windows. But they
+are still not many removes from the peasant.
+
+There is, however, another section of Urga’s Russian colony, grouped
+around the consulate, a large compound situated a verst east of the
+Mongol town, which was built in 1863, and was fortified in 1900,
+against the Boxers. Within this compound are the Orthodox Church, the
+Russian doctor, the rooms of the twenty Cossacks of the Guard, and the
+great empty barracks of the two _sotnias_ that were sent here in Boxer
+times, and were, to the regret of their compatriots, later removed. The
+barracks are still ready for any future visits, and the breastwork,
+with its stake and fosse lined with barbed-wire, is equal to any force
+which from a five-hundred-verst radius can assemble against it.
+
+In this quarter, the Russian consul is autocrat. He is the official
+notary, without whose stamp no contract is legal, the chief of police,
+the guardian of orphans. Around him revolves the society of the few
+dozen mondaines of Urga, whose personnel consists of the officials,
+the garrison officers, and some half-dozen commercial agents, single
+generally, or with distant families. They conduct their bachelor
+quarters through Chinese servants, and their cuisines are helped out
+by all the canned and bottled delicacies that can be ordered from the
+frontier. The gold-mines, and the extensive wool-trade which produces
+a commerce of twenty to thirty millions, demand that first-grade men
+watch the interests of the great companies which handle the business.
+So men of the best cosmopolitan Russian type come, at salaries
+proportioned to their sacrifice. They gather in the consulate evenings,
+or sit in the fenced-off boxes at the theatrical performances, which
+periodically come down from Kiahta.
+
+A few families who have made their sixteen-day camel-trip from Kalgan
+and Peking have foregathered here with their household goods and gods.
+
+Buttressed by the companionship of books, this other class lives
+in splendidly-furnished rooms, with pictures purchased in Paris,
+statuettes from Rome, and grand pianos drawn for days over the passes
+by laboring oxen. One converses at the consulate in French, the mother
+tongue of none, but the common tongue of all. The few favored guests,
+who are invited of necessity over and over, play chess endlessly in the
+evenings. The ladies read the latest French novels, or sing the songs
+that distant friends have sent from the Riviera or St. Petersburg.
+
+They drive in imported carriages and sleighs for the afternoon airing,
+and bemoan Nice and Monte Carlo in winter over the pages of Zola’s
+“Rome.” The men subscribe extensively to English, French, German, and
+Russian periodicals. They invite such relatives as can be persuaded for
+lengthy stays, and shower a guest with the hospitality of old claret,
+caviar, and the varied courtesies which the rarity of visitors from the
+world inspires. They take long adventurous horseback trips in the dull
+season,--explore forgotten monasteries, study the Tibetan inscriptions,
+print monographs on the folk-tales, and dream of promotion and
+Petersburg.
+
+The consulate has one uniquely circumstanced personality, whose career
+is a romance of Eastern adventure. Born in the Baltic provinces, he
+studied in the Oriental training-schools, and entered the Russian
+diplomatic service at Peking. Here he applied himself indefatigably,
+until he knew the Chinese language as did hardly another European. He
+could write the ten thousand ideographs, and could speak flawlessly the
+Mandarin and the popular dialects. He went to Mongolia and mastered its
+languages also,--its spoken idioms and its written grapevine letters.
+Then, with his diplomatic entrée, his knowledge of men and tongues,
+and the initiative of an adventurer, he launched his grand coup in the
+palace of Peking.
+
+He carried away the sole right to the gold of two _eimucks_, a
+territory as large as France. Not a Chinaman may pan the metal, not a
+Slav may open a mine, save through this concessionnaire. A third of all
+gold washed,--these are his terms to those who would lease from him;
+just double what he pays the Peking Yamen for his privilege. Fortune
+upon fortune he is reported to have made, and the Chinese gold-washers
+and the Russian miners who lease from him have gathered their own
+stakes, too, despite the Cæsar’s tribute which he exacpts of all that
+they produce.
+
+He has spent large sums in bringing down machinery, to do on a
+great scale what the shallow veins of ore demanded should be done
+on a limited scale. An abandoned gold-dredge lies far up the Iro
+River, transported piecemeal at exorbitant expense over the hills.
+Traction-engines are here, which could not cope with the Mongol
+roads. They consumed forty days going one hundred and twenty miles
+to the largest mine. Now they lie rusting in their sheds. Thousands
+of ox-carts were engaged for hauling in the various purchases. River
+steamers and great oil-drills scattered over northern Mongolia are
+relics of his ambition.
+
+His brick house, finely furnished, and his brick smelter stand hard-by
+the consulate. The Russians tell of masons imported from Sweden to
+build them. The life-history is a bizarre record of great things
+attempted by a man whose overleaping ambition stopped nowhere, and
+whose expenditures more than once brought him down. But his interesting
+meteoric career continues, and twenty _pud_ of gold are said still to
+come down yearly from the mines to the most picturesque character in
+Russian Urga.
+
+We drive down with one of the officials, to be present at another of
+the events in Urga’s meagre happenings--the arrival of the mail.
+
+The Russian post, one delivery a week, crosses Mongolia. The horses
+bring in three mails from the Russian frontier. From Urga to Kalgan,
+the camel-post guarded by Cossacks, traverses the great desert of Gobi.
+Save the Imperial Chinese telegraph, it is the only regular method of
+intercourse with the outside world. The two thousand-odd roubles a year
+paid by Russia as a subsidy are a small expenditure for the opportunity
+of accustoming the people to her service, and for controlling the
+avenues of news and communication.
+
+The post-office is at the consulate, and a new postmaster has just been
+installed. Thereby hangs a tale which is poured into your ear before
+your stay in Urga has been much protracted.
+
+A telegram came from Irkutsk to seize and bring to Verhneudinsk as
+propagandists the postmaster’s son and daughter--twenty-one and
+eighteen. Twenty Cossacks surrounded the house at three in the morning.
+The two were arrested, taken to the mayor’s house, and lodged there.
+The next day they were started on the trail to Kiahta. Once over the
+border, there would be no more hope. Quickly the leading men of the
+colony assembled and telegraphed the Russian ambassador at Peking,
+knowing that if the ambassador had official cognizance, he could not
+safely authorize an arrest on Chinese soil by the Cossacks of the
+Guard. The response was delayed, but there was pressure enough upon
+the consul to get the prisoners held at the mining-camp beyond Iro
+until the answer was received. At length the ambassador replied that
+Chinese suzerainty must be respected. The two were free. But the
+father had been advised to resign his post and accept a station which
+was offered him at Kalgan, where there were only three Russians, all
+warranted proof against propaganda.
+
+Beyond the Russian consulate, six versts, is the Chinese town called,
+as are many of these trading-posts, Maimachen, or place of trade. One
+can get there by the solitary Cossack-driven droshky that the Russian
+colony supports. But more appropriately we go on pony-back, borrowing
+an army-saddle and a purple fleece-lined _shuba_, whose skirts reach
+around the knees, and whose long sleeves fold over the hands, keeping a
+rider reasonably warm in cold weather.
+
+The houses of Mongol Urga are soon left behind, the stockaded lamasery
+is passed on the left, and we are on a big open plain. A few minutes’
+gallop takes us past the consulate. Beyond it stands a compound girded
+by a stockade of saplings, within which are the low mud walls of
+straggling houses, amid which the gilded eaves of a more pretentious
+residence lift themselves above the rest.
+
+A troop of pig-tailed horsemen trots past: the white tunics of the
+riders are covered, back and breast, with red ideograph letters,
+which stigmatize the bearers as of the lowest caste--soldiers of the
+Celestial service. The man in front holds aloft a gilded pear-shaped
+standard, and between the ranks lumbers a covered cart with closed
+shutters. The cavalcade wheels to the right and turns in, dipping the
+standard as they pass under the gargoyle-tipped beams of the gateway.
+Servants come running out of the great house. From the cart is helped
+down a Manchu of pallid face and short gray mustache. That wooden
+house, girded by mud huts, is the seat of government for this greatest
+_eimuck_ in Mongolia. The figure robed in cheap blue cotton is lord of
+life and death, the _Zinzin_, Viceroy for the Emperor of China.
+
+This Manchu Viceroy, and his _Tu-T’ung_, or lieutenant-governor, who
+represents Chinese authority in the city of Kalgan, are responsible
+for the collection of tribute, the administration of justice in the
+cities, and the maintenance of order. Over the Chinese inhabitants in
+the Maimachen the rule through the agency of the prefect of police
+appointed by the Viceroy is direct and absolute.
+
+Over the Mongols, Chinese rule is exercised in an irregular nebulous
+fashion, with some force in the centres and almost none in the outlying
+districts, where the old nomad organization of society, with princes,
+barons, or _tai-tsi_, clergy, and ordinary black men, still persists. A
+code of Chinese laws exists, but in general justice is dealt out by the
+local princes, or _guns_, who receive also the cattle-tax in some
+districts, and who go by turns for a year to Peking in symbol of homage.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE MANDARIN]
+
+[Illustration: GIGIN, THE LIVING BUDDHA]
+
+These Mongol _guns_, ruling over each of the _hushouns_, or counties,
+which compose the _eimucks_, are under feudal obligations to the
+Chinese Emperor. Their visible subjection to China consists of
+ceremonial visits with tribute, for which the Emperor’s return gifts
+are of far greater value. A total of one hundred and twenty thousand
+_lens_ of silver ($90,000) goes yearly from the Emperor to the nomad
+nobility. A khan of the first rank receives two thousand _lens_ ($1500)
+and twenty-five pieces of silk; lesser gentry in proportion.
+
+This primitive aristocracy lives in barbaric state, with splendid
+carpets, silver-inlaid furniture, and jeweled accoutrements. The women
+are sometimes very good-looking. They are laden with ornaments, furs
+and silks, and have a spot of carmine on each cheek, which is the
+prerogative of a princess. But the normal imagination does not go
+beyond the gir as a dwelling. Finely fitted it may be, yet it remains
+a one-room hut, with the open brazier in its centre. Their wealth is
+in ancestral ornaments, and in the flocks and herds of their private
+domains. Their one relic and memorial of a past sway lies in the
+custom under which the Chinese rulers call by the old Mongol names the
+_eimucks_, which were the ancestors’ kingdoms. That of which Urga is
+capital still bears the name of Tu-she-tu.
+
+The Mongol lords are responsible for the feudal army, and a caste
+of bannermen exists, who are paid nominally two ounces of silver per
+month and a supply of grain, with the corresponding duty of keeping
+their bows and arrows in order. In the Tu-she-tu khanate of the eastern
+Khalka tribes, there are twenty banners, each under an hereditary
+_yassak_, or tributary prince. In 1900 some banners of the Barukhs
+turned out to fight Russians, but they made no showing whatever, and
+hurriedly returned after a skirmish with the Cossacks. Spears and
+arrows are the only weapons the Mongol army can show.
+
+While this feudal system applies in general to the whole _eimuck_, in
+Urga the Gigin has a unique position. The city is a great monastery,
+practically all of the permanent native population of fifteen thousand
+being priests. The laymen who are there are mostly pilgrims, or
+dependents upon the Church. Over these the Gigin is master, so that
+Urga is known as “The Holy Living God’s Encampment.”
+
+Over the Russians and the Buriat tribesmen, the Chinese have no
+actual sway, and from them they collect no taxes. The Russian consul
+is dictator to this little flock; and behind his stockade, where the
+tricolor waves, rally the Orthodox in times of danger.
+
+Across from the _Zinzin’s_ doorway is a spiked stockade. Inside, where
+they have been thrust through a hole just big enough for a man’s
+body, are the miserable criminals. In the big pit dug with their
+naked hands, the wretches cower, shelterless, under the terrible cold
+of winter. They live or die there, sometimes fed by the charity of
+Mongols, sometimes forgotten, sometimes purchasing miserable fragments
+of offal with the unstolen remnants of the prison allowance. Few
+waste sympathy on the inmates. The low level of existence of those
+outside makes the place perhaps less terrible than it would be to
+people who had known other conditions. It is a grim Chinese jest, this
+loathsome prison for those who have stolen bread in the market-place,
+set opposite the palace of the grafting governor who has filched the
+tribute of Tu-she-tu.
+
+From the Chinese city now, there begins to come the distant throb of
+drums and clash of cymbals. Three gorgeous Mongols gallop past in their
+splendid free-reined horsemanship. A sentry stalks to the door of
+the stockaded prison, and looks toward the gray walls and temples of
+Maimachen. The procession of the New Moon is to pass to-day.
+
+You leap onto your little Mongol riding-pony, and spurring him into
+a gallop, hasten along the way to the Chinese city. He tears down
+the broad road. The resplendent trotting horsemen take the pace as
+a challenge, and yell joyfully for a race as their whips come down
+on their own horses’ flanks. Mongol girls walking hand in hand along
+the highway scatter and call out as the riders clatter by. It is
+contagious. Soon a score of riders are shouting, shaking bridles, and
+lashing ponies, and it is a cavalcade of racers that gallops up to the
+gate of Maimachen.
+
+How different is this Chinese settlement from Mongol Urga! It is a
+magnified replica of the city at the frontiers. Instead of the straggly
+avenues a hundred yards broad, with cañon-like alleys flanked by
+high mud walls, all the streets are so narrow that two strides cross
+them. They are lined with miniature booths. Through the bars of their
+paper-paned windows one sees the little delicately-tinted pictures of
+pagodas and of Chinese girls, in quaint sweeping outlines. Red and
+black and gold, the New Year placards flame on every post and wall.
+Lanterns are hung before the gateways; green saplings stand sentinel
+by the doors; and in the unshuttered compounds innumerable lines of
+gaudy banners are seen, strung from side to side across the courtyards.
+From the houses come from time to time a thrumming and a picking of
+strings in minor music, broken by an occasional clang of cymbals or a
+drone of beaten drums. You pass a temple of marvelously carved wood,
+wrought into curves and flowers and arabesques, with eaves turning out
+into open-mouthed dragons. Everything is brilliant in paint and gilt--a
+blazing kaleidoscope of color.
+
+In a friendly courtyard the horses are tied, and you walk into the
+teeming streets. All the Chinese of Maimachen and half the Mongols of
+Urga have come out to-day. Here is a little shifty-eyed Chinese clerk,
+in his low shoes, with white soles several inches thick, his white
+stockings, tied at the ankle, showing below the baggy trousers.
+
+Here is a young Mongol lama, who hails you gleefully with a Russian
+word which he has learned from a Buriat, and points out where the
+procession will emerge. A Mongol woman passes, gorgeously dressed in
+flowered yellow silk, with red, sable-cuffed sleeves so long as nearly
+to touch the ground, and her head cuirassed with the burden of silver
+ornaments. She smiles at the burly Mongol camel-driver who so openly
+admires her.
+
+A Chinese merchant, with red-buttoned cap, attended by a servant, is
+pushing through the crowd. His looks are surly; perhaps he is thinking
+of the whereabouts of his own establishment in this carnival.
+
+Though the rich and wifeless Chinese may acquire Mongol companions,
+they cannot buy or give affection. For a poor Mongol, who has the
+sincerity and humanness which the Chinaman withholds, one of these
+Mongol concubines will either deceive her master, or, if he object too
+vigorously, will strip herself of his presents and go to her lover’s
+_gir_.
+
+A big Celestial with a fuse comes hastily through the gateway from
+which the procession is to emerge. The crash of his firecrackers
+startles the Mongol ponies pushed close along the houses. Beneath
+the multi-colored gateway, next pour out a score of horsemen with
+pennanted spears. They ride two by two, in white coats with red letters
+on their breasts. Then comes a crowd of footmen, who fill the street
+in a torrent. The curious Mongols press to each side, and watch the
+procession of their alien overlords. Two ranks are robed in vivid red,
+and carry poles with big gold knobs. Blue-coated Chinamen, with cymbals
+and shrilling fifes, follow; then come more horsemen; then the great
+silken umbrella, and a gray-mustached dignitary on horseback,--the
+chief of police; next, more fifers and wand-carriers, six abreast.
+With fireworks and clashing music, the vivid ranks in red and blue,
+and yellow and gold, and green and purple, and every other conceivable
+combination of hues, make their way around the stockade and back again
+through the gated city.
+
+The crowd seems to be trending now toward a brilliantly colored archway
+spanning the main street. With the Mongol holiday-makers we follow
+along into a cloistered courtyard flanked by peaked temple-like houses.
+A crowd of Chinese is pressing around some one clad in blue, who has
+just stepped out between the beater of a tom-tom and an artist with a
+big pair of cymbals. A preliminary flourish introduces the performer--a
+pasty-faced young Chinaman. He starts a rhythmic chant whose cadence
+is within a note or two of one of the old crooning Negro melodies of
+our South. Over and over again he chants it. A poet this is. He has
+conned his verses, and now comes out to sing them. He ends with a
+special swirl in what is evidently a very comic climax. The drum and
+cymbals crash out once more, and another chanter comes--this one
+old and feeble, with a curiously penetrating voice. He drones a long
+hexameter-footed epic, in which the harsh Chinese _gh_ and _wh_ sounds
+are not so coarsely enunciated as in the poem of the first reciter.
+“That is one of the old legend-singers,” you are told. It is such a
+ballad as Homer sang, or the Welsh bards chanted. It is the poetry
+and the history of the long past, the immemorial past, far before the
+infancy of other nations; for China keeps alive her antiquity, and in
+her old age never forgets.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE ARCHWAY, URGA MAIMACHEN]
+
+This week there can be no buying or selling. The Moon must be honored,
+but visits are in order. Your friend brings you to meet a leading
+Chinese merchant. At the house, a grille of thick wooden bars runs
+down to the street level from the eaves just above one’s head. Looking
+through them, one can see over the little square window the most
+delicately-traced pictures on a white background. The panes are of
+paper, all save one, which is of glass, so that the owner may see if,
+coming down the street, any one turns and climbs the three steps into
+the ordinarily wide-open door of his house.
+
+The home of our host, which is likewise his office, is finely fitted up
+and faultlessly clean. His light-blue silk robes are immaculate. Two
+servants wait at table, bringing in the best of China tea and French
+“petit-beurre” biscuits for our delectation. Everything is appetizing
+and orderly.
+
+As we are sitting over the cups with the Chinese merchant, the boy
+comes to announce visitors, and two blue-robed fellow countrymen enter.
+One has a strip of light-blue silk laid over his two arms, which he
+stretches out. The host extends his own arms and receives it, then
+gives it back to the newcomer, who goes down on one knee and again
+presents it. The merchant takes it a second time and bows, this time
+retaining it. The two guests bend and leave the room. “New Year’s
+presents,” the merchant explains. Again the boy comes in and announces
+a guest. A Mongol messenger enters, goes down on one knee, and presents
+a red slip, black-lettered. “Visiting-card,” the host explains. Then,
+with a smile, “White, like yours, not polite.” He accepts this too.
+“_Ch’ou Ta-tzu!_” (the dirty Tatar!) he says as the latter leaves.
+
+The calls continue, and our visit. The host is charming, cultured,
+educated; he speaks English well, and lacks in no attention. But
+you wonder if, when you leave, he is not going to murmur about you,
+“Yong-kwei-tsz!” (foreign devil!)
+
+Throughout all intercourse with these Chinese, one has always the
+uneasy consciousness that one is doubtless, as with the card,
+unwittingly offending. There are three hundred rules of ceremony,
+three thousand formulæ of behavior, regulated by a classic tradition.
+The ritual is so drilled into the Chinese as to become instinctive.
+Celestial breeding would dictate that the little formalism which
+precedes a rubber, “May I play to hearts, if you please?” be stretched
+to cover every action of life. The left, not the right, is the place
+of honor, and to enter a room facing wrongly is a slight. An irregular
+method of folding a red New-Year’s card, and the failure in writing
+to raise one character above the level of the rest, are breaches of
+etiquette.
+
+For our race there is always felt, behind the soul-mask of Chinese
+eyes, a contempt. The kindness of our host to-day is unfailing. Yet we
+are not at ease or sure of the ground. Errors, condoned to keep face,
+are often inwardly resented. If you put your hat on the Mongol’s altar,
+everybody in the hut will yell out for you to take it off. When you
+remove it, they will nod understandingly as the interpreter explains
+that the ignorant foreigner transgressed inadvertently. Forthwith all
+is forgotten in an enthusiastic discussion of the last case of botts
+among the horses. But with these Chinese one can never tell if, by
+taking a chop-stick between the wrong fingers, one has not intimated
+that the host’s grandfather was a cross-eyed coolie soldier. No one
+will challenge or set a man right, but the breach will be silently
+resented, though the tea continues to be smilingly offered.
+
+The old-time Chinese dealers at Urga grew enormously wealthy in the
+tea-trade to Kiahta. These have mostly gone back to China. But there
+are still a number of the better-class merchants whose wares are sold
+to the traders and by them to the Mongols. The house of Liu-Shang-Yuan
+claims two hundred years of establishment. The Urga people are still
+prosperous, for great sums in religious tribute come from all Mongolia
+to this Lourdes of Lamaism. There are also many Chinamen who make large
+profits from wool.
+
+Of a total trade in Urga estimated at twenty-five million roubles per
+year, nine tenths is in the hands of Celestials. The remainder is
+Russian, for the Mongols are entirely without a merchant class. Of the
+exports, wool is the main item. Some two hundred thousand _puds_ are
+sent from Urga annually, four fifths of which go to the United States.
+While cotton cloth, cutlery, kitchen-utensils, and other European
+goods come down from Russia, the bulk of the imports are brought from
+China by caravan, through Kalgan. Silks come from Shanghai, and tea
+from Hankow, passing via Peking. There is trade, too, with Ulasati in
+western Mongolia. It is the centre of a fur and hide country which is
+isolated from outlets toward Russia by the high mountains, and must
+send caravans to Kiahta. Its communication with China is either by Urga
+and Kalgan, or by the caravan-route further south.
+
+When the holiday-time is over we see more of the Chinese traders.
+Sitting in the shops, with one of these, and glancing out over the
+little counter of the sales-room, we converse as the customers come and
+go.
+
+The Russian in his shop shows all he has of wares, the red and magenta
+cloths, the enameled kettles, the cutlery and sweetmeats. But the
+Chinaman wraps his goods in hieroglyphic-covered papers, and all that
+can be seen are rows of long-stemmed brass-bowled pipes, and an array
+of silver and bronze teapots on shelves at one side. Very rare things,
+too, our Chinese host can produce. Shanghai silks of finest texture,
+ten roubles the _arsheen_; jade mouthpieces for the pipes at a hundred
+_taels_; Hankow tea culled from the tenderest shoots. Everything is
+labeled and systematized in the Chinaman’s place, and he goes at once
+to the packet which he wishes to show.
+
+A dozen Chinese, with bright blue silk jackets over their black
+surtouts, invade now the home of the merchant. The red knot on their
+black skull-caps and the length of their queues and finger-nails show
+them to be men of some importance. They take off the bright-colored
+ear-tabs as they enter. They are down to buy wool. To-day they visit,
+next week they will trade. Then all but one will sit in the outer shop,
+while the spokesman alone will go into the inner room and confer with
+the merchant. From time to time the spokesman will go back to the party
+and consult, till in the end the bargain is made. They will all hold
+to the agreement, too, whichever way the market goes. For in this the
+Chinese are inflexibly honest. A local Chinaman dispatched a mounted
+messenger the six versts to Urga, to return to us twenty kopecks which
+he had overcharged by a slip of his abacus-adder.
+
+Yet the Scotch engineers saw shells in the arsenals loaded with clay
+when the native troops went against the Japanese. The English miners in
+the Province of Shan-tung have had their profits cut to nothing by the
+official “squeezes,” and Chinese have bought in the depreciated stocks.
+
+The ethic code of the squeeze seems to be very nice. It is a point of
+honor, almost always scrupulously observed, that the first-fruits of
+official graft go to repaying the one who advanced the money to buy the
+office. A Chinaman, who could not be trusted to administer honestly
+a trust fund of a hundred _taels_, will repay this obligation to his
+backer. Thus must he keep face.
+
+From the tax-appraiser who numbers the sheep to the civil governor
+who receives the lumps of silver tribute for transmission to Peking,
+every official gets his squeeze. They say in the _eimuck_ of Ulasati,
+where sables are part of the tribute, that the officials take out the
+best furs and put back poor skins to keep the number the same; and in
+Urga, that the enormously rich administration takes a Tammany third
+of the tribute. There has never been a viceroy yet, it is reported,
+who has left Mongolia poor. Yet each official plays straight with his
+backer, his “belly-band.” Very curious is this race, and there live few
+Westerners who can at all understand it.
+
+We ride back in the evening from the Chinese city (for none may stay
+for the night), buried in recurring reveries. How brightly glitters
+the face, and how barren is the heart in Maimachen! Never the thousand
+ties of kinship and affection, never the thrill of citizenship, never
+the love of a home. How little generosity, too, or sympathy for the
+people of the land! The Mongols are but “tame barbarians,” as of old
+were stigmatized the tributary Formosans. Now and then one finds a
+Chinaman out among the nomad Mongols. Perhaps he may be a watcher at
+a distant temple, perhaps a telegraph-operator on the two lines that
+go, one to Kalgan and Peking, one to Kiahta and Russia. Always he is
+something solitary--different. There is an almost sinister splendor in
+this aloofness--this self-sufficiency of walled cities and compounds
+where none but Chinese may dwell. What a rebuff of nationhood in the
+gates that shut out at night all save the alien outlanders! What
+contempt in the law that no woman of China may come among these Mongol
+people, as if the very air were contamination! How the natives are
+silently despised, whose bodies in death go to the dogs, while the
+Chinaman’s, in a casket, is sent back over the long leagues to his home!
+
+The homeless, wifeless, Chinese city, with the quarter of Mongol women
+without the walls,--it is in many ways typical of all Chinese rule in
+Mongolia. For, as the Celestial trader defaults in the duty of marrying
+the Mongol mother of his children, so China defaults in many of the
+duties that are inherent in suzerainty. One resents the heavy Chinese
+yoke on the necks of these simple frank-hearted Mongolians. They are
+a race of great good-humored children, and they are exploited while
+disdained.
+
+We are thinking of this unfairness as we ride back along the road
+to Urga. Behind is the distant Chinese city, the Manchu Viceroy’s
+straggling palace, the picketed prison-stockade. Before is the drooping
+tricolor banner of the Czar, and the white and green of the Greek
+Church, with its far-seen golden crucifix. A crowd of brilliantly-clad
+Mongols, lamas and laymen and girls and youths, are strolling back from
+Maimachen. They are laughing and chattering, and in uncouth playfulness
+are pushing one another about across the road.
+
+Half a dozen of the _Zinzin’s_ Chinese foot-guard are likewise coming
+from Urga, stolid-faced, superior. As they reach the tumultuous band it
+sinks into silence, and the men crowd to the side of the road that the
+Chinese may pass.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL]
+
+They tramp by without a glance. Then out from the Russian barrack-gate
+swings a little Cossack in his great black sheepskin hat, gray
+tunic, clattering curved sabre, boots and spurs. He is one of the
+Zabaikalskaia Buriats, whom Russians call Bratskie, the brotherly
+people. He speaks a tongue so similar to the Mongol that all these
+people can understand him. They look up to him as a rich relative,
+fortunate in overflowing measure. For on the pilgrimages of Buddhist
+Buriats to Urga, their wives have told the wondering Mongol women
+of the sewing-machines which they have at home to stitch linings, and
+have allowed the visitors to peep into their mirrors. The Mongol men
+have admired the Buriats’ breech-loading rifle, worth six horses at
+current quotations. They have enviously heard tell that in Russia one
+pays no cow-_alba_, but the young men get a uniform and free food when
+they ride out to give their Cossack service to the Czar. They have
+listened to Buriat boasts of the warm houses of Siberia, and stacks of
+hay, and stored-up harvests. So Mongols smile when the Buriats come to
+their _girs_. They say, “Rich smooth Buriats! Great lords! Give candle,
+give sugar, give tobacco, give vodka.”
+
+Has not a little Zabaikalskaia Buriat reason to swagger when he starts
+from the Russian barrack-gate to see his lady in Urga? And should a
+Cossack of the Czar step aside for a Chinaman in the shadow of the
+Eagles? Head erect, with a look to right and then to left, hand on
+sabre, he swings straight down the centre of the road, and right
+through the Chinese soldiers. Without dispute they open a way. He
+chucks a not unwilling girl under the chin as he passes the Mongols,
+and he is good-naturedly hailed by the rest: “Hello, Cossack! Why so
+fast? She has gone away with a lama.” And he goes a bit faster toward
+Urga.
+
+These Cossacks, terrible in war, friends and equals with the conquered
+in peace, are those who have held the Russian vanguard in this march
+to China,--the march which began when the two _hatamans_ of Moscow,
+commanded by Ivan the Terrible, started in 1507 on their long tramp
+eastward. The Cossacks it was whom Yermak led to the conquest of
+Sibir. Through them, in storm and stress, despite oppression and
+convict-gangs, with faults and failings, omissions and commissions, the
+advance of Russia has been the way of civilization where none could
+otherwise have come.
+
+“It will mean much when a Russian railway follows our trail from
+Kiahta,” says Alexsimevich; and André adds: “They will all be glad when
+the Cossacks come to Kalgan.”
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+RUSSIA IN EVOLUTION
+
+
+New times have come to Russia with the events that have halted her
+armies. The Slav, looking and reaching outward, has been hurled
+violently back upon himself, and he turns to look inward. The stream
+of Slavic civilization still flows eastward. But now held back at
+the frontiers, its tide is rising behind the impounding barriers
+and is lifting on its wave the level of national life. Its scour
+is undermining here and there, its laden currents are depositing
+and filling in the interstices of the social fabric. The struggle
+is intensified to achieve representative government, to secure
+administrative reform, to relieve the distress of the peasantry. The
+people are in evolutionary throes and are sweeping forward in the arts
+of peace, in the science of government, and in the myriad lines of
+internal development.
+
+The movements of empire-advance have been noted because they have been
+conspicuously visualized. But the economic and social growth have been
+only slightly regarded by our western world, intent upon great events,
+crises, conflicts lost and won. The seizure of a hamlet in Manchuria
+has obscured the founding of twenty cities in Siberia.
+
+The continent-cleaving Siberian Railway has now revealed, in the
+Russian occupation of northern Asia, not an exploiting colonial
+enterprise, but a race-movement akin to the European invasion of our
+Aryan ancestors. The upward struggle of a people striving to find
+itself is embodied in imperial rescripts and armed revolts, in dumas
+and dynamite, where rival titans grapple for the throw. There is now
+therefore in the world a more earnest watching of this metamorphosing
+Russian people. What are the types of civilization, the beliefs, the
+manners of thought, the institutions that are to hold mastery over the
+largest area on the globe occupied by a single nation?
+
+To comprehend a people and the course of its evolution one must pierce
+below the surface of ephemeral and contemporary incident, and probe
+the primitive racial elements. Russia is to-day iceberg-like. The
+crumbling, upper ice, honeycombed by eating waves, is exposed; but
+submerged and unseen is the massive blue block beneath. Because rotten
+surface-structures are obvious, many fail to appreciate what lies in
+the depths. There comes understanding for much when one sounds the
+ancient sources in race-history.
+
+From the earliest times Russia lay across the path of incessant
+invasion from Asia. In 1224 the Mongols swept down upon the old
+Scythian plains. There were no mountain fastnesses in which the sparse
+population could defend itself. The followers of Genghis Khan, through
+the years that followed, destroyed town after town,--Bolgari, Suzdal,
+Yaroslavl, Tver,--devastated Volkynia, and Galicia, until all Russia,
+save Novgorod, was brought under Tatar rule. Their devastations cut
+off the population of whole provinces, and changed old Russian cities,
+such as Kiev, to hybrid towns of Asiatics. At Sarai on the Volga, for
+two centuries Tatar sovereigns ruled; and here from being pagan they
+became adherents of Islam. Russia’s foreign master was confirmed in a
+religion as antagonistic as was his race. To these aliens Russia gave
+humiliating homage and paid tribute, and from their khans her czar
+received permit to rule. Thus in her infancy she had a foreign race,
+not as servile members of the humble labor class, but in the wild,
+fierce scourge of conquerors.
+
+Throughout this period many Russian princes married into noble Mongol
+families, and Mongol officers formed alliances with the Russian
+boyars. The Muscovite aristocracy had already grown into strong
+Oriental proclivities from contact with its southern neighbor, the
+Byzantine, and these became confirmed under the Tatar. One czar, at
+least, Boris Godunov, was of Mongol birth. Incessant war harassed
+the people. Alexander Nevski, of Novgorod, beat back the Swedes;
+but, abasing himself, he went to the Tatar khan with the tribute of
+a country too feeble still to resist him. By and by Russia began to
+rally and to strengthen her centres, Novgorod, Kiev, and Vladimir.
+Moscow arose--that small destiny-city where Simon the Proud, even
+in vassalage, dared to dream of unity and nationality, and took the
+title of “Prince of all the Russias.” His grandson made the first
+great stand against the Mongols and won in the field of Tula, which,
+with the fights of Alexander Nevski, gives to chroniclers and bards
+their early Russian ballads, or _bilinî_. Moscow, punished cruelly,
+was razed almost to the ground. But the Bear was aroused and goaded
+into desperation. Russia reeled to her feet, and for nearly a hundred
+years she fought, she lost, she fell; but she rose again and fought
+on, until at last the power of the Tatar terror was broken and the
+tyrant was driven over her border. Still, for a hundred years more, she
+was forcing back his inroads, and rescuing the winding trains of her
+children, toiling over the southern steppes to be sold as slaves at
+Kaffa. This was Russia in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.
+
+That Europe was spared this, she owes to the Russian. Through those
+crucial centuries when the Slav, weak, torn, anguished, beset with
+foes around and foes within, was standing grimly at the perilous
+portal of civilization, Europe, within the temple, safe by his grace,
+was privileged to work up into light, to cement her nationalities, to
+effect the liberation of her masses, and to develop her intellect into
+the magnificent promise of a printing-press, a people’s Bible, and a
+Shakespeare.
+
+But to the brave warden of that portal there was not the sweetness and
+the light. For him were the seams and the scars, the mutinous passions
+of the strife. Long after the clouds of the Dark Ages had cleared from
+the face of western Europe, they hung over Russia. The Slav was back
+in his Dark Ages yet, heir only to a barbaric experience. Here he
+must start, where Europe had started nearly a thousand years before,
+where America, in the favor of Providence, was never to be called
+upon to start. For him were the memories of subjection and the blood
+of contention; but also, in relief, to him were the stolid patience
+and endurance which were to serve him so well. He groped along in the
+shadow until the coming of the great Peter.
+
+But now arose a man. He, too, had dreamed the dream of empire,--vast,
+masterful. He set about making his dream real. He found Russia a small
+inland state, torn by faction, barbarian, and Oriental. Though himself
+the descendant of a long line of Byzantine kings, half monk, half
+emperor, he saw with the insight of genius, and he knew that that way
+did not lie greatness. Therefore fully and fiercely he broke with the
+past and set himself to the future.
+
+Between him and that future stood the Strelitz. The walls of
+the Kremlin, and the Red Square told the doom of their barring
+conservatism. He warred with the Turk, he fought the Cossack, he
+routed the Swedes, again and again, taking whole provinces on his
+Baltic outlet and securing the coveted Neva. He embroiled himself with
+Persia, and through Baku opened a way to the Caspian. Then, with a high
+hand, he swept out the customs that made for Orientalism. He broke the
+seclusion of women, the prostrations, banished the caftan, the beard,
+and the flowing robes. He lifted his people bodily and violently out of
+their past, and set them down face-front to a new order. The Russia he
+had received a province, he left an empire. The Russia he had received
+Asiatic, he left European, and already a force in Europe. And when
+arose one of his own blood--a reversal--who would undo the herculean
+labor of this master-builder, who would give back to Sweden those
+priceless, wave-washed Baltic provinces, and, restoring the capital to
+Moscow, return to an Oriental estate, the patriot was stronger than
+the father, and at the price of his son’s life he bought the progress
+of Russia. Here in this man, who died in 1725, we can truly say that
+Modern Russia begins.
+
+Through this skeleton history can be traced the structure of the modern
+state, as in the struggle for survival may be found the root and early
+warrant of her governmental system. Every element, physical and ethnic,
+was, and still is, a handicap. Russia is not protected by the ramparts
+of the sea; she is surrounded on all sides by nations with whom her
+history has been that of perennial conflict. In place of a compacted,
+well-peopled country, she has an empire extended gradually from frozen
+Nova Zembla to Afghanistan, from the Danube mouth to Behring’s arctic
+sea. She is a land of many distinct peoples, as foreign to each other
+as Lithuanians and wild Kirghis; as alien in religion as Catholic and
+Mohammedan. She is divided into one knows not how many tribes, numbers
+of them completely barbarous. Her eastern and south-eastern frontiers
+call for defense across vast and vacant stretches. Her northern and
+western borders are occupied by Finns and Poles, unforgetful forever of
+their own days of sovereignty, naturally and rightly jealous for the
+memories and the prerogatives that are its legacy.
+
+With the eastern problem living from the first on her immediate border,
+with her many tribes wayward, Russia early strove to fuse her empire
+into national unity. In old Poland had been seen the fearful price
+which feebleness and disunion pay to fate. How much greater was the
+menace to polyglot Russia, were her master-grip to relax! That she
+should hold a strong hand over the elements that ever threatened her
+disruption was the first national necessity. This supreme obligation
+to herself in her entirety compelled a firm, commanding, centralized
+authority. The mould that was to shape such metal had need of rigidity
+and unyielding strength. To meet these race-desires, not as a
+purposeless tyranny but as the fruit of a long evolving system, arose
+the autocracy.
+
+The system reached its climax in the most absolute administration of
+modern times at the period of the American Revolution; the “Government
+Statute of 1775” meshed all things and all men into the institutions
+of despotism; Russia groaned under the iron rule of a Nicholas, yet
+rejoiced in the belief that strength was there, and sure defense from
+domestic disunion and foreign aggression; then, in the Crimea, came a
+revelation of the inefficiency of the bureaucratic juggernaut. Despite
+the stubborn valor of the defenders of Sevastopol, despite the gallant
+efforts of the aged autocrat, the glory of Russia went down in the
+blaze of her city and her fleet.
+
+The old régime had failed. Even the Czar, before he died, could read
+the lesson but could not act. How pathetic the words of the failing
+monarch: “My successor may do what he will, I cannot change.”
+
+With the accession of Alexander to the throne in 1855, on the sudden
+death of Nicholas, came the first effective steps toward modern
+institutions. The young czar, a self-declared friend of progress,
+raised regally the standard of reform. All Russia rose to the hopes of
+his idealism. Corruption in office, which had before been rampant, was
+crushed out by the sheer force of public opinion. Pamphlets circulated
+freely, uncensored. Meetings were everywhere held to discuss the varied
+plans of a vivified government. With a whole nation become to a degree
+transcendental, the Czar began his reign and his reforms.
+
+First of all for righting, as it was first in evil, came serfdom.
+Summoning commissions of his ablest advisers, seeking counsel of the
+proprietors and their coöperation in an act of self-abnegation, the
+Czar proceeded to the execution of his great task. For three years
+every side and every phase of the problem was studied. Then at length
+with a fundamental law which forecovered every detail of the situation,
+Alexander II put his signature, February 19, 1861, to the great Ukase
+of Liberation.
+
+In Russia’s past there is much to answer for before the judgment-bar,
+in omission and in commission. Yet, giving but justice to ruler and
+people, it must be allowed that the measure which freed the serfs
+ranks, with Magna Charta and the American Constitution, among the
+mightiest agencies of advance that mankind has ever known. A dependent
+population of nearly forty-six million souls was given liberty. The
+great act was accomplished peacefully, and the measures were executed
+without any trouble worthy of the name, in a spirit equitable to
+the old owners as well as to the serfs. Not alone were the latter
+released from bondage, they were provided, one and all, with land and
+livelihood. They were given, in everything that concerned their local
+administration, entire freedom from interference by their old masters
+or by the members of the Administration. The righteous deed that the
+American Republic achieved nearly three years later liberated but one
+ninth the number of the Russian bondmen. It did so at the cost of the
+deadliest fratricidal war of modern times, and the impoverishment
+of one quarter of its people. All the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau
+through the Reconstruction period could not insure to a tithe of the
+Negroes the opportunity for a livelihood,--this that Russia provided
+inalienably for each of her liberated. To this day the American Negro
+in many places is under special civic disabilities more galling than
+those imposed anywhere in the Russian Empire.
+
+The protection of the former serfs was skillfully arranged by grouping
+them in self-governing village communes, to which land enough was given
+on a long-term repayment basis. In each, by an assembly composed of all
+the heads of households, periodic allotments of the common territory
+were made to the individuals. Compact economic units, whose property
+could not be sold, were built up against alienation of the land or
+poverty-induced peonage. The rendering of justice in local disputes was
+delegated to the peasant courts,--the only tribunals in Russia, save
+the National Senate, from which there is no appeal.
+
+The Mir, complete within itself, was responsible to the Imperial
+Government for good order and the taxes, and was secure from
+molestation provided these duties were fulfilled. Its inhabitants,
+united and independent, were able to resist any encroachment by
+their former masters or by neighboring landlords.
+
+[Illustration: THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW]
+
+It is not unworthy of note that up to the present time the liberties
+in economic matters thus granted have rarely been infringed by the
+authorities, nor have the village assemblies been exploited as a play
+in politics or to attain personal ends. While agriculturally and
+industrially the communal land provisions have become insufficient,
+cramping, perhaps baneful, and no longer necessary now that society
+is in equilibrium, nevertheless the germ of free institutions
+fecundated in the Mir, when dissociated from its communal features, is
+admirable still, and is capable of becoming the foundation for real
+self-government.
+
+Plans for provincial assemblies as a further extension of local home
+rule had been under consideration since 1859. On January 1, 1864, an
+Imperial Ukase was promulgated instituting Semstvos in thirty-three
+governments. To this assembly, proprietor and peasant, rich and poor,
+elected their representatives. Each Semstvo was to appoint its own
+executive to carry out the laws it decreed.
+
+The jurisdiction of this assembly, though confined to local and
+non-political matters, was wide. Rates, streets, convocations, posts,
+sanitary measures, famine-relief, fire-insurance, schools, agricultural
+improvement, all land, house, and factory taxes (those upon imperial
+as well as those upon private domains), were given into the Semstvo
+control. It was granted partial powers over various other minor
+matters. It exercised practically all the economic and social functions
+of local governmental activity save what fell to the Mirs. It was
+welcomed as an epoch-making institution. The liberal press of the
+period hailed it as a living guidon of the upward way, as the blessed
+daylight of a constitutional government.
+
+So indeed it might have become. In the new Emperor’s mind there
+germinated a whole peaceful revolution. He had plans for new
+courts of justice, reorganization of the army, reform of the civil
+administration, and popular representative government, with an elected
+national chamber.
+
+But in the midst of his reforms broke out the Polish insurrection.
+The Czar had granted to the Poles elective councils in each district
+of government and in the chief cities; he had appointed a Pole his
+Minister of Public Instruction, and had made many concessions to their
+old language. Iron and blood crushed out the insurrection, but it had
+brought to the great Czar Liberator the conviction that liberty spelled
+disunion for Russia, and this belief was never to be dispelled.
+
+Upon the Semstvo assemblies, no longer uplifted by the old generous
+enthusiasm of the sovereign, pressed little by little the dead weight
+of executive officialdom. One by one their functions were lopped away.
+More and more the selection of delegates was transferred to the
+administrative officials. The marshals of noblesse became chairmen,
+the governors vetoing overlords. Before the death of Alexander II, his
+once-cherished creations had lapsed from independent state legislatures
+into anomalous, semi-advisory councils, discussing roads, land-taxes,
+agriculture, and schools, and controlled by the land-owning nobles and
+the governors. Semstvo and Mir and Assemblies of the Noblesse became
+ornamental trimmings to the colossal edifice of the bureaucracy.
+
+The assembling of all the functions of government into the hands of
+the executive became again the guiding principle of this system. “The
+Council of State,” whose office was that of discussing the budget and
+law-making proposals, was the simulacrum of a parliament. The Senate,
+which gave decision on special points appealed from the lower courts,
+and whose promulgation of all enactments was the hall-mark of their
+legality, was a form of supreme court. But both hung from above rather
+than rested on a substructure. They were substantially cut off from
+popular influences, their function was secondary action following
+origin in the executive bureaus. The Imperial Autocrat, deriving his
+right from Divinity alone, exercised, in addition to his executive
+functions and his duties as supreme commander of the armed forces of
+the State, those powers which by a segregation of functions would have
+fallen to the legislative bodies and the judiciary. In this, the ten
+ministries were his main agencies.
+
+Under this system, legislation was inaugurated through the presentation
+of a project to the Czar by one of his ministers, or by outside
+petition, or perhaps by the imperial wish.
+
+The proposed enactment, if the Czar ordered it to be further examined,
+was referred usually to an Imperial Commission of Study. Debates
+followed in the Advisory Council of State, and the completed bill, as
+framed by this body, was signed by the Emperor and became a ukase, to
+be formally promulgated by the Senate and enrolled as part of the law
+of the land. Interpretations of law were made by the Ministers, which
+none might gainsay. Thus was the legislative function absolute.
+
+In the provinces the three functions of government were equally
+centralized. A governor (almost invariably a general or an admiral)
+through his subordinate executive officers duplicated in microcosm
+the system of the capital. The dependent Semstvo was his Council of
+State, the dependent judges composed his Senate, the dependent Semski
+Natschalniki, his executive ministers. Into his bureaus came the
+details of provincial government save such matters as the villagers
+settled in their own Mirs. The troops of the district were at his call,
+the gendarmerie under his orders carried out the judicial arrests and
+the drumhead condemnations that sent so many thousands along the road
+to Siberia.
+
+In the placing of these proconsuls and their sustaining soldiery was
+applied the Roman rule, “Divide et impera.” The head officials of the
+provinces were from distant parts,--the Governor of Warsaw from Tiflis,
+the Governor of Odessa from Samara, the Governor of the Amur from
+the Baltic. The Orthodox Cossacks of the Don were in force among the
+troubled Poles and Jews of the western governments; the drafts from
+the peasantry of Little Russia garrisoned Tiflis and Turkestan, and
+Siberian regiments watched the Austrian frontier. Even the popes sent
+to petty village congregations were generally of far-off origin.
+
+Though power was thus alienated from the people, the bureaucracy, by
+other agencies rooted deep in human nature, had twined itself around
+the daily life of society.
+
+Every ambitious man in his profession, as he succeeded, was marked for
+promotion. Not only to office-holders and soldiers, but to everybody,
+throughout the whole social fabric, were “chins” or graded ranks given.
+Here for example is a selection from one of the lists of the Czar’s
+Christmas announcements:--
+
+ Appointed members of the Council of State: Privy Councilor Kabylinski,
+ and Von Kaufman, Senator, Minister of Public Instruction, President of
+ the Supreme Court.
+
+ Decorated with the St. Stanislaus Order, First Class: Major-General
+ Hippolyt Grigerasch, Director of the Department of Physics and
+ Electro-technology at the Nicholas Engineer Academy and School.
+
+ Decorated with the St. Vladimir Order of the Third Class:
+ Major-General Michael Hahnenfeldt, on the staff of his Imperial
+ Highness the Supreme Commander of Guards in the St. Petersburg
+ Military District.
+
+ Valentin Magorski, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Chief of the
+ Veterinary Staff.
+
+ Alexander Pomeranzev, Professor of Architecture.
+
+ Dimitri Sassiyadke, Governor of Radom.
+
+ Michael Mardarjev, Censor of Foreign Papers and Journals.
+
+ Advanced to the ranking Chin of actual State Councilor, hereditary
+ “honorable citizen” Constantine Popov, founder and director of the Tea
+ Emporiums.
+
+ Raised into hereditary “honorable citizenship” of the 3d gild, the
+ Archangel merchant Emil Brautigam.
+
+ Given personal “honorable citizenship,” Vladimir Ritimoun, Proprietor
+ of the Wollner Typographical Establishment; Karl Volter, Captain of
+ the steamer _Emperor Nicholas II_, of the Riga Navigation Co.
+
+When a professor from his books was called up before the highest
+provincial dignitary to have pinned on his lapel for honorable service
+to the Empire the Order of St. Stanislaus, it was hard for him not to
+have a warm sentiment for those who had so signally recognized his
+talents. When on the document which recorded the promotion of a royal
+prince to a colonelcy was enrolled the name of a tradesman; when a
+neighboring doctor was raised his step in civil rank, each felt the
+touchstone. All who had served well in their respective positions
+might hope to be on the honor list, and this was the most effective
+tribute to the weakness, the worth, and the ambition of human nature.
+
+In Russia, as in France under Napoleon’s iron yoke, there was a welcome
+to every sort of ability, and its elevation to posts of the highest
+trust. The aristocracy sought for was one of power, not that of a small
+birth-caste. A fundamental democracy ran through society. Save for a
+few of the Guards regiments, the army was officered by poor men. The
+Cossacks’ officers were chosen from among their own people and were
+state-trained. In the knapsack of every soldier was Skobelov’s baton;
+in the desk of every chinovnik, Witte’s portfolio.
+
+So stood the bureaucratic edifice, complete in itself. Here and there
+a popular embellishment was added, perhaps to strengthen, often to
+conceal; but in grim reality it formed no part of the structure. Thus
+the Russian Empire finished out the nineteenth century. With the
+twentieth the system had come to trial for its stewardship.
+
+In the great reckoning are elements both of good and of evil. The
+liberation of the serfs and all that went with the emancipation stand
+as a credit. It is a further vast credit that Russia has made, held
+together, and civilized an empire of over eight and a half million
+square miles, with a population of over one hundred and forty million
+souls; that to the internal development of her splendid resources
+the Government has vigorously set its hand, seeking for her rivers
+unhampered navigation, for her canals larger passage, for her deserts
+great irrigation works. Already the Siberian Railway links the Baltic
+and Pacific; already on the southeast the tracks creep to the threshold
+of Kashmir, where some four hundred miles separate the Russian lines
+from those of British India. This gap once crossed, Calcutta becomes
+but eleven days distant from London. It is still another credit
+that, despite Slavic limitations and financial loss, in the face
+of Western invention and competitive leveling, the country of the
+cheapest telegraph and the cheapest railway rate was until recently
+not America but Russia. It is a credit that the public land has been
+put so efficiently and generously at the disposal of the people, that
+any emigrant expressing a genuine purpose of settling will be given,
+wherever he may select it in Siberia, a liberal homestead, and he will
+be conveyed to it over the Trans-Siberian Railway for a sum less than
+the cost. He is not only allotted his homestead, but he is supplied
+with seed, grain, tools, and advances for his first years of marketing.
+
+It is again a credit that the governmental attitude to the industrial
+classes has not been one of oppression. True, work-hours are
+unrighteously long and certain strikes have been put down arbitrarily.
+Still the Russian labor laws and arrangements for the settlement of
+labor difficulties are in many features conspicuously statesmanlike and
+just. Some years since, a body of Belgian miners, fifty or more, with
+their families, were transferred from the collieries of the Meuse to
+the Donetz Basin. Recently these miners, at a meeting of the directors’
+board, presented a memorial to this purport: “How happy are we who are
+no more in Belgium, but who live and work in Russia! No longer must we
+support the socialistic committee. On the day of pay we put our hands
+in our pockets and have it for our wives and children.”
+
+The other side of the ledger is, however, not without weighty items.
+While no system of government can legislate prosperity, the public
+welfare is rightfully the first test, as it should be the first
+consideration, of an administration. Despite her immense territories,
+her vast mineral deposits, her fertile soils, her navigable rivers, her
+abundant timber, all the natural sources of national wealth, Russia
+is very poor. The peasants have more than doubled in number since the
+allotment of communal fields that followed the emancipation, and they
+are in general want. Vast stretches, whole provinces, are subject to
+periodic famine. Millions of the people are constantly on the brink of
+starvation. Manufacturing is, as a rule, desultory, undeveloped, and,
+in general, unprofitable.
+
+The per-capita wealth of Russia is estimated at but two hundred and
+seventy-five dollars, as compared to Germany’s seven hundred dollars,
+France’s eleven hundred and twenty dollars, and England’s twelve
+hundred and thirty-five dollars. The savings-bank deposits reported
+for all Russia average but $2.75 per man, while in France they average
+$20.82, in England $15.00, and in Austria $15.68.
+
+The degree of administrative responsibility for this condition is
+of course not to be definitely laid down. Much manifestly is due to
+natural conditions, national character, and historic handicaps; and
+some of the resultants would be the same under any administrative
+policy. Russia in her great area has had a sparse population. She
+has not, like her sister nations, and preëminently America, been
+able to lay the rest of the world under teeming contribution to her
+citizenship. She has had only her natural increase, and no such
+record as that of the United States has been possible. The Slav is
+not commercial, but agricultural. He has remained poor, and has had
+relatively very small resources to devote to what have proved our two
+greatest developing forces--internal improvement and education.
+
+It is, however, a matter directly involved in government that, with
+this low standard of national living, there is the correlated fact of
+extremely high national expenditure. An immense budget of two billion
+roubles, ordinary expenditure, is annually met, which the war-loans
+raised to a total, for some years, of over three billions.
+
+[Illustration: DRAGOON CONSTABLE RUSSIAN TYPES]
+
+It is the general belief that a large part of the public funds is
+frittered away in needless waste, with multitudes of idling clerks
+and sinecure officials. Granting the benefit of doubt, assuming
+that the Administration’s corruption and inefficiency are exaggerated,
+and supposing that the public money is in the main honestly and
+productively spent, it is still a very serious question if any public
+service rendered by the agents of Government can correspond to or
+justify the immense burden of taxation heaped upon a people whose
+economic distress is so terrible.
+
+The weight of the tax-levy crushing the peasants, whose improvident
+habits aggravate their want, is, for most, unescapable unless they
+follow the emigrant’s road to Siberia. The rate-gatherer can take
+anything the mujik has, save his last coat, his last horse, his
+seed-grain for next year. He is, with fateful frequency, forced to hire
+himself out to whoever will use his services, and this during the brief
+summer season which is so supremely essential if he is to attend to his
+own crops and fields. One landowner relates that he has seen paid an
+average of five roubles ($2.50) a month for farm-laborers, including
+men, women, and children, during June, July, and August.
+
+Under the old system the method of rate-levy on the “souls” in a family
+weighed inequitably. Census revision was delayed in one instance,
+personally related, by over twenty-three years. A family taxed,
+twenty-three years before, on a father, four brothers, and two adult
+sons,--seven souls,--was still assessed for seven males, whether the
+family had increased to twenty, or been reduced to one. Each member of
+the household was responsible for the total.
+
+It is related that whole families in Samara, reduced by the fearful
+cholera epidemic of some years back from scores of men to a dozen or
+ten, had to leave their home-country for Siberia to escape the load of
+their dead brothers.
+
+Discussing the economic loss of the years of military service, one of
+the country nobles related an incident. He told of ordering the dead
+leaves and branches cleared out of his lake. Ordinarily, he said, he
+did not go near the work or let the peasants come near his château, for
+there was a good deal of class-hostility where he lives. But he was
+interested in the lake because the branches were killing some specially
+cherished fish, so he went down through the woods and was surprised
+to see nobody working. All the men were crowded round a peasant whom
+he had cited as an example of those who, though unlettered, had great
+capacity. This man had served seven years in the navy and could neither
+read nor write, a commentary upon what the service training was. He was
+declaiming on politics, and the squire stepped behind a tree, for the
+peasant spoke musically and well. The man was telling about his naval
+service: “Seven years on the boats I have been, brothers, and every
+three months I got ninety kopecks to buy a string for the crucifix and
+to cut my hair. I had no money for tobacco, none to send home to my
+wife in all this time, and I came home without a kopeck. Seven years
+of my life I have given to the Czar. What has he given me? What has he
+given you?” The landowner stepped from behind the tree and faced the
+group of startled peasants. “You have heard, your honor? Well it is
+true, it is true!”
+
+The measure which under existing land-conditions would most directly
+raise the standard of life is the improvement of the mediæval
+agricultural system, and this depends upon the intelligence of the
+people at large. Scientific farming needs technical knowledge, yet of
+the great sums collected, a very small portion goes to education. The
+Nation spends for it but forty-three million roubles, the Semstvos but
+twenty million roubles, or together one eighth of the military budget.
+
+A tedious, inefficient course in Slavonic, with the prayer-books as
+text, a smattering of modern Russian, sometimes mathematics as far
+as multiplication and division,--this is the state education of the
+privileged few of the peasants’ children. Whatever small amount of real
+knowledge is gained is quickly submerged in the ocean of ignorance at
+home. The percentage of illiteracy is very great. The record gives
+Switzerland five, Germany seven, Great Britain ten, France fifteen,
+Russia eighty-four.
+
+It is argued that for the bulk of the population, under existing
+material conditions, schools are of small use. The lack, in the
+general poverty, of the very primary materials,--paper, pencils,
+books; of proper shoes and clothes; the unsuitableness of the houses
+of the peasants as places for the children to prepare their lessons
+in, with no spot to put their books or to do their tasks and with no
+available light--all these things strike at the very root of education.
+The population must be raised economically to the point where the
+elementals of existence are assured, before the incidental costs of
+schools can be met by the peasantry. However, there has been coming
+to Russia during the last generation, in a great wave, the kind of
+education that made the American West--the education of expansion, of
+the founding of towns, the planting of new industries, the building of
+new railroads, the opening of better navigation-routes, the enlistment
+of foreign capital; all the intelligence and enlightenment that attends
+a real industrial, commercial, and material quickening.
+
+Beyond these social and economic factors a large count is set against
+the bureaucratic system for the conduct of administration. The
+suppression of personal liberty, of freedom of speech, the abuse of
+power by arbitrary officials, remorseless repression, ruthlessly
+carried out, racial oppression, frightful cruelty in the prisons and
+exile stations;--it is a terrible indictment that has been drawn. The
+close of the Japanese War opened a new “Smutnoe Vremya,” or time of
+trouble. Industrial wars, riots in Baku, uprisings in the Caucasus,
+seizure of cities by Social Democrats,--so went the disturbances
+throughout Russia, the white terror above grappling with the red terror
+beneath.
+
+The situation which the forces of order were required to meet was
+extraordinary. The balance-wheel of the human mind, and all sense of
+proportion among classes of the people, seemed at times to be lost.
+Barbaric as the administration condemnations undoubtedly were, the
+individuals were not infrequently innocent only by curious standards.
+In a broad view one must confess that on both sides were rights and
+wrongs. The system, far more than individuals, was at fault. But
+while a system so linked to violence and oppression could not longer
+be suffered, the way out could not come through yielding to men in
+insurrection.
+
+Salvation lay along the path that the Emperor opened. His rescript of
+October 17, 1905, proclaimed a National Duma.
+
+The pregnant clauses in the summons to a national legislature were
+these:--
+
+ We direct the Government to carry out our inflexible will in the
+ following manner:--
+
+ 1. To grant the population the immutable foundation of civic liberty
+ based on real inviolability of the person and freedom of conscience,
+ speech, union, and association.
+
+ 2. To call to participation in the Duma those classes of the
+ population now completely deprived of electoral rights.
+
+ 3. To establish it as an immutable rule that no law can come into
+ force without the approval of the State Duma.
+
+The ebullition of sentiment that followed these decrees was
+extraordinary. All the bitterness and discontent that had weltered
+through the years of distress were metamorphosed into a glowing hope.
+Ambition and aspiration became a fervor. The delirium went electrically
+through all classes during the few following weeks of uncensored press
+and unfettered meetings. The educated were fed with every sort of essay
+upon what would be the result of the new order, and exhortation to keep
+spread the young wings for national ascension. Among the unlettered
+peasants, pictures circulated showing glorified cartoons of the risen
+Russia. One of the most widely distributed of these celebrated the
+Imperial Svoboda Manifesto. The genius of the Slav stood forth: one
+hand rested on a tablet marked “Zakon” (Law), the other unfurled a
+banner inscribed in blazing red letters, “Svoboda” (Liberty), below
+which followed freedom of speech, of forming associations, of holding
+meetings, of religion, the inviolability of the home, and amnesty for
+political prisoners. Peasants and workmen were grouped around, and
+above them stood an heroic figure representing the Duma which was to
+halo all national activity with law. The rising sun, illumining the
+Tauride Palace, cast its glow and glamour over the prophecy.
+
+The ukase had gone forth to give the widest representation at the
+polls. The command was followed out in a system by which every class
+had its own deputies in the nominating colleges that elected the Duma
+members. Among the peasantry each _volost_ had two deputies; every
+thousand industrials had one, the nobility, the salaried clerks,
+the bourgeois in the cities, the Cossack stanitzas, the boards of
+trade, the universities, the Holy Synod, the aboriginal Buriat
+tribesmen,--each had special representation. Uninterfered with for the
+most part by officialdom, all Russia crowded to the polls, every man
+believing that his ideal was now, at last, on the eve of realization.
+The peasants who called for land, the workmen who wished for higher
+wages, the Intellectuals with their slogan of universal education, the
+submerged races with dreams of reborn nationalities, the ambitious with
+visions of power, the venal with hopes of plunder, each and all thought
+their hopes were to spring at once into the actual and the visual.
+
+In such a fever-time the men to whom official service meant the slow
+toilsome improvement of conditions by self-sacrificing devotion to the
+routine of administration, who could offer as pre-nomination pledges
+only earnest study and conscientious action on the legal matters
+presented, were passed by in the hot aspiring canvass for delegates.
+Those who believed all things and promised all things, whose fervency
+of expectation fed the universal hope, whose preaching held that, the
+way once cleared, Russia could at a bound reach the plane to which
+other countries had so long and toilsomely struggled, those of fiery
+faith which would consume every obstacle--these were the men whom the
+people ratified and whom the nation sent to St. Petersburg for the
+first Duma.
+
+It was a band of hot heads and eager hearts that assembled, echoing
+their constituents’ desires, crying for all things and at once. They
+were saturated with the history of the French Revolution, they felt
+confident that their coming meant the end of the old régime, and belief
+in their own power was the pledge of the future. Their first official
+act threw down the gauntlet to autocracy. In the reply to the Crown,
+passed during their first day’s session, the final paragraphs read:--
+
+ The most numerous part of the population, the hard-working peasants,
+ impatiently await the satisfaction of their acute want of land; and
+ the first Russian State Duma would be recreant in its duty were it
+ to fail to establish a law to meet this primary want by resorting to
+ the use of lands belonging to the State, the Crown, the Royal family,
+ all monastic and state lands, also private landed property, on the
+ principles of eminent domain.
+
+ The spiritual union of Russia’s different nationalities is possible
+ only by meeting the needs of each one of them, and by preserving
+ and developing their national characteristics. The Duma will try to
+ satisfy these wants.
+
+ Sirs, the Duma expects of you full political amnesty, as the first
+ pledge of mutual understanding and mutual agreement between the Czar
+ and his people.
+
+It was apparent that if these clauses did not contemplate the
+confiscation of private property, which was openly advocated by the
+peasant deputies, and the substitution of a “spiritual union” of
+Russia’s subsidiary peoples for the real hegemony, there was fair
+_prima-facie_ evidence for thinking that they did. While a general
+amnesty would render less than justice to a large number of citizens,
+it would cover as well the bomb-shell anarchists, whose imprisonment
+was as necessary to the protection of society as that of any other
+dangerous criminals. The tenor of these demands, the speeches of the
+deputies, and the avowed desires of their majority, brought matters
+to a crisis. Not alone the autocracy, but national unity, and the
+jurisdiction of the courts, were called openly and violently into
+question. When such a challenge is offered a government, it must answer
+or abdicate.
+
+Unostentatiously, the Imperial Administration poured troops into St.
+Petersburg from Kronstadt and the northern garrisons. The governors at
+Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw, and the big industrial centres were notified
+to concentrate their loyal regiments. The whole country was mapped
+out like a checker-board. It was now only a question of when the
+authorities would act.
+
+On the night of July 8, the troops in St. Petersburg were called to
+arms. They marched with machine-like precision to appointed stations
+throughout the city. With the dawn every strategic point was held by
+the soldiery, and a battalion ringed about the deserted Duma hall. In
+the silence was read the imperial rescript. The first Duma had ceased
+to exist.
+
+The dissolution of this national parliament had come as a stroke of
+lightning. The venerable representative Petrunkevitch told how he was
+awakened at five in the morning with the news that the city was under
+martial law and that soldiers with fixed bayonets were at the Duma
+doors. Hurried consultations were held with groups of colleagues,
+and finally the word was passed to meet at Viborg in Finland. At the
+little inn there, the pressing crowd of one hundred and sixty-nine
+fugitive deputies signed their manifesto. It called for the cessation
+of tax-payments, the refusal of conscription, and reclaimed the freedom
+of Russia. But the insurrection, the uprising in their support! Not a
+regiment came to assist them, not a city rallied to their call, not a
+Mir responded. For a few weeks the signers were free. Then the police
+took them, one by one.
+
+Dully unprotesting, the public received the news of the dissolution
+of the Duma and the arrest of the deputies. The majority of Russians
+did not want disunion, did not want the overthrow of vested rights.
+Each wanted some specialty of his own. Yet here was the resultant of
+each constituency’s crystallized desires. The people had accepted the
+leadership of those who had held out great hopes, impotently. The
+Government had crushed the men whose power meant social and economic,
+as well as administrative, revolution. In the blow it had perforce
+shattered the dreams as well.
+
+[Illustration: THE TVERSKAIA GATE LOUBIANSKAIA PLACE STREET SCENES IN
+MOSCOW]
+
+Humiliated by the contemptuous condemnation of their chosen
+representatives, bitterly disillusioned, the people at large stolidly
+acquiesced in the extinction.
+
+The voting for the second Duma, which followed some months later,
+was almost perfunctory. Those who had chronically wished to agitate,
+and those put forward by the Administration in an effort to pack the
+membership, composed the bulk of the deputies. Moderates, hopeful of
+progress with order, stayed at home, disgusted with both sides. The
+result was a second violent, wrangling Duma, offending like the first,
+and in its turn ignominiously snuffed out.
+
+The year 1907 saw universal disappointment, cynicism, and skepticism.
+In the literature, the lassitude of the nation was shown, and morbid
+despair reflected the thwarted hopes, the agonies, the confusion of the
+people. The bitterness in the _Lazarus_ of Andreyev, the decadence in
+the _Sanin_ of Artzybashev, mirrored the people’s mood, and the shadow
+of a dark destiny brooded over all. To fill the cup, the reaction,
+coldly triumphant, was able to bring the members of the first national
+parliament before the bar for high treason in signing the Viborg
+Manifesto.
+
+In the stifling Hall of Justice in St. Petersburg, like a resurrection
+of the first Duma, sat the hundred and sixty-nine signers, grouped
+as of old by party affiliations. Each man was called upon to justify
+his actions. Many had signed the Viborg document in the belief that
+the people would rise in bloody rebellion, and they issued what was,
+to their fevered view, advice of moderation. One deputy after another
+stood erect to answer for his deeds. If the men had been carried
+from liberty into license, at least they had been fired by intense
+belief in themselves and in their mission. Impressive were the solemn
+declarations of those who expected nothing less than long imprisonment
+for speaking out, now, a defiance to the ruling power. It was currently
+rumored that should the former President of the Duma, Dolgoroukov,
+justify his action, his penalty was to be three years’ imprisonment;
+the others would serve one; while liberty was reported to be the bribe
+for any who would confess a fault. Yet almost to a man these old
+deputies rose to declare that they still stood by all that they had
+done.
+
+“I did not care, and do not care if our action was unconstitutional. We
+found that we must rely,” said Nabokov, “on the highest law, the will
+of the people.”
+
+Kakoshtin, of the Cadet Party, and a professor in Moscow University,
+declared: “Whatever fate awaits us, it will be nothing compared to
+the sufferings of our predecessors who have fallen in the fight for
+liberty.”
+
+Three members of the “Group of Toil” declared that the first Duma would
+be an encouragement to the people to overthrow the present system.
+
+Mourontzev, and Prince Dolgoroukov were there, leading members of the
+first Duma. Petrunkevitch ended his speech: “If you open for us the
+doors of the prison, we will quietly enter with the knowledge that we
+have fulfilled a duty to the Fatherland.”
+
+Burning words these, but they waked not an echo. The Administration
+was in complete control of the situation. Repression was the order
+of the day, repression as widespread and efficient as in the days of
+Nicholas I; the autocracy, buttressed by an army which, however lacking
+in discipline and supposedly honeycombed by disaffection, nevertheless
+rallied still to the command and service of the master.
+
+At this time there was issued the call for a third Duma. As Prime
+Minister sat cold Stolypin, whose reputation as a governor-general was
+the reverse of liberal. He had risen by virtue of rigid efficiency. His
+best friends did not know his beliefs. He had dissolved both the first
+and second assemblies, and had done his best to pack the third. “I want
+a Duma that will work, not talk,” he declared.
+
+The murmurers said that the Russian Parliament had become a farce; that
+the administrative officers were following to the best of their ability
+instructions from St. Petersburg to deliver a roster of safe men; that
+those who had agitated unwisely were being removed from the likelihood
+of candidature; that the Senate, with its membership of retired
+officials, had so construed each provision of the election law that
+the unquiet classes were as far as possible disfranchised; that every
+influence was being used to make the third a “dummy Duma,” hopelessly
+manipulated into the reactionary camp.
+
+Throughout this time of shattered ideals and discouragement, a very
+small band of real believers still held high the torch of faith. Most
+prominent among them was Alexander Goutchkov, he who among the Moscow
+Constitutional Democrats (the “Cadets” of the earlier times) had in a
+critical Polish debate of the party spoken and voted alone for a united
+Russia.
+
+When at length the third Duma had assembled, the so-called Octobrists
+or Moderates, who had a small plurality, prepared a reply to the Speech
+from the Throne. Very respectful it was, with no demand for general
+amnesty or suggestions of confiscation or national devolution. It read
+in part:--
+
+ We wish to devote all our ability, knowledge, and experience to
+ strengthening the form of government which was given new life by the
+ Imperial will; to pacify the Fatherland, to assure respect for the
+ laws, to be a buttress for the greatness and power of indivisible
+ Russia.
+
+Unexceptionable, this, to the higher powers, save that in the preamble
+in the original draft, the Czar’s historic title of “Autocrat” had not
+been given him. A debate followed, and brought about the declarations
+which defined the parties of the third Duma. Bishop Mitrophane,
+of the Right, or reactionary party, rose. He said in the name of
+his group that the Address to the Throne must contain the phrase
+“Autocrat of all the Russias.” Lawyer Plevako seconded, threatening
+to secede if the proper title were not incorporated. Paul Milyoukov
+spoke hotly for the opposing Cadets, asking whether the country was
+or was not under a constitution. He declared the new election law to
+be contrary to the original ukase and an act of force. Others of the
+Left, among them orator Maklakov of the Cadets, declaimed against
+the election law by which this Duma was constituted. They were not
+politic, these spokesmen, but harsh and dogmatic, yielding none
+of the courtier-respect that makes up for so much absence of real
+yielding. For the Octobrists, Alexander Goutchkov led the debate. His
+speech revealed that they operated, not with the bludgeon, but with
+the Damascus blade. They were of flexible obstinacy and opportunism,
+stirring up no sleeping dogs, bending to rise again. Goutchkov slipped
+adroitly into his speech the disputed word constitution, thus: “We do
+not believe that the Czar’s power has been diminished. The Emperor
+has become free, for the Constitution has delivered him from court
+camarillas and the hierarchy of chinovniks.” Thanks largely to his
+tact, the Octo brists won. The Address, without “Autocrat,” was passed
+by a vote of two to one. But it passed at the cost of self-separation
+by the right wing of the reactionaries, who withdrew.
+
+The answer of the Administration came sharply from Prime Minister
+Stolypin:--
+
+ The manifesto of imperial power has borne witness at all times to the
+ people that the autocratic power, created by history and the free will
+ of the monarch, constitutes the most precious benefit of the political
+ state of Russia; for it is this power and this free will that are
+ alone capable, as the tutelary source of existing constitutions, of
+ saving Russia in times of trouble, of guaranteeing the state from the
+ dangers that threaten it, and of bringing back the country to the way
+ of order and historic truth.
+
+He called upon the Chamber to incorporate the recognition of the
+“Autocracy.”
+
+A hundred members protested. Many of the Cadets walked out. To the
+Octobrists, barely a quorum, fell the humiliating duty of recalling
+their own address and of inserting, despite the scorn, the fateful
+word. So shaken was the group itself by the conflict that of its one
+hundred and sixty members but ninety-five united in the caucus that
+elected officers and committee members. Alexander Goutchkov was chosen
+chairman, Baron Meyendorf, Priest Bjeloussov, and Radsjauko, officers.
+Among the heads of committees were Prince Wollanski, and Peasant
+Kusovkov. In spite of the stigma of reaction popularly imposed upon
+them, these were not unrepresentative men.
+
+The distracted Duma got slowly under way, and the Prime Minister
+brought before them his proposed policy of administration.
+
+M. Stolypin’s address to the Duma, November 16, 1907, stated that:--
+
+ 1. The destructive movements of the party of the extreme Left have
+ resulted in brigandage and anarchy. Order will be the first duty of
+ the Government.
+
+ 2. Agrarian relief is the first necessity, and this by a system of
+ small proprietors.
+
+ 3. Local self-government and administrative reforms will be formulated
+ and presented to the Duma.
+
+Business got centred on these practical subjects. Discussions as to
+whether or not there was an autocracy gave place to famine-relief
+measures and railway-rate studies. The absenting delegates of the Left
+and Right, who had retreated to their tents in the wrangle over the
+Czar’s titles, and had left the forlorn little band of constructive
+Octobrists to carry on the work of legislation, now returned. The
+proceedings began to take parliamentary form.
+
+The Budget came on, the Ministers of the Government presenting their
+projects for discussion. In the heat of debate, the Minister of
+Finance, M. Kakovtsev, exclaimed, “Thank God, we have no parliament
+yet!” The fact that an Imperial Minister was presenting his budget to
+an elected assembly showed the reality, but the war on names rose
+up afresh. The Duma officially declared the Minister’s expression
+unfortunate. He threatened to resign unless the house apologized.
+The Left again exploded in outcries, called out that the Duma was a
+farce, threw in their votes as more fuel for the flame of discord, and
+deserted the hall when they were in the minority. Still the little band
+of moderates chose the self-abnegating, unspectacular part, and gave
+the apology that avoided a crisis.
+
+But now came up a matter wherein the dispute was not over a name or a
+title, but a reality. The Government, upheld by the Czar, the Court,
+and much public sympathy, proposed a programme for a new navy. It
+called for the immediate allocation of one hundred and eleven million
+roubles, and the expenditure in ten years, of over a billion roubles.
+In the state of the country this entailed a fearful burden, perhaps the
+loss of the gold standard. The outwardly supine members, in rows like
+grenadiers, voted against the project. By 194 to 78 it was lost.
+
+The Minister of Finance shortly afterwards undertook to issue railway
+bonds without the Duma’s consent. With a rebuke, for which this time no
+apology was asked or given, his estimate was cut down by one rouble,
+and voted. The Amur Railway was authorized, though three hundred
+million roubles are its prospective toll. The sole remaining Pacific
+port of Russia, Vladivostok, is thereby linked with the Irkutsk and
+Trans-Baikal districts of Siberia, and so doubly insured against an
+eastern enemy.
+
+After a lengthy session the third Duma adjourned, but not by violence.
+It could show as results two hundred bills passed, a budget thoroughly
+scrutinized and ratified, and much faithful work in committee. More
+important still, the Parliament, by forbearance and patience, had
+made itself a part of the machinery of government, and had shown that
+a national legislature did not mean expropriation, and a partitioned
+Russia.
+
+At the end, fiery Maklakov of the Cadets, he who early in the session
+had cried out that all was a farce, admitted that “the third Duma has
+lost none of its rights, it is systematically extending them.” All
+honor to those whose self-suppression and patience won.
+
+The thin edge of the wedge had been driven in under absolutism by
+the third Duma, but little could one foresee that a half-dozen quiet
+blows would, during the fourth Duma’s session, bring autocracy to the
+greatest crisis it has encountered since it decreed a legislature. The
+heart of the situation lies in a naval bill submitting to the Duma
+matters which the Constitution reserves to the control of the Emperor.
+Strangely, too, the Czar is himself the abettor, if not the originator,
+of the supplanting.
+
+In May, 1906, the Czar decided to create the “Naval General Staff.”
+One hundred thousand roubles a year were needed, and the money must
+be sought of the Duma. The first two assemblies being so violent, the
+measure lay in abeyance, to the great injury of the service. Since
+the regeneration of the navy was one of the measures made painfully
+necessary by the Japanese War, M. Stolypin had a bill drafted, in three
+clauses: one ratifying the creation of the “Naval General Staff,” a
+second furnishing an annual sum for its operation, a third supplying a
+fund for contingencies. No feature of the creation, save the financial
+aspect, came at all within the legal jurisdiction of the Duma. Yet the
+Premier had the organization itself brought before the Assembly.
+
+The deputies criticised the institution, modified it, sliced the
+estimates. Assuming the judicial functions of a court of last
+appeal, they voted the money and passed the bill, which M. Stolypin
+then submitted to the upper chamber. In view of the overstepping of
+domain, the bill was, after a lucid exposition of the law by the
+ex-Controller-General, thrown out.
+
+The matter was next submitted to the Czar himself, who authorized
+its reintroduction in the Duma. A second time the measure was passed
+and sent to the Council. M. Durnovo, ex-Minister, ablest of the
+Conservatives, and candidate for the Premiership, made a notable
+speech. He proved clearly the trespass upon the rights reserved to the
+Crown, showed that such precedents would build up an artificial claim
+which could not later be combated, while the allowance of participation
+in one instance gave a warrant for demanding interference in any and
+every proposal. The bill was a blow at the very heart of monarchical
+government, and a degree of democracy not allowed even in republican
+France. But, defiantly, M. Stolypin held his ground. The anomaly was
+presented of Conservatives decrying the Premier for undermining the
+dynasty, with the Emperor himself supporting the culprit. Thus has the
+former government minority been converted into a majority,--the measure
+passed by the small margin of twelve.
+
+The reactionaries have bitter feud with this Premier. He has, it is
+allowed, so enlarged the functions of the deputies by handing over
+to them, one after another, the vital prerogatives of the autocracy,
+that no later action can ever disestablish the Duma. The Empire is
+now governed through a unified cabinet; the important prerogative of
+appointing the governors-general has been exercised by the Premier,
+rather than by the Czar, since June 16, 1906. Russia has marched far on
+its upward way.
+
+Great, however, is the task ahead. Of all that the Duma can achieve
+the country has supreme need. The agrarian question calls aloud for
+solution, and the peasants’ future depends on land-relief. The Emperor
+has given instructions for the sale of most of the Crown domains and
+those of the Imperial Family. The nobles are being encouraged to sell
+to the tenants, on notes guaranteed by the Imperial land bank. Firm
+and able hands must guide this improvement, promoting the division
+of estates left to run wild, but avoiding the pitfalls of threatened
+property-rights.
+
+Individual enterprise must be awakened, which will in the end bring
+about more scientific rotation and intensive farming. The old system
+leaves fallow thirty-three per cent of the arable land--an area equal
+to the whole ploughed acreage of the United States. In western Europe
+but seven per cent is fallow, and the value of the harvest per acre
+in Russia is less than a third that of Germany. The policy adopted in
+the Agrarian Law of November 9, 1906, for the gradual breaking-up of
+the communistic Mirs, and the division of the common lands, at the
+villagers’ option, into freehold plots, is a wise one. In 1907, the
+year following the law’s promulgation, 2617 peasants, in the government
+of Ekaterinoslav had become individual proprietors. Under the Land Act
+of 1909 one million farms had been taken up for private ownership in
+the first six months of the law’s operation.
+
+Emigration to the vast untilled fields of Siberia should be carried on
+with all the efficiency of which the Government is capable. That this
+is in progress, the figure of four hundred and ninety-one thousand
+emigrants for the first seven months of 1908 attests. Fifty-nine
+thousand homeseekers were sent by villages which wished to emigrate
+thither _en masse_. But care and providence must follow the movement,
+and insure that the settlers are equipped with the means for safe and
+permanent establishment.
+
+The race-question calls also for a righteous solution. The future must
+bring the repeal of the old bureaucratic laws of Jewish exclusion, and
+end the vicious circle of oppression and terrorism against this much
+wronged people. The chaotic finances of the Empire must be regulated
+by years of patient work, such as that of the last Duma, through whose
+agency there is now, for the first time in twenty-two years, a budget
+surplus.
+
+The Duma members, to whom these all-important tasks fall, must plough
+the fields in all their armor. The autocracy is not their greatest
+enemy. The history of parliamentary government demonstrates again and
+again that in an ordered community authority gradually reverts to the
+national representative assembly. Little by little power slips away
+from the throne. In England, in 1686, the reign of James II could show
+Jeffreys’ Bloody Assizes; yet five years later the Parliament was in
+full and permanent control of the government.
+
+The preservation of the country from the nether chaos is, however, a
+mightier problem. Before the ship of state rides safe in the harbor
+of true representative government there must come a critical period
+when the administrative powers are not firmly clasped by the hand of
+either autocracy or duma. This hiatus-time, when iron repression ceases
+and sober self-rule begins, is yet to come. Those who must tide the
+nation over it are such as those pathetically few Octobrists, unpopular
+because of their bending, craven-seeming policy, and because of the
+unfree elections that gave them place. Will such a group, when the
+crucial hour strikes, be allowed peaceably to pilot the vessel? Or will
+red-handed revolution wrench from their grip the tiller, bereft of the
+guidance of autocracy? Is it to be evolution or revolution?
+
+One cannot deny that a free election to-day would throw out the toiling
+Octobrists and put in a membership like that of the first Duma. These
+constructive, unvisionary men are not loved, nor is their progress
+likely to make them so. They exist as the ruling factor only by
+virtue of election manipulations and legal interpretations. With this
+essentially temporary support taken away, the group would be powerless,
+for every indication shows that the people would not support them or
+their policies.
+
+[Illustration: PEDDLER POLICEMAN RUSSIAN TYPES]
+
+Even Moscow, their former stronghold, fell away in the 1909 elections.
+There is throughout the country an undercurrent of fierce demand
+for an immediate millennium, with Liberty as the guiding grace and
+some particular party as its escort. A song that has become almost
+an anthem, “Spurn with us that ancient tyrant,” chanted softly by
+the school-boys to the tune of the _Marseillaise_,--this tells the
+tale of what is in the air, and in the blood of the people. The most
+poorly-suppressed desire is insatiate to hack away with one blow
+the abuses that have, through the centuries, rooted themselves deep
+in Russian society. The experience of the various revolutionary and
+terrorist movements proves that their votaries are capable of daring
+any death for their creeds, and of swimming to their imaged goal in
+a sea of blood. Let the conservative Octobrist group once succeed
+in concentrating power in the Duma, and then let a free election
+substitute for them such men as were in the first Duma, and the Russian
+Revolution has become a fact.
+
+It is a commonplace to compare the situation with that of France in
+1790. There is, however, one fundamental difference. France possessed
+a numerous and economically powerful bourgeoisie, from whom political
+rights had been withheld. This class included many strong men moved
+to a unity of political desire. They were able in the first place to
+work up into a place of dominance. After the interval of supplanting
+terrorism, they retook by their own efforts the power which, save for
+the periods of despotic militarism, they have since maintained. In
+Russia the conservative middle-class is numerically very weak, and
+its representatives are unable to seize and hold control themselves.
+They possess it now only precariously, by the external propping of
+weakening absolutism. Will Russia’s Octobrists, after performing the
+function of filching power from the autocracy, meet, at the hands of a
+new Robespierre, the fate of the high-idealed Gironde?
+
+One cannot yet answer. But whatever the harvest, the work of the third
+and fourth Dumas, carried out in harmony with the Imperial Ministers,
+has shown that the last dread arbitrament of social war need not
+come. Revolution is the final recourse, to be undertaken only if a
+political and social situation is so desperate that all other means
+must fail. Such is not the case in Russia. There are administrative
+abuses there. But governmental restrictions press rather less than one
+might imagine upon the plain workaday people; and compared to those
+of other nations, they are not exceptional save in degree. It is the
+educated and so-called upper classes who complain. Taxes elsewhere than
+in Russia are burdensome and sure as death. Emigration to Siberia will
+give any peasant the legal privilege of escaping taxation, which in
+America is the prerogative of her absentee plutocracy alone. The exile
+system, dwindling for years past, has now been in effect abolished by
+the refusal of the Duma to make an appropriation for its continuance.
+The press-censorship is only the open operation of influences tacitly
+accepted elsewhere--such as in the United States left the Tweed Ring
+so long uncriticised. The much-condemned passport is actually of no
+more inconvenience than showing a railway ticket, and it does not come
+within “forty _sagenes_” of the custom-house inquisition which faces
+every American citizen on his return home.
+
+It is not an error to say that in many matters of individual liberty
+the Slav enjoys more than the American. In the treatment of subject
+nations, reliable and neutral witnesses declare that Russia does not
+approach the rigor of the Prussian bureaucracy in Alsace. Many of
+the Empire’s restrictions are those which obtained throughout Europe
+fifty years ago--abuses common to a certain stage of civilization,
+and of public opinion. These melt away in newer customs, for time
+is curing much. Once the chariot of progress is started, many evils
+right themselves in the natural and inevitable upward pressure, and
+many slough off unnoted. It is not so many years back that in America
+a black man could be deported to malarial lowlands more deadly than
+Siberia’s steppes; not so long ago that the English Parliament passed
+an act requiring all railway-trains to be preceded by a man carrying
+a red flag. Like the seignorial rights of Germany’s feudal states,
+anachronisms become outgrown, and fall away.
+
+In Russia, unfortunately, the onslaught against iniquitous human laws
+is overcarried into a blind charge against Nature’s laws, which no
+revolution can repeal. The protest against dire artificial abuses is
+mixed with a rebellion against the curse of Adam. It is the fearful
+fact of life that the destiny of the majority is anxiety, dependence
+for daily bread on other men, grinding incessant toil remunerated by
+a bare livelihood, a barring-back from the fullest personal capacity
+and possibilities through poverty, parentage, environment, and lack of
+opportunity. The forces of Nature and primal competition put so many
+limitations upon every one’s action that it is hard to say which are
+due to the tyranny of men, which are the handicaps born of the nature
+of things. The cry for deliverance is rising equally in the workhouses
+of Scotland, in France, where thirty-five per cent of the land is
+owned by great proprietors, in the slums of New York City, and in the
+rice-fields of Japan. A government under the present system can but do
+its best to develop men’s capacities, and to give them a fair deal. All
+that the best of modern societies has succeeded yet in securing to the
+mass of mankind is the chance to get their sons the education which
+will enable them to vanquish some of the limitations, security for the
+person, and protection from robbery of the cruder sort.
+
+Capacity and opportunity can come but by slow degrees. When one sees
+the numbers and the types in the villages, men of latent capacities
+undoubtedly, but swamped by the spirit of _nietchevo_ and with all
+their enterprise sapped in the stagnant communism of the Mir, he
+realizes the futility of a sudden change and the hopelessness of
+germinating by political pellet the leaven of progress in the hundred
+and forty millions.
+
+Rulers may be changed by revolution. But the real quickening of the
+people to their great future must come and is coming by the slow, sure
+way of evolution.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE STORY OF THE HORDES
+
+
+Among people so peaceful and subdued as are the latter-day Mongols,
+it is hard to realize that the race has had a past which in tradition
+at least goes back to the infancy of history. According to legend,
+the Chinese, the first reputed offspring of the Mongols, preceded by
+three hundred years Egypt’s earliest dynasty. They antedate Abraham’s
+assigned epoch by twenty-six generations. They claim to have continued
+before Marathon a longer time than has elapsed from the foundation of
+Rome to our own era. Yet they yield not even to the Romans preëminence
+of arms, for they won and ruled an empire in extent and population the
+greatest that has ever existed. Mongols have led the world’s mightiest
+armies; their hosts have carried the ox-hide banners over every great
+European state but Spain and England, and into every Asian country
+except Japan.
+
+That the march of Mongols down the long way of history has been so
+little appreciated is the sword’s obeisance to the pen. Save for the
+mendacious memoirs of Tamerlane, and a few Ouighour inscriptions in
+Central Asia, chronicles there are virtually none. So story has found a
+peg for the clipped tails of Alcibiades’ dogs, but scarcely a word for
+the deeds of those who won the world from the Yellow Sea to the Baltic,
+from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic. Only where the annals of the race
+have been written in the blood of the peoples they conquered are the
+events to be traced; only by assembling the alien and hostile evidences
+of the encircling nations can one shape the outline of Mongolia’s
+mighty past. History takes from the Confucian Book of Records the story
+of the earliest emigration to the east; from Herodotus the descent upon
+Mesopotamia and the struggle with Persia on the west. It gleans from
+the Chinese archives the doings of the Hiung-nu--the Huns; from the
+documents of the Byzantine Empire the descent on Europe of the same
+Mongolian “Scourge of God.” It culls from Arab historiographs the facts
+of the southern conquests of Genghis Khan; from Russian monasteries the
+tale of the northward march of his lieutenant Batui.
+
+The outlines of Mongolia’s career are patched and gathered from her
+frontier lands, yet silhouetted against the far recesses of time they
+grow steadily clearer and more colossal.
+
+In the year given by most as 2852 B.C., a tribe, whose earliest
+folk-lore and traditions point to an origin in the cradle of the Hordes
+near Urga, was pushing seaward down the valley of the Yellow River.
+Like the children of Israel, they were in constant conflict with the
+“barbarian” aborigines. This tribe became in due time the Chinese
+nation.
+
+Through fifteen hundred years the descendants of the invaders wrought
+out a dimly comprehended civilization on the banks of the Hoang-ho.
+Behind the imposing national legend, hallowed by the mist of centuries
+and focused by images of their five Hero Kings, one may see the fact
+of strong, brave rulers striving for their people’s advance. A real
+statesman was the original of the demigod Shinnung, “holy husbandman,”
+the introducer of agriculture, in whose honor every spring a furrow is
+ploughed in the soil of his temple courtyard by the Emperor of China.
+A father in the flesh was that “Nest-builder” who watched the birds
+construct their homes, and on that model taught his people to make
+the wattled and plastered huts one sees to-day. The mystic queller of
+disastrous inundations, Ta-yu, founder of the house of Hia, was the
+first hydraulic engineer, the dykes of whose successors embank the
+treacherous Yellow River. He it was who hung at his door a bell which
+any of his subjects might ring, to obtain immediate attention, and who
+would leave his rice to answer a call to secure justice. Kie likewise
+wears human lineaments, he who made a mountain of meat and a tank of
+wine, and then, to please a frail companion, had his courtiers eat and
+drink of them on all fours like cows. There is an historic background
+to the rising against the tyrant under Shang, who later offered himself
+as a human sacrifice for rain in time of famine, and a kindred note in
+the story of Chou-siu, sold to misfortunes by a woman whom he loved
+and immolating himself in his royal robes when the rebellious vassals
+were closing in around him.
+
+As the years pass, the histories become clearer and more direct,
+and the legendary aspect of exploits falls away. The Commentaries
+of Confucius deal with events as tangible and exact as Luther’s
+Reformation: they give the records of kings, and their daily doings two
+thousand years before our era.
+
+In 1122 B.C., with Wu-wang of the dynasty of Chu, the Chinese nation
+emerged as a civilized state. It was organized on a feudal system,
+not dissimilar to that built up by Japan’s powerful Daimios. Under
+this single dynasty the Celestial Kingdom began a period of 873 years
+of development, marked by the writings of the great sages. Lao-tse,
+founder of the Taoist religion, with its watchword of “Tao” (reason),
+but its quick degeneracy to forms and idol-worship, was the first of
+the Chinese philosophers in point of time. He was at the zenith of
+his repute around 530 B.C. He had a young disciple struggling through
+poverty to an education, “Master Kung,” known to us under the Latinized
+nomenclature of Jesuit missionaries as Confucius.
+
+The youth eagerly conned and meditated upon Lao-tse’s abstract
+speculations; but, unsatisfied, he began the studies and compilations
+from the ancients which to this day constitute the foundations of
+Chinese literature, etiquette, religion, ceremonial, and policy of
+government.
+
+Confucius was at once the world’s greatest college professor and its
+most influential editor. His school instructed three thousand pupils
+in ethics and etiquette. His writings have influenced more minds than
+those of any other human individual, and his supremacy is the triumph
+of uninspired work. His moral tone is lofty,--as witness his “Do not
+unto another what you would not have done to yourself,”--but his life
+brought no great new message.
+
+“I am a commentator, not an originator,” he said of himself.
+
+Mang-tse, “Master Mang,” whom we know as Mencius, followed “Master
+Kung” by one hundred years, applying, as a practical reformer, to the
+society of the day, the maxims of his enlightened philosophy, rebuking
+princes and giving to the Chinese world the last of its classics.
+
+In the glories of the Chu Dynasty, China, the earliest offshoot of the
+Mongol race, reached its literary and philosophic climax.
+
+In Turan, now called Turkestan, and in Mesopotamia, a western division
+of the Mongols appears about 640 B.C. It is making an incursion into
+the declining Empire of Assyria, over which Nebuchadnezzar is soon to
+rule. Nothing of detail remains, only the record of the devastating
+inroad over the mountain; but it locates at this date the southwestern
+frontier of Mongol dominion.
+
+Scythia, north of the Black Sea, reveals them next. The sketch
+is drawn by the master-pen of the Greek father of history in his
+description of the expedition of Darius, 506 B.C. “Having neither
+cities nor forts, they carry their dwellings with them wherever they
+go,” Herodotus writes, describing the nomad foes of the Great King. He
+relates that they are “accustomed, moreover, one and all of them, to
+shoot from horseback and to live not by husbandry, but on their cattle.”
+
+This was the enemy against whom Darius planned a campaign, whose
+object was to free from the menace of the Scythians north of the line
+of advance his prospective expedition for the conquest of Greece.
+From the bridge of boats over the Hellespont, beside which Miltiades
+watched, the great Persian marched to the Don River, the nomads always
+retreating. Darius finally challenged the Scythian king to stand and
+fight, or to accept him as suzerain. To this message Idonthyrsus
+replied: “This is my way, Persian. I never fear men or fly from them,
+nor do I now fly from thee. I only follow my common mode of life in
+peaceful years. We Scythians have neither towns nor cultivated lands,
+which might induce us, through fear of being taken or ravaged, to be in
+any hurry to fight with you. In return for thy calling thyself my lord,
+I say to thee, ‘Go weep!’”
+
+All the Asian steppes were open to the ever-retreating nomads: Darius
+was obliged to halt. Hereupon, the Scythian prince, understanding how
+matters stood, dispatched a herald to the Persian camp with presents
+for the king. They were “a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows.”
+
+Darius was at liberty to deduce whatever explanation he chose. He
+retreated, the Scythians hounding his army on. He found his bridge over
+the Bosphorus safe, and returned to Persia to prepare the Athenian
+expedition that ended at Marathon. The Scythians remained: they were
+left leading their flocks as of old over the unconquerable steppes.
+
+By these echoes of clashings with other nations, the first-known
+streams of Mongol outflow are dimly followed to the Caucasus Mountains
+and the Black Sea on the south and west, bounding Scythia; to the
+Hoang-ho Valley, in which were living the metamorphosed Chinese.
+
+But the rolling hills south of Lake Baikal, the source of the
+race-stream, still poured out fresh hordes, which periodically
+overflowed in roving nomad bands, harrying the plainsmen. While the
+feudal states of China struggled and fought among themselves, now
+coalescing under the “Wu-pa,” the five dictators, now uniting under a
+Prince Hwan of Shan-tung into a temporary Chinese Shogunate, there came
+down upon the fertile lands and populous cities wild horsemen, sparing
+none, burning, looting, riding away. “The Hiung-nu descended on us,”
+appears again and again in the history.
+
+At length, about 246 B.C., arose the short but glorious dynasty of
+Ts’in, under China’s king, Shi-hwang-ti. He was a man of action. He
+compacted a centralized monarchy from the many princedoms, drove back
+the nomad Hiung-nu beyond the Yellow River, built the Great Wall, and
+by his glorious exploits blazoned into Europe’s vocabulary, the word
+China--Ts’in.
+
+In Sz-ma Ts’ien’s history, a striking incident, revealing the Great
+Emperor’s limitations, is graphically told.
+
+“Li-se, the councillor, said, ‘Of old, the Empire was divided and
+troubled. There was nobody who could unite it. Therefore did many
+lords reign at a time. For this, the readers of books speak of old
+times to cry down these. They encourage the people to forge calumnies.
+Your subject proposes that all the official histories be burned.
+The books not proscribed shall be those of medicine, of divination,
+of agriculture. If any want to study laws, let them take the
+office-holders as masters.’”
+
+The decree was “approved.” The old books of annals, the Confucian
+Commentaries, the Odes and the Rituals, to the suppressed execration of
+the learned, fed the flames. The literati who protested were warmed,
+themselves, over the same fires.
+
+But despite Shi-hwang-ti’s signal defeat of the five coalescing tribes,
+and the eighty-two thousand severed heads; despite the victories in 214
+B.C., the Hiung-nu Empire grew in power, until it extended from Corea
+to Tibet.
+
+The Chinese “Han” Dynasty, even under the peasant-founder, Lin-pang,
+who had proven himself a thorough soldier, was constantly harried. The
+loss of the old literature continued to be mourned, which argues some
+plane of general appreciation. The Minister urged the recall of the
+Ts’in philosophers and the reproduction of the burned books.
+
+“Why have books?” said the Emperor. “I won the Empire on horseback.”
+
+“Can you keep it on horseback?” the Minister asked.
+
+The literati were eventually recalled. Their support was secured for
+the throne, and the Hiung-nu were kept back by art as well as by arms.
+
+At the Emperor’s death, his widow, the Dowager Empress Lu, of Borgian
+repute, was still harder pressed by the nomads. Meteh, the khan of the
+invading hordes outside the Wall, ventured to send to her a proposal of
+marriage and tariff-treaty couched in Rabelaisian poetry. “I wish to
+change what I have for what I have not.” He followed the verses with
+gifts of camels and carts and steppe ponies. In return his messengers
+insisted on a tribute of wadded and silk clothes, precious metals and
+embroidery, grain and yeast, as well as the intoxicating _samshu_.
+These royal presents and tribute were really a trading of goods, a
+barter, and citizens of lower rank, in the fairs beside the Wall, were
+carrying on an equivalent.
+
+More and more oppressive became the demands of the Mongols. A band of
+beautiful maidens, a very toll of the Minotaur, was exacted yearly.
+In one of the ancient Chinese poems a princess laments the fate that
+condemns her to a barbarian husband, a desolate land where raw flesh is
+to be her food, sour milk her drink, and the felt hut her palace.
+
+In 200 B.C., Sin, King of Han, marched against the Hiung-nu, only to
+retreat after heavy losses, with a third of his soldiers fingerless
+from the cold. Again, in 177 B.C., the Hiung-nu broke a treaty and
+raided across the Wall. A speech of the Emperor, in 162 B.C., is
+quoted in the Chinese chronicles: “These later times for several years
+the Hiung-nu have come in a crowd to exercise their ravages on our
+frontiers.”
+
+In 141 B.C., Nu-ti, the fifth of the House of Han, assembled a great
+army of one hundred and forty thousand Chinese, and marched against
+the Confederacy. This army, like that of Darius, penetrated far up
+into the nomad’s territory. Scarcely a quarter of them returned. But
+the invasion was not fruitless: the Hiung-nu gave allegiance to China.
+Later, in 138 B.C., largely to turn the left flank of the Horde, the
+Chinese advanced into Corea. In 119 B.C. another march to the district
+north of Tibet turned the nomads’ right flank. At length, in 100 A.D.,
+a more northerly Tatar clan, the Sien-pi, came down on the broken
+remnants of the Hiung-nu. After thirteen hundred years of power this
+tribe was destroyed. Of the scattered nomads some remained to unite
+with their victorious conquerors; some went south to Turkestan; a third
+group trekked north, and went over the great steppe. Subsequent to 100
+A.D., they are found on the east bank of the Volga, where during two
+centuries they temporarily disappear from history.
+
+The great Empire of China now existed unmolested by the Hordes, and
+after a few hard fights ruled Asia as far as the borders of Persia.
+Its outposts almost met those of the Empire of Rome. Both realms were,
+about this date, in peace and prosperity. There is even a record of
+trade between them, the Chinese annals telling of an expedition of
+King An-tun, or Antoninus, in 166 A.D., to Burmah, from which his
+factors reached the Middle Kingdom; and of glass, drugs, metals, and
+game obtained overland by way of Parthia from Ta-ts’in, the Great
+Empire. Pliny writes of silk, iron, furs, and skins, caravan-brought
+from China. So moved the two empires until 376 A.D., when Valens the
+Irresolute reigned in Byzantium. To him came messengers bringing word
+of great alarm from the Danube. The whole nation of Goths were on the
+bank, begging a refuge in Roman territory.
+
+“Wild enemies, from where we know not, are upon us!” they cried.
+
+The Goths, who were to subvert the declining empire, were escaping from
+before the western division of the old Hiung-nu. Valens had the Goths
+ferried over the Danube, and the Huns established themselves in the
+vacated places of what is now Austria.
+
+[Illustration: THE MIRACLE OF ATTILA’S REPULSE (From a painting by
+Raphael in Vatican)]
+
+Amid those hordes arose a leader destined to leave a memory in the
+sagas of the Scandinavian bards, in the Niebelungenlied of the Teutons,
+and a lurid trail in the annals of the Cæsars. He called himself a
+descendant of the great Nimrod, “nurtured in Engaddi, by the grace of
+God, King of the Huns, the Goths, the Danes, the Medes; the Dread of
+the World,”--Attila.
+
+A profound politician, he alternately cajoled and threatened the
+peoples whose conquest he undertook; a true barbarian, no food
+save flesh and milk passed his lips. He and his men worshiped the
+mysteriously discovered scimitar of Mars, and from Persia to Gaul, from
+Finland to the walls of Constantinople, his armies ranged. Ambassadors
+went from his Court to China. The great battle of Chalons, in which,
+aided by the Goths, the dwindling forces of Rome’s Western Empire
+won their last victory, alone preserved Europe from his yoke. His
+descendants, mixing with succeeding conquerors, have remained until
+this day in the land that is called, after their dreaded name, Hungary.
+
+Back to the history of Sz-ma Ts’ien one must return for the next
+harvest of Mongolia’s dragon-teeth. The Tung-hu, whose descendants are
+now the skin-clad Tunguses that live far to the north, even up to the
+Arctic Ocean, came down between 309 and 439 A.D. upon Manchuria. This
+occupation separated China from Corea, which, thus isolated, preserved
+for centuries the old Han dialect. The Tung-hu conquerors established
+a great kingdom extending from the Japan Sea to Turkestan. From 380 to
+580 they ruled the northern kingdom of China proper. The leading place
+among those who composed their empire was held by the tribe of Juju, or
+Geougen, whose descendants are now the Finns. Subject to the Juju was a
+Mongol clan descended from the old southern Hiung-nu, who lived hard-by
+Mount Altai. They were blacksmiths and armorers for the Tung-hu army,
+and were called Turks. Their crescent power gradually supplanted that
+of their masters.
+
+In 480 this people appeared on the border of China. By 560 the Turkish
+Empire had become supreme in Central Asia. They pressed upon the nation
+of Avars on the Altai borderland of the steppe, until twenty thousand
+of these, refusing to submit, moved westward. Justinian received
+the envoys of the fugitives in 558. They offered to serve him, and
+threatened, if unaccepted, to attack his Eastern Empire. Anxious only
+to keep them away from his own domains, and indifferent as to which
+should survive, he sent them to attack his German enemies. The Avars,
+conquering a place in Europe, established a powerful nation between the
+Danube and the Elbe, biding their time till with the other barbarians
+they could descend to the spoil of Rome.
+
+After their rebellious vassals came the Turkish envoys, with richer
+presents to the Eastern Emperor Justin II, and more alarming menaces.
+The military alliance of the Turks was accepted and that of the Avars
+renounced. Kemarchus carried the ratification of Rome’s treaty to Mount
+Altai in Central Asia. For many years there was friendship between
+Mongol and Byzantine, mutual alliance and trade.
+
+In 618 the great T’ang Dynasty arose in China, whose fame is suggested
+in the fact that the only Cantonese word for a Chinese nationality
+is “Man of T’ang.” The energetic Li-shi-min subdued the Manchurian
+Tunguses, and in 630 a great battle broke the Turkish power. China once
+again was supreme from Corea to the borderland of Persia. During the
+T’ang Dynasty, Kashmir in India, and Anam were captured by the Chinese.
+
+There followed now a period of centuries when the breeding-place of the
+Mongol’s wolf-born hordes ran barren. In unchronicled obscurity the
+skin-clad herdsmen lived out their generation. To the feeble Ouighour
+confederacy fell the sceptre of the steppes. The old territory of the
+Hiung-nu khans and the Turkish Supreme King was split into little
+chief-governed principalities. Manchus and Tung-hus, rallying again,
+alternately ruled and harried China. Avars and Huns occupied their
+distant conquests. But in the vast stretch between, the tribes were
+in a bewitched sleep. The people and the qualities that made the old
+armies were there; the breed of shaggy ponies which they rode was
+there; iron reddened the hill-slopes, waiting to be hammered into
+spears in the Altai forges; China and Europe were as ripe for the
+spoiling. All that the Mongols needed was a leader.
+
+In a quaint chronicle of the Middle Ages we read of how he came. When
+the French took Antioch from the Turks, one Can Can ruled over the
+northern region out of which the Turks had originally come. To the
+old kindred in this hour of need they sent for aid. Can Can was of
+the Cathayans, a people dwelling among the mountains. In one of the
+valley stretches lived the Tayman tribe, who were Nestorians. After
+Can Can’s death a shepherd, who had risen to power among the Taymans,
+made himself ruler as King John. King John had a brother named Vut.
+Beyond his pastures some ten or fifteen days’ journey was Mongol; the
+latter described as a poor and beggarly nation, without governor or law
+save their soothsayings so detestable to the minds of the Nestorians.
+Adjoining the Mongols were other poor people called Tatars. When King
+John died without an heir, Vut became greatly enriched. This aroused
+naturally the cupidity of his needy neighbors. Among the Mongols was
+a blacksmith named Cyngis. Ingratiating himself with the Tatars, he
+pointed out that the lack of a governor left both peoples subject to
+the oppression of the surrounding tribes. He got himself raised to the
+double chieftainship, secretly collected an army, and broke suddenly
+upon Vut. Cyngis sent the Tatars ahead now to open his way, and the
+people everywhere cried in dismay, “Lo, the Tatars come! the Tatars
+come!”
+
+While the Turks sought aid of their kinsmen for the defense, the French
+King sent to King John’s reputedly Christian kingdom for help to his
+crusade. But Cyngis “Temugin,” the Man, had come. As Genghis Khan he
+was to open up the vastest empire the world has ever seen.
+
+In 1200 the young Temugin, in a great battle near Urga, defeated Wang
+Khan, whom modern research, vindicating the basis of truth in the old
+Friar William de Rubruquis tales, has shown to have been a Tatar prince
+of the Nestorian Christian faith, King of the Kitai or Cathayans, in
+all probability the ruler known to the princes of Europe, through his
+letters to the Roman Pope, as the Christian potentate of the Orient,
+Prester John.
+
+Wang Khan’s skull, encased in silver, graced the conqueror’s tent as a
+first trophy. In 1206, summoning all the Mongol chiefs, Temugin took
+the title of Genghis Khan, “The Greatest King.”
+
+His armies were turned next to the reduction of his own people, the
+nomad tribes of the Central Asian plains. As one after another was
+defeated, its warriors were incorporated into his growing army. When
+all these myriad shepherds and soldiers were gathered in, he directed
+his march towards China.
+
+The Great Wall was as paper to his host. Ninety cities were taken by
+storm, never one surrendering. For while to the kindred races which he
+had conquered, and which furnished further recruits for his armies,
+Genghis was most merciful and humane, to a foreign foe he was indeed
+the Wrath of God. Once he was bought off from the invasion; but again
+he returned to the prey. A way into Peking was opened by means of a
+mine dug under the walls to the centre of the city; through it a picked
+body of Mongols entered, marched to the gates, and opened them. The
+savage host rushed in to sack and slay. For sixty days Peking burned,
+and five desolated provinces of North China were added to the Mongol
+Empire.
+
+Mohammed, Sultan of Carizme, who reigned from India to the Persian
+Gulf, was the next objective for the Mongols. In the field, by valor
+and numbers, the Khan’s troops defeated all the Sultan’s armies. The
+walled towns were besieged and taken, largely through the skill of
+Chinese engineers. The whole great Persian district was harried after
+the custom of the Mongols through four years; for hundreds of miles
+the country was so ruined that to this day the old populousness and
+prosperity have never been recovered.
+
+The army of one of the Khan’s generals marched north into Turkestan,
+and subduing many Turkish peoples, entered beyond the Caucasus the
+territory of the Polovtisni, themselves Mongols of an earlier invasion.
+The conquest of Russia had begun. A Muscovite chronicle of those days
+illustrates the utter consternation and surprise of the inhabitants at
+this formidable and sudden incursion: “In those times there came upon
+us, for our sins, unknown nations. No one could tell their origin,
+whence they came, or what religion they professed. God alone knew
+who they were.” The people generally believed that the time had come
+foretold in Revelation when Satan should be let loose with the hosts of
+“Gog and Magog to gather them together in battle; the number of whom is
+as the sand of the sea.” Indeed, in the old map of Tatary, by Hondius,
+the territories of these two fabled worthies are carefully outlined in
+what is now Manchuria.
+
+Despite the Tatarean theory of the Mongols’ army, the Russian chivalry
+gathered to the aid of the Polovtisni, and collected an army by the
+lower Dnieper. Defiantly they killed the ambassadors whom the Mongols
+sent. The wrathful nomads advanced into the Crimea near the Sea of
+Azov. The two hosts met in the fatal battle of Kalka. It was the Crécy
+of Russian chivalry. Hardly a tenth of the army escaped. Ten thousand
+of the men of Kiev fell; of the princes, six, of the boyars, seventy,
+died on the field of battle. Matislaf the Bold alone made front, and he
+was treacherously betrayed and slain.
+
+The way into southern Russia was now open; yet, after their victory in
+1224, the Mongols disappeared as suddenly as they had come. The hordes
+had been diverted to complete the conquest of China. For thirteen
+years they were swallowed up by the steppe. The son of Genghis,
+“Oktai,” had succeeded the dead conqueror, and had appointed Batui
+General of the West.
+
+Again there was heralded an invasion, this time by one of the outlying
+tribes of Khirgiz on the eastern border. The blow was aimed at the very
+heart of Russia. The old Slav ballads, or “_bilinî_,” tell how Oleg the
+Handsome fell at Riszan. The Tatars entered and burned Moscow in 1237.
+Onward into the north rolled their conquest, town after town falling.
+At the Cross of Ignatius, fifty miles from Novgorod, the torrent
+turned, and, sparing for the time being the ancient republic, swept to
+the south.
+
+Against the cradle of the Russian race, the white-walled many-towered
+city of Kiev, Mangu, the grandson of Genghis, now marched. By
+multitudes the Tatars carried the walls. Fighting to the end, the last
+defenders went down in a ring around the tomb of the great Yaroslav.
+
+Russia was prostrate at the feet of the nomads. Her princes became
+vassals, some to journey as far as the Amur to pay their homage to
+the Great Khan. Without the Tatar Emperor’s letters-patent, no prince
+could assume his inheritance. When the envoy presented the documents,
+the nobles had to prostrate themselves and accept them kneeling. Each
+Russian city gave its tribute, even the still uninvaded Novgorod.
+Every peasant in Muscovy paid his poll-tax. Indeed, the supremacy of
+the czars of Moscow, when the Tatar yoke was at length thrown off,
+was largely due to the wealth which the Romanov family had managed to
+acquire and to hold during their term as tax-farmers of the Great Khan.
+Russian troops, supplied as part of the tribute, engaged in the Tatar
+wars, getting in one instance of record their share of the booty--after
+the sack of Daghestan. They were drafted on account of their great
+size and valor into a body-guard for the Mongol Emperor in Peking,
+corresponding to the Swiss Guard of Louis XVI.
+
+While the conquest of Russia was being consolidated into a permanent
+Mongol dominion destined to endure for nearly two hundred and fifty
+years, Batui led his army on into Poland and Bohemia. He took Buda-Pest
+and devastated the country far and wide. The most alarming accounts
+preceded him, which are still to be read in the monkish annals of the
+time. “Anno Domini, 1240, the detestable people of Satan, to wit, an
+infinite number of Tatars, broke forth like grasshoppers covering
+the face of the earth, spoiling the eastern confines with fire and
+sword, ruining cities, cutting up woods, rooting up vineyards, killing
+the people both of city and country. They are rather monsters than
+men; clothed with ox-hides, armed with iron plates, in stature thick
+and short, well-set, strong in body, in war invincible, in labor
+indefatigable, drinking the blood of their beasts for dainties.”
+
+The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, who undertook to gather the
+powers of Europe to meet the danger, wrote to Henry III of England:--
+
+“A barbarous nation hath lately come called Tatars. We know not of what
+place or originall. A public destruction hath therefore followed the
+common desolation of Kingdomes and spoil of the fertile land which that
+wicked people hath passed through, not sparing sex, age or dignity,
+and hoping to extinguish the rest of mankind. The general destruction
+of the world and specially of Christendom calls for speedy help and
+succour.
+
+“The men are of short stature but square and well-set, rough and
+courageous, have broad faces, frowning lookes, horrible cries agreeing
+to their hearts. They are incomparable archers.
+
+“Heartily we adjure your majestie in behalfe of the common necessitie,
+that with instant care and prudent deliberation, you diligently prepare
+speedy aide of strong knights and other armed Men-at-arms.”
+
+Throughout Europe the dread was universal. In 1248 Pope Innocent IV
+sent to the Tatars an embassy with money, begging them to cease their
+ravages. Failing, he summoned Christendom. Louis IX of France prepared
+a crusade. The fishermen of England could not sell their herrings
+because their usual customers, the Swedes, had remained at home to
+defend Scandinavia. Fortunately, the tide of western Mongol invasion
+had spent itself. After wasting the Danube district, the death of
+the Great Khan recalled Batui in 1245.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO THE MING TOMBS]
+
+Syrian archives reveal the Mongols’ next appearance. In 1243 Hatthon,
+King of Armenia, sought Mangu Khan at Cambaluc (Peking), praying him to
+fight the Saracens and recover Jerusalem. Mangu sent his general, who
+speedily took Antioch, spoiled Aleppo, and sacked the city of Bagdad.
+
+When the latter was stormed, Haloon, the Mongol general, ordered that
+the Caliph be brought alive into his presence. There had been found in
+the city a quite surprising booty in treasure and riches. Haloon asked
+why the Caliph had not used his wealth to levy mercenaries and defend
+his country. The Caliph replied that he had deemed his own people
+sufficient to withstand the Mongols. Then the Khan announced that the
+precious things which had been so cherished would be alone left to the
+miserable man, who was shut into a chamber with his pearls and gold
+for sustenance and perished in torments. There was no Caliph of Bagdad
+after him.
+
+Thus, almost simultaneously, there were conquered by the Mongols,
+northern China, Syria, Russia, Hungary, and Poland. The stream of human
+blood that it cost is immeasurable.
+
+Of the first conqueror, Genghis Khan, an Arab poem says:--
+
+  On every course he spurred his steed
+  He raised the blood-dyed dust.
+
+The lives of four and a half million people are reckoned as his toll on
+humanity. He had proposed to raze every city and destroy every farm of
+the five northern Chinese provinces, to make pasture for his nomads,
+and was only dissuaded by a minister, who ventured death in opposing
+him. It was he who ordered the million souls of Herat to slaughter.
+Batui, subduer of Russia, called “Sein Khan” (the Good King), is
+said after the Moscow massacre to have received 270,000 right ears.
+Following his fight with the Teutonic knights, near the Baltic, nine
+sacks of right ears were laid at his feet. “Vanquished, they ask no
+favor, and vanquishing, they show no compassion.” “The Mongols came,
+destroyed, burnt, slaughtered, plundered, and departed,” summarizes
+an Arab; and the unimaginative chronicles of the Chinese tell without
+comment of city after city taken, and their inhabitants put to the
+sword.
+
+Utter ineradicable barbarity would, on the face of things, seem to have
+been the inmost nature of this people. Yet only a few years later, when
+Mangu Khan was ruling at Caracorum, the Court had become civilized.
+Forty-one years after Genghis Khan’s death, when the great Venetian
+traveler Marco Polo arrived at Kublai’s Court, the palaces and the
+organized statecraft at Peking had become a model of efficiency. The
+Mongols, not as a race, but in the sphere of their leaders, had become
+a real nation, not unworthy of its success.
+
+It is interesting to reconstruct the Tatar capital and note its
+development in half a century. The Minorite monk, sent to beg aid from
+the supposedly Christian Mangu Khan for the delivery of Jerusalem,
+wrote a detailed description of the city, Caracorum. It had a circuit
+of three miles and in dearth of stone was rampiered strongly with
+earth. It had two main streets: one of the Saracens, where the fairs
+were held and where many merchants assembled, attracted by the traffic
+with the Court, and with the continuous procession of visitors and
+messengers; the second chief street was occupied by Chinese, who were
+artificers. The town had four gates. In the eastern section grain was
+sold, in the western sheep and goats, in the southern oxen and wagons,
+in the northern horses. Beyond were large palaces, the residences of
+the secretaries. The Khan himself had a great court beside the city
+rampart, enclosed not by an earth but a brick wall. Inside was a
+large palace, and a number of long buildings, in which were kept his
+treasures and stores of supplies.
+
+Twice a year the Khan held high festival, with drinking-bouts
+whereat Master William, a captive taken in Hungary, served as chief
+butler, officiating at the tree which he had devised to pour forth
+intoxication. The ambassador of the Caliph of Bagdad came in state,
+carried upon a litter between two mules. Before the Khan, rich and poor
+in multitudes moved in procession, dancing, singing, clapping their
+hands. The guests brought gifts to the monarch. Those of the ambassador
+of the Turkish Soldan were especially rich, but for quaintness the
+Soldan of India scored. He sent eight leopards, and ten hare-hounds
+taught to sit upon the horses’ buttocks as do cheetahs. Manifestly it
+was no raw encampment of barbarians, this Caracorum of Mangu Khan.
+
+If the Mongol’s Court could, in 1253, show this degree of “pomp and
+pageantry,” how much was it exceeded by that of Kublai the Magnificent,
+visited and told of by Marco Polo.
+
+Kublai had established a second seat at Shang-tu, and had built not
+merely a court, but a city. His palace was of marble, its rooms
+aglitter with gold. Art had come, and the ceilings were painted
+with figures of men and beasts and birds. Trees of all varieties,
+and flowers, were executed with such exquisite skill as filled the
+traveler, familiar with the best products of Italy, with amaze
+and delight. Sixteen miles of park, enclosed by a wall, embosomed
+the palace. Rivers, brooks, and luxuriant meadows diversified the
+landscape, and white stags, fallow deer, gazelles, roebuck, rare
+squirrels, and every variety of attractive creature, lent gayety and
+charm.
+
+The Khan rode weekly with his falcons. Sometimes a leopard sat a-croup
+behind him, and was loosened at the game that struck his fancy.
+
+The tale runs on of the Khan’s silk-corded pavilion in the grove, gilt
+all over, and having lacquered, dragon-pedimented columns; of cave-born
+rivers running deep below the ground; of treasured gems and gold.
+
+No wonder that Coleridge’s imagination was warmed to his dream poem.
+
+  In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
+  A stately pleasure dome decree,
+  Where Alph the sacred river ran,
+  Through caverns measureless to man,
+  Down to a sunless sea.
+
+London’s tortuous streets were to wait two hundred years for their
+first pavement, when Cambaluc’s were so straight and wide that one
+could see right along them from end to end, and from one gate to the
+other. In the Khan’s parks, the roads, being all paved and raised two
+cubits above the surface, never became muddy, nor did the rain lodge on
+them, but flowed off into the meadows.
+
+In addition to civilization’s wealth and magnificence, the Mongols
+had developed a well-organized government. The Khan’s twelve barons
+exercised his delegated authority, as does a modern cabinet in behalf
+of the national executive. Cambaluc was policed by a thousand guards.
+The city wards were laid out, for taxation and government, in squares
+like a chess-board, and all these plots were assigned to different
+heads of families. The military roads were constantly kept up by a
+large force. The Emperor had ordered that all the highways should be
+planted with great trees a few yards apart. Even the roads through the
+unpeopled regions were thus planted, and it was the greatest possible
+solace to travelers.
+
+The post, too, was as thoroughly organized as Napoleon’s. The
+messengers of the Emperor, bound in whatsoever direction from Cambaluc,
+found, every twenty-five miles of the way, a relay-station. Where the
+route lay through uninhabited deserts, the relay-posts were made houses
+of sojourn. At all stations express messengers were in readiness, as
+links in the system for speeding dispatches to provincial governors or
+generals: they were equipped with the fastest horses, which stood fresh
+and saddled, ready for an instant mount. The men wore girdles hung with
+bells; when within hearing of a station came the sound of jingling and
+the clatter of hoofs, the next man similarly provided would leap to
+his horse, take the delivered letter, and be off at full speed. The
+post covered a full two hundred miles by day, and an equal distance
+by night. Marco Polo states that, in the season, fruit gathered one
+morning at the capital, in the evening of the next day reached the
+Great Khan in Shang-tu--a distance of ten days’ journey.
+
+Organized charity was instituted by the Mongol Khan for Cambaluc.
+A number of the poorest families became his pensioners, receiving
+regularly wheat and corn sufficient for the year. The nomad levied
+as tribute a tenth of all wool, silk, hemp, and cloth stuffs, and
+had therefrom clothing made for the indigent of his capital. He had a
+banking system, paper money, a wonderful military discipline, advanced
+astronomy; and he opened the Grand Canal to the commerce of the ages.
+When one recalls the epoch at which all this existed, and realizes that
+at that time wolves and robbers disputed mastery of the streets of
+Paris; that the Saracens were lords of half of Spain; that Wycliffe had
+not yet published his Bible, and that French was the language of the
+English law courts,--the advance attained is hardly short of marvelous.
+
+In nothing whatsoever is the Mongol civilization more remarkable and
+contrasting than in its religious toleration--the last acquisition of a
+civilized state.
+
+While the Christian King of France was engaged in earning the title of
+“Saint Louis” by extirpating a people of whose creed he disapproved,
+his envoy, the friar, came to a country which had attained complete
+religious liberty and toleration. There were “twelve kinds of
+idolatries of divers nations.” Two churches of Mahomet preached the law
+of the Koran, and one church of the Christians proclaimed the gospel of
+the Christ.
+
+He found his own creed treated with especial courtesy, the Great Khan
+subscribing two thousand marks to rebuild a chapel on the behest of
+an Armenian monk. He relates that the privilege was accorded to the
+Church of trying any of their number accused of theft; that the
+Khan’s secretary and his favorite wife were Christians; that a chapel
+was allowed them within the court enclosure; and that the Nestorians
+inhabited fifteen cities of Cathay and had a bishopric there.
+
+Marco Polo found the same indulgent tolerance of his religion. In
+Calaci, the principal city of Tangus, the inhabitants were “idolaters,”
+but there were three churches of Nestorian Christians. In the province
+of Tenduch, formerly the seat of Presbyter John, King George was a
+Christian and a priest, and most of the people were Christians. They
+paid tribute to the Great Khan.
+
+Indeed, if the Mongolian attitude toward armed nations combating in
+Christ’s name has been implacable hostility, toward those of the faith
+who worshiped peacefully in their midst it has been uniformly tolerant,
+even favoring. The Nestorians, who brought their creed from Khorassan
+in the fourth century, had by 500 A.D. bishoprics in Merv, Herat, and
+Samarcand. The Perait Turkomans as a tribe accepted Christianity, and
+were unpunished. That the Faith was liberally treated in 781, under
+the Chinese, is self-acknowledged, on the ancient Nestorian stone of
+Si-an-fu. Headed by a cross, there is graven in Syrian and Chinese the
+Imperial decree of 638, ordering a church to be built: it gives an
+abstract of Christian doctrine, and an account of the “introduction
+and propagation of the noble law of Ta-t’sin in the Middle Kingdom.”
+In Si-an-fu at this time there were four thousand foreign families,
+cut off from return by a northern inroad of fanatical Tibetans into
+Turkestan.
+
+Another monument of 830, found near the site of the old Ouighour
+capital on the Orkhon, and carved in Chinese, Turkish, and Ouighour
+characters, mentions the Western religion. A strange sect of Hebrews
+of unknown origin found as well an unpersecuted home at K’ai-feng-fu,
+where the Mosaic rites could be performed. To this day a remnant
+survives.
+
+The same tolerance for alien faiths marked Tatar rule in Russia. The
+Khan of Sarai authorized a Greek church and a bishopric in his capital,
+exempting the monks from his poll-tax. Khan Usbek in 1313 confirmed the
+privileges of the Church, and punished with death sacrilege against it.
+Kublai Khan took part regularly in the Easter services, and allowed the
+Roman missionaries to establish a school in Shang-tu.
+
+Indeed, reviewing the whole sweep of Asia’s religious history, one can
+hardly escape the deduction that if the greatest race of the greatest
+continent is idolatrous, it is not the fault of the Mongolians.
+
+The Nestorian missionaries had an unsurpassed opportunity in the
+fourth century when their faith was new and burning, and the world
+was at peace. But stigmatized as heretics after a doctrinal dispute
+which had been settled by the logic of a street fight, in which
+Cyril’s Egyptian bravos defeated the Syrian henchmen of the Patriarch
+of Constantinople, their mother church was driven out of the Roman
+Empire into Persia, where, cut off from the support of the main trunk
+of fellow Christians, their organization withered away as a lopped
+branch. The chief congregations in Iran and Turan were overwhelmed by
+the Mohammedans, until at length there were left only the dwindling
+congregations in Mongolia, and such communities as those on the Malabar
+coast in India.
+
+To-day one hears of interesting discoveries. Now it is of the old
+buried Christian strata among Turkomans of Samarcand, of doctrines
+preserved through the fury of Islam fanaticism by families that have
+secretly transmitted Christian worship through the centuries. Next it
+is of Nestorian monks in Asia Minor, startled at being able to read the
+characters of Ouighour inscriptions, relics of the writings which their
+predecessors carried to Mongolia. But for all practical purposes the
+Nestorian labors, once so promising, are as if they had never been.
+
+Another supreme opportunity for Christianity came when Kublai Khan, in
+1268, sent west by the Polo brothers for Roman missionaries to teach
+his people.
+
+“The Great Khan, ... calling to him the two brethren, desired them
+for his love to go to the Pope of the Romans, to pray him to send an
+hundred wise men and learned in the Christian religion unto him, who
+might show his wise men that the faith of the Christians was to be
+preferred before all other sects, and was the only way of salvation.
+
+“After this the Prince caused letters to the Pope to be written and
+gave them to the two brothers. Now the contents of the letters were
+as follows: He begged that the Pope would send as many as an hundred
+persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men acquainted with the
+seven arts, well qualified to prove by force of argument to idolaters
+and other kind of folk, that the law of Christ was best; and if they
+would prove this, he and all under him would be Christians.”
+
+In the advance of Christianity the steps ahead have been made not
+so much by the conversion of the people as by the winning of their
+rulers,--Constantine, giving to Rome’s legions the standard of the
+Cross; Clovis; Ethelbert; Vladimir, who drove the whole population of
+Kiev naked into consecrated water of the Dnieper; Charlemagne, moving
+against the Saxons with his corps of priests. Where these spoke for
+a hundred thousand souls, Kublai spoke for a hundred million. He was
+able to deliver; it was the Pope who did not rise to the occasion.
+In all Christendom Gregory could find but two priests to go with the
+Khan’s messengers, and these turned back in the midst of the journey,
+alarmed by the prospect of its hardships. The Khan, who wished some
+religion, sent to Tibet, and received the Buddhist missionaries whom
+he requested. So China, Mongolia, Tibet, and eastern Turkestan are
+Buddhist to this day.
+
+Yet once again the Christian opportunity came. The way which had
+been opened into China by Matteo Ricci had been followed by Jesuit
+missionaries, until at the beginning of the seventeenth century there
+were two churches in Peking, some three hundred thousand converts in
+the Empire, and the favor of the Emperor Hang was with the Western
+faith.
+
+When Christianity was spreading with cumulative rapidity, the
+Dominicans and Franciscans came in and denounced the Jesuit workers for
+tolerating the ancestor-cult of the Chinese, and for permitting God
+to be called “Shang-ti.” In vain the Emperor Hang, appealed to by the
+Jesuits, declared that by “Shang-ti” the Chinese meant “Ruler of the
+Universe,” and that the Confucian rites were family ceremonies and not
+idolatry. The rival friars persuaded the Pope to proclaim “Tien-chu”
+the proper Chinese word for God, and to condemn all ancestral
+ceremonies. Thereupon, the Chinese Emperor, rebuffed and disgusted
+with all the wrangling fraternities, condemned the Christian religion
+and killed the friars, save those whom he wanted for the Imperial
+Observatory.
+
+One cannot but recall an early commentary made by Mangu Khan upon the
+jarring Christian sects whose rival dogmas have prevented, and do to
+this day, the common progress.
+
+“We Mongolians believe that there is but one God, through whom we live
+and die, and we have an upright heart towards Him. That as God hath
+given unto the hand fingers, so He hath given many ways to men. God
+hath given the Scriptures to you, and ye Christians keep them not. But
+He hath given us soothsayers, and we do that which they bid us, and we
+live in peace.”
+
+For some years after Kublai Khan’s death, the Mongol Empire held its
+preëminence by inertia rather than by strength. Each of the khans had
+his kingdom. Presently the nations that had been subdued began to rise
+against the numerically small garrisons of Mongolia. In China, the
+young Bonze, Chu-Yuan-Chang, finally organized a band of Boxers, and
+succeeded in driving out the last degenerate Mongol khan from Peking.
+He united the old eighteen provinces and established the Ming Dynasty,
+the tombs and palaces of whose kings are still the most celebrated
+structures of China.
+
+In Russia, Dimitri of the Don gathered one hundred and fifty thousand
+men and defeated the Mongols at Kulikovo.
+
+If the old supreme monarch of the north had lost his sway, in the south
+the Mongol race was being lifted to its second period of empire under
+Tamerlane, the Iron Khan. His was the history of the first Mongol
+conqueror repeated. The ant that Timur watched during his exile,
+which fell back and returned sixty-nine times before it carried its
+grain of wheat to the top of the wall, was the symbol of his early
+career. Constant obscure tribal conflicts, unsuccessful at first, led
+finally to a gathering of the nomads into a terrible invading army.
+The Golden Horde was hurled against Dimitri, defeated him, and marched
+upon Moscow. It was sacked with the horrors of Genghis’ days, and all
+Russia was ravaged to the Don and the Sea of Azov. One of Tamerlane’s
+armies traversed the Pamir into India, and, by the capture of Delhi,
+opened the way for the Mogul Dynasty of his sons, which was to endure
+until the Indian Mutiny. His Indian army, returning, swept a swath of
+desolation through Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Georgia, and Armenia.
+Every city that was taken was sacked, and the event commemorated by a
+pyramid of skulls embedded in mortar. One hundred and twenty pyramids
+marked Tamerlane’s path through India alone. The Delhi pyramid was made
+from the skulls of one hundred thousand slain “with the sword of holy
+war.”
+
+Bajazet, Sultan of the Ottoman Turks,--themselves sprung from a nomad
+Mongol tribe,--was threatened by Tamerlane on the west. In a great
+battle Bajazet was defeated.
+
+Alhacen, Tamerlane’s Arabian secretary, relates that the conquered king
+was examined by his master.
+
+“Wherefore dost thou use so great cruelty towards men? Dost thou not
+pardon sex or age?”
+
+Bajazet might logically have responded with a “tu quoque,” but his
+position did not warrant it.
+
+“I am appointed by God to punish tyrants,” continued Tamerlane. He had
+an iron cage made; and locked within it like a linnet, the unfortunate
+sultan was carried from place to place, because, in the Tatar’s naïvely
+quoted words, “It is necessary that he be made an exemplary punishment
+to all the cruel of the world, of the just wrath of God against them.”
+
+The invasion of China was under way, in 1405, when Tamerlane died,
+leaving a renewed Mongol Empire, which stretched from the Hoang-ho to
+the Don, and from Siberia to India.
+
+Here again the descendants of the savage conquerors rose to the
+requirements of their sovereignty and obeyed the peaceful and humane
+maxims that each of the two great and warlike and pitiless tyrants had
+bequeathed to his successors. They ruled with a fair degree of wisdom
+and a large measure of success. A descendant of Tamerlane was to build
+at Agra, in 1630, the most splendid monument the world has ever seen,
+the Taj-Mahal.
+
+In the century after Tamerlane’s death the Hordes split up once
+more, Ivan the Great of Moscow, having consolidated many neighboring
+princedoms, with the nominal consent of his Tatar overlord, at length
+seized the opportunity to refuse the payment of tribute. The Mongol
+Khan had no longer the power to compel it at the sword’s point, and
+without a battle the Tatar supremacy was covertly relinquished. In
+1480 the long servitude of Russia to the alien invader was ended. From
+this time the Mongol nomads appear hardly at all in history. They
+withdrew gradually to their Asian steppes, leaving in Turkey, in the
+Crimea, and in India, the kingdoms of their offshoot tribes. Russia and
+China still felt the raids of the horsemen, for the khans of the Golden
+Horde were yet not to be despised.
+
+Fernan Hendez Pinto, the shipwrecked Portuguese of the generation
+after Vasco da Gama, was in China in 1542 when Tatars came down and
+besieged it. He saw “an emperor called Caran whose seigniorie confineth
+within the mountains of Gen Halidan, a nation which the naturals call
+Moscoby, of whom we saw some in this citie [of Tuymican], ruddie, of
+big stature, with shoes and furred clothes, having some Latin words,
+but seeming rather, for aught we observed, idolaters than Christians.
+
+“To the ambassador of that Prince Caran, better entertainment was
+given than to all the rest. He brought with him one hundred and twenty
+men of his guard, with arrows and gilded quivers, all clothed in
+chamois-skins, murrie and green. After whom followed twelve men of high
+giantlike stature, leading great greyhounds, in chains and collars of
+silver.”
+
+When Yermak cleared the way to Sibir, and opened the path that was to
+lead to the Pacific, the Mongols were pushed south. Russians still had
+Tatars all along their frontier, but these were pressed steadily back
+as the Slavic race advanced eastward. The Tatar domains were restricted
+soon to the steppe country and Mongolia.
+
+After Yermak’s time the Mongol power sank. It fell further when the
+Manchus established their dynasty in Peking in 1644. So low had its
+estate become that even the old fighting instinct was gone,--all
+the passionate desire for independence that has been the Mongols’
+birthright since the dawn of history. How had it vanished? Christianity
+had not come. Buddhism had come, and it was the tolling of the knell
+for freedom.
+
+The sum of national energy and the heat of the new dispensation were
+diverted into theocracy. The meaning of life, its value and its duty,
+these basic ideas which determine the ultimate activities of every
+race, were revolutionized by the new faith. To the Pagan the world
+was good despite its evils; struggle against environment measured the
+worth of manhood and freedom was the supreme blessing. To the Buddhist,
+life was an evil in which the soul had become enmeshed. The path to
+release lay not in overcoming the environment, but in retreating from
+it within the citadel of the soul. Resignation, self-surrender, the
+yielding of this world to secure the other world beyond,--such were the
+forces which transformed the Mongols from the foremost warriors into
+the priest-ridden, subject, unaspiring people of to-day. The supreme
+problem in the autonomy of China, and in the subjugation of India,
+is involved in the point of view of Buddhism and its outgrowth in
+character.
+
+In 1650 a son of the leader, Tu-she-tu Khan, was made chief of the
+Mongol _kutukhtus_, or cardinals, with the title of Cheptsun Damba.
+This monsignor began the Urga hierarchy of Gigins, or god-priests,
+which has continued until the present time, when the eighth Gigin
+reigns at the Holy City. As the powerful Tu-she-tu clan lost its
+vitality, Chinese influence made itself felt. This was directed in
+general toward the encouragement of the priesthood, whose celibacy and
+other-worldliness dovetailed with Chinese control.
+
+The Mongol khans, becoming through the years more and more unwarlike,
+had grown tired of internecine feuds. They were at last won over by
+China to a nominal allegiance and the payment of a formal tribute,
+reciprocating which, imperial gifts of tenfold value served as artful
+bribes. Modestly, diplomatically, came King Stork, leaving to the local
+Daimios, seemingly undisturbed, their feudal sway. With the coming of
+the first Manchu governor began the present era of Mongolia.
+
+[Illustration: THE GLORY IS DEPARTED]
+
+As time went on, the Chinese, more astute and cunning, took little
+by little from the careless hands of the nomad princes the reins of
+real political power. The native chiefs were wheedled into giving up
+many ancient rights over the vassals, as well as their general taxing
+powers. The celibate priests, who were draining the manhood of their
+idle but powerful hierarchy, were subsidized and directed by the
+interlopers. They preached to their confiding countrymen obedience and
+submission. In the Mongol Gigin of Urga, the Chinese raised up a native
+power superior to all the old feudal lords, whose armies melted away
+beneath the ecclesiastical dominion. When the Gigin became in turn
+too great a menace, they caused it to be decreed that each succeeding
+incarnated Buddha must come from Tibet, and that his main powers must
+be delegated to a “Council of Lamas.”
+
+In the train of the Manchus came the Chinese traders, polite, supple,
+calling themselves friends of the Mongols, offering their alluring
+wares on undefined credit terms which tangled the unsuspicious natives
+in inextricable usury. Peking-brought gewgaws were paid for a hundred
+times over in the food and clothing which the natives kept giving to
+the compounding voracity of the debt.
+
+Chinese coolies pressed up the river-valleys, begging land here,
+intruding themselves there; more followed, and ever more, until the
+best of the pastures were filched away, and the nomads, in order to
+exist, were forced to trek to the more distant and barren slopes.
+Deforesting transformed into deserts whole provinces. The once famed
+virtue of the Tatar women is forgotten, and every Chinaman has his
+“friend” whom he leaves behind when he returns to his native land. The
+big prosperous Mongol families, that early travelers noted, are no
+more. Two or three children are the most that one sees to a _yurta_,
+and the population, owing to lama celibacy and the decreased means of
+subsistence, is declining from year to year.
+
+This is the people and this the land which sent horde after horde
+through centuries to conquer the world; where in half a dozen
+generations a little band of blacksmiths like the Turks could breed a
+nation that would dominate Asia. With narrowing means of subsistence,
+and aliens draining their small surplus capital, the Mongol race lies
+prostrate beneath the Yellow Empire. The grim Malthusian tenet that the
+world cannot give food for all its children falls short here of the
+grim actuality. The silent invasion of the Chinese has been as ruthless
+as was the march of Genghis Khan. The economic garroting of a race is
+what the world has seen in Mongolia.
+
+No longer are there men to lead or men to fight. Obediently and
+submissively the once fierce, ranging warriors have yielded to the
+artfully-imposed yoke. The army of unmatched cavalry has become a
+memory, and a nation of fighters has become a race of timid herders,
+with little heart or brain. The sons of the old soldiers have learned
+to shave their heads and croon Tibetan prayers, and the fires of a
+people’s ambition are quenched in the creed that makes abstention
+from effort a cardinal virtue, and annihilation life’s supreme
+objective. What there was of virtue and of valor lies buried in distant
+graves. Ringed with the bones of slaughtered captives, rusted swords
+at their sides, they sleep well, those old forgotten warriors. In
+poverty and hardship, priest-ridden and debt-ridden, decimated and
+degenerated, their descendants eke out their sterile days. But there
+lingers yet among them a half-forgotten memory of the heroic past.
+The wandering chanter still sings in the twilight the old “Song of
+Tamerlane”--Tamerlane who will come again, they say, and lead the
+hordes once more to victory.
+
+  When the divine Timur dwelt in our tents,
+  The Mongol Nation was redoubtable and warlike.
+  Its least movements made the earth bend;
+  Its mens’ look froze with fear
+  The ten thousand people upon whom the sun shines.
+  O Divine Timur, will thy great soul soon return?
+  Return, return; we await thee, O Timur!
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+CHINA
+
+
+Destiny has bequeathed to his once subject-race the heritage of Genghis
+Khan, but whether its Manchu possessor can or cannot hold even his
+own birthright is to-day an enigma. The last few years have seen the
+gathering of the eagles, disputing the mastery of eastern Asia, where
+China stands against the world. Slav, Saxon, and Frank press in, upon
+the supine empire. Has this yellow race the manhood and the capacity to
+rally against them and retrieve its national integrity?
+
+The cession of Formosa after the war of 1895 began the partition.
+China’s defenselessness was then visualized. The revelation of her
+easy defeat set every predatory nation on the alert. Watchful for an
+occasion, which two murdered missionaries supplied, Germany, by clumsy
+but successful unscrupulousness, seized Kiao-chow and two hundred miles
+of hinterland. Three weeks after the bludgeoned ratification of Admiral
+Diedrich’s grab, Russia procured the signature of the intimidated
+Emperor to the lease of Port Arthur. France demanded and secured the
+cession of Kwang-chow-wan, on the mainland opposite the island of
+Hainan. England acquired the lease of Wei-hai-wei, and continental
+territory opposite Hong-kong. Italy came to claim as its portion Sanmen
+Bay; but this at least China found courage to refuse.
+
+Then followed a period when, backed each by its government, invading
+cohorts of promoters scooped in franchises and special privileges of
+every description. The latter part of 1899 saw foreigners pushing in
+from Manchuria on the north, where Russia with her so-termed railway
+guards held the strategic route, and from Yun-nan on the south, where
+France was constructing a similar road of conquest. It showed four
+European nations so established along the coast that only by courtesy
+of a foreign government could a Chinese vessel cast anchor in some of
+the principal ports of China. It saw a Belgian-French railway driving
+from Peking into the heart of the Empire at Hankow; an American line
+started north from Canton to the same objective; an English line
+controlling the territory between the main northern trade-centres,
+Niu-chwang and Tien-tsin; a French society in possession of a great
+south-country copper concession; Russians with the exclusive right to
+all the gold in two _eimucks_ of Mongolia; and an English syndicate
+deeded the best of the Chinese coal-fields.
+
+The partition was thus far accomplished. The continental nations
+seemed to be ready for all that they could get. The strength of Great
+Britain’s traditional position, based upon maintaining the integrity
+of China, was shaken by her lease of Wei-hai-wei, although this lease
+was to run only so long as Russia should hold Port Arthur. England
+was on the point of recognizing openly “spheres of influence,” as is
+shown by the inferential claim to special British rights in the Yangtse
+region set forth in the official transactions of Sir Claude McDonald,
+and brought out under parliamentary interpellation, when a Secretary
+of State for Foreign Affairs in the Balfour Ministry spoke of “British
+rights” to the provinces adjoining the Yangtse River and Ho-nan and
+Che-kiang.
+
+There was apparently good warrant for the general belief that in
+expectation of an impending partition a provisional understanding had
+been reached by the different chancelleries, regarding the share of
+each nation, England being allotted the mighty domain from the Yellow
+Sea to Burma and Afghanistan, including all Tibet, as well as six
+hundred and fifty thousand square miles in China proper. In general,
+from Shan-tung inland the valley of the Hoang-ho was destined for
+Germany; the district north of her Anamese possessions for France; all
+Mongolia and Manchuria for Russia; Corea and the province of Fokien on
+the mainland opposite Formosa, for Japan. Peking and the surrounding
+district, whose disposition was embarrassed by jealousy if not by
+scruples, was alone left for the Chinese.
+
+At this critical juncture, when the day of dismemberment seemed indeed
+to have arrived, the United States came forward in behalf of the
+“open-door” doctrine, as a means of preserving the nationality and the
+integrity of China. In a circular letter to the Powers, our Secretary
+of State, Mr. John Hay, asked that adhesion be given in writing to
+three main propositions, appertaining to each country “within its
+respective sphere, of whatever influence.” These points were that no
+treaty port rights or other vested interests should be interfered with;
+that the Chinese tariff should be maintained; that no discriminating
+railway charges or harbor-dues should be imposed.
+
+America’s might, thrown into the wavering balance, turned the scale.
+Great Britain gave ready adhesion. Though the responses of some of
+the other Powers were evasive, none was at this time willing to bear
+the onus of an adverse stand: each nation nominally accepted, and the
+movement toward partition was checked.
+
+To most people Chinese matters seemed settled. The preservation of a
+nation had been combined with the guaranteeing of a great free market;
+the orgy of grabbing had ceased. Russia, assenting to the open door,
+had promised to evacuate Manchuria. The special concessions, though
+secured by stand-and-deliver methods, it was felt would bring economic
+improvements and would furnish to the Chinese a demonstration of the
+beneficent results of Western civilization.
+
+It was recognized that there would be frictions: misunderstandings
+are inevitable when old ways are faced with new. The extra-territorial
+rights of foreigners and their converts, absolutely necessary to
+protect their liberties if not their lives, could not but create
+occasional unharmonious situations, in which the consuls would have to
+intervene. The severity of the judicial punishment meted out at times
+to rioting cities for harm done to the protégés of the Powers was to be
+deplored, each nation grieving at the atrocities the others had seen
+fit to perpetrate.
+
+But periodic local and temporary disturbances had been going on from
+time immemorial. Did not the Chinese realize, we reasoned, that their
+old corrupt government had been given another undeserved chance to try
+and march with the rest of the race; that this world is not the place
+for graft-ridden relics from the fifth century B.C.? The least we felt
+was that, thanks to the bearer of the “Flowery Banner,” the Chinese had
+been given a last opportunity. A self-denying Occident had guaranteed
+the nation’s existence and had presumably earned its everlasting
+gratitude. “Let China get up and do something--let it redeem itself.”
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE AND TABLETS IN PEI-HAI]
+
+A very small circle of Chinese shared this Western view, and realized
+at their true value the mights if not the rights. There existed among
+the literati at Peking and in the coast cities the rudiments of a
+foreign liberal party. Recognizing that Western methods must come, they
+had been in favor of accepting foreign improvements even at the cost
+of railway concessions and the violated dwellings of wind and water
+spirits. When this party won over the young Emperor, there began the
+period of foreign concessions. Reforms, too, covering every subject,
+from queue-cutting to postage-stamps, were inaugurated.
+
+The summer of 1898 saw the important edict which ordered the abolition
+of the Wen-chang essays and the penmanship posts, with the Emperor’s
+personal comment that the examinations should test “a knowledge of
+ancient and modern history, and information in regard to the present
+state of affairs, with special reference to the governments and
+institutions of the countries of the five great continents, and their
+arts and sciences.” A Bureau of Mines was established, a patent-office,
+schools, a scheme of army reform.
+
+The climaxing decree was the one abolishing sinecures. For the
+Emperor’s unreconstructed entourage this last was too much. Foreign
+aggression had embittered to the point of unreason mandarin and coolie
+alike. The _coup d’état_ planned by the Dowager Empress, and executed
+by the reactionaries, virtually dethroned the Emperor, exiled his
+advisers, and ended the foreign-encouragement reform.
+
+Indeed it was not within human nature for it to endure. From the point
+of view of the party of the second part the aspect of the whole foreign
+relationship, even after the Hay Note, looked very ugly indeed. The
+fact of guaranteed integrity was obscured by the _laissez-faire_ of
+the already consummated grabs. The idea that gripped them was the
+humiliation of foreign occupation and foreign aggression. It was as
+if the Russians and the English had just seized rival reservations
+on Long Island and the Jersey coast, commanding New York City; as if
+the English had wrenched away Charleston; the Germans, Philadelphia;
+the French, New Orleans; and Cossacks were garrisoned in strategic
+points throughout New England. It was as if the New York, New Haven and
+Hartford Railway were manned and guarded by Slavs, the New York Central
+by Belgians, the Pennsylvania by Prussians; as if the Pittsburgh mines
+were handed over _en bloc_ to an English corporation, and the Russians
+had exclusive mining rights to the gold of Alaska’s Yukon region. It
+was as if America’s protective-tariff and contract-labor laws were
+repealed at foreign dictation, and a flood of foreign machine-made
+goods and undesired immigrants were poured into the unwilling country.
+It was as if yellow-robed Buddhist lamas were everywhere haranguing the
+Yankee farmers, telling them of the fraudulent nature of the Christian
+creed, and urging upon them an approved canine method for disposing of
+deceased ancestors, to replace their superstitious funeral services.
+It was as if astrologers, calling themselves engineers, were to dig
+up New York cemeteries in order to erect prayer-wheels; as if the
+apostates whom these yellow priests had drawn into their joss-houses
+were enabled to dodge part of the taxes, which consequently fell with
+added oppression on the rest of the people; and as if, when they
+did something which others would in the normal course of events get
+punished for, a lama came before the magistrate and got them off. As
+if the President and the Senate were given a weekly wigging by the
+diplomatic corps, and were periodically forced to deed away sections of
+the forest reserve and tracts of particularly desirable territory.
+
+With such an aspect as this, which represents what in an undefined,
+bewildered way the Chinese saw and felt, it is no wonder that they
+considered the Confucian dictum obsolete: “Do not unto others, what
+you would not that they should do unto you”; and joined the patriotic
+harmonious Fists,--the Boxers.
+
+Chinese sentiment was ungauged in the West because we had never
+put ourselves in their places. Unforeseen save by a few unheeded
+Cassandras, and unprepared for, there broke out the planless,
+leaderless Boxer Rebellion, grim fruitage of the national resentment.
+A few hastily gathered legation guards were alone available for
+defense. Spreading from the Shan-tung Province, where the severity of
+the Germans had goaded the usually peaceable people to madness, the
+I-Ho-Chuan besieged the legations at Peking. It was the infuriated and
+ill-directed rush of a patriotism real if futile,--a turning against
+the spoilers.
+
+The movement was crushed in a torrent of blood, and with a devastation
+that for long will leave its mark upon the northern provinces. The
+closing year of the nineteenth century saw the Taku forts stormed,
+Tien-tsin, the Liverpool of the North, taken over and administered by
+a foreign board, Manchuria and Mongolia swarming with Cossacks, the
+Dowager Empress in flight, and her capital looted by foreign armies.
+
+The coming of alien soldiery to the Forbidden Palace left its impress
+in the fiercer though more carefully smothered hatred of mandarins and
+people. It was still a blind resentment. They were injured, stung in
+all their pride and self-sufficiency, but dumb, bewildered, not knowing
+what to do, which way to turn. The liberals with their solution were
+gone; with them had passed the hopes of a progressive policy.
+
+The people, perplexed, looked to their reëstablished reactionary rulers
+for guidance. But these officials, mostly of advanced age, and steeped
+in the ideas and ideals of the Confucian classics, were anxious mainly
+to close the ears and eyes of the masses to the unpleasant realities;
+to feather their own nests and finish off their lives in tranquility.
+
+The Chinese Minister to the United States, Wu Ting Fang, gives a
+graphic picture of these Celestial Bourbons:--
+
+“It must be remembered that most of the high officials in Peking are
+born and bred Chinese of the old school. All the princes and nearly all
+the ministers of state have spent most of their days within the four
+walls of the capital. They have never visited even other parts of the
+empire, not to say foreign lands; nor can they speak any other language
+besides their own. They have absolutely no knowledge or experience of
+foreign ways except those who are ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen, and
+the experience of these men has been confined exclusively to their
+official intercourse with the foreign representatives at Peking.”
+
+Buttressing their hereditary _intransigeance_, these mandarins had,
+after the Hay Circular, possessed a measure of confidence that their
+yielding of open-door trade privileges to the greed of the foreigners
+had enlisted a combined support which would preserve China’s remaining
+national powers.
+
+But so powerless to fulfill their purposes had these paper pledges
+become, so far was the open-door doctrine from settling the situation,
+that in China’s own territory, where by solemn promises of both parties
+no special privileges could accrue, the year 1904 saw two Powers in the
+throes of the greatest war of modern times.
+
+If the realization of the combatants’ purpose has signified much to
+the nations of the West,--perhaps rather to the United States, for
+the others nursed no illusions,--to China it has meant far more. It
+has brought for the first time a real and general appreciation of the
+necessity for modernized, efficient self-defense.
+
+Fifteen years of aggression have been needed to drive home this
+knowledge. While the defeats of 1895 came as a blow to a few
+keen-minded Chinese, to most they were a matter of entire indifference.
+China was not conquered, they reasoned: only two provinces took
+part while the viceroys of the rest looked idly on. “That Shan-tung
+man’s war” was the general attitude; “Li Hung Chang’s boats beaten.”
+When it was over, merely Formosa, the little-valued island of “tame
+barbarians,” had been lost. The traditional policy of playing off the
+jealous powers one against the other had apparently succeeded; it had
+cleared the Japanese from Corea and Port Arthur. China as a nation was
+hardly touched, and multitudes of people never knew there had been a
+war.
+
+The seizures of 1897-1899, coming close upon each other, exasperated,
+but taught no lesson. The mass of Chinese, and even those in high
+official circles, believed that a little effort would drive the foreign
+devils into the sea. The march of the Allies to Peking stunned them. It
+was their first facing of the fact.
+
+[Illustration: HSUEN-WU GATE, PEKING]
+
+The Russo-Japanese War, and the partition of the province that had
+cradled their Emperor’s dynasty, dissipated their fool’s paradise. It
+was seen then, clearly, by all, that China’s only hope of maintaining
+her integrity lay in her defensive power. With the object, not of
+securing the blessings of civilization (which the overwhelming majority
+of Chinamen desire no more than we do the Holy Inquisition), but of
+beating away the spoilsmen, the Peking rulers turned at length to the
+survey of their actual military condition. As this concerns intimately
+the Chinese internal situation, a summary of it may be pertinent.
+
+The Hwai-lien regulars, to the number of twenty-five thousand, are
+well-drilled, and well-armed with Chinese-made Mausers. They are
+stationed in the northern provinces, including the Taku and Peht’ang
+forts, the Tien-tsin station, and the neighborhood of Peking. These
+make up the only national force of modern troops at the disposal of
+the Chinese Government, but the private armies of various viceroys
+bring up the total somewhat as follows: The camps of foreign-drilled
+troops, formerly Yuan Shi Kai’s, probably the best in China, number
+roundly twenty thousand. From the Shen-ki Ying, or artillery force,
+from the camps of the Manchu Banners, which the Government is making an
+effort to whip into some kind of shape, from the Imperial body-guard,
+and other scattered and less important troops, ten thousand effectives
+might be culled. In the south the Viceroy of Nanking has, all told,
+some twenty thousand more men holding the Wusung forts, who may be
+classed as efficient and well-armed; some of these are German- and
+Japanese- drilled. This total of seventy-five thousand represents
+China’s numerical military strength in effective modern troops.
+
+The old hereditary organization of twenty-four Banners, adds some two
+hundred thousand Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese,--of the privileged
+soldier caste, which through two hundred and fifty years has drawn
+an annual subsidy of eight million taels from the Peking treasury.
+Billeted as the nominal wardens of the provincial cities and garrisoned
+around Peking, these Tatars have become as a rule so degenerated by
+immemorial idleness as to be useless save for picturesque parades. The
+one positive element is that they are men under pay, subject to order,
+and available for initial experiments.
+
+The Green Banner, or militia, under the command of a general for
+each province, is theoretically composed of a large number of native
+Chinese. The army is made up mainly of officers. The higher officials
+of the Green Banner acquire the pay, commissary, and weapon-allotments
+of their nominal armies, and pad the rolls with the names of coolies
+who come out for the annual review in return for the small portion of
+their nominal wage which must be spent to keep face.
+
+To expect these men to get out and fight is obviously more than they
+bargained for. The Green Banner can deliver about the same relative
+number of actual soldiers per unit of population that a Mississippi
+backwoods county polls for the Republican party. The most that can be
+said for the Green Banner is that it has a list of men’s names from
+which a certain number of real recruits might be obtained.
+
+The military organization of even the best regular troops is feeble.
+Constant word reaches the press of soldiers revolting for lack of
+pay. In one such instance nine hundred men near the Manchuria border
+mutinied and were put down with difficulty, tying up the caravans for
+some time. Aside from questions of discipline, and considering number
+only, it is doubtful if, in the whole empire of four hundred million
+people, one hundred thousand decently armed and drilled troops could be
+gathered, in an extremity, for defensive purposes.
+
+Drilled and armed men in whatever numbers are, however, but one
+element of a country’s defensive power. Organization, transportation,
+commissary, and supply are factors of hardly less importance. The
+troops that get there are the ones which count, and even a Chinese army
+marches on its belly. Russia’s defective transport, to mention but one
+case, undoubtedly decided both the Crimean and the Japanese wars. The
+question of territorial defense is one of several dimensions, first of
+which is how soon could a given force, with its necessary commissary
+and ammunition-supply, be disposed along the various lines of possible
+attack.
+
+Making the round of the Chinese Empire, it is apparent that Tibet and
+Mongolia, for all the resistance that could be made, might be taken by
+England and Russia respectively whenever they were minded to cross the
+border. The Chinese could throw out barring columns no further westward
+than Sze-chuan, no further northward than the Great Wall.
+
+On the frontier of Corea, the Yalu River formerly defined the first
+line of defense. But this frontier has been moved westward by the
+Japanese, so that it would be a political impossibility to put men
+there even were it practically possible. The present line would of
+necessity be between Shan-hai-kwan and Yung-ping. Perhaps withdrawals
+from the northern provinces, the viceroys permitting, might admit
+massing here fifty thousand troops. But this, as well as any other
+possible line, is entirely unfortified, giving hardly more advantages
+to the repelling than to the attacking forces. There would be no second
+line of defense, nothing to fall back upon but the old Tatar Wall of
+Peking. Beyond this fifty thousand any quota brought from the south
+would consume a very considerable time, probably a month, even allowing
+that their semi-independent viceroys did not discreetly hold off
+altogether.
+
+Further east, at Shan-tung, Germany’s railway pierces to the heart
+of the Confucian province; while from the Chinese military centre in
+Chi-li there is no corresponding railroad, Chinese-manned, giving them
+access, were it necessary to repel aggression. The Anamese railways
+afford the French means of bringing up troops, where China could
+assemble an army only after weeks of marching. The Burmese frontier of
+Britain’s dominion is similarly vantaged.
+
+The German _Land-Wehr_, while the first armies go to the front, may
+be called out and mobilized, until the whole manhood of the nation
+is in arms. Such a body is nonexistent in the Celestial Empire. Like
+her own lichee nut, once the frail shell of her resistance is broken,
+the meat is ready for the eating. Considered solely from the military
+standpoint, aside from reform as such, China is as supine as a huge
+helpless jelly-fish, with disconnected nerve-ganglia, and not even the
+rudiments of a backbone.
+
+For the first requirements of national defense, what is necessary? For
+the north there should be a thoroughly drilled and equipped regular
+army of at least one hundred and fifty thousand men, with capacity for
+rapid concentration in the neighborhood of Peking. For the south a
+standing army of at least fifty thousand men. An intermediate army of
+fifty thousand more should be available near Hankow, capable of being
+thrown either way. The Peking-Hankow railway line must have strategic
+branches to Canton, Shanghai, Yun-nan, and Shan-tung. These must be
+controlled not by foreigners but by Chinese. There must exist a reserve
+of, say, five hundred thousand men, at least partially drilled, from
+which to draw reinforcements. There must be arsenals able to make all
+the weapons and ammunition for these forces, since foreign nations
+will continue to command the sea. The sums needed to realize such a
+programme must be available, and China must possess the organization
+and fiscal system for the conduct of a war. From this summary it may
+be seen that adequate defense requires a measure of increase in her
+efficiency that is revolutionary. The demand which such measures would
+make upon any nation is stupendous. How much more would it exact of
+China, where for its accomplishment every single factor must overthrow
+the ideas, the principles, the very morals evolved through centuries in
+the most conservative race of the globe!
+
+At the outset, for the personnel of such a regular army, two
+hundred and fifty thousand adults must be transformed from stolid,
+superstitious field-tillers and coolies, never of combative spirit,
+into courageous, disciplined fighting men. Can this be done? Some,
+eminently qualified to judge, answer that it can; but Chinese history
+has not for several thousand years furnished many glorious annals.
+Where a stark fight is recorded, as at Albazin, or against the Mongol
+khans in the sixteenth century, the warriors have been Manchus rather
+than Chinese. Whenever an aggressive nation, be it Hiung-nu or Khitan,
+Mongol or Manchu, British or Japanese, has gone against the genuine
+Chinaman, the latter has invariably submitted. It is only when his
+subjugators, absorbed into the swarming mass of conquered, have
+degenerated, that the native has been able to rise and drive out
+his enfeebled oppressor. The Chinese have conquered by time and their
+birth-rate.
+
+[Illustration: PEKING Where the Allies’ main assault was made]
+
+On the other hand, the Chinaman has qualities which, translated into
+military virtues, should theoretically give him a great initial
+advantage over any other race. He is comparatively without nerves;
+he can hold a gun without a tremor for what to a Westerner is an
+inconceivably long time; he has good eyes and a strong sight; he can be
+victualed on a few handfuls of rice; he is entirely indifferent as to
+where or how he lodges; he is sober and reliable; he is a big-bodied
+man, stronger even, perhaps, than the Japanese; he is docile, obedient,
+and susceptible to discipline. Indeed, in all that concerns his
+physical qualities and certain moral superiorities, one could not
+ask for better raw material. When well led he has at times done very
+creditably. A generation of such leadership as Yuan Shi Kai’s would do
+not a little toward bringing out what there is latent in this people.
+
+If in the army organization the gap between what is and what should
+be is so great, how much wider is it in the government organization
+needed to finance reform. The revenues of China are some $100,000,000.
+About $36,000,000 are allotted to military purposes. When from this
+has been deducted the eighteen million-odd which go to the generals
+of the Red and Green Banners, there is left, theoretically, about
+$18,000,000 for the real army. Actually there is efficiently applied
+probably not over $10,000,000. The regular army of Japan--two hundred
+and twenty-five thousand--takes $40,000,000 effectively expended. China
+must begin from the very bottom, whereas Japan is simply carrying
+along. A judicious total expenditure of at least $50,000,000 is needed
+for China’s army. With the additional railway and arsenal programme,
+and other concomitant work, the demands over and above present outlays
+would reach around $110,000,000. Add this to the present budget, less
+the well-spent ten millions, and there is to be reckoned a total budget
+of at least $200,000,000.
+
+Could China raise such a defense-fund on top of her present
+hundred-million-dollar budget? Could she cut down on present expenses
+to help it out? The latter might be considered. Theoretically the
+wasted army money of the present budget might be saved and applied.
+Practically the vested interests in the graft are so important as to
+make it of infinite difficulty. The mere beginning of sinecure-cutting
+cost the Emperor the actuality of his throne and nearly his head.
+
+The list shows other items of expenditure which cannot be materially
+economized. The large and growing sum which goes to repay interest,
+foreign loans, and indemnities, cannot be touched, nor can the
+$16,000,000 sent to the provinces for their local expenditures.
+The $8,000,000 for the Peking salaries and palace expenses is
+a fixture. The modest and well-administered $3,000,000 of the
+customs expenditures, covering about all the public works that China
+undertakes,--the lighthouse and coast-patrol allowances, the mails, the
+interpreters’ school,--this cannot be pared. The needed money must come
+if at all by increase of the receipts. One is driven irresistibly back
+to the Government’s taxing capacity.
+
+The physical possibility of such taxation undoubtedly exists. The per
+capita revenue which the Government receives from its four hundred
+million subjects is but twenty-five cents. The American per capita
+revenue is eight dollars, the Japanese five dollars, the Russian twelve
+dollars, the Indian--perhaps in conditions the closest parallel to the
+Chinese--one dollar and a quarter. An extra twenty-five cents would
+raise the Chinese Government well above all financial difficulties, and
+still leave the rate far below that of the other great nations of the
+world.
+
+Looking at the actual mechanism for revenue collection, one is met by
+difficulties which have rooted themselves deeply into the system. One
+cannot squeeze any larger proportion of the needed sum than the present
+$25,000,000 from the Imperial Maritime Customs. Tariff-rates are
+fixed by treaty, and the collections, under English direction, are as
+efficient as they can become. The likin duties on freight during inland
+transit are such a plague to commerce that, far from being increased,
+they should be swept away altogether as one of the earliest of reform
+measures. This $14,000,000 is produced at so heavy a price of fettered
+and thwarted commerce that added tariff would but aggravate the
+strangulation without materially increasing income. The opium revenue
+of $5,000,000 is likewise an item which, for the best interests of
+China, should disappear from a reformed budget, and the “foreign dirt”
+from the Celestial domain. In any event opium cannot be made much more
+productive.
+
+After these eliminations there are left items which bring in
+$56,000,000. The sources consist principally of the land-tax, the
+grain-tribute, native customs, and the salt gabelle. The returns from
+these factors would require to be nearly trebled, if they were relied
+upon to make up the bulk of the needed total.
+
+The method of collection is a further check to greater income. The
+existing machinery of fiscal administration operates, roughly,
+as follows: When the funds begin to run short for the usual
+expense-accounts, the various executive boards apply to the Board
+of Revenue. The latter makes a glorified guess at the sum which,
+considering harvests, rebellions, and other elements, each province
+might be able to pay. It is thereupon put to the provincial officials,
+consisting usually of a viceroy, a governor, a treasurer, and a
+judge, to supply something approximating this sum. The provincial
+syndicate, through the medium of various intermediate officials,
+such as the _tao-tai_ and the _fu_-prefect, whose powers are nebulous
+and overlapping, call upon the eighty-odd county magistrates for an
+estimated share. The magistrates, _shien-kwan_, called colloquially
+“father and mother officials,” whose varied functions include rendering
+justice, keeping the jail, leading the religious processions, and
+collecting the taxes, send out each his hundred henchmen to get the
+actual money or grain. Of this hierarchy of officials not one has
+a salary which would keep his establishment going for a month. Of
+necessity the laborer must draw his own hire first from the harvest.
+
+Under such a satrap system, by the grace of human nature, each official
+takes what the traffic will bear, letting pass to the man higher up
+enough to conciliate his claim and to keep face with Peking. If the
+penalties which follow deficient generosity to a superior define
+the maximum contribution, the minimum is fixed by the famine or the
+rebellion point. With this method in vogue, it is not unreasonable to
+assume that the amounts gathered in the first instance are about as
+great as can be wrung from the people. An increase of the Government’s
+receipts would have to come through shaking down the office-holders for
+a larger share of their pickings. Such a revenue as a real reform would
+demand must despoil of vested rights in his livelihood every mandarin,
+viceroy, _tao-tai_, _fu_-prefect, magistrate, and petty publican in
+the empire. It might be practicable to commute the likin, or inland
+octroi dues, for fixed sums by agreement with the _hongs_, or merchant
+associations. This was done in Li Hung Chang’s province, Kwang-tung,
+where $2,750,000 was paid in order to get rid of likin dues which
+netted only $670,000. Enough might be raised by this means to pay the
+officials at just rates. Then honest collections might reasonably be
+demanded, and a beginning be made of fiscal reform. But it is apparent
+from these outlines how long a way China has to travel before her
+capacity for self-defense is a reality.
+
+The facts are now being comprehended by all classes. From the coast
+cities, a growing number of young Chinese have been sent to study
+abroad, mainly in Japan--as many as fifteen thousand in 1907.
+Returning, these so-called “students” have become the leaders in
+the boycotts against the United States and Japan. They have engaged
+actively in propaganda of a patriotic nature, and, more constructively,
+have translated into their mother tongue hundreds of books on history,
+economics, and law, including the whole Japanese code, Herbert Spencer,
+Huxley, Voltaire, Montesquieu, the “Contrat Social” of Rousseau, the
+works of Henry George and Karl Marx, and many others of the same
+general nature.
+
+These movements show a widespread public opinion friendly to Chinese
+regeneration. Various administrative measures have been inaugurated
+which are yet more promising.
+
+The old method of dividing the Peking Bureau into provincial
+departments, and letting each of these care for every sort of business
+from its special province, has been altered. Instead of a bureau having
+general charge over the salt-tax, the customs, and the appointments
+of each province, there have been organized ten departments, dealing
+each with its specialty throughout the entire realm. The five
+recently-created bureaus--Agriculture, Works and Commerce, Police
+and Constabulary, Post-Office and Education--tell by their names the
+centralizing purpose of the new régime. Formerly five hundred clerks
+attended a department, with office-hours from eleven A.M. to two
+P.M. including lunch, smoking-time, and due intervals for examining
+peddlers’ wares. Now a much reduced force is employed, with actual
+working-hours generally from nine A.M. to four P.M. The foot-binding of
+children has been prohibited; pressure has been put upon the officials
+who smoke opium to abandon it, under penalty of dismissal from the
+service; classical essays as a civil-service examination subject are
+being given up, and the education of the Chinese youths abroad is being
+encouraged. A large number of Japanese officers have been engaged to
+train the khaki-clad and well-armed Chinese regulars, who have shown
+excellent aptitude. The Government has bought back practically all
+foreign railroad concessions, and all the valuable mining concessions
+except the Kai-ping coal-fields.
+
+Even representative government is well under way. The Dowager Empress’s
+edict of August 27, 1908, by which a nine-year period was set for
+the devolution of legislative powers to provincial assemblies and
+a national senate has been justified by remarkable success. The
+local legislatures, elected under carefully restricted suffrage
+qualifications, have grappled earnestly with the economic problems
+of the districts. The senate, of thirty-two members, selected by the
+Prince Regent from an elected body, has not yet had time to show
+results, but the calibre of the men in it is encouraging.
+
+China is making a real effort to get abreast of the times. But never
+was a nation brought more directly before the judgment-bar on the plain
+test of character. Upon the capacity of the race for private sacrifice
+and public honesty rests primarily her salvation. Whether China can
+or cannot rise to the task depends upon her own manhood, and no one
+can be prophet of the issue; for all estimate of Chinese character is
+perplexed by that curious Eastern subtlety of contradictions which
+baffle understanding.
+
+The inability of the Chinese to keep fingers out of the public till
+is proverbial; yet the very high standard of business integrity is
+universally conceded.
+
+[Illustration: SUMMER PALACE OF THE EMPEROR]
+
+The quality of Chinese honesty is attributed by some to the local
+idea of good form, and the obvious mercantile maxim that future
+credit depends upon present performance. Bourse operators may be
+scrupulously exact as to obligations which the mere lifting of a
+finger imposes, while engaged in campaigns diverting to their private
+speculations the funds of a chain of banks, or looting the values from
+the minority owners of a street-railway.
+
+Chinese business integrity is said to be due to the fact that her
+merchants are of the upper class; cowardice in war, to the fact that
+her soldiers are of the lowest caste. In Japan the condition is exactly
+reversed: hence the prowess of her Samurai, and the peccability of her
+clerks--such that Japanese bankers employ Chinamen to handle their
+money.
+
+Since the Japanese have built up an effective public administration, it
+is fair to give the Chinese the benefit of faith, and to assume that in
+time they too will rally to the task, and make a modern state.
+
+With this should come the Trans-Mongolia Railway: opening to the
+plainsmen of Central Asia a prospect of civilization and advance.
+
+Equally or more important, looking at things broadly, it would give to
+the world the best of the great Asian trade-routes. Examine a globe
+and see what, in the shortening of distance, this land-route to Peking
+signifies. Note the enormous circumnavigations that must be made in
+going around by India and Suez, and measure then the direct overland
+route by the Urga Post-Road and the Trans-Siberian Railway.
+
+The bulky freight from the Asian Coast to western Europe will still
+pay tribute to the sea. To compete with vessel-transportation, which
+carries a ton from Shanghai to London for seven dollars, the railroads
+over the 7283 miles from Vladivostok to Paris would have to make a
+rail-rate of one tenth of a cent per ton-mile; this is impossible when
+one remembers the average American rate of eight tenths of a cent. But
+North China, all North Asia, and Europe west of Moscow, are within the
+railway radius of an Urga-Peking line.
+
+From interior China may be drawn the goods for half a continent. The
+tea-freight which Russia receives over the long sea-trip to Odessa, or
+by the trans-shipped Vladivostok route, can be loaded then at Kalgan on
+the car that goes to Moscow. By it the silks of the Tien-tsin merchants
+may be rolled through into the freight-yards of St. Petersburg, and
+the timberless cities of interior China may build with the wood of
+the Yakutski Oblast forests. By it the dwellers in the valley of the
+Hoang-ho, “China’s Sorrow,” may be nourished in their need with the
+wheat of the Angara Valley; the Manchu mandarins may be clad in the
+furs from the Yenesei; the ploughshares tempered in Petrovski Zavod
+break the ancient soil of the Chi-li Province; the silver of the Altai
+Mountains make the bangles that deck the anklets of the purdah women.
+
+For America the road will open a commercial highway into the very heart
+of a new and expanding empire. American rails may carry American
+cars,--those ever moving shuttles which weave the woof of trade.
+American woolens and felts may protect the Siberians against their
+Arctic cold, American machinery mine and refine their gold. New England
+cottons, utilizing the Panama Canal, may clothe the myriad coolies
+of interior China. Here is the mail-route of ten days from Paris to
+Peking, against the thirty-five days needed by the fastest ships. Here
+is the quickest passenger-route from London to Yokohama. All these
+potentialities lie as the fallow heritage of the Urga Road, if beyond
+Kalgan it is given its avenues to China and the sea. It is civilization
+that must profit when the equilibrium of the East is restored, and over
+the old Urga Road China is relinked to the West by the trains of the
+great Asian Railway.
+
+
+  The Riverside Press
+  CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
+  U . S . A
+
+
+[Illustration: ASIA]
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
+
+  Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77082 ***
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+{
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+}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;}
+
+/* Images */
+
+img {
+    max-width: 100%;
+    height: auto;
+}
+img.w100 {width: 100%;}
+
+
+.figcenter {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 100%;
+}
+
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+    padding-top: 4em;
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+}
+
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+
+.figcenter3 {
+    padding-top: 2em;
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+
+
+/* Poetry */
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+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
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+.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;}
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+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77082 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover">
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>THE RUSSIAN ROAD TO CHINA</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f1">
+<img src="images/fig1.jpg" alt="maid">
+<p class="caption">A MAID OF OLD MUSCOVY</p>
+<p class="caption">(From a painting by Venuga)</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p class="c sp xxlarge">
+THE RUSSIAN ROAD<br>
+TO CHINA</p>
+
+<p class="c less">
+BY</p>
+
+<p class="c sp xlarge">
+LINDON BATES, <span class="smcap">Jr.</span></p>
+
+<p class="c sp p2 less">
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter1">
+<img src="images/fig2.jpg" alt="decoration">
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp less">
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="c sp large">
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</p>
+
+<p class="c sp oldeng">
+The Riverside Press Cambridge</p>
+
+<p class="c sp">
+1910
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+
+<p class="c sp more">
+COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY LINDON BATES, JR.</p>
+
+<p class="c sp more">
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p>
+
+<p class="c sp more">
+<i>Published May 1910</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="r5 x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2">CONTENTS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c1">I.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Path of the Cossack</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">1</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c2">II.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Great Siberian Railway</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">25</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c3">III.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In Irkutsk</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">71</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c4">IV.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Sledging through Transbaikalia &#160; &#160; &#160; </span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">114</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c5">V.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In Tatar Tents</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">173</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c6">VI.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The City of the Reborn God</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">220</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c7">VII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Russia in Evolution</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">273</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c8">VIII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Story of the Hordes</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">322</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#c9">IX.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">China</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr">364</td></tr>
+
+
+
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr class="r5">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph2">ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Maid of Old Muscovy</span><br>
+From a painting by Venuga</td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Yermak’s Expedition to Sibir, attacked by the Tatars</span><br>
+From a painting by Surikova</td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f3">8</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Church of St. Basil, Moscow</span><br>
+Ivan the Terrible blinded its architect that he might never<br>
+duplicate the masterpiece</td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f4">20</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Bridge over the Irtish</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f5">38</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Along the Trans-Siberian Railway</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f6">38</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Dining-Car Saloon—View of the Library</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f7">46</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Cities of New Russia—Tiumen, Tomsk, Perm</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f8">50</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Island of Kaltigei, Lake Baikal</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f9">68</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Village of Listvianitchnoe, Lake Baikal</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f9">68</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Angara River, Irkutsk</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f10">76</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Cathedral, Irkutsk</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f10">76</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Chapel in Irkutsk</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f11">86</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Bolshoiskaia, Irkutsk</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f11">86</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Bazaar, Irkutsk</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f12">90</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Ice-Breaker, Yermak—Lake Baikal</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f13">98</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Organizers of the Chita Republic</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f14">108</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Baikal Station</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f15">116</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Highlands of Transbaikalia</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f16">116</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Sledging Southwards</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f17">126</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Siberian Types—Peasant, Village Storekeeper</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f19">136</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Peasant Types</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f21">150</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Chickoya Girl</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f22">164</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Troitzkosavsk Student</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f22">164</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Wayside Temple</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f23">178</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Mongol Belle and her Yurta</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f24">186</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Zabaikalskaia Buriat</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f24">186</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Mongol “Black Man”</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f25">206</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Temple of Gigin, Urga</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f26">222</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Temple in the Urga Lamasery</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f27">228</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Prostrating Pilgrimage</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f28">234</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Grand Lama</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f29">244</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chinese Mandarin</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f30">256</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Gigin, the Living Buddha</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f30">256</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Chinese Archway, Urga Maimachen</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f31">262</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Great Wall</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f32">270</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Kremlin, Moscow</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f33">282</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Russian Types—Dragoon, Constable</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f34">292</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Street Scenes in Moscow<br>(The Tverskaia Gate, Loubianskaia Place)</span></td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f35">302</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Russian Types—Peddler, Policeman</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f36">316</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Miracle of Attila’s Repulse</span><br>(From the painting by Raphael in the Vatican)</td>
+  <td class="tdrt"><a href="#f37">332</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">On the Road to the Ming Tombs</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f38">342</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Glory is departed</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f39">360</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Bridge and Tablets in Pei-hai</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f40">368</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Hsuen-wu Gate, Peking</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f41">374</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Peking, where the Allies’ Main Assault was made</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f42">380</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Summer Palace of the Emperor</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f43">388</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Map of Asia, showing Route from Moscow to Peking</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#f44">392</a></td></tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<p class="c sp up" id="c1">THE RUSSIAN ROAD TO<br>
+CHINA</p>
+</div>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<p class="c sp">THE PATH OF THE COSSACK</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>N ancient way leads across northern Asia to the
+Chinese borderland. The steel of the great
+Siberian Railroad harnesses now the stretch which
+mounts the Urals, pierces the steppes, winds through
+the Altai foothills, and by cyclopean cuts and tunnels
+girdles Lake Baikal. From Verhneudinsk southward,
+it has remained as an ancient post-road
+leading through the Trans-Baikal highlands to the
+frontier garrison town of Kiahta. Over the Mongolian
+border at Maimachen, it has narrowed into
+a camel-trail threading the barren hills to the
+encampment of the Tatar hordes at holy Urga.
+Thence it strikes across the sandy wastes of Gobi,
+and passes the ramparts of the Great Wall of China,
+on its way toward Peking and the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>Through five centuries this road has been building.
+Cossacks blazed its way; musketoon-armed
+Strelitz, adventuring traders, convicts condemned
+for sins or sincerity, land-seeking peasants, exiled
+dissenters, voyaging officials—all have trampled it.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>
+Hiving workmen under far-brought engineers have
+pushed the rails onward, bridging the chasms and
+heaping the defiles. Following it eastward, unpeopled
+wastes have been sown to homesteads, hamlets
+have grown into cities. To the very gateway
+of China it has led the Muscovite. It is the path of
+Slavic advance.</p>
+
+<p>The way scarcely passed Novgorod in the early
+sixteenth century when the great family of the
+Stroganovs, a “kindred in Moscovie called the
+sonnes of Anika living neare the Castle of Saint
+Michael the Archangel,” began the fur-trade with
+the Samoied tribesmen from Siberia, who paddled
+down the Wichida River to barter peltries with the
+Russians. The prudent merchant Anika, looking to
+a more permanent source for those valued furs than
+the irregular visits of the aborigines, planned to
+anticipate his brother traders in their purchases.
+He sent east with a band of returning Samoieds
+some of his own henchmen carrying, for traffic with
+the inhabitants, “divers base merchandise, as small
+bels, and other like Dutch small wares.” The
+agents returned to report what impressed them
+most. There were no cities. The Samoieds were
+“lothsome in feeding,”—even a Russian frontiersman
+might shrink from the cud of a reindeer’s
+stomach as food,—and knew neither corn nor
+bread. They were cunning archers, whose arrows
+were headed with sharpened stones and fishbones.
+They were clad in skins, wearing in summer the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>
+furry side outward and in winter inward. They
+willingly gave sable-skins for Dutch bells.</p>
+
+<p>A series of trading expeditions began, which made
+the Stroganovs so enormously wealthy that “the
+kindred of Anika knew no ends of their goods.”
+Indeed, they gained so much by this exploitation
+that they began to fear the application by the
+Czar’s agent of a monetary test of patriotism. So,
+by a stroke of finance not unknown in modern days,
+there was arranged the Russian equivalent for
+carrying five thousand shares of Metropolitan. A
+block of small wares for the account of the Czar’s
+brother-in-law, Boris, was added to the stock in an
+especially important expedition among the Samoieds
+and Ostiaks. The adventurers got far inland. They
+saw men riding on elks, and sledges drawn by dogs.
+They returned with wonderful tales of marksmanship,
+and, more important, brought back enough furs
+to give Boris a dividend, in gratitude for which he
+secured to the Stroganovs the grant of an enormous
+tract of land along the Kama River and a monopoly
+of the trade with the aborigines.</p>
+
+<p>The Stroganovs grew and thrived. They scattered
+trading-posts and factories along the river-highways
+and sent many parties into the interior
+to barter. In the half-century following old Anika’s
+expedition, they had carried the Slavic way to the
+Urals.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1578, when Maxim Stroganov
+was ruling over the family estates along the Kama,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>
+one Yermak, heading a fugitive band of Cossacks,
+tattered and spent, with dented armor and drooping
+ponies, straggled into camp and offered service.
+With great delicacy Maxim forbore pressing too
+closely his inquiry into their antecedents. It might
+have wounded Yermak’s susceptibilities to avow
+that his chief lieutenant, Ivan Koltso, was under
+sentence of death for capturing and sacking a town
+of the Nogoy, and that the immediate cause of his
+advent was an army of Imperial Strelitz, which had
+driven his band from the Volga District for piracy
+and highway robbery.</p>
+
+<p>The situation on the far side of the Urals, where
+the skin-hunting tribes had been conquered by a
+roving horde of Tatars under Kutchum Khan, was
+at this time interfering sadly with the Stroganovs’
+fur business. Eight hundred Cossacks, furthermore,
+of shady character and urgent needs were undesirable
+neighbors. So the prudent Maxim, not particularly
+solicitous as to which of the two might
+be eliminated, offered Yermak a supply of new
+muskets if he would go away and fight the Tatars.
+They were not pleasant people for the Cossacks to
+meet, these former masters of Moscow. But behind
+were the soldiers of Ivan the Terrible. With
+a possible conquest before, and the Strelitz behind,
+Yermak gladly chose to invade the Tatar territory,
+which is now western Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>Up the Chusovaya River the little expedition
+started in 1579, damming the stream with sails to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
+get the boats across its shallows. Penetrating far
+into the mountains, the band reached a point where
+a portage could be made across the Ural water-shed.
+Then they headed down the Tura River into
+Siberia. Here the invaders met the first army of the
+Tatars under Prince Yepancha, and with small loss
+drove them back. Yermak made his winter camp
+on the site of the present city of Tiumen.</p>
+
+<p>Next year the advance began once more. The
+Khan of the Tatars, Kutchum, was alive to the seriousness
+of the incursion, and prepared to ambush
+the Cossack flotilla as it descended the Tura. At a
+chosen spot chains were stretched across the stream,
+and bowmen were stationed on the banks to await
+the coming of Yermak and overwhelm with arrows
+his impeded forces. The Tatar sentries above the
+ambuscade signaled the coming of the boats; all
+eyes were turned intently upstream. Then Yermak’s
+soldiers fell upon them from the rear, to their
+total surprise and his complete victory. Straw-stuffed
+figures in Cossack garments had come down
+in the boats; the men themselves had made a land-circuit
+and had struck the enemy unprepared.</p>
+
+<p>In defense of his threatened capital, Sibir, the
+old Khan rallied once more. He assembled a great
+army, thirty times that of the Cossacks. For the
+invaders, however, retreat was more perilous than
+advance. Yermak went on, and in a great fight on
+the banks of the Irtish, again prevailed. With his
+forces reduced by battle and disease to some three<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>
+hundred effectives, he entered Sibir on October 25,
+1581. A few days later the Ostiak tribes, glad to
+escape their Koran-coercing masters, proffered their
+allegiance, and the Cossack saddle was on Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>But how precarious was their seat! Southward
+were the myriads of the unconquered hordes of Tatary;
+only one of the score of their khans had been
+vanquished. As thistledown is blown before the
+wind, so could Yermak’s oft-decimated band have
+been swept away had once the march of the Mongols’
+main division turned northward. Girding him
+round were the self-submitting Ostiaks, loyal for
+the moment to those who had won them freedom
+from the old proselyting overlord, but not long to
+be relied upon once the weight of Cossack tribute—the
+fur-yassak—began to be felt.</p>
+
+<p>But what the Tatar hordes had not, what the
+Ostiak hunters had not, the three hundred Cossacks
+had—a man. This man, starting his march as the
+hunted captain of a band of outlaws, could conquer
+half a continent. Then over the heads of his employers,
+the mighty family of Stroganov, over the
+heads of governors of provinces, of boyars, of ministers
+to the throne, he could send by his outlaw
+lieutenant, Ivan Koltso, loftily, imperially, as a
+prince to a king, his offer of the realm of Siberia to
+Ivan Vasilevich.</p>
+
+<p>Ivan the Terrible, Czar of all the Russias, he who
+had blinded the architect of St. Basil, lest he plan a
+second masterpiece; he who had tortured and slain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+a son, hated less for his intrigues than for his unroyal
+weakness, responded imperially. Over the long
+versts Ivan’s courier carried to Yermak a pardon,
+confirmation as ruler of the newly-won realm and
+the Czar’s own mantle, an honor accorded only to
+the greatest, the boyars of Muscovy. Following the
+messenger eastward there plodded three hundred
+musket-armed Strelitz to bear aid to the Cossack
+garrison. Sorely now were these reinforcements
+needed, for the Ostiak tribes flamed into rebellion
+against King Stork. With Kutchum’s Tatars, they
+returned to the attack and besieged Sibir. Once
+again, though hemmed about by the multitude of
+his enemies, the valor of Yermak saved his cause.
+In a totally unexpected sally, in June, 1584, the
+Tatar camp was surprised, a great number massacred,
+and the besiegers scattered.</p>
+
+<p>The whole country, however, save only the city
+of Sibir, was still in arms. Engagements between
+small parties were constant. Ivan Koltso, striving
+to open a way for a trader’s caravan, fell with his
+fifty, cut down to the last man. Yermak, marching
+out to avenge him, was himself surprised near the
+Irtish. With Ulysses-like adroitness, he and two
+followers escaped the massacre and reached the
+river-bank, where a small skiff promised safety.
+Leaping last for the boat, Yermak fell short, and,
+weighted with his armor, sank in the river that he
+had given to Russia. The two Cossack soldiers
+alone floated down to their comrades.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p>One hundred and fifty, all that were left of them,
+started their long homeward retreat. Far from
+Sibir, they met a hundred armed men sent by the
+Czar. Great was the spirit, not unworthy of the
+dead leader, that turned them back, to march to
+a site twelve miles from Sibir, where they built their
+own town, now the city of Tobolsk.</p>
+
+<p>In the years that followed, their nomad enemies
+drifted south, leaving those behind who cared
+not for their old khan’s quarrels. The phlegmatic
+Ostiaks returned to their hunting and to their
+feasts of uncooked fox-entrails. The long fight had
+rolled past, leaving the Slavic way undisputed to
+the Irtish.</p>
+
+<p>Well it was, for no more of the Strelitz marched
+to the aid of the garrisons. Russia was in the
+throes of civil war and invasion,—the long-remembered
+“Smutnoe Vremya,” time of troubles. Boris
+Godunov, once favorite of Ivan the Terrible, became
+the real ruler in the reign of the weak Feodor.
+On the death of this prince, with the heir-apparent
+Dimitri suspiciously slain, he had mounted the
+empty throne, and a pretender, claiming to be
+Dimitri miraculously escaped, had risen up in
+Poland, gained the support of the king, and marched
+against Boris. Though the Polish army was routed,
+Boris succumbed shortly after to a poison-hastened
+demise.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f3">
+<a href="images/fig3big.jpg">
+<img src="images/fig3.jpg" alt="tatars">
+</a>
+<p class="caption">YERMAK’S EXPEDITION TO SIBIR ATTACKED BY THE TATARS</p>
+<p class="caption">(From a painting by Surikova)</p>
+<p class="caption"><span class="greentext sans">(click image to enlarge)</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dimitri attacked the new czar, captured Moscow,
+and was crowned in the Kremlin by the Poles.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>A revolution followed within a year, in which the
+pseudo-Dimitri was slain. Meanwhile the Poles
+were devastating Russia more cruelly than had
+the old Tatar conquerors. At length Minim the
+butcher of Novgorod led a popular revolt, which in
+1613 carried to the throne Michael, the first of the
+Romanovs.</p>
+
+<p>Through all these years, despite the fact that
+anarchy and chaos rioted over Muscovy, despite the
+fact that no troops came to aid in the advance,
+the Cossacks still pressed their way, contested by the
+scattered bands of Tatars, and farther on by
+the Buriats, the Yakuts, the Koriats. After these
+fighters and conquerors came the traders and colonists,
+with their families, following along the road
+that had been won. The valleys of the great Siberian
+rivers, which so short a time before had been
+the grazing-grounds of the Tatars, became dotted
+now with the farms of the new-come settlers. The
+advance guards of the fur-traders, with blockhouses
+guarding the portages, and clustering wooden
+huts and churches, pushed south and east as far as
+Kuznetz, at the head of navigation on the River
+Tom, and to the foot of the Altai Mountains. North
+and east the trade-route was advanced to the
+Yenesei, twenty-two hundred miles inland. As
+many as sixty-eight hundred sables went back to
+Russia in 1640, together with great quantities of
+fox, ermine, and squirrel-skins.</p>
+
+<p>The quaint volumes of “Purchas his Pilgrimes,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+published in 1625, tell of some of the early explorations.
+A band of Cossacks dared the upper Yenesei,
+which “hath high mountains to the east, among
+which are some that cast out fire and brimstone.”
+They made friends of the cave-dwelling Tunguses
+in this region, who were themselves stirred to explore,
+and went on far eastward to another river,
+less than the Yenesei but as rapid. By faster running
+the Tunguses caught some of the inhabitants,
+who pointed across the river and said “Om! Om!”
+The old chronicler diligently records the speculation
+as to what “Om! Om!” could mean. Some
+thought that it signified thunder, others held it a
+warning that the great beyond teemed with devils.
+These unfortunate slow-running natives died, “probably
+of fright,” when the Tunguses, in a spirit as
+naïvely unfeeling as if they were collecting curios,
+were taking them back to be exhibited to their friends
+the Cossacks. How far these Tunguses had pierced
+cannot be told. In one of the dialects of the Yakuts
+who live beyond Baikal, “ta-oom” or “tanak-hoom”
+means “greetings.” Had the Tunguses and
+the Cossacks who followed them arrived at the
+Yakuts’ country? Or was the river on which passed
+“ships with sails” and beyond which was heard the
+booming of brazen bells the Amur? Were those the
+junks and temple-gongs of the Manchus? <i>Ni snaia</i>,—who
+knows?</p>
+
+<p>In 1637 the Cossacks reached and established
+themselves in Yakutsk. In 1639 by the far northern<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+route they pierced to the Sea of Okhotsk. In 1644
+a party reached the delta of the Kalyma, and
+curiously speculated upon the mammoth tusks
+which they found. In 1648, on the Cellinga River
+beyond Lake Baikal they built Fort Verhneudinsk.
+Had their tide of conquest now rolled southward, up
+the Cellinga Valley, the Russian Eagles might to-day
+be flying over Peking. Only the Kentai Mountains
+were between them and prostrate Mongolia,
+enfeebled by the internecine warfare of her rival
+khans. From Mongolia, the road, worn by so many
+conquerors of old, leads fair and clear to the Chi-li
+Province and the heart of China.</p>
+
+<p>But they passed this gateway by, those old Cossack
+heroes, as the railway builders have passed it
+by, to press with Poyarkov to the Pacific; to conquer,
+with Khabarov, the Amur; to meet in desperate
+conflict the whale-skin cuirassed Koriats of the
+coast; to battle with the Manchu in conflicts where
+“by the Grace of God and the Imperial good fortune,
+and our efforts, many of those dogs were
+slain”; to fight until but an unvanquished sixty-eight
+were left of the garrison of eight hundred in
+beleaguered Albazin.</p>
+
+<p>The current of conquest passed by this door
+to China, but the swelling stream of commerce
+searched it out. In 1638, the Boyar Pochabov,
+crossing Baikal on the ice, broke the first way to
+Urga, the capital of the Mongolian Great Khan,
+and gained the friendship of the monarch. In the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+interests of trade, the deputies of the Czar Alexei
+Michailovitch followed up the opening with an
+embassy in 1654 to the Chinese Emperor himself.
+Over steppe and mountain and desert the mission
+wound its weary way to Kalgan, the outpost city
+beside the Chinese Wall, and then on to Peking,
+bearing to the Bogdo Khan, the Yellow Czar, the
+presents of Chagan Khan, the White Czar.</p>
+
+<p>From the Forbidden Palace at Peking were started
+back, four years later, return presents, including
+ten <i>puds</i> of the first tea that reached Russia. With
+the presents came a message that drove flame
+into the bearded cheeks of the Czar and set his
+Muscovite boyars to grasping their sword-hilts. “In
+token of our especial good-will we send gifts in return
+for your tribute.” Thus, the Chinese Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The answer of the Czar started another legation
+plodding across a continent, and the retort was
+thrown at the feet of his Yellow Majesty. It was a
+summons forthwith to tender his vassalage to Russia.
+The Czar’s gauntlet had been hurled across Asia.
+But all it brought was beggary to the traders who
+had begun to press along the newly-opened route to
+a commercial conquest of the East.</p>
+
+<p>Soon Russia regretted the fruitage of her challenge.
+In 1685 Golovin’s embassy left Moscow, and,
+arriving two years later at Verhneudinsk, opened
+negotiations with Peking. A Chinese commission
+then made its way north, and at Nerchinsk,
+August 27, 1689, was signed the famous treaty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
+closing to Russia her Amur outlet to the Pacific,
+purchased with such desperate valor at Albazin,
+but granting to a limited number of Russian merchants
+trading privileges into China.</p>
+
+<p>A lively traffic at once sprang up. Long caravans,
+silk- and tea-laden, crossed the Mongolian deserts,
+the Siberian steppes and hills, and the forested
+Urals, taking the road to Europe. A little Russian
+settlement was founded at Peking, and a traders’
+caravansary was built. The church constructed by
+the prisoners of Albazin, who had been so kindly
+treated by the Manchus that they at first refused
+the release which the treaty brought, gave place to
+a larger edifice erected by popes from Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, however, the Russians again offended the
+Celestial Emperor. In their riotous living, the
+quickly enriched merchants disquieted the sober
+Chinese. The Siberians over the frontier gave
+asylum to a band of seven hundred Mongol free-booters,
+whom it was urgently desired to present to
+a Chinese headsman. So commerce was forbidden
+anew, and most of the reluctant merchants left
+their compound. Some stayed and assimilated with
+the Chinese, retaining, however, their religion; and
+for years a mixed race observed in Peking the rites
+of Greek Orthodox Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange that rulers so energetic as
+Peter the Great and some of his successors took no
+steps to resent by force of arms the arbitrary acts
+of the Chinese Emperor. But much was going on in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+Russia; Peter was occupied with his invasion of
+Persia, and Catherine was without taste for a distant
+and doubtful campaign. The garrisons scattered
+over the enormous area of Siberia were numerically
+too weak and too poorly equipped to do more
+than hold their own. So, when commerce was once
+more interdicted and the merchants banished, recourse
+was had to diplomacy. In 1725 the Bogdo
+Khan relented enough to receive Count Ragusinsky
+with a special embassy from Catherine the First,
+which arranged the second great agreement with
+China, called the Treaty of Kiahta.</p>
+
+<p>By it the frontier cities of Kiahta in Siberia, and
+Maimachen, facing it just across the line in Mongolia,
+were established as the gateway to Chinese
+trade. The treaty provided for the extradition of
+bandits and for a perpetual peace and friendship
+between the high contracting parties. Ever since,
+the citizens of Kiahta have alternately blessed and
+blamed Ragusinsky,—blamed him because, in the
+fear lest any stream flowing out of Chinese into
+Russian territory should be poisoned, he settled the
+boundary city beside a Siberian brook so inadequate
+that Kiahtans have suffered ever since for lack of
+water, with the river Bura only nine versts away in
+China; blessed him because of the great prosperity
+the treaty brought to their doors.</p>
+
+<p>The tea carried by this highway became Russia’s
+national drink. Great warehouses arose, built
+caravansary-wise around courts. Endless files of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
+two-wheeled carts rolled northward, bearing each
+its ten square bales of tea, or its well-packed bolts
+of silk. The merchants grew wealthy in the rapidly
+swelling trade.</p>
+
+<p>A great Chinese embassy, headed by the third
+ranking official of the Peking Foreign Office, made
+its way to Moscow to keep permanent the relations
+of the two empires. Similarly, a Russian embassy
+was established in the rebuilt compound in Peking,
+where a new church arose, whose archimandrite
+gained a comfortable revenue by selling ikons and
+crucifixes to the many Chinese converts he had
+baptized.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine the Second’s edict opened to all Russians
+the freedom of Chinese trade. Its volume,
+large before, became now even greater. In 1780
+the registered commerce at Kiahta had risen to
+2,868,333 roubles, not to mention the large value
+of the goods taken in unregistered.</p>
+
+<p>Tea, a pound of which, if of best quality, cost
+two roubles in those days, silks, porcelains, cottons,
+and tobacco, went north, exchanged for Russian
+peltries, for cloth, hardware, and, curiously enough,
+hunting-dogs.</p>
+
+<p>An English merchant, who had penetrated to
+Kiahta in that year, gives an amusing account of
+the mutual distrust with which the barter was
+conducted. The Russian going over the frontier to
+Maimachen would examine the goods in the Chinese
+warehouse, seal up what he desired, and leave two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+men on guard. The Chinese merchant would then
+come to Kiahta, and do the same with the Russian’s
+wares. When the bargain was struck, both together
+carried one shipment over the border with guards
+and brought back the exchange.</p>
+
+<p>In growing prosperity, undisturbed, the Kiahta
+caravans came and went, while elsewhere history
+was warm in the making.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon marched to Moscow, to Leipsic, to
+Waterloo. The Kiahta caravans came and went.
+The St. Petersburg Dekabrists rose for Constantine
+and the Constitution. The Kiahta caravans came
+and went. The Crimean War saw the Russian flag
+flutter down at Sevastopol. Even as the Malakoff
+was stormed, a Russian army marched into Central
+Asia to seize the Zailust Altai slope, which points
+as a spear toward Turkestan and India, and a Russian
+navy sailed under Muraviev to occupy the
+forbidden Amur. The Kiahta caravans came and
+went.</p>
+
+<p>At length a railroad, pushed year by year,
+reached the Pacific. One branch cut across the
+reluctantly-accorded Manchurian domain to Vladivostok;
+another struck southward to Dalny and
+Niu-chwang. The Russian Eagles perched at Port
+Arthur and nested by the far Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>The camel-commerce of the old overland road
+across Mongolia shrank now as shrinks a Gobi
+snow-rivulet under the burning desert sun. The
+meagre Kiahta caravans became but a gaunt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>
+shadow of the mighty past. Only an intermittent
+wool-export and a dwindling traffic in tea to the
+border cities remained of the great tribute of the
+Urga Road. As trade vanished from their once busy
+warehouses, the Chinese merchants were troubled.
+Perhaps to prayer and sacrifice the God of Commerce
+would relent? So a scarlet temple rose on the
+hill by Maimachen. Prosperity came suddenly once
+again, a new trade rolled north over the historic
+way. The Mongol cart-drivers returned from far
+Ulasati. The camel-trains, that had scattered south
+to the trails beyond Shama, gathered back as antelopes
+herd to a new spring in the desert.</p>
+
+<p>The God of the Red Temple, the God of the Caravan,
+had sent the Japanese. As the Amban’s executioner
+strikes off a victim’s hand, so had the Nipponese
+lopped away the railroad reaching down to
+Dalny and Niu-chwang—the road that was breaking
+the camel-trade a thousand versts beyond, on
+the old route by Maimachen and Kiahta. Against
+the Russian control of the Pacific the Japanese had
+hurled all their gathered might. By battle genius
+and efficiency the Island soldiers won, and athwart
+the front of Slavic empire they set their desperate
+legions. Far more was lost to Russia than men
+and squandered treasure, far more than prestige and
+power of place. The enormous stakes, even in the
+port of Dalny, in the forts of Port Arthur, in
+the East China Railway, were but incidents. The
+real tragedy of the war was that the vital terminus<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+of her continent railroad was alienated, and that
+her civilization was barred back indefinitely.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers and statesmen who carried Russia’s
+power across a savage continent had sought out
+many inventions. But by whatever means each
+successive territory was won, its maintenance had
+been by the warrant that the Slavs had gone not
+lightly, adventuring to conquest, but as an earnest
+host clearing a way for the homes and the hearths
+of their race. The colonist had followed the Cossack;
+cities and villages, railways and telegraphs,
+had risen behind the armies. The dawn of the twentieth
+century saw a mighty expanse of Siberia
+redeemed from a desolate waste to a land of farms
+and villages, of mines and industries; a native population,
+once hardly superior to the American Indian,
+not, like him, displaced and exterminated, but
+raised side by side with the settlers to a more equitable
+place than is held by any other subject people
+in Asia. The Russian advance had brought the
+establishment of the volunteer fleet plying from far
+Odessa to Vladivostok, and the completion of the
+greatest railway enterprise the world has ever seen.
+It had opened from Europe to the Far East a land-route
+more important to more people than the
+water-route discovered by Vasco da Gama. The
+fruition of a nation’s hope was lost when the Eagles
+went down at Port Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>For those who feast at Russia’s cost the reckoning
+is long. Predecessors not unfamed are worthy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+remembrance: the Tatars who lorded it four hundred
+years, the Poles whose kings caroused in the
+Kremlin, the great Emperor, with his Grande
+Armée, whose stabled horses scarred the walls of
+St. Basil, the Turks, the Swedes,—all conquerors
+of yesterday. But long years must take their toll of
+life and gold before Russia can carry the entrenched
+lines along the Yalu, and reënter the
+redoubts hewn in the sterile hills around Port
+Arthur. The spoils to the victors for the present are
+unchallenged. The Russian way to China is not
+now through Manchuria.</p>
+
+<p>But the ancient road of the Kiahta caravans is
+still unblocked. Here is the shortest route from
+Europe to the East. Here, through the defiles and
+the broken foothills of the Gobi Plateau, lies the
+future redemption of the great unfettered land-route
+to North China. The Chinese are themselves
+advancing to anticipate it. They have already built
+into Kalgan. To this trading-centre across the pale,
+a Russian railway may yet pass and her colonists
+make fruitful the unpeopled wilds of Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p>In the cycles of progress old paths are reworn.
+Pharaoh’s canal from the Mediterranean to the
+Red Sea was swallowed up under the sands of
+three thousand years when the Genoans won a way
+across the Isthmus. Their track was left unsought
+when the Portuguese showed the route for ships
+around the Cape. Yet to-day the Strait of Suez is
+thronged with reborn commerce.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+<p>The first American highway to the Western Reserve
+was superseded by the better avenue of the
+newly built Erie Canal, yet came to its own again
+beneath the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio. So,
+far to the westward of Japan’s outpost, the age-old
+caravan road, with a shadowy fantastic history
+dim as its dun trail across the desert, may rise to
+a resurrected glory as a new road to China.</p>
+
+<p>Its greatness is of yesterday and of to-morrow.
+Unto to-day belongs the quaintness of the cavalcade
+that passes to and fro along its track. Over the
+frozen snows of winter and the rocky trails of summer
+there plod horse and ox and camel, sleigh and
+wagon and cart,—a broken line of men and beasts.
+Russian posts thunder past with galloping horses,
+three abreast. Bands of Cossacks convoy the
+guarded camel-trains of heavy mail for China. One
+meets troops of boyish recruits, singing lustily in
+chorus on the tramp northward, and Mongol carts
+and flat-featured Buriats on their little shaggy
+ponies, sleepy wooden villages, forests, steppes,
+swamps, frozen river-courses, mountain passes.</p>
+
+<p>Through the kaleidoscope of races and peoples
+one moves in a world-forgotten life, a procession of
+the ages.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f4">
+<img src="images/fig4.jpg" alt="basil">
+<p class="caption">CHURCH OF ST. BASIL, MOSCOW</p>
+<p class="caption">(Ivan the Terrible blinded its architect that he might never duplicate the masterpiece)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the threshold of Siberia the traveler has
+turned back in manner, in ways of thought, in
+government, in everything, to the past. Go into
+one of these cities,—you are in the Germany of
+1849, with the embers still hot of the fire lighted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>by the republican movement of the young men and
+the industrials. The seeming chance of victory has
+passed them by. The iron hand is over all. One
+hears of Siberian Carl Schurzes, fugitives to America
+and to Switzerland, of the month-lived Chita
+Republic, of the row of gallows at Verhneudinsk,
+of the bloody assizes at Krasnoyarsk.</p>
+
+<p>It is as if one lived when citizens gathered in
+excited groups in the Forum to discuss the news
+from Philippi; or as if, from the broken masonry
+of the Tuileries, there stepped out into breathing
+actuality the five hundred Marseillaises “who know
+how to die,” fronting the red Swiss before the
+palace of Louis, the King. Here is the reality of
+friends in hiding, of files of soldiers at each railway-station,
+of police-examined passports without which
+one cannot sleep a night in town, of arms forbidden,
+meetings forbidden, books forbidden,—all
+things forbidden. Here as there men thought that
+the new could come only by revolution. Yet one
+can see, despite all, the germs of improvement and
+the upward pressures of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Move further toward the frontier towns, where
+the relayed horses bring the weekly mail,—you have
+gone back a hundred and fifty years. You are
+among our own ancestors of the days of the Stamp
+Act. Did the General Howe who governs the
+oblast from his Irkutsk residency overhear the
+school-boys of Troitzkosavsk as they chant the forbidden
+<i>Marseillaise</i>, he, too, might say that freedom<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+was in the air. These Siberian frontiersmen shoot
+the deer with their permitted flint-locks as straight
+as the neighbors of Israel Putnam, and with spear
+and gun they face the bear that the dusky Buriat
+hunters have tracked to its lair.</p>
+
+<p>Our Puritans are there, rugged, red-bearded dissenters,
+“Stare’ Obriachi,” Old Believers, they are
+called, who came to Siberia rather than use Bishop
+Nikon’s amended books of prayer. Yankee-like, outspoken,
+keen at a trade, are these big Siberian sons
+of men who dared greatly in their long frozen march.
+The grants to Lord Baltimores and Padroon Van
+Rensselaers are in the vast “cabinetski” estates of
+the grand-ducal circle, engulfing domains great as
+European kingdoms.</p>
+
+<p>Go into one of the villages of the peasants transplanted
+in a body by the paternal Government.
+Here are the patient, enduring recruits for the army,
+brothers to the toilers over whose fields the Grand
+Monarch’s wars rolled back and forth. Though
+steeped in ignorance and overwhelmed by the incubus
+of communism, they are capable of real and
+splendid manhood, and will show it when their
+world has struggled through into the century in
+which we others live.</p>
+
+<p>Go to a mining-camp in the Chickoya Valley. It
+is California and the days of ’49. Histories as
+romantic as those of the Sierras are being lived out
+in its unsung gorges,—tales of hardships, of grub-stakes,
+of bonanzas in Last Chance Gulches.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<p>When the bumping tarantass rolls across the
+Chinese frontier into Mongolia, it enters a kingdom
+of the Middle Ages flung down into the twentieth
+century. Feudal princes, lords of armies weaponed
+with spear and bow, tax and drive to the corvée
+their nomad serfs. A hierarchy of priests whose
+divine head lives in a palace at Holy Urga, sways
+the multitude of superstition-steeped Mongols, and
+receives the homage of pilgrims wending their way
+from Siberia, from the Volga, from Tibet, from all
+Mongolia, to their Canterbury of Lamaism. In
+prostrate devotion the penitents girdle the Sacred
+City before whose hovels beggars dispute with dogs
+their common nourishment, and in whose compounds
+princes of the race of Genghis Khan, with
+armies of retainers, live bedless, bathless, lightless,
+in the felt huts of their race. Squalid magnificence
+and good-humored kindly hospitality are linked to
+utter brutality. Sable-furs and silks cover sheepskins
+worn until they drop from the body. Here and
+there among the natives a Chinese trading caravansary,
+alien, walled, peculiar, stands as of old the
+Hansa-town, with merchant guilds and far-brought
+caravan goods.</p>
+
+<p>A way of adventure and strangeness, where the
+years turn back, is this old road of the Golden
+Horde, leading down past the ancestral homes of
+the Turks to the Great Wall.</p>
+
+<p>The Cossack sentries at Kiahta look Chinaward.
+They have become an anomaly, this hard-riding,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+fierce-fighting soldier class. The plow has metamorphosed
+into myriad farms the plains along the
+Don where once their ponies grazed. Mining-cuts
+score the hills in the Urals where once they hunted.
+Villages of Slavonic peasants rise along the Amur.
+The sons of the old warriors grow into peaceful
+farmer-folk, differing in name alone from their blue-eyed
+neighbors. Soon they must disappear in all
+save picturesquely uniformed Hussars of the Guard,
+and as a memory, chanted by young men and girls
+in the Siberian summer evenings when Yermak’s
+song is raised. The task of the Cossack, to lead in
+the conquest of kindred native races and to weld
+these through themselves into Russia’s fabric, is
+nearly done.</p>
+
+<p>Down the ancient road lies a last avenue of advance.
+Eastward is Manchuria, where artillery and
+science grappling must decide the day with Japan.
+Southward is India, where England’s guarded gateway
+among the hills can be opened only from behind.
+But into Mongolia Fate may decree that the yellow-capped
+Cossacks, drafted from Russia’s Mongol
+Buriats, shall lead once more the nation-absorbing
+march of the White Czar. For another memorable
+ride, the Cossacks, who on their shaggy ponies led
+the long conquering way across the continent, may
+yet mount and take the road to China.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c2">II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">H</span>OW long to Irkutsk? Seven days now, seven
+years when last I came.” The bearded Russian
+standing in the doorway of the adjoining compartment
+in the corridor-car of the Siberian Express
+gazes thoughtfully at the fir-covered slope, whose
+dark green stands in sombre contrast to the winter
+snows. The train is slowly climbing the Ural Range,
+toward the granite pyramid near Zlatoust, on opposite
+sides of which are graven “Europe” and
+“Asia.” Neighbors with easy sociability are conversing
+along the wide corridors, exchanging stories
+and cigarettes, asking each other’s age and income
+in naïve Siberian style.</p>
+
+<p>Regarding the burly occupant of the next stateroom
+one may discreetly speculate. From sable-lined
+paletot and massive gold chains you hazard
+that he voyaged with the traders’ slow caravans
+in the days before the railway—that he was a
+merchant.</p>
+
+<p>“A merchant? <i>Optovi?</i> No, I did not come with
+the caravans.”</p>
+
+<p>From the triangle of red lapel-ribbon, the rank-bestowing
+decoration, you venture a second guess.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps the <i>gaspadine</i> made the great circuit<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>
+to oversee the local administrations? He was a
+government inspector—<i>Revizor?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Chinovnik niet navierno</i>,” he answers. Most
+decidedly he was not an official. The suggestion
+causes him to smile broadly. “I was with the convicts,”
+he says.</p>
+
+<p>Beside the line of rails curves the old post-road
+winding like a ribbon through the highlands.</p>
+
+<p>“It was by that road we marched. Seven years
+of my life lie along it.”</p>
+
+<p>The train swings through a cleft hewn in the living
+rock, steep-sided as if the mountain had been gashed
+with a mighty axe. It rumbles around the base of
+an overhanging crag while you look clear down over
+the white valley, with the miles of rolling green
+forest beyond.</p>
+
+<p>“Was not seven years a long time for the march?”
+you venture.</p>
+
+<p>“For a traveler, yes; for convict bands not unusual.
+We went back and forth, now northward
+a thousand versts as to Archangel, now west as to
+Moscow, now south as to Rostov. Again and again
+our troop would split, and part be sent another
+way. New prisoners would be added, from Warsaw,
+Finland, Samara. New guards would take charge.
+Some groups would go to the West Siberian stations,
+some east to the Pacific and Sakhalin. I, who was
+written down for ten years at the Petrovski Works beyond
+Baikal Lake, with a third commuted for good
+behavior, had finished my term before I got there.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Why did they wander so aimlessly?”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems truly as a butterfly’s flight, but you
+others do not know the way of Russia. Very
+slowly, very deviously she goes, but surely, none the
+less, to her goal. We each came at last to our place.”</p>
+
+<p>A match flares up and he lights another cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>“Shall we not go to the ‘wagon restoran’ for a
+glass of tea?” you ask.</p>
+
+<p>Along the broad aisles you walk, past the staterooms,
+filled with baggage, littered with bedding,
+kettles, novels, and fur overcoats. Everything is
+in direst confusion, and the owners are sandwiched
+precariously between their belongings. On the little
+tables which are raised between the seats, they
+are playing endless games of cards, sipping tea and
+nonchalantly smoking cigarettes the while. You
+pass the stove-niches at the car entrances, heaped
+to the ceiling with cut wood. The fire-tenders
+as you pass give the military salute. You cross the
+covered bridges between the cars, where are little
+mounds of the snow that has sifted in around the
+crevices; and a belt of cold air tells of the zero
+temperature outside. At length the double doors
+of the foremost car appear ahead, and crossing
+one more arctic zone over the couplings, you can
+hang your fur cap by the door and salute the ikon
+that with ever-burning lamp looks down over the
+parlor-car. Now you can sit on the broad sofa set
+along the wall, or doze in the corner-rocker under
+the bookcase, or sit tête-à-tête in armchairs over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>
+a miniature table. Ladies here, as well as men, are
+chatting, reading, and smoking, for this combination
+parlor, <i>fumoir</i>, and dining-room is for all, not a
+resort to which the masculine element shamefacedly
+steals for unshared indulgences.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Dva stakan chai, pajolst</i>” (two glasses of tea,
+please), your friend says to the aproned <i>chelaviek</i>,
+a Tatar from Kazan.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Stakan vodka</i>,” you add; for you are willing to
+contribute twenty kopecks to the government revenues
+if this beverage will help out the memoirs of
+your friend, the convict.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Say chass</i>,” replies the waiter, which means,
+literally, “this hour,” figuratively, “at once,”
+actually, whenever he chances to recall that your
+party wants a glass of tea and another of vodka.
+When at length the refreshments have come, your
+companion gets gradually back to the reminiscences.</p>
+
+<p>“Were your comrades many on that march?”</p>
+
+<p>“Twenty-six from my school in Odessa,” he says.
+He tells of the tumult in the Polytechnic Academy,
+when he was a boy of sixteen studying engineering;
+of the barricade which the students threw up; of the
+soldiers sent against it; of an officer wounded with
+a stone, and the sentence to the mines. He tells of
+the journey, day after day, the miserable company
+trudging under the burning suns of summer and
+shivering under the biting cold of winter, ill-fed and
+in rags. He recalls how this friend and that friend<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+sickened and died; how a peasant-woman gave him
+a dried fish; how one of the criminals tried to escape
+and was lashed with the <i>plet</i> until he fainted beneath
+its strokes.</p>
+
+<p>“We were a sad procession. First came the Cossacks
+on their ponies, with their carbines and sabres.
+Then the murderers for Sakhalin, and the dangerous
+criminals in fetters; a few women next; then we, the
+politicals; last, more soldiers marching behind. Far
+to the rear came carts and wagons with the wives
+and families of the prisoners, following their men
+into exile. Slowly we went, scarcely more than
+fifteen versts a day, with a rest one day out of
+three, for the women. In winter we camped in stations
+along the road.”</p>
+
+<p>From the comfortable leather armchairs they
+seem infinitely distant and dream-like, these tales
+from the dark ages of Siberia. The speaker seems to
+have forgotten his auditor and to be talking to himself,
+and soon he relapses into silence. He sits holding
+his glass of lemon-garnished tea, like a resting
+giant with his shaggy beard and mighty chest. The
+drag of the brakes is felt through the train. “<i>Desiet
+minute stoit</i>” (ten minutes’ stop), somebody calls
+out. Suddenly, with an effort, the man across the
+table rouses from his reverie, and looks about the
+car, when the broad smile comes back and he says
+earnestly:—</p>
+
+<p>“You must not think of that as the true Siberia.
+It was all long ago—thirty-five years. And you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>
+see I who became a <i>kayoshnik</i>, a gold-seeker, have
+prospered, and work many mines. I am glad now
+that they sent me to Siberia. And many others
+prosper who came with the convicts. The old dark
+Siberia dies, but our new Siberia of the railroad
+lives, and grows great.”</p>
+
+<p>He rises resolutely and shakes your hand with a
+vise-like grip.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>De svidania!</i>” (Till we meet again.)</p>
+
+<p>You rise with the rest, draw on your fur cap and
+gloves, work into the heavy fur-lined overcoat, and
+clamber down to the platform. A little wooden
+station-house painted white is opposite the carriage
+door. It has projecting eaves and quaint many-paned
+windows. In front of it is a post with a large
+brazen bell. On the big signboard you can spell out
+from the Russian letters “Zlatoust.” This is the
+summit station of the pass that crosses the Urals.
+Around are standing stolid sheep-skinned figures,
+bearded peasants just in from their sledges, which
+are ranked outside the fence. Fur-capped mechanics,
+carrying wrenches and hammers, move from
+car to car to tighten bolts and test wheels for the
+long eastward pull. Uniformed station attendants
+are here and there, some with files of bills of lading.
+As you walk down the platform among the crowd,
+you come upon a soldier, duffle-coated and muffled
+in his capote, standing stoically with fixed bayonet.
+Forty paces further there is another, and beyond
+still another, all the length of the platform, and far<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>
+up the line. What a symbol of Russian rule are these
+silent sentries! And what a mute tale is told in the
+necessity for a guard at every railroad halting-place
+in the Empire!</p>
+
+<p>You stroll along toward the engine. Huge and
+box-like are the big steel cars, five of which compose
+the train. Two second-class wagons painted in mustard
+yellow are rearmost, then come the first-class,
+painted black, next the “wagon restoran” and the
+luggage-van, where the much advertised and little
+used bath-room and gymnasium are located. The
+engine is a big machine, but of low power, unable to
+make much speed; and the high grades and the
+road-bed, poor in many places, additionally limit
+progress. It is apparent why the train rarely moves
+at a rate greater than twenty miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>At first you do not notice the cold. But now that
+you have walked for a few minutes along the platform,
+it seems to gather itself for an attack, as if
+it had a personality. You draw erect with tense
+muscles, for the system sets itself instinctively on
+guard. The light breeze that stirs begins to smart
+and sting like lashes across the face. The hand
+drawn for a moment from the fleece-lined glove,
+stiffens into numbed uselessness. As you march
+rapidly up and down the platform, an involuntary
+shiver shakes you from head to foot. A fellow
+passenger, remarking it, observes:—</p>
+
+<p>“It is not cold to-day, in fact, quite warm. <i>Ochen
+jarko.</i>”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>
+
+<p>You walk together to the big thermometer that
+hangs by the station-door. It is marked with the
+Réaumur Scale, and your brain is too torpid for
+multiplications. But the slightly built official,
+known as a government engineer by green-bordered
+uniform and crossed hammers on his cap, is inspecting
+the mercury also.</p>
+
+<p>“Eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit,” he says.
+“Quite warm for January. It is often thirty-five
+degrees below zero here in the Uralsk.”</p>
+
+<p>It gets colder at the suggestion. The three starting-bells
+ring, and everybody scrambles into the
+compartments.</p>
+
+<p>The express rolls onward down the Urals. You
+stroll back to the warm dining-room and idly watch
+the groups around. Across the way is an elderly mild-looking
+officer, whose gold epaulettes, zig-zagged
+with silver furrows, are the insignia of a major-general.
+He smokes endless cigarettes in company
+with another officer lesser in degree, a major,
+decorated with the Russo-Japanese service-medal,
+smart of carriage and alert of look. By the window
+beyond is a young German, gazing meditatively at
+the hills and the snow through the bottom of a
+glass of Riga beer. A rather bright-mannered dame,
+with rings on her fingers and long pendants in her
+ears, chats vivaciously in French with a phlegmatic-looking
+personage in a tight-fitting blue coat which
+buttons up to his throat like a fencer’s jacket. A
+quietly-dressed gentleman, evidently in civil life,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
+is reading one of the library copies of de Maupassant.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, cut and tunnel, hill, slope, and valley,
+green forest, white drifted snow, and bare craggy
+rocks, the Urals glide past. The little track-wardens’
+stations beside the way snap back as if jerked
+by a sudden hand, and the telegraph-poles catch up
+in endless monotony the sagging wires.</p>
+
+<p>The Tatar waiter goes from place to place, clearing
+off the ashes and the glasses, and getting ready
+for dinner. There is a table-d’hôte repast, the Russian
+<i>obeid</i>, a meal which starts with a fiery vodka
+gulp any time after noon, and tails off in the falling
+shadows of the winter sunset with tea and cigarettes.
+Or, if one wishes, he may press the bell,
+labeled in the Græco-Slavonic lettering, “Buffet,”
+and dine à la carte.</p>
+
+<p>“Il vaut mieux essayer le repas Russe,” says the
+quiet reader of de Maupassant, joining you.</p>
+
+<p>He is duly thanked for the advice, and we beckon
+to the aproned waiter. At once the latter passes the
+countersign kitchenward to set the meal in motion,
+and puts before us the little liqueur-glasses and the
+bottle of vodka. While we still gasp and blink over
+this, he has gotten the cold <i>zakuska</i> of black rye-bread
+and butter, <i>sardinka</i>, salty <i>beluga</i>, and cold
+ham, and has started us on the first course. Then
+comes in, after the omni-inclusive <i>zakuska</i>, a big
+pot of cabbage-soup which we are to season with
+a swimming spoonful of thick sour cream. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+chunky pieces of half-boiled meat floating in it are
+left high and dry by the consumption of the liquid.
+The meat becomes the third course, which we garnish
+with mustard and taste.</p>
+
+<p>“Voyons!” the Frenchman observes. “Of the
+Russian cuisine and its method of preparing certain
+food-substances one may not approve. Frankly it
+calls for the sauce of a prodigious appetite. But
+contemplating the <i>obeid</i> as an institution so evolved
+as to fit into the general scheme of life, it finds
+merit. The Russian meal is a guide to Russian character.”</p>
+
+<p>“What signifies this mélange of raw fish, eggs,
+and great slices of flesh, and mush of cabbage-soup?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not that the Russian has no taste. It is that
+he sacrifices his finer susceptibilities to his love of
+freedom. A regular hour for meals would seem to
+him a sacrifice of his leisure and convenience to that
+of the cook. The guiding principle of the national
+cuisine is that all dishes must be capable of being
+served at any time that the eater feels disposed.”</p>
+
+<p>This is a problem to put to any kitchen, we
+allow. Napoleon’s chef met it by relays of roasting
+chickens. But one cannot keep half a dozen fowl
+going for each household of the one hundred and
+forty million inhabitants of Russia. Thus sturgeon
+is provided, and sterlet, parboiled so that it tastes
+like blotting-paper; and the filet that is called
+“biftek,” and the oil-sodden “Hamburger,” that is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
+dubbed “filet.” These can be started at nine in the
+morning, and be removed at any time between that
+hour and nine at night, without any appreciable
+change in taste or texture. The cook of the restaurant,
+like his brethren of the Empire, has laid
+his professional conscience sacrificially upon the
+national altar of unfettered meals. If the <i>obeid</i> is
+not a triumph in culinary art, it is at least a signal
+example of domestic generalship.</p>
+
+<p>We have advanced without a hitch to roast partridge,
+with sugared cranberries, which our friend
+washes down with good red wine from the Imperial
+Crimean estates. We get through a hard German-like
+apple-tart, and reach the last item of cheese.</p>
+
+<p>When the mighty meal is over, we order tea, light
+cigarettes, and lean back in the armchairs to chat
+and note how our neighbors are getting through the
+time.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the room a Russian has joined
+the French lady and her escort. They are celebrating
+some occasion that requires heaping bumpers
+of champagne. The babble of their conversation is
+in the air. It seems to refer to the comparative
+appreciation of histrionic talent in Rouen and
+Vladivostok!</p>
+
+<p>Somebody is being treated to a dressing-down in
+the latest Parisian argot. “Ces sont des betteraves
+là-bas!” one hears scornfully above the murmurs.</p>
+
+<p>Across the way some Germans are engaged with
+beer-schooners. One of them gets excited and brings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>
+his fist down upon the table. “Arbeit in Sibirien
+nimmer geendet ist; they always want more advice
+about their gas-plants.”</p>
+
+<p>In the lull that follows the explosion, a gentle
+English voice floats past from the seat behind us.
+“And so I told him that the station had nearly
+enough funds, but we needed workers, more workers.”
+It is the English medical missionary on his way
+to Shanta-fu, discussing China with the American
+mining-engineer, bound for Nerchinsk.</p>
+
+<p>The piano, under the corner ikon with its ever-burning
+lamp, tinkles out suddenly, and a man’s
+voice starts up—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">You can hear the girls declare,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">He must be a millionaire.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He misses a note every now and then, which does
+not embarrass him in the least. Caroling gayly to
+his own accompaniment, he forges ahead. The
+crowd in the armchairs around the room, consuming
+weak tea or strong beer, and smoking, all join with
+an untroubled accord and versatile accents, French,
+English, and Russian, in the blaring chorus, “The
+man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”</p>
+
+<p>The train rocks faster on the falling grade; little
+by little the mountains drop away; gradually the
+mighty forests become dwarfed into scattered clumps
+of straggly birches, and the great trees dwindle into
+bushes; lower and still lower fall the hills, until all is
+flat. As far as the eye can see are the snow-covered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
+wastes, treeless, houseless, lifeless. The lowest foothills
+of the Urals have been passed. It is the beginning
+of the great steppes.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the daylight wanes. The gray darkness
+deepens steadily; it seems to gather in over the gliding
+snow, and the peculiar gloom of a Siberian winter’s
+night closes down. At each track-guard’s post
+flash with vivid suddenness the little twinkling lanterns
+of the wardens of the road. Involuntarily
+conversation becomes less animated and voices are
+lowered; the spell of the sombreness is over all.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the electric lamps are lighted, and from
+brazen ikon and sparkling glasses flash reflections
+of their glitter. Curtains are drawn, which shut out
+the enshrouding blackness. The piano begins tinkling
+again; the waiters come and go with tea and
+liqueurs; the babble of conversation rises; and the
+idle laughter is heard anew. Darkness may be
+ahead, behind, and beside, but within there is light—enjoy
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The train slows for a halt. Station-lamps shine
+mistily through the brooding night. Lanterns bob
+to and fro on the platform as fur-capped train-hands
+pass, tapping wheels and opening journal-boxes.
+At each door a fire-tender is catching and
+stowing away the wood which a peasant in padded
+sheepskins is tossing up from his hand-sled below.
+It is Chelliabinsk, whose old importance as the
+clearing-house of the convicts has been passed on
+to the new city of the railroad. Here the just completed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+northern branch, linking Perm to Petersburg,
+meets the old southern line from Samara and Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>A short stop and the train moves on again. The
+day is done and gradually each saunters into his
+own warm compartment, which the width of the
+Russian gauge makes as large as a real room. One can
+read at the table by the window, under the electric
+drop-light, or, propped in pillows, one can stretch
+out luxuriously on the easy couch that is nightly
+manoeuvred into an upper and lower berth. Practically
+always after crossing the Urals, the number of
+passengers has so thinned out that each may have
+a stateroom to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Presently you push the bell labeled, “Konduktor.”
+A uniformed attendant appears standing at
+the salute. “<i>Spate</i>” (sleep) is sufficient direction.
+The sheets and pillows are dug out and the transformation
+of the couch into a bed is effected.
+“<i>Spacoine notche</i>” (good-night) he says, and you
+fall asleep to the rhythmic throb of the engine.</p>
+
+<p>During the following hours the train enters the
+Tobolsk Government, the oldest province of Siberia,
+whose 439,859 square miles of area, nearly four
+times as large as Prussia, extend roughly from the
+railroad northward to the Arctic Ocean, and from
+the Urals eastward so as to include the lower basin
+of the Ob-Irtish river system. This ancient province
+has seen much of Siberia’s history, whose predominant
+features have been two, growth and graft.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f5">
+<img src="images/fig5.jpg" alt="irtish">
+<p class="caption">BRIDGE OVER THE IRTISH</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter2" id="f6">
+<img src="images/fig6.jpg" alt="railway">
+<p class="caption">ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p>
+
+<p>Out of evil, somehow, in a marvelous way has
+been coming good. In the earliest days, with what
+smug satisfaction did the Stroganovs find that the
+native inhabitants would trade ermine for glass
+beads! Yet the fruit of their sharp dealing and
+purchased protection and special privilege was the
+expedition that won Sibir, founded Tobolsk, and
+opened to Russia the way into northern Asia. The
+imperial commissioner who came to Tobolsk shortly
+after Kutchum Khan’s overthrow, to collect the
+yassak tribute of ten sable-skins for each married
+man and five for each bachelor, was detected culling
+the choice skins for himself, and substituting cheap
+ones for his master. But his agents had sought out
+the paths and extended the Russian Empire far
+into the northern forests.</p>
+
+<p>By despotic oppression the inhabitants of Uglitch
+town, condemned for testifying to the murder of
+Dimitri, the Czarevitch, came here into exile in
+1593, carrying with them the tocsin-bell that had
+tolled alarm when the Czar wished silence. But
+they, together with the deported laborers settled
+by the same arbitrary will along the Tobol River,
+started the permanent settlement of the new realm.</p>
+
+<p>A succeeding functionary called on the natives
+for a special tribute of ermine for the Czarina’s
+mantle. He collected so many bales of it that the
+taxed began to wonder at the stature of the “Little
+Mother,” and sent a special deputy to Petersburg.
+The legate discovered that the Empress was as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>
+other women, and on his disclosures the official was
+unable to save his own, let alone the ermines’ skins.
+Yet while the governor was plundering the fur-merchants
+of Tobolsk, the frontiers were extending,
+until by 1700 they reached eastward to Kamchatka
+and Lake Baikal, southeast to the Altai foothills
+at Kuznetz, and north to the Arctic Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>At Tobolsk in 1710 Peter the Great established
+the capital of his reorganized province of Siberia.
+Prince Gagarin, whom he appointed its first governor,
+found here a systemless extortion unworthy
+of an efficient statesman. With the thoroughness of
+genius he built up in the unhappy province a regular
+organization of rascality. His pickets patrolled
+the roads into Russia, to prevent the escape of those
+who might carry the tale of his oppression. He arranged
+with high officials at Court that any petitioners
+who evaded this frontier net should be handed
+over to an appropriate committee. Thus fortified,
+he began collections of as much as could be wrung
+from his luckless subjects. Every traveler paid
+Gagarin’s tariff, every farmer sent him presents of
+stock, every trapper forwarded the best of his catch.
+The fur-trader’s donations and the merchants’
+loans were assisted into Gagarin’s warehouses by
+thumbscrew and thonged knout.</p>
+
+<p>While these things passed in Tobolsk there came
+periodically to Petersburg delegations of outwardly
+contented citizens attesting the wisdom of their
+governor. They brought to the Czar and the Grand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+Dukes, in addition to the punctiliously rendered tax
+yassak, gifts of especially fine furs. Such was the
+completeness of Gagarin’s control that not an echo
+of the true state of affairs reached the ears of the
+astute Peter.</p>
+
+<p>At length, in 1719, Nesterov, the Minister of Finance,
+was privately approached by some Tobolsk merchants
+and was supplied with evidence sufficient to
+hang half the officials in Siberia. In a dramatic presentation
+the Minister furnished this to the Imperial
+Senate, showing so bad a case that Gagarin’s own
+agents in the ducal circle rose up against him. The
+Czar sent Licharev, a major of the Guard, to Siberia,
+to proclaim in every town and hamlet that Gagarin
+was a criminal in the eyes of the Emperor. As this
+messenger approached Tobolsk, official after official
+came out to turn state’s evidence, trying to assure
+his personal safety. The highways to Russia were
+guarded by Peter’s own troops, with orders to seize
+all outgoing travelers who might be transporting
+Gagarin’s accumulated spoil, which with commendable
+prudence the Czar had allocated to himself.</p>
+
+<p>When Peter was in England he had remarked
+casually to an acquaintance, “In my realm I have
+only two lawyers, and one of these I intend to hang
+as soon as I get back.” It was particularly unfortunate
+for this ex-governor that the remainder of
+the legal profession did not feel himself called upon
+to explain to Peter the Gagarin campaign contributions.
+No one ever needed an attorney more. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>
+was under trial before an imperial judge who did not
+know a technicality from a tort, and whose preliminary
+procedure was to order a reliable gallows.</p>
+
+<p>For some score of years subsequent to Gagarin,
+the governors of Siberia were, in any event, moderate.
+The province grew apace, increased by exiles,
+by land-seeking colonists, by raskalniks,—nonconformists
+of the Greek Church, self-called “Old
+Believers,”—who preferred to come to Siberia
+rather than follow Peter’s orders and shave off their
+beards.</p>
+
+<p>Then Chicherin the Magnificent came. His life
+was a round of celebrations. Wonderful stews he
+concocted for his sybaritic revels. At <i>obeid</i> an orchestra
+of thirty pieces supplied the music. Artillery
+in front of the residency saluted him with salvos
+when he drove out. In Butter-Week all Tobolsk
+drank the spirits which their governor bountifully
+provided. It is hardly necessary to say that the
+money for these entertainments did not come from
+Chicherin’s private purse: the city merchants
+groaned over forced loans and benevolences; and
+at last their cry reached the throne, and Chicherin
+too was removed.</p>
+
+<p>With his passing, the Tobolsk Province fell to less
+spectacular rulers, but under good and bad it grew
+steadily, until in 1860 there were a million inhabitants
+within its borders, a population which at the
+present time has risen to a million and a half. Some
+forty thousand of these are exiles; some eighty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>
+thousand raskalniks; and forty thousand Tatars,
+who feed the flocks where their ancestors once bore
+sway, living peacefully side by side with the Russians.
+Some fifteen thousand are descendants of the
+Samoieds and Voguls with whom the first Stroganov
+from the adjoining Russian province of
+Archangel traded his wares. Some twenty thousand
+are Ostiaks whose forebears were alternately allies
+and enemies of Yermak.</p>
+
+<p>The capital city, Tobolsk, on the Tobol River
+hard-by its junction with the Irtish, has grown from
+a precariously held camp of two hundred and fifty
+fugitive Cossack soldiers to a city of thirty thousand.
+Tiumen, the easterly city on the Tura River,
+another of Yermak’s camps, has grown into a great
+distributing-centre for produce brought by the river-highways.
+From the railway line northward as far
+as the city of Tobolsk extends a farm-belt, a continuation
+of the black-earth region of great Russia.
+The fertility of the land may be judged by the
+number of villages met as the train speeds on, and
+the large proportion of enclosed fields on both sides
+of the track. Some of the finest agricultural soil in
+the world lies here, such soil as composes the
+prairies of Minnesota and Dakota. Three million
+head of live stock graze in the district, which has
+a yearly production of ten million hundredweight of
+wheat alone, four million of rye, and nine million
+of oats. Five million more settlers may live and
+thrive, and the harvest will feed the ever-growing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+cities of Europe when Siberia comes to be the new
+granary of the old world. The stress and turmoil of
+Tobolsk are passed. Happy the people who have no
+annals!</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as the train rolls eastward beyond the
+Ishim River Valley, the farm country opens out into
+the unfenced prairie of the Great Steppe. The clustered
+wooden villages that flanked the line through
+Tobolsk appear less and less frequently, till at last
+we seem to glide over an immense white sea, frozen
+into perpetual calm and silence. Here and there a
+gray thicket of stunted trees and bushes, here and
+there a grove of naked-limbed birches, mutely exhibit
+Nature’s desolation.</p>
+
+<p>As the sullen landscape bares itself, one thinks of
+the prison caravans tramping these wastes; of the
+early neglected garrisons which Elizabeth’s favorite
+General Kinderman proposed to victual on crushed
+birch-bark and relieve the Crown of their expense;
+of all the misery and the wrong that the steppes of
+Siberia have symbolized. No sign of man’s handiwork
+or of Nature’s kindliness is seen,—only the
+cold snow and the bare birches, while regularly as
+the ticking of a clock the telegraph-poles and the
+verst-spaced stations snap back into the wastes.
+The dominant reflection is not, how great is the
+achievement which has mastered these steppes! but,
+how infinitesimal is all that man has done in this
+ocean of untrodden snow! Hour after hour we are
+driving on. Yet never is there passed a landmark<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>
+to conjure into imagination a picture of progress.
+One moves as in a nightmare, where he runs for
+seeming ages, hunted forward, yet can never stir
+from the spot. The horizon-bounded circle of vision
+is as the ever-receding rim of a giant dome, the
+rails ahead and behind bisecting its white immensity.
+Above, the vast bowl of the blue sky dips and
+meets it, imprisoning us. Where are the fields and
+villages; the bustling activity of human life that
+tells of man’s mastership? Hour after hour passes
+without a change in the drear monotony of the landscape;
+for miles on miles not a trace is seen of human
+dominion. Grim Nature spreading her shroud
+over plain and pasture is despot here, and Winter
+is ruler of the Siberian Steppe.</p>
+
+<p>One could ride due south a thousand versts,
+through Golodnia the “hunger steppe” to the borders
+of Turkestan, and find the same monotonous
+plain, snow-covered save where the dryness of the
+south has thinned its fall. One could ride from
+the Caspian Sea due east to China, with each day’s
+march a counterpart of the rest. Five hundred thousand
+square miles of area are covered with grass and
+gaudy flowers in the spring, with low brush and green
+reeds where the salt swamp-lakes receive the tribute
+of snow-fed streams. In midsummer the growing
+grass scorches under a heat of 104°. In winter snow
+is everywhere,—in feathery flakes that the midday
+sun does not soften during whole months of a cold
+which is a ferocity. Thirty to forty degrees below<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+zero is not unusual, and the land is swept by bitter
+winds that pierce like daggers through doubled furs
+and felts. Yet there dwell on the central plateau of
+Asia a million people, and one million cattle and
+three million sheep are scattered over the tremendous
+range. As the herds have become hardened
+through the centuries and survive in measure despite
+the severity, so also have the men. From the
+train-windows now one may chance to see infrequent
+straggling herds of long-horned cattle, lean and
+gaunt, scratching away the snow in search of food.
+Mounted on little shaggy ponies are figures buried
+in skins, who keep guard over them.</p>
+
+<p>One detects a new type among the crowds at the
+stations,—flat faces, round eyes, square thickset
+bodies. Here on the borderland, the old race has
+fused with the Slav and has become metamorphosed.
+The sons of the Tatars, whose very name was distorted
+into that of a dweller in Tartarus by those
+who feared their fierce valor, have become shopkeepers,
+train-hands, waiters, and butchers, who
+come to sell meat and milk to the chef of the wagon
+restoran. Sometimes, at the stops, figures, gnome-like
+in enveloping red capote and grotesquely
+padded furs, hold their ponies with jealous rein,
+staring curiously at the locomotive and passengers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f7">
+<img src="images/fig7.jpg" alt="library">
+<p class="caption">DINING-CAR SALOON, VIEW OF THE LIBRARY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Looking long from the windows at this steppe,
+a drowsy hypnotism steals over the mind—a dull
+stupor of unbroken monotony. It is better to do
+as the Russians—pay no attention whatever to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>landscape outside, but make the most of the life
+within the moving caravansary,—cards and cigarettes
+and liqueurs, tea and endless talk, with yarns
+that take days for the spinning.</p>
+
+<p>The uniformed judge, passing by, joins you. He
+is traveling to a new appointment with his swarming
+family of children, shawl-decked females of unknown
+quality and quantity, the household bedding, and
+the ancestral samovar, all crowded into one stifling
+compartment. He discusses volubly the confusions
+of the Code, and propounds a unique theory of his
+own as to Russian jurisprudence, to the effect that
+all the best laws of other nations have been adopted,
+with none of the old or conflicting enactments
+repealed. The general drops into the circle. He is
+interesting when one has pierced the crust, but
+dogmatic. At every station the soldiers of the garrison,
+not on sentry-duty, jump to one side, swing
+half-around, and stand at the salute until he passes,
+to the huge inconvenience of the porters. He would
+undoubtedly vote the Democratic ticket to repay
+Mr. Roosevelt for putting Russia under the alternative
+of stopping the war perforce, or forfeiting
+sympathy, when Japan was said to be breaking
+under the strain.</p>
+
+<p>“Russia was beaten this time. What of it? <i>Nietchevo!</i>”
+says the general.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Nietchevo</i>,” we echo, as we sip our tea.</p>
+
+<p>“But the Japanese are wily insects,” observes his
+companion, the young service-medaled major. “I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
+was in Vladivostok when our prisoners came back.
+They tried to get money for the checks the Japanese
+had given them. That was how the big mutiny
+began. You know, when our men were taken captive,
+the Japanese treated them very well, much
+good food, vodka, let them write home all about it,
+and gave them enormous pay, six yen, three dollars
+a month, charging the expense all up to the Czar
+for after the war. When at last the prisoners were
+to be released, the Japanese promised every man
+double pay, twelve roubles. But they gave them the
+money? No, the insects gave them each an order
+payable by the Russian commander in Vladivostok.
+So the transports came, and these men were sent
+ashore with these checks in their hands, and they
+went up to the commandant of the city, and asked
+for their cash that the Japanese had promised.
+What money did the commandant have for them?
+What could he do? He ordered them to go away.
+So they stood and discussed on the street-corners.
+And more men still came from the transports. Then
+they said, ‘We will ask the general of the forts.’ So
+they marched to the forts in a big crowd, and the
+general he also told them to go away. For a long
+time they talked and they persuaded the sailors to
+help them. So they went again to the forts, and the
+sailors shot at the forts, and the general ordered
+the artillery to shoot. But the artillery would not,
+so the men broke in and killed the officers and got
+arms and went back to the city commander. Him,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+too, they killed, and all Vladivostok was in mutiny
+for two weeks. Not an officer dared show himself.
+General Orlov persuaded them to let him into the
+town. Then many were shot, but at last the city was
+quiet. The Japanese are very sly insects.”</p>
+
+<p>His story ends and the two officers go back to join
+their families. The train throbs on across the steppe.</p>
+
+<p>The German gas-plant drummer, with his new
+Far Eastern outfit, is gathering from the missionary
+doctor details of treaty-port life, which are being
+treasured up as valuable reference data. The
+French fur-merchant dips back into his library copy
+of de Maupassant.</p>
+
+<p>The rigor of the outside scene seems at length to
+be changing. A few scattered houses appear, and
+trees and fenced fields, and villages, with curling
+smoke rising from the chimneys. Men and children
+are walking about, and finally we come to the Irtish
+River, over which the train rumbles on a half-mile
+bridge. Spires and gilt domes are visible, dark
+wooden houses, and bright white-painted churches
+with green roofs. Droshkies and carts are passing in
+the streets, and presently we draw up to the station
+of Omsk, the second city of Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>The junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway with
+the Irtish River, which is 2520 miles long and open
+from April to October, would of itself make Omsk
+a centre of great strategic importance. But in addition
+to this main river-highway, which is navigated
+by some hundred and fifty steamers, there are affluents<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+by which one can sail from the Urals to the
+Altai, from the Arctic Ocean to China, and these
+lines of communication centre here.</p>
+
+<p>From Omsk, following the Irtish down past Tobolsk,
+one can steam by the Obi to Obdorsk, within
+the Arctic Circle. Indeed, a regular grain-export
+service was planned via the Kara Sea to London by
+an ambitious Englishman. It failed after some
+promise of success, because of the ice-packs in the
+Gulf of Obi. From Omsk, following the Irtish upstream,
+steamer navigation extends as far as Semipalatinsk,
+in the Altai foothills. Smaller craft may
+go nearly to the Chinese frontier.</p>
+
+<p>By the Tobol and Tura rivers, Tiumen, in the
+Ural foothills, may be reached, four hundred and
+twenty miles from Semipalatinsk. By ascending
+the Obi, a boat may go fourteen hundred and
+eighty miles east from Tiumen to Kuznetz on the
+Tom; through a canal from an Obi confluent the
+Yenesei River System may be entered, and from it
+by a short portage the Lena System. In all twenty-eight
+thousand miles are navigable by small craft,
+and seven thousand miles by steamer. Omsk is
+the pulsing heart of this mighty interior waterway
+system.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f8">
+<img src="images/fig8.jpg" alt="cities">
+<p class="caption">CITIES OF NEW RUSSIA<br>
+Tiumen<br>
+Tomsk<br>
+Perm</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The train leaves the station, which is at a distance
+from the town, and once more we are en
+route. The eye rests gratefully upon the ribbon of
+cultivated fields which follow the Irtish down. But
+we reënter the steppe, and again the desolation settles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>over all. In hours of looking, not a habitation is
+seen, not an animal, not a tree,—only the same
+white billows. This Barbara district in the Tomsk
+Government has an area of fifty thousand square
+miles. Kainsk, some seven hundred versts from
+Chelliabinsk, is the centre. The section, though covered
+with the fertile black earth of the adjoining
+regions, is, owing to lack of drainage and adequate
+rainfall, arid and almost untilled.</p>
+
+<p>The round-faced civilian from the compartment
+further up, whose familiarity with the country has
+made him a welcome accession, joins us at the window.
+He looks out over the level plain of the Barbara
+Steppe with manifest satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>“You admire the landscape?” we ask satirically.</p>
+
+<p>He smiles. “We got big money when the line
+went through here. I made my first fortune then.”</p>
+
+<p>He sighs at the memory of old times, and tells of
+the railway-building days when the Czar had given
+the order for a road across the continent, and the
+soldiers of fortune, of whom he was one, had gathered
+to the task.</p>
+
+<p>“Not a kopeck had I when the Dreyfus brothers
+made their big speculation in Argentine wheat and
+went down, leaving us young clerks stranded in
+Kiev. You know Kiev? Great pilgrimages come
+there to see the bodies of Joseph and his brethren,
+all preserved just as when they died. We heard by
+accident of a grading job under a big contractor out
+here. None of us knew anything about construction,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
+but three of us grain-clerks wrote a letter saying we
+would put the work through, and started. We had
+just enough money to get to Samara. In Samara
+was a merchant much esteemed, whom I went to
+see. He went on our bond, never having seen us before,
+and gave us enough money to come. So it was
+in the old days. The country was flat as a board.
+We had but to lay down the ties and spike the rails.
+Thirty versts we made of this line. It cost us thirty
+thousand roubles a verst, but we got fifty thousand.
+Would that we might do that now again.”</p>
+
+<p>The contractor, his round jolly face glowing with
+the recital and his eyes shining through gold-rimmed
+glasses, is entertaining a growing company, for the
+judge has stopped to gossip, and the railroad official.</p>
+
+<p>“I took my money and bought an estate in the
+country of the Don Cossacks,” the contractor is
+saying. “I paid ten per cent to the Government for
+taxes when I bought the land. I had to pay no more
+taxes then all my life, but my heir would pay taxes,
+or, if I sold, he who bought would pay. So it was
+done in the Hataman Government.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is just,” says the judge. “Why should they,
+who get the property, not pay taxes?”</p>
+
+<p>The contractor shrugs his shoulder and continues:
+“For five years I farmed, and though I had a German
+overseer, I did not prosper. So I went to one
+of the cities of Russia and thought to put in a tramway.
+The men of the city said, ‘Are all the horses
+dead? He of the spectacles is mad.’ Yet by importunity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>
+I got them to give me the right to make a
+tramway. There were in Petersburg then many
+Belgians, with much money, wishing to give it
+away. So I went to them and said, ‘Here is a great
+franchise, but who will build the line and gain the
+riches?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘We will, we will,’ said the Belgians.</p>
+
+<p>“From them I got a hundred and eighty thousand
+roubles clear, and an interest. I sold the interest
+quickly to other foreigners, Frenchmen, and went
+away. Yes, the tramway was built, and the people
+crowded to ride on it as I had said. But when it
+was going well, and the profits were yet to come,
+the people said, ‘Shall foreigners oppress our city?’
+So the town bought the tramways for what they
+said was the cost, and the Belgians went away.
+And they did not come back to Russia. Thus were
+many railways and tramways built and taken. The
+foreigners will not come back now, and Russians too
+do not enter these pursuits, lest the Government
+come after them later. It is <i>hudoo</i> (bad).”</p>
+
+<p>“But is it not worse that these men should make
+a tramway and draw vast money from the people?”
+says the railroad official. “For me, I think the
+Government should do it all.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ni snaia</i>, I don’t know,” says the contractor.
+“But I who bought stocks with the Belgians’ money
+(foolishly thinking that the business which I knew
+not was safe, while that which I knew was shaky),
+I will not give again to the stock-people the money<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>
+I shall make from the oil-fields of Sakhalin, where
+I go now.”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” says the railway chinovnik, “does not
+the State do these things better? Look you at this
+very railway. For years any who wished might
+have built into Siberia. An Amerikanski, and Collins,
+an Angleski, came proposing railroads, but all
+things slumbered. Then in 1891 the Czar ordered
+the road to be built, and in ten years we had laid
+the eight thousand versts to Vladivostok. I read
+that the line of Canada, where too there are steppes
+and highlands as ours, took ten years for but half
+the distance. We made two versts a day for all the
+years, and they but one. Who other than the Government
+could spend a billion roubles for a line that
+will bring money returns only in the far future?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, you chinovniks, you say, lo, we do all this!
+But it was such as I built that road, and because
+you gave us big money. And is not the money to
+support it now got from the peasants’ taxes while
+so many clerks and operators waste time in the
+offices? I have seen a third as many men as at
+Omsk do the same work. And your trains go as the
+water-snails, twelve versts an hour for freight,
+twenty versts an hour for the mail-trains, thirty-five
+versts for the express. One can go eighty versts
+in Europe.”</p>
+
+<p>“Truly, truly, but why go so fast? It costs more
+for fuel, and the track has to be made straight.
+What good does it do you to come in sooner? If a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+man is in a hurry to get somewhere, can he not take
+an earlier train?”</p>
+
+<p>The group mulls over this knotty point of logic,
+which is complicated by the fact that our own train
+is twelve hours late. They cite hypothetical men
+with varying sorts of engagements, and then lightly
+switch to talk of the nourishing properties of beer,
+the utility of agricultural machinery, and the old
+tiger battue of Vladivostok.</p>
+
+<p>The birch groves become more frequent now,
+pines begin to appear, and at last the country has
+become forested. Several of the passengers bestir
+themselves for departure, gathering multitudinous
+bundles, and making the circuit in demonstrative
+hand-shaking farewells.</p>
+
+<p>“We come to Taiga, whence they go to the stingy
+town of Tomsk,” the government engineer observes.</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you call it the stingy town of Tomsk?”</p>
+
+<p>“I will tell you. Tomsk, before the railroad came,
+was the biggest, finest, and wealthiest of our cities.
+She was the capital of the great Tomsk Gobernia,
+with three hundred and thirty thousand square
+miles of area, and a million and a half people. The
+Tom brought the big river steamers to her wharves.
+In the city she had sixty thousand inhabitants,
+increasing every year; a university, Stroganov’s
+Library, a cathedral, fine public buildings. The
+merchants were rich; the miners came down from
+the Altai; all things were prospering. When the
+railway was ordered, the engineers came through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>
+to locate the line. All they asked was a hundred
+thousand roubles. But how stingy were the people
+of Tomsk! They had given two million roubles for
+their university, where the students made speeches
+and got sent to the Yakutski Oblast, yet they would
+not give a hundred thousand roubles to the engineers.
+‘Give fifty, give even forty thousand,’ said the
+engineers. But the people of Tomsk said, ‘Are we
+not the seat of government for all western Siberia?
+Have we not Yermak’s banner in the cathedral?
+Are we not Tomsk? You must bring the railway
+here anyway.’ But if the engineers had done that,
+who could say where it would have ended? All
+the other cities would begin to make excuses. So the
+grades to Tomsk became suddenly so bad that
+the line had to be run away south here, eighty-two
+versts. The station where one changes was named,
+in mockery, Taiga, ‘in the woods.’ The merchants
+flocked out begging the engineers to come back to
+Tomsk. They offered all that had been asked and
+much more. They hung around the office and wept
+over the blue-prints. But how can a professional
+man change his plans and sacrifice his reputation?
+One cannot do such things. So Tomsk was left, and
+her trade now falls far behind that of the other cities,
+Omsk and Irkutsk. We in Siberia smile at her and
+call her the stingy city of Tomsk.”</p>
+
+<p>“We have, too, another jest, of the Tomsk Czar,”
+chimes in the judge. “There appeared one day
+there a stranger calling himself Theodore Kuzmilch,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>
+who bought a little house which he never left save
+to do some act of charity. For years he lived; then,
+when he died, the house was turned into a chapel
+because of his good deeds. Many years after his
+death, a merchant started the tale that this was the
+Czar Alexander I, who did not die in the Crimea,
+but left a false body to be carried to Petersburg and
+entombed in state. He had, it was told, not really
+died, and, disappointed at his powerlessness to help
+his people, had come, self-exiled, to Siberia. But we
+others laugh at this tale of Tomsk as an imperial
+residence.”</p>
+
+<p>The twenty minutes’ stop at Taiga ends, and the
+train renews its journey through the forests.</p>
+
+<p>With rolling hill and long-stretching forests, the
+watershed bounding the eastern limits of the Obi
+Basin is crossed near Achinsk, and the drainage-basin
+of the mighty Yenesei River, one million three
+hundred and eighty thousand square miles in area,
+is entered. It just fails to equal in length the
+Mississippi-Missouri System. Including the administrative
+territory “Yeneseik” of the East Siberian
+Gobernia, the river sweeps from the Chinese borderland
+north beyond the Arctic Circle. In the far
+south, where it rises among the Minusink Mountains,
+the valley country is like the Italian Alps,
+mild and very fertile. Iron-mines of prehistoric antiquity
+are found in these valleys, relics of the old
+Han Dynasty of China.</p>
+
+<p>Of the twenty million bushels of grain produced<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>
+throughout the Yeneseik territory, nearly a third
+comes from the Minusink oasis. The railroad pierces
+the central plains, farmed in the most favorable
+spots only, and capable of enormously extended
+cultivation.</p>
+
+<p>Through alternating forest, field, and plain the
+train moves on, and crossing the three thousand-foot
+Yenesei bridge, enters the city of Krasnoyarsk.
+When we pull out, the engineer, who has been chatting with
+the erstwhile contractor, observes, “This
+town was a main hotbed of the great strike. They
+are well in hand now, but we had our time with
+them in 1905. Even I knew nothing of what had
+been prepared.”</p>
+
+<p>He goes on to tell the most curious tale of the
+organized strike movement which introduced the
+disturbances subsequent to the Russo-Japanese
+War.</p>
+
+<p>“On September 15 at noon, no one knows by
+whom or from what station, a signal of dots and
+dashes was tapped off. Each telegraph-operator answered
+the message and passed the word to the next,
+standing by until it was repeated back. Then, leaving
+all things in order, he stepped from the operating-room
+into the railway-station. With a motion
+he gave the countersign to the ticket-sellers, and
+each, as he received it, shut his desk, and walked
+out. The word went to the engineers, and each, at
+the signal, drew his fires and left the engine and its
+train forsaken on its tracks. Every postman put<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>
+away his mail, closed the safe, and left his office;
+every diligence-agent locked his doors. From Astrakan
+to Archangel, from Warsaw to Vladivostok,
+the electric summons went, and the whole realm of
+Russia was paralyzed.</p>
+
+<p>“With two thousand roubles, offered by the
+Governor-General of Poland, before them, and ten
+bayonets on the tender behind, an engineer and a
+fireman were secured to run one coach, containing
+a terrified prince, from Warsaw to the frontier. In
+the south, a few cars were started by soldiers, but
+beyond such rare instances, for three weeks not a train
+was moved. More than this, not a telegram was
+transmitted, not a letter delivered. Everywhere
+was black silence, as if all the Russias had been
+swept from the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>“‘More wages, and the constitution,’ was the
+slogan of the strikers. The official cohorts met the
+issue courageously, with bribes and bayonets, and
+little by little got the upper hand. Force and money
+were used unstintingly to win the operators needed
+and break the front of the strike. A few, who, contrary
+to the expectations of their mates, had remained
+loyal to the officials, were finally secured
+and protected by the soldiery. As in time one train
+after another was manned and moved, the men who
+had stayed away lost heart, knowing but too well
+what would be the fate of those who were left outside
+the breastworks. First singly, then in crowds,
+they returned, and the great strike was broken.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Here in Krasnoyarsk there was revolutionist rule
+for a while as well,” the manager remarks. “The
+troops were driven out, and we had to wait for reinforcements.
+Yet when I came to my office there
+were sixty thousand roubles in the safe, not a kopeck
+of which had been touched. Some of the best
+employees were condemned. I was very sad, and the
+service was very poor when they marched away.”</p>
+
+<p>“What became of them?” we ask.</p>
+
+<p>In a low voice he answers, “They went to the
+Yakutsk.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody is silent for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>“Where did you say?” inquires the missionary.</p>
+
+<p>“The Yakutski Oblast,” answered the chinovnik.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe people talk of the rigors of Russia’s
+winter. In Russia of the cold of Siberia. In Siberia,
+along the railway, when the thermometer gets down
+into the forties and the sentries pick up sparrows
+too numb to fly, they say, “It’s as cold as the
+Yakutsk.”</p>
+
+<p>“One starts to the Yakutsk by the steamer-towed
+prison barge, following down the Yenesei
+from Krasnoyarsk,” the engineer continues. “For
+the first thousand versts northward the way is
+through a mighty forest region. The interior is almost
+as unknown as when the Samoieds were its
+sole inhabitants. Marshes covered with trembling
+soil, to be crossed only on snowshoes, alternate with
+thickets, called <i>urmans</i>, of larches, cedars, firs,
+pines, and beeches.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It is not alluring,” we observe.</p>
+
+<p>“The cold of the winter seems largely to arrest
+decay, and the fallen trees, remaining unrotted,
+form a nature-made <i>cheval de frise</i>, impossible to
+traverse save along the hunters’ trails. Another
+thousand versts up the Upper Tunguska River, at
+whose limit of navigation is a crossing into the Lena
+System, and the Yakutsk Province begins; eastward
+to the coastal range overlooking Behring Sea, and
+northward to the Arctic Ocean, a million and a half
+square miles of desolation, extends this exiles’
+oblast. Prison-stations are located in the forsaken
+tundra country beyond the Arctic Circle, where
+scattered clumps of creeping birches and dwarf
+willows struggle to maintain existence in the few
+unfrozen upper inches of ground, congealed perpetually
+beneath to unmeasured depths. Here, where
+the average winter temperature is eighty below
+zero, come the exiles deemed most formidable.”</p>
+
+<p>“How long do men last in the Yakutski cold?” we
+ask the engineer.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, sometimes a strong man will outlive his
+sentence and return. The friends of our strikers
+ask me sometimes about one or another, but we
+have heard nothing of them since they marched
+away in chains. May fate keep us from that road!”</p>
+
+<p>The theme is not enlivening, and soon we go forward
+into the observation-car.</p>
+
+<p>After crossing the Kan River at Kansk, the railroad
+turns abruptly southwest, through the hilly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>
+country of the Irkutsk Gobernia, and climbing into
+the highlands of the Altai, enters the watershed of
+the Angara. The drainage-basin of this river equals
+the combined areas of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana,
+Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. It is as well
+adapted to agriculture as parts of the best provinces
+of Central Russia in the same latitude.</p>
+
+<p>The train pulls next into the station of Nishneudinsk.
+A booted peddler is making his way down
+the platform, with knives, combs, caps, and cheap
+knick-knacks. He stops to show us something
+special, a miniature of multicolored minerals, glittering
+from a hundred crystal facets. The Russian
+engineer picks out the flaky quartz, the iron
+pyrites,—“fools’ gold,” as they called it in old
+Nevada times,—green porphyry, iridescent peacock
+ore of copper, and some black crystals like
+antimony, which show here and there. Malachite,
+serpentine, topaz, and numberless other minerals
+are in the mass, which glitters in kaleidoscopic
+changes. A small piece of gold ore tops the pile.</p>
+
+<p>“Cabinetski?” asks the engineer.</p>
+
+<p>“Da, da,” assents the peddler. “Cabinetski.”</p>
+
+<p>“It comes from one of the domains of his Imperial
+Majesty’s Cabinet,” explains the engineer.
+“Stretches of forest, belts of fertile river valley, fur
+districts, hundreds of thousands of square versts,
+the best mines in these Urals which produce sometimes
+yearly seven million roubles, the entire Nerchinsk
+region, producing six million roubles, are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
+‘cabinetski,’” he remarks. “Even I, Ivan Vasilovich
+Poyarkov, am ‘cabinetski’!”</p>
+
+<p>He explains the origin of the term, going back to
+the old days when princedoms went to the courtiers
+of Catherine. Always for a great enterprise it was
+necessary to have a friend at Court. So the rich
+merchants and miners would form, with powerful
+members of the inner circle at St. Petersburg, alliances
+such as that made by the Stroganovs with
+Boris. Gradually, as time went on, the protected
+were swallowed by the protectors, until one by one
+the various estates had passed into the hands of
+the nobles of the Imperial Court. The mines in the
+Altai, which Demidov had opened up, were taken
+over in 1747 by the Emperor, those in the Zabaikalskaia
+Oblast at about the same time. With the passing
+of the years, what had been graft and expropriation
+was transmuted into vested interest, until
+now it is the established right of the Imperial Cabinet,
+or the Grand Dukes, to receive the revenues
+of these vast domains. In the mining regions their
+perquisite is from five to fifteen per cent. Save for
+the tax, however, miners are free to operate upon
+the ducal estates, and many are thus engaged.</p>
+
+<p>A fur-capped station-agent clangs the big bronze
+bell, waits a moment, and then clangs twice. The
+passengers climb back into the box-like steel cars of
+the express. The third bell sounds, and the train
+starts. We sit down beside the engineer and the
+conversation takes up the “cabinetski” again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+<p>“We have great traditions. One Governor, Neryschkin,
+of the ‘cabinetski’ mines at Nerchinsk,
+marched to fight the Czar. In 1775 he was appointed
+chief of the mineral belt in the Zabaikalskaia
+Oblast. He sat for eleven months at home
+with closed shutters. Then, on Easter Sunday,
+singing a devil’s hymn, and with a fat female on
+either side, he drove to church and ordered the
+service amended to suit a rather bizarre taste. He
+organized a series of glittering shows at the Crown’s
+cost, gave free drink to the populace, and throwing
+out many of his subordinates, appointed convicts in
+their stead. When he had used up all the tax-money
+in his keeping, he drew up cannon before the house
+of the rich merchant Sibirayakov, the operator of
+the mines, and made him hand out five thousand
+roubles. Finally he got together an army of Tunguses
+and the peasants, to march against the Czar.
+He was caught on the way and sent to Russia for
+punishment. It is the great honor of our service to
+be governor over the ‘cabinetski’ mines. Perhaps
+I shall rise there some day. Perhaps not. But I shall
+not march against the Czar.”</p>
+
+<p>The forests of birch and pine and fir, and the hills,
+as the car drives eastward, close in again. The
+crests of mid-Siberian mountains lift their snowy
+heads, and the train climbs up and up toward the
+great central Lake Baikal, and the city of Irkutsk,
+3378 miles from Moscow, and further east than
+Mandalay.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span></p>
+
+<p>When, on this seventh day, the train is winding
+up the Angara Valley toward Irkutsk, one may
+mentally look back over the country that has been
+traversed and estimate somewhat the meaning of
+the railway. The Urals formed the first landmark.
+As in the dominion of the blind the one-eyed man
+is king, so after the monotony of the plains, the Ural
+Mountains seem great and worthy of the name
+given by the old Muscovite geographer, the “Girdle
+of the World.” By actual measurements, however,
+in their seventeen hundred miles of length, no peak
+rises over six thousand feet. Coming eastward from
+the Urals the line has cut through the southwestern
+corner of the old Tobolsk Government, has skirted
+the northern border of the steppe, has bisected the
+Tomsk Province, and after crossing the Yenesei
+River in Yeneseik has entered Irkutsk Province,
+and traversed the central highland region nearly to
+Lake Baikal.</p>
+
+<p>Many who journey this way will have as their
+first impression, when the long winter ride draws to
+its close, a feeling of depression, almost of discouragement,
+so few are the settlements, so desolate
+seems all Nature. They see the single line of rails,
+without a branch or feeder in the mighty expanse
+from Chelliabinsk to Irkutsk, save for the stub put
+in for the ungenerous outlanders of unlucky Tomsk.
+They calculate that for a territory forty times the
+size of the British Isles, and one and a half times as
+large as all Europe, the inadequacy of a railroad less<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>
+in total mileage than the Chicago, Milwaukee and
+St. Paul, is manifest. Statistically-informed bankers
+sometimes shrug their shoulders at the mention
+of the Trans-Siberian. “Every year a deficit,” they
+say. “Gross earnings but twenty-four million
+roubles,—one sixth of the Canadian Pacific Railway;
+one tenth of the Southern Railway. <i>Hudoo</i>
+(bad)!” One hears expressed not infrequently in
+Russia the opinion that the railway is a sacrifice
+justified politically by Russia’s need for a link to
+the Pacific, but ineffectual to secure prosperity and
+advancement to the isolated land of mid-Siberia. It
+is deemed, like the Pyramids, a monument to colossal
+effort and achievement but of little service to mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Their statistics are correct. But it is to the
+greater honor of the road that much which it has
+accomplished will never appear in credits on the
+account-sheets. Where the white stations of the
+Siberian Railway stand now were once the wooden
+prison-pens with their guarded stockades. Murderers
+and priests, forgers, profligates, and university
+professors, highway robbers and privy councilors,
+all together have tramped this way. It is its past
+from which the railroad has raised Siberia, the past
+of neglect and exile that this steam civilizer has
+banished to the far Yakutsk.</p>
+
+<p>Closer study gives, too, a better appreciation of
+the railroad’s economic significance. The line holds
+a strategic position as truly as does the Panama<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>
+Canal. Though in Siberia proper there is the enormous
+area of nearly five million square miles, so
+much of this is in Arctic tundra, impassable swamp,
+forest, or barren steppe, that the really habitable
+and arable land narrows down to a tenth of this,
+which lies in general between the parallels of 55°
+and 58° 30’ north, and is contained within a belt
+some thirty-five hundred miles long and two hundred
+to two hundred and fifty miles broad.</p>
+
+<p>When it is noted that the tillable area of one
+hundred and ninety-two thousand square miles in
+Tobolsk and Tomsk, mostly along the Obi System,
+the stretch of twenty thousand miles in the steppe,
+and that of one hundred thousand in the Yeneseik
+and Irkutsk governments of eastern Siberia, are
+all in immediate proximity to the railroad, whose
+course is generally along the 55th parallel, the economic
+value of Russia’s great enterprise takes a
+different perspective.</p>
+
+<p>Its vantage is still more emphasized when the
+element of the north and south watercourses is considered.
+One after another the great Siberian rivers
+are crossed,—in the Tobolsk Gobernia, the Tobol,
+the Ishim, the Irtish; in the Tomsk Gobernia, the
+Obi and the Tom; in Yeneseik, the Yenesei; in
+Irkutsk, the Angara. Each of these reaches far up
+into the agricultural zone that lies north of the railroad,
+bringing the harvests to its cars by the cheap
+unfettered water-avenues. Thus, to the part of
+Siberia that is capable of extensive development, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+railroad is even now in a position to give great
+aid.</p>
+
+<p>It is from such natural factors as these, not from
+financiers’ figures, that one must weigh the potentiality
+of this great line. Its direct value is enormous,
+its indirect commercial services greater yet.
+It may best be compared to a mighty river system
+such as that of the Mississippi. The latter’s
+traffic has never directly returned a dollar of the
+millions that have gone to maintaining its levees
+and training-walls and channels. Yet indirectly the
+return and the value, as an asset to the American
+people, are so great as to be incalculable. From its
+controlling position in relation to the cultivatable
+land and the interior watercourses of Central
+Siberia, as well as in relation to the far eastern
+artery, the Russian railway is an empire-builder
+as important as has been the Nile.</p>
+
+<p>The results already achieved are noteworthy.
+The city of Omsk, where the railroad and the Irtish
+River lines meet, has risen from a population of
+thirty-seven thousand in 1897 to seventy thousand
+in 1908. Further east, Stretensk has sprung from
+a town of two thousand people ten years ago to over
+twelve thousand to-day. Irkutsk has climbed from
+sixty to over eighty thousand since the railroad
+opened.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f9">
+<img src="images/fig9.jpg" alt="lake">
+<p class="caption">LAKE BAIKAL<br>
+<span class="more">ISLAND OF KALTIGEI<br>
+VILLAGE OF LISTVIANITCHNOE</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The rural population has increased even as that
+of the cities. At the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, all Siberia contained but two hundred and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>thirty thousand souls; at the end of the eighteenth,
+one million five hundred thousand; at the end of
+the nineteenth, five million. Now, with the railroad-induced
+immigration, it approaches the seven million
+mark. The Steppe Government alone has risen
+in fifty years from five hundred thousand to one
+million five hundred thousand, and the Tomsk from
+seven hundred thousand to two million five hundred
+thousand.</p>
+
+<p>More in importance than its present utility is
+the fact that the railway holds the key to Siberia’s
+future. The arable territory of the belt is equal
+to that of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio,
+Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska,
+and the Dakotas combined. This land is
+generally well-watered, in a climate suitable to grain-raising,
+and it is, as has been shown, in its whole
+extent, adjacent to river and rail transportation.</p>
+
+<p>While such farming districts of the United States
+have some fifty inhabitants to the square mile, the
+most densely populated gobernia, Tomsk, has but
+six, and the Yeneseik but six tenths of one.</p>
+
+<p>An immense further area will yield to clearing
+and to irrigation, as has been demonstrated in the
+great results secured from five hundred versts of
+canals in the Barbara Steppe. Coal and iron are
+available in many places, and timber in the greatest
+abundance grows in the northern district.</p>
+
+<p>From a summary of these elements one may
+glean an idea of the Colossus sleeping beneath<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+these snows. At a normal rate of increase, fifty
+million souls should populate Siberia at the close of
+the twentieth century. The agency of their coming
+and existing will be primarily the line of rails across
+the continent. Despite the eight hundred million
+roubles expended, with only far-off hopes of profit,
+the faulty road-bed, the light rails, the steep grades,
+and crawling trains, the glory of Russia is still
+“The Great Siberian Railway.”</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c3">III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">IN IRKUTSK</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE train pulls slowly up to the white station-house
+at Irkutsk. A swarm of porters,
+<i>nasilchiks</i>, white-aproned, with peaked hats, and
+big, numbered arm-tags, invade the carriage. They
+seize each piece of luggage and run with it somewhere
+into the crowd outside. You, encumbered
+with your heavy coat, laboriously follow. Irkutsk
+station, more than any previous one, is crowded
+with passengers and Cossack guards. Train officials
+are shouting instructions, and every few paces
+a sentry is standing his silent watch. This is the
+transfer entrepôt for all through traffic, as well as
+the depôt for the largest and most important city
+of Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>Threading the press on the platform, you struggle
+with the outgoing human current, and in time reach
+the big waiting-room of the first class. It likewise
+is crowded with a mass of people, and its floor is
+cumbered with heaping mounds of baggage. One
+of these hillocks is constructed from your impedimenta,
+which are being guarded now by a porter,
+apparently the residuary legatee of the half-dozen
+original competitors within the car. The man takes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
+the long document that witnesses your claim to two
+trunks, and departs. Upon you in turn devolves
+sentry duty for the interminable time during which
+those trunks are being culled out from the baggage-car.</p>
+
+<p>It is an exasperating wait, but the fundamental
+rule for Russian traveling is, “never separate from
+the baggage.” The parcel-room here at Irkutsk
+held for six months a suit-case left by a friend to
+be sent to this traveler. The officials would not give
+it up to its owner or to any person save the forwarder,
+though he, oblivious to sequels, had gone
+on to San Francisco.</p>
+
+<p>Like the rest, now, you camp, with the baggage
+in front of you, on the waiting-room floor. It is a
+very country fair, this station. At the far end is
+a big stand crowded with dishes, on which are cold
+meats, potato salad, heaps of fruit and cakes, sections
+of fish from which one may cut his own slices,
+boxes of chocolates, and cigarettes. All are piled
+up in heaping profusion. One can get a glass of
+vodka and eat of the <i>zakuska</i> dishes free, or while
+waiting he may buy a meal of surprisingly ample
+quantity and good quality at the long tables that
+run down the centre of the room. Most of the Russians
+order a glass of tea, and with it in hand sit
+down till such indefinite future time as the luggage
+situation shall unroll itself.</p>
+
+<p>We move our baggage and join the tea caravan.
+Across the table is a slight, brown-faced man, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>
+an enormous black astrakan cape falling to his
+ankles, and wearing a jauntily perched astrakan
+cap on his head. “One of the Cossack settlers,”
+a friend from the train remarks. Beyond are half a
+dozen tired-looking women, with dark-gray shawls
+over their heads. Near them are men with close-fitting
+<i>shubas</i>, or snugly-belted sheepskin coats, fur
+inside, and rough-tanned black leather outside.
+Beside the lunch-stand are a couple of young men
+with huge bearskin caps, short coats, and high
+leather boots tucked into fleece-lined overshoes.</p>
+
+<p>A general at one of the little side tables is talking
+volubly to a plump dame with furs, which are
+attracting envy from many sides. The lady merely
+nods between puffs of her cigarette, and sips her
+tea. A large fat merchant waddles past, wrapped in
+a paletot made of the glistening silvery skin of the
+Baikal seal. The room is stifling, full of smoke, and
+crowded with people. Yet no one seems to feel
+the discomfort, even to the extent of taking off the
+heavy outer coats, which, with the thermometer at
+twenty degrees below zero, they have worn on the
+sleigh-ride in, from across the river.</p>
+
+<p>Your friends of the train, save those whose possessions
+were comprised in their multitudinous
+valises, are all here, fur-coated likewise and sipping
+tea, waiting, without a thought of impatience, for
+the baggage to be brought out.</p>
+
+<p>At last appears your <i>nasilchik</i>. “They are got,”
+he cries, and balances about himself, one by one,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
+your half-dozen pieces of luggage. Through the noisy,
+gesticulating, thronging passengers and heaped belongings,
+he shoulders and squirms a way to the
+door and into the anteroom.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of soldiers are good-naturedly hustling
+out, from the third-class waiting-room opposite, a
+little leather-jacketed and very dirty mujik.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not owe seven kopecks. I cross myself. I
+am not a Jew,” he loudly proclaims.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Nietchevo</i>,” says the soldier. “Out with him
+just the same!” The peasants and crowd loafing
+alongside grin appreciatingly, as the mujik is escorted,
+collar-held, through the great doors.</p>
+
+<p>The porter and yourself follow. A plunging line
+of sleighs, backed up against the outer platform of
+the station, extends far up and down the road.
+Their <i>isvoschiks</i>, leaning back, are shouting for
+fares. In sight are your two trunks. “How much to
+the Métropole?” you call. The legal fare across the
+river to the hotel is a rouble, but the Governor-General
+of eastern Siberia couldn’t tell how much
+it would be if you didn’t bargain beforehand.
+“<i>Piat rubla!</i>” “<i>tree rubla!</i>” come hurtling from all
+sides.</p>
+
+<p>It is for you to walk down the line calling in the
+vernacular, “fifty, seventy kopecks!” One of the
+drivers will eventually shout a fare which you feel
+able to allow, and the porter, who has been watching
+the bargaining process with keen interest, gives him
+the two trunks. The <i>isvoschik</i> retires then behind the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+stormy hiring-line, and you renew the process for
+a second vehicle. The sleighs are just big enough
+for one person to occupy comfortably. Two can
+squeeze in if they be thin enough or economically
+minded. But a second sleigh is needed now for the
+hand-baggage, and a third for one’s self. At length
+the arrangement is completed. The porter bows
+low at the donation of fifty kopecks, “for vodka”;
+then, “Go ahead! all ready!” you call, and with
+a flourish the procession of sleighs dashes out of
+the station purlieus.</p>
+
+<p>The road to the town mounts first a low hill
+parallel to the river. As the horses climb toward its
+crest the panorama of the city and stream, hidden
+previously by the railroad structures, unrolls. Like
+a great band of white, the frozen Angara sweeps to
+the left and right. Beyond it stand out boldly the
+clustered domes of the cathedral, their surmounting
+crucifixes glittering in the sunlight. At your feet
+are the sections of the pontoon bridge, which in
+summer spans the river but in autumn is disconnected,
+the parts being moored to the shore, lest
+the drifting ice from partly frozen Baikal cut and
+destroy their woodwork.</p>
+
+<p>A dark streak crosses the frozen river, with dots
+moving, as small apparently as running ants. The
+deceptive snow has made the distance seem much
+less than it is in reality. The streak is a road, and
+the seeming insects are the sleighs that pass and
+repass on the frozen river-trail. Between scattered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+wooden houses our cavalcade rides down to the
+bank, and at length onto the smooth white sheet.
+It is like skating. The big horses on our sleigh are
+imported from Russia, and trot splendidly, overtaking
+one after another of the citizens with their little
+shaggy Siberian ponies. The heaped snow is on
+either side. The cold air is bracing, almost welcome,
+until it begins to eat its way in.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fair drive, this, across the river—a full
+verst to the northern bank. We mount the incline
+that leads up the slope, and come to the first log
+houses of the poorer quarter of Irkutsk town.
+Gaunt dogs bark feebly, and slink away on either
+side. The street is almost deserted; the houses give
+no sign of life.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we come into a square crowded with
+people, gay with life and motion, and motley in
+colors. It fairly buzzes with talk and cries and
+chaffering. Low-built booths face every side of the
+open <i>piazza</i>. We catch a glimpse of one stocked
+with hardware. Opposite it stands a little shrine
+within which are dimly visible pictured saints and
+the Madonna, before which are scores of burning
+tapers. Our <i>isvoschik</i> takes off his hat as he drives
+past, and reverently makes the sign of the cross.
+He crosses himself also as he passes the white
+church of St. Nicholas with its green roofs and gilded
+crosses, and he removes his cap to the long-haired
+and dark-robed pope that he meets, for the Siberian
+pays much reverence to his Church.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f10">
+<img src="images/fig10.jpg" alt="irkutsk">
+<p class="caption">IRKUTSK<br>
+<span class="more">THE ANGARA RIVER<br>
+THE CATHEDRAL</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p>
+<p>The residences improve from the log cabins of
+the outskirts, and grow into the two-storied whitewashed
+structures of the main thoroughfares. The
+streets also have an interesting procession of people.
+The big troika of some high official glides past, with
+coal-black horses and a coachman padded out into
+a liveried Santa Claus, after the style of St. Petersburg.
+Officers of the garrison sweep by in their light-gray
+overcoats. Shoals of sleighs and sledges are
+going to and fro. At almost every corner, armed
+with a sabre and revolver, stands a police officer.</p>
+
+<p>As one drives along he reads the Russian letters
+on the placards and the names on the stores. Many
+here are Hebrew, for the Siberians of the cities are
+more tolerant than their European cousins. Irkutsk
+has a very large and prosperous Jewish merchant
+community, and sent her Dr. Mendelberg to
+the Duma. Irkutsk has had its representation cut
+down, they say, <i>post hoc</i>,—perhaps <i>propter hoc</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The driver, who has kept his horses at a moderate
+trot from the station through the town, suddenly
+cries out to them, and swings and snaps his lash till
+they break into a gallop. “We always come in
+handsomely,” says the city native who is with you,
+as the sleigh pulls up triumphantly at the door of
+the Hôtel Métropole.</p>
+
+<p>A swarm of attendants greet you at the portal,
+a tall uniformed concierge, half a dozen aproned
+porters, a waiter or two, a page, and behind them
+the Hebraic Hazan, our host. Each porter seizes a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
+parcel and the concierge leaves his post by the front
+door to lead the procession up the broad red-carpeted
+stairway. With a rattle of keys he swings
+open the door to a salon big enough to give a ball in,
+and whose ceiling is six good feet above one’s head.
+The average New York flat would rattle around in
+it. The concierge advances to its centre and bows.
+Then he goes on through to another room, almost
+its duplicate in size, with a forlorn-looking washstand
+and a screen across one corner.</p>
+
+<p>“But the bedroom, where do we sleep?” you ask.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Sdiece, gaspadine</i>,” he says, “right here”; and
+he conducts you to the screen.</p>
+
+<p>Raised about eighteen inches above the floor is
+a little wooden platform-like structure, about the
+size of a cigar-shop showcase. A dingy mattress is
+rolled up at one end of it. As you ruefully feel its
+straw texture and survey the planks which it is to
+cover, the hotel-keeper pushes in to tell you that
+sheets will be put on at once if the <i>gaspadine</i> has not
+his own. “<i>Chass! Chass!</i> If only the rooms suit
+the <i>gaspadine</i>, everything will be arranged.”</p>
+
+<p>The porters silently deposit their loads and depart
+with their twenty kopecks each. The manager
+goes out, doubtless to gather his sheets. Only the
+concierge stays expectant after he has received his
+tribute. You throw your heavy overcoat over one
+of the armchairs and begin to open some of the
+bags. The concierge still stays and looks on. You
+begin to segregate laundry, and locate brushes and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+tooth-powder. The concierge still stays and looks
+on. You get out some slippers which are an improvement
+upon the heavy snow-boots. The concierge
+still lingers.</p>
+
+<p>“The room is accepted,” you say finally.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes,” he answers. “<i>Haracho</i>, but for the
+police, I want, please, your passport.”</p>
+
+<p>To show your passport, true enough, is no more
+of an incident than to take out your handkerchief.
+But to be obliged before you have been ten minutes
+in a place to produce a paper for the police telling
+of your age and infirmities, the color of your eyes,
+the number of your arms and legs and children,
+seems tiresome.</p>
+
+<p>“Must all give in their passports?” you inquire.</p>
+
+<p>“All, all,” he answers. “I am punished if one
+person stays here overnight without showing it.”</p>
+
+<p>He takes the document, visibly impressed with
+its flying eagle and the big red seal, and bows his
+way out.</p>
+
+<p>Now one can stroll around one’s suite and take in
+some of the details. There are electric lights with
+clusters of globes in the big pendant electrolier of
+the parlor, and drop-lamps for the massive writing-desk
+in the corner! The armchair by the high-silled
+window is a good place to read in. Too bad
+one cannot look out on the shuttling sleighs of the
+street below, but the cold has thickly frosted the
+double windows. Here is a big sofa, plush-covered,
+and half a dozen armchairs surround the polished<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+table, whose top is scarred with a multitude of rings—from
+the hot tea-glasses, one deduces.</p>
+
+<p>Mentioning tea, why not have some? There
+ought to be a bell somewhere. Unfortunately there
+is not a bell. In looking for it one finds that Siberian
+housekeeping does not include any dusting of the
+heavy red hangings which flank the doors and
+windows. An imperious cry resounds in the corridor.
+“<i>Chelaviek!</i>” It is followed by a patter of
+footsteps. So this then is the custom of the country.
+You open the door, and in the tone described in
+books upon elocution as “hortatory,” cry out into
+the dim distances of the corridor, “<i>Samovar, chai!</i>”
+Somewhere down the line a voice answers, “<i>Chass,
+chass!</i>” and you retire to wait and hope.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously battered the furniture looks when you
+inspect it closely. Here and there a flake is chipped
+away from the varnish, and cuts or dents show in
+the paint. Have sabre fights, perhaps, taken place
+here, or raids on assembling revolutionists? Certainly
+in the generations of occupants, life has been,
+in some fashion, tumultuous.</p>
+
+<p>There is a fumbling at the door-knob, and, without
+any preliminary knocking, a waiter comes in
+with a nickel samovar, an empty teapot, and a glass.
+He puts them down on the battered table and walks
+out. The big kettle hums away pleasantly as the
+red charcoal in its hollow interior glows from the
+upward draft. The preparations seem all made, save
+for the tea. Perhaps the <i>chelaviek</i> has gone to get it.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>
+You let your eye rove around to the little ikon far
+up in the corner, and the sleighing and wolf-shooting
+etchings on the walls. But after a time this becomes
+tiresome. Has the secret gendarmerie descended on
+the waiter among his teapots and trays? Has he
+forgotten the matter entirely, or what? The corridor-call
+seems to be the only recourse. Once again
+you go out. “<i>Chelaviek!</i>” and from some region he
+comes trotting up.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is that tea?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, <i>chai</i>,” he says, illumined. “Has the <i>gaspadine</i>
+not his own?”</p>
+
+<p>“Most decidedly the <i>gaspadine</i> has not his own,”
+you retort. “The <i>gaspadine</i> does not carry pillow-shams
+or bales with him. He is not a draper’s
+establishment or a grocer’s store.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Nietchevo</i>,” says the waiter, amiably; and runs
+off, to return with a saucer of tea-leaves, and another
+containing half a dozen lumps of sugar.</p>
+
+<p>“Your pardon, generally the <i>gaspadines</i> have
+their own”; and he leaves you to the brew and your
+meditations.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it is pleasant, after a long train-ride, to
+stretch out in a big, if battered, armchair, and sip
+glasses of anything hot. The little teapot, full of a
+very strong decoction, is perched on the top of the
+samovar over its chimney. For a fresh glass you
+pour out a half-inch of the strong essence, throw in
+the sugar, and from the samovar’s spigot fill the
+glass with hot water. It is thus just the strength<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+you personally prefer, and always hot. The samovar,
+by a judicious regulation of the draft, can be
+kept for hours exactly at the boil. It is a fine institution,
+but cannot be transplanted to a country
+where hot charcoal embers are not constantly
+available.</p>
+
+<p>Comfortably ensconced and sipping one’s tea, one
+can leisurely, Russian fashion, think of the most
+amusing method of passing the time. It is getting
+on toward evening; for the day fades early here.
+To-morrow is soon enough to look at things and
+distribute letters of introduction. The beverage has
+also blighted the appetite. Perhaps a light supper
+and an early couch would be wise. The latter in the
+far room looks singularly unpromising, but, “<i>Nietchevo!</i>”
+It is rather early for dinner or supper, but
+what of that? As an elusive New York politician
+used to say to each of the office-seekers who came
+to ask his influence for nominations, “If you want
+it, there is no reason why you should not have it.”
+We will try another summons of the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>Up he comes with the bill of fare printed in Russian
+and alleged French.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some eggs would be good. You decide
+upon them to begin with, and you will have them
+poached.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Gaspadine</i>,” he says, “the eggs to-day cannot be
+poached. Will you not have an omelette instead?”</p>
+
+<p>On second thoughts we will not have eggs at all
+this time; we will have a sterlet, a small steak, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>
+a compote. He goes off to the nether regions again.
+A long time passes, but at length he returns with
+the sterlet, its chisel-shaped nose piercing its tail in
+true Siberian style. White creamy butter and
+Franzoski kleb, white bread, round out the course.
+The steak is excellent and the canned fruit is satisfying,
+eaten beside the singing samovar in the great
+room of the main hotel of Irkutsk. Half a dozen
+letters pass the next hours until it is time to sleep.
+They are written on the big desk beneath the drop-light,
+with a glass of tea at one’s elbow in warm cosy
+comfort.</p>
+
+<p>The place is rather warm, and without any apparent
+source of heat, for there are no registers or gratings
+of obvious instrumentality. A search of elimination,
+like the game in which one is warm, warmer,
+very hot, leads at length to a rounded corner of
+porcelain built into the wall, of which only a curved
+segment shows in an angle of the room. Further
+inspection reveals that it is a big cylindrical stove
+fed by somebody in the hallway, and so arranged
+as to warm two adjoining rooms.</p>
+
+<p>In mitigation of the fire-tender’s zeal, we decide
+to open a window. Perhaps with an hydraulic jack
+this might be possible; but to manual labor it is not.
+A single pane of the inner window, however, swings
+back, and then we can open a similar pane in the
+outer window, leaving a hole as big as the port of a
+ship. It is sufficient in this weather. Some further
+corridor-shouting, produces, in due time, sheets and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
+blankets, and presently we lie down on the straw
+mattress in the little wooden-bottomed box called
+a bed. “<i>Spacoine notche</i>,” the attendant calls, and
+without trace of irony.</p>
+
+<p>It is one thing to go to bed, another to sleep.
+Tales are told of powder-circled couches which the
+invaders, surmounting these ramparts by climbing
+walls, dropped upon from above. There is a legend
+that there are some people whom they do not bite.
+“<i>Nietchevo!</i>” Is it not Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia?
+Why then complain of parasites?</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, a brass band has started up somewhere
+in the immediate neighborhood the tune of
+<i>Viens poupoule!</i> to which there echoes a popular
+accompaniment of tapped glasses and stamping
+feet. Perhaps one had better get up and see things
+after all,—“Needs must when the Devil drives.”
+We dress again. An exploring expedition reveals
+the big dining-room on the floor below full to the
+doors with uniformed officers, long-haired students,
+and assorted civilians. All are drinking and smoking.
+On a stage at one end of the room thirty
+short-skirted damsels are singing and dancing in
+chorus, to the great approval of the audience. As
+the curtain rolls down on an act, the <i>ci-devant</i>
+dancers descend to their friends on the floor. Corks
+pop, and sweet champagne flows. The call goes
+up for “<i>Papirose!</i>” and more cigarettes and more
+bottles come thick and fast.</p>
+
+<p>Soon there is an air of subdued expectancy, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>
+eager looks are directed to the curtain. Somebody
+near by leans close and whispers for your enlightenment,
+“All-black man!” Out comes an old Southern
+Negro, who sings to the wondering Russians a
+Slavonic version of the “Suwanee River,” between
+verses delivering himself, with many a flourish, of
+a clog-dance. Johnson is the man’s name. How he
+drifted so far from Charleston he hardly knows himself.
+He followed the music-halls to ‘Frisco, and
+somebody, for whom he “has a razor ready,” told
+him he would make his fortune in Vladivostok.
+He kept getting further and further into the interior,
+picking up the language as he went, and
+turning his songs into the vernacular. Poor chap,
+the pathos he puts into the “Suwanee River”! He
+is thinking, in frozen Irkutsk, of the old Carolina
+homestead, and is singing and dancing his way back.</p>
+
+<p>A girl in peasant dress takes the stage after
+“Sambo.” She is singing some song that is running
+its course across northern Asia. The lassies at the
+tables and the men join in. Glasses clink and heels
+tap. The miners who have made their stake, the
+prospectors who hope to, the sable-merchants of the
+Yakutsk, the wool-dealers from Mongolia, all meet
+here as the first place where the rigors of the hinterland
+can be compensated. It is very gay—very,
+very gay.</p>
+
+<p>In the years after the ukase of Paul I, ordering
+that all officers who had made themselves notorious
+for lack of education or training should be sent to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
+the Siberian garrisons, it may be imagined what a
+Gomorrah grew up under the Russian banners.
+Modern celebrations are by comparison mild and
+temperate, as the cold beyond these double windows
+is mild and temperate to that outside the
+Tunguses’ huts, in the Yakutsk Province. But it is
+fairly impressive, nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>Even in a Siberian hotel, the world goes to bed
+sometime. By four o’clock the music has stopped,
+and the traveler is tired enough to sleep on even the
+populous plank-bottomed bed. Thus do all things
+work together to weave the “web of life.”</p>
+
+<p>It is nearing noon when one wakes to eat a combination
+of breakfast and lunch, and plan for the
+day. The Post-Office and the Bank are the first
+material objectives. One must register so that mail
+may be delivered. We go down and join two companions
+of the road. With careful directions from
+the porter, the party prepares for the half-mile
+walk to the Post-Office. The preliminaries are formidable
+in themselves. First the felt goloshes must
+be pulled over the shoes; then the big fur overcoat
+must be swung on and carefully buttoned down its
+length. Finally a fur cap, like a grenadier’s, with
+ear-flaps is tied, and great fleece-lined gloves are
+donned. The droshky-drivers assembled before the
+hotel seem to take it as an insult to their profession
+that we elect to walk, and two or three follow along
+outside the curb until the group reaches the corner
+and turns into the main street, Bolshoiskaia.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f11">
+<img src="images/fig11.jpg" alt="irkutsk">
+<p class="caption">IN IRKUTSK<br>
+<span class="more">A CHAPEL<br>
+BOLSHOISKAIA</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p>
+<p>There is an air of placid quiescence at this noon
+hour. The policeman at the nearest corner is ruminatingly
+handling his sabre-hilt, and watching the
+sleighs go by. Here and there a woman, with the
+ubiquitous gray shawl over her head, passes, with a
+preoccupied air. Sheepskin-clad mujiks are driving
+along, with sledge-loads of firewood or stiffly-frozen
+carcasses, on their way to the bazaar markets. The
+shop-windows attract our gaze. Here is one with
+the word “<i>Apteka</i>” over the door, which is to say,
+Apothecary. Benches are set in front of it, on which
+one may sit and watch the people pass, as in the
+chairs before a New England country tavern. Further
+along is a solidly built white department store,
+the Warsawski Magazine, wherein one can get all
+manner of apparel,—shawls of the latest Irkutsk
+pattern, towels and soap, and—most important—blankets
+for the trip into the interior. We stroll in
+for a moment. An individual looking like a stalwart
+Chinaman, with long braided queue, shoulders his
+way past us to buy some cloth.</p>
+
+<p>“He is a Buriat of the tribe north of Irkutsk,”
+explains one of the shop-girls, very close herself in
+type to those seen at Wanamaker’s in Manhattan.</p>
+
+<p>Near-by the imposing magazine is a low one-story
+booth occupied by a watchmaker. Beyond that is a
+walled enclosure with lofty gates, as befits a school.
+Still further is the yellow and green sign of a government
+liquor-<i>traktir</i>. The name is said to be
+derived from the French word <i>traiteur</i>, which was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
+current in the days when Napoleon and Bourrienne
+were planning conquests in their Parisian poverty.</p>
+
+<p>As we turn up a side street, the shops for the
+poorer people appear. Gaudy pictures, of packages
+of tea, vegetables, and sugar-loaves, illuminate
+the walls, to tell the unlettered that groceries are
+sold within. Saws and hammers and vises are
+painted on the walls of the hardware-shops. Loaves
+of bread, crescent rolls, and rococo wedding-cakes
+decorate a bakery; boots and high-heeled slippers,
+a shoemaker’s booth. The street is an open-air
+gallery of rude frescoes.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we come to residences, some of cement-covered
+brick, with high enclosing whitewashed
+walls and iron gates, some wooden, with their rough-hewn
+logs unpainted save for the brilliant white sills
+and window-frames.</p>
+
+<p>At length, far from the town’s busy district, the
+Post-Office is reached. The building is thronged.
+Two soldiers are loading their saddle-bags with the
+mail for the regiment. Women are collecting
+money-orders. A crowd waits at the window of the
+girl who sells stamps. In rushing industry she
+makes the calculating beads of her abacus fly
+across the wires. Everybody is far too occupied to
+register a voyageur’s name,—excepting always the
+half-dozen soldiers posted in different parts of the
+room and leaning stolidly upon their bayonets. We
+venture to ask one of them which is the registry
+window.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>
+
+<p>“<i>Russisch verstehe ich nicht</i>,” is the answer.</p>
+
+<p>A Siberian post-guard knowing no Russian and
+answering in German seems extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>“Where are you from?” we inquire in his native
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>“Courland,” he answers,—“Courland by the
+Baltic.”</p>
+
+<p>This city of Irkutsk gave trouble in 1905. If it
+gives trouble again, the garrison will be safe.</p>
+
+<p>The registering at length is done and we turn to
+go out. A tattered figure, bearded and haggard,
+with rags bound on his feet, opens the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>“Will the <i>gaspadine</i> help a man get back to
+Russia?”</p>
+
+<p>Your companion looks closely at him.</p>
+
+<p>“A convict! very bad people.” He adds: “There
+is a murder every day here, and one cannot safely
+go out at night. Very bad men!”</p>
+
+<p>With the contradictory charity that is so typical
+of the Russian, he fumbles in his pocket and gives
+the unfortunate a fifty-kopeck piece.</p>
+
+<p>We go now to the great market-place and the
+bazaars. Here where we enter is a row of hardware-shops.
+In the first booth a string of kettles hangs
+down, and knives, spoons, candlesticks, and hammers
+are suspended so as to catch the eye. The
+proprietor stands outside, chatting with a passer-by
+and the tenant of the adjoining booth. Further on
+are stationers, with tables of cheap-covered books.
+The wall of one is decked with chromos of galloping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>
+Cossacks, led by a long-haired pope with a crucifix.
+The soldiers are sabring fleeing Japanese, and red
+blood is lavishly provided. On the opposite wall are
+glittering brass and silver ikons, and lithographs of
+ancient martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>Row upon row of red felt boots hang in the next
+line of booths, and in still another—the wooden-ware
+bazaar—are bowls and spoons, and platters
+of high and low degree. Further on a dozen women
+are grouped around one of their class, who is bargaining
+for a huge forequarter of beef, a full <i>pud</i>
+weight by the big lever scales that are balancing it.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Dorogo! dorogo!</i>” (Too dear, too dear!) she
+cries. “I will give eight kopecks a pound.”</p>
+
+<p>The market-woman protests that she will be
+beggared at less than eleven kopecks.</p>
+
+<p>A half-<i>sotnia</i> of little Buriat Cossacks come riding
+by, clad in their puffy leather <i>shubas</i>. Yellow-topped
+fur caps are their only uniform garment, and
+across their backs are hung the carbines. They
+make merry at the haggling women. Two swing off
+their shaggy ponies, and begin in turn to bargain
+in broken Russian for some paper-wrapped sweetmeats.
+They close the deal finally, tuck these away,
+toss themselves back into position, and ride off.
+Further along, half a dozen men cluster around a
+fur-cap seller. He is a merry fellow, and there is
+much noise and banter and gossiping. Such is the
+bazaar, the Forum of old Rome set down in a Siberian
+city.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f12">
+<img src="images/fig12.jpg" alt="bazaar">
+<p class="caption">THE BAZAAR, IRKUTSK</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span></p>
+<p>A short further stroll, and the party is at your
+other objective, the Bank. You take leave of the
+rest and enter. At the door, a grandly uniformed
+porter helps you off with the outer husk of furs,
+and motions you into the outer office, with its half-dozen
+clerks bending over sloping desks. One of
+these takes your card, and returning leads the way
+to a capacious sitting-room, with armchairs scattered
+here and there, pictures on the wall, magazines
+of many nations on the centre table. The
+American typewriter, which alone betrays that this
+is an office, is on a little table at one side. A tall
+military-looking man, gray-mustached and grave
+in manner, is seated beside the window reading some
+documents. He rises as you enter, and greets you,
+and for some minutes the conversation in French is
+upon general themes. Presently you go down into a
+side pocket and get out letters of introduction. One
+is from the Petersburg headquarters. He looks at
+the signature—Ignatieff.</p>
+
+<p>“You are his friend?” The polished worldliness
+falls away as a cloak that is thrown off. “Splendid!”
+he says. “Welcome to our city. We must have tea.”
+He pushes a bell, and a page, red-bloused and wearing
+brightly polished jack-boots, appears. “<i>Chai</i>,
+Alexis,” he orders. “And how did you leave Ignatieff?”
+he begins eagerly. “Does he still drive his
+black stallions? It is two years that I have not seen
+him. When I was in Petersburg last winter, he was
+in Paris, and when I was in Paris, he was at Nice.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>
+One is very separated from his friends here. One
+might as well be a convict.”</p>
+
+<p>You answer all his questions, and begin to feel as
+if you were at a little family party. Presently, in the
+midst of the double conversation,—for the Russians
+seem to talk and listen at the same time,—the
+boy comes in with a big samovar, and the other
+accompaniments. The banker makes the brew in
+the china pot. From this each of us serves himself
+as the compound conversation moves on.</p>
+
+<p>“You have not yet seen the sights of Irkutsk?”
+he observes at last. “I will get my sleigh and show
+you around when we have finished.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the middle of the day. I cannot break into
+your work like that,” you protest.</p>
+
+<p>But he rings a bell for the red-jacketed boy.
+“Order my sleigh.—We have the finest city in Siberia,”
+he continues; “eighty thousand people now,
+and growing always. And trade has come with the
+railroad as we had not dreamed before. In the days
+when they used to bring the tea overland from
+Kiahta, the sledges from Baikal would carry as
+many as five thousand bales daily. We thought
+when this began to be shipped through by the railroad
+that it would hurt the city. But there was so
+much other traffic that the loss was hardly felt.”</p>
+
+<p>“The sleigh is ready,” the boy announces.</p>
+
+<p>“May I have the honor?” he says, with his easy
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>He leads the way to the coat-rack, and is received<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+with the deepest bows by the uniformed worthy,
+who solicitously helps him on with his coat and
+overshoes. Then with a stereotyped motion the
+man holds out his hand for the tip. Though this
+servant is at the door of the banker’s own office and
+presumably upon his pay-roll, the incessant tribute
+is his perquisite. It is usual throughout Siberia for
+wealthy Russians to scatter small silver everywhere
+along their path—to friends’ servants, to house-porters,
+to beggars on the street. The most profuse
+miscellaneous generosity prevails. Riding to-day
+with the Russian banker is like watching the progress
+of a mediæval prince dispensing his largesse.</p>
+
+<p>At the entrance to the bank is the sleigh, skeleton-framed
+and high-built, unlike most of the sleighs of
+Siberia. Three big black horses, with the snake-like
+Arab head that characterizes the best Orloff strains,
+are hitched to it, troika-fashion, the centre horse
+under a big bow yoke, the outside animals running
+free. The coachman has the square pillow-hat, and
+the enormous wadded corpulence of Jehu elegance.</p>
+
+<p>It is an interesting ride in which we move slowly
+up the Bolshoiskaia, receiving, so far as the banker
+is concerned, neighborly greetings from most of the
+sleigh-riders, and respectful salutes from the foot-passers
+on the sidewalks. A nice social distinction
+our host draws in returning the formal salute for
+uniformed officials, the cordial wave of the hand
+for intimate friends, a nod for the humbler acquaintances:
+but none go unrecognized.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span></p>
+
+<p>Something like the Roman’s idea of showing his
+city by turns up and down the Corso, is this Siberian’s.
+We do halt, however, and look at the big
+Opera House and the Geographical Society’s Museum
+and the many-domed Cathedral,—buildings
+which in no city would be other than sources of satisfaction.
+After an hour of driving in the piercing
+cold, one’s conscience begins to prick. The banker,
+even though absent from his affairs, does not appear
+to feel either business or atmosphere. At length we
+are brought at a gallop to the doorstep of the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>“To-night we dine at eight. Adieu.” With a bow
+he draws the bearskin robes about him, and the
+black horses bear him swiftly around the corner.</p>
+
+<p>An acquaintance from the train is in the hallway
+as you climb stiffly up the steps.</p>
+
+<p>“Has the drive been a bit cold?” he asks. “Come
+in and have a <i>stakan</i> of vodka.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is that not rather heady for a between-meal
+tipple?” you suggest.</p>
+
+<p>“This is Siberia. When you run with the wolves,
+you must cry like a wolf,—but tea, too, is good.”</p>
+
+<p>You mount the stairs together, to the scene of
+last night’s orgy, and order a couple of glasses of tea.</p>
+
+<p>It is a strange anticlimax to find the room so
+deserted. At three this morning it was a good imitation
+of the traditional “Maxim’s.” At four in the
+afternoon it is simply a crude wooden hall, with
+the stiff-backed, plush-seated chairs ranged in bourgeois
+regularity at the discreetly covered tables.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+Only the shuffle of somebody practicing a new step
+on the stage behind the curtains suggests the double
+life of this innocent-looking hotel dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of glasses of tea attack the cold in strategic
+fashion, from the inside, and are better than
+the external reheating method. We sip in silence for
+a while.</p>
+
+<p>“I am going to drive over to the Banno and have
+a Russian bath,” observes your companion. “I do
+not like the tin tub they bring around here at the
+hotel. Are you impelled to come along?”</p>
+
+<p>“Is there attendance and room for two? I’m not
+minded to sit around and wait.”</p>
+
+<p>“Room for five hundred,” he says, with a long
+sweep of the hand. “Everybody goes there. It is
+one of the institutions of the city.”</p>
+
+<p>As you are now warm enough to consider a further
+drive, you go down to assist in bargaining for a
+sleigh to make the tour to and from the Banno.</p>
+
+<p>A big brick building a verst or so away, with a
+number of private equipages and a stand for public
+sleighs and droshkys, is our destination. A beggar-woman
+opens the double doors and gets her service
+percentage from each passer.</p>
+
+<p>“How much is given in this part of the world to
+beggars!” you remark.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian smiles. “It is a part of religion to
+give. At every big family affair,—a wedding, a
+christening, a funeral,—we distribute money and
+gifts to the poor.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the entresol of the bath-house, a big tiled
+anteroom, there are marble-topped tables, around
+which men and women are smoking and reading
+papers. One can dine here, even; but this comes
+after the bath. A ticket at the <i>kontora</i> gives, for a
+rouble, the privilege of a preliminary boiling and
+a flaying by one of the naked attendants. A start
+is made by washing you with infinite thoroughness,
+section by section, the attendant continuing on
+each spot until told to stop or advance to the next.
+An unfortunate foreigner, in Irkutsk, had his head
+shampooed seven times in succession before he could
+recall the cabalistic word necessary to direct the
+man’s attention elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>One is scrubbed and rinsed, and is then conducted
+up onto a wooden platform, running along under
+the ceiling. Here, while the first inquisitioner dashes
+water on a steamer-oven below, the second scrapes
+the victim with new pine branches. One remembers
+an Irkutsk Russian bath at least as long as the
+smarting and the cold he gets from it endure.</p>
+
+<p>Back at the hotel one can dig out his rather
+crumpled dress-suit in preparation for the evening’s
+entertainment. Later, he gathers in another sleigh,
+and sets out for the home of the banker.</p>
+
+<p>In Irkutsk nobody relies on house-numbers to
+find his way. Even Moscow has not yet advanced
+to this refinement of civilization. If the driver does
+not know the route, he stops to ask passers-by,
+“Where is So-and-So’s house?” Again and again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
+you are taken to the abode of somebody else with a
+name more or less similar. Then the driver will say,
+quite nonchalantly, “<i>Nietchevo!</i>”—ask the next
+person he encounters for directions, and start anew.
+You leave abundant margin of time, and usually
+arrive sooner or later.</p>
+
+<p>Our host of to-night is, happily, well known
+throughout the city. So the driver whips up to a
+gallop and rushes down the snowy streets. It is not
+a long ride to the big arched doorway of the white
+two-storied plaster-covered house, in front of which
+the driver pulls up with a flourish. You ring a bell
+at the side of the door and wait. The <i>isvoschik</i> has
+taken a station beside the curb, has folded his arms,
+and is nodding on the box, apparently prepared to
+camp there indefinitely. “Eleven o’clock, return,”
+you say. “<i>Haracho!</i>” is his drowsy answer, given
+without moving. The horses have drooped their
+heads; they too are settled for repose. The tinkle
+of a piano comes from within, but minute after
+minute goes by, the bell unanswered, the <i>isvoschik</i>
+immovable on his little seat. Other pulls of the bell
+are at last of avail: the door slowly opens. A final
+objurgation to the coachman that he is not wanted
+until eleven o’clock falls on sealed ears. You go in
+through the massive doorway.</p>
+
+<p>In the antechamber a gray-bloused attendant
+helps you off with wraps and goloshes, then silently
+disappears through a rear door, leaving you standing
+there unannounced. The vestibule is cumbered with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>
+coats and hats on the wall-hooks, overshoes helter-skelter
+on the floor, and canes and umbrellas in the
+corner. It is like a clothing establishment. Beyond
+the curtained doorway on the right are lights, and
+the sound of the piano is louder. This seems the
+most promising direction for exploration, so—forward!</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the portières is a splendidly lofty room,
+like that of an Italian palace, brilliantly lighted
+with electricity. Many-paned windows run high up,
+starting from the level of one’s breast, and long
+heavy hangings half-conceal them. To the right of
+the door is a mahogany grand piano, at which, oblivious
+of the world, the host is diligently thumping
+away at <i>Partant pour la Syrie!</i> with inadvertent
+variations, singing carelessly as he plays. Beyond
+him, in an imposing armchair of German oak, like
+King Edward’s throne in the Abbey, is a lady,
+propped with many cushions. She is slender and
+darkly clad, and is conversing with a young man in
+uniform, who sits very straight on a dainty gilt chair
+of the Louis XVI epoch. A low lacquered table
+before them is gayly painted with geisha girls and
+eaved pagodas. It holds a massive brass samovar encircled
+by a row of beautifully colored tea-tumblers
+of the sort that one sees on exhibition in the glass-factories
+which front the Grand Canal at Venice.
+The chorus comes from the banker at the piano:—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Amour à la plus belle;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Honneur au plus vaillant.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f13">
+<img src="images/fig13.jpg" alt="yermak">
+<p class="caption">THE ICE-BREAKER, YERMAK—LAKE BAIKAL</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p>
+
+<p>There is no use of paltering and waiting to be
+announced, so we enter the room. The performer
+hears the steps on the polished floor and swings
+round on the stool. “Ah, voilà!” he says, and rises
+to introduce you to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“A moi le plaisir,” she says, smiling. “Mon
+frère, Ivan Semyonevich,” presenting you next to
+the young officer, who rises abruptly and clicks his
+heels as he takes your hand.</p>
+
+<p>You are motioned to a replica of the little chair,
+and your host returns to his piano, this time to play
+with immense satisfaction in your honor a hazy
+memory of some bygone variety show: “There’ll be
+a hot time in the old town to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“A friend is very welcome,” says Madame Karetnikov,
+when he finishes. “We do not see many from
+the world here in Siberia.”</p>
+
+<p>“The life, however, is interesting, is it not?”</p>
+
+<p>“O monsieur, I, too, was interested at first, but
+there are so few people of the world here, and we
+see them all the time. C’est affreux! I give you a
+month to change that opinion.”</p>
+
+<p>“You give a month, Irina; I give a week,” growls
+her brother.</p>
+
+<p>“If it were not that we get away during the
+spring one would perish of ennui,” the hostess adds.
+“But Japan is not far. We go there or to Europe
+every year. Perhaps soon we shall get a transfer
+to another branch.”</p>
+
+<p>“You bankers have hopes,” observes the brother,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+“but what of us poor officials of the Justice Department!
+We are chained to the bench like old galley-slaves,
+and all we get is three hundred roubles a
+month and a red button when we are seventy.”</p>
+
+<p>As the macerated song floats anew from the piano,
+the hall-door opens and there is dimly visible in the
+anteroom a curious much-encumbered figure, with
+a gigantic sheepskin hat and short blue reefer coat.
+He divests himself of these, and of a long woolen
+inside muffler, and, brushing back his long hair,
+comes into the room. His blue tunic is resplendent
+with brass buttons and he wears jack-boots. A light
+down is growing upon his upper lip. He is nineteen
+or twenty.</p>
+
+<p>“Good-day!” says our host, hailing him in English.</p>
+
+<p>“Good-day, uncle!” he replies.</p>
+
+<p>He presents himself before Madame Karetnikov,
+who holds out her hand, which he formally kisses.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Zdravstvouitie</i>, Valerian!” says the official,
+shaking the young man’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>Then you are introduced with explanations.</p>
+
+<p>“Valerian here is in his last year at the Irkutsk
+Realistic School, studying preparatory to engineering.”</p>
+
+<p>The status of science in Siberia becomes the
+theme, and the newcomer infuses considerable local
+color into his pictures.</p>
+
+<p>“Does the professor in drawing suit you now,
+Valerian?” the banker inquires presently. Then he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
+adds to you: “They all went on strike because the
+old professor of drawing had a method they did not
+like. The authorities had to replace him before any
+of the students would go back.”</p>
+
+<p>“The new professor respects our rights,” says
+Valerian soberly, not liking the levity of his elder.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, from an adjoining room, come in the children
+of the host,—a very pretty girl of the age at
+which misses wear short dresses and braids; and
+a little boy of about eight. The boy very respectfully
+kisses his mother’s hand and is introduced to the
+stranger, but finds a superior attraction in his father
+at the piano.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, Marie Pavlovna, sits down beside her
+cousin Valerian. Lacking the stock football amenities
+of a happier land, and half-embarrassed, half-superior
+in the status of a budding young man, Valerian
+is not much of a conversation-maker. Marie
+Pavlovna, too, is seen but not heard. She is evidently
+the typical product of the French system of
+sex-segregation and cloistered study, which keeps
+girls abnormally uninteresting until marriage, perhaps
+to make amends subsequently.</p>
+
+<p>“I think we had better go in and eat. It is half-past
+eight,” says the host.</p>
+
+<p>“Si tu veux,” replies his wife; and we stroll out
+into a big dining-room, at one end of which is a
+heavily-freighted oak sideboard.</p>
+
+<p>As we approach this, the host opens a far door,
+and shouts down into the darkness:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Obeid, Dimitri.”</p>
+
+<p>We turn to the <i>zakuska</i> sideboard. The official
+reaches for the vodka-bottle, and the little silver
+egg-like glasses.</p>
+
+<p>“Vodka will it be, or do you prefer cognac?”</p>
+
+<p>The various guests choose their tipple. With
+the gulp of a mountaineer taking his moonshine, the
+banker swallows the twenty-year-old French brandy,
+of the sort that gourmets protractingly sip with their
+coffee. The little boy slips out to his particular region
+of the house. The hostess takes her seat at the
+foot of the table, and the gentlemen pass and repass,
+bringing her assorted <i>zakuska</i> dishes as at a ball.
+Caviar from the Volga, Thon mariné from Calais,
+sprats from Hamburg, Columbia River salmon, are
+spread out and attacked by the rest of us, standing,
+free-lunch fashion. One by one the men finish and
+straggle to their places at the table.</p>
+
+<p>Three menservants, with gray blouses and baggy
+silk trousers falling over their topboots, appear now,
+one with a huge tureen of bouillon, another with
+the little silver bowls, and a third with a plate of
+the <i>piroushkies</i> that accompany the soup. Madame
+Karetnikov deals out the consommé for the whole
+table, and also for little Paul and his governess in
+some outside quarters. Every one begins to eat,
+without waiting for the hostess or for anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>“It is hard work managing a big family like ours,”
+she allows, in reply to your question about the
+domestic problem. “We always have seven or eight,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>
+and one can never tell how many friends will come
+in to dine with us.”</p>
+
+<p>She casts a solicitous eye over the table, to see
+that no one has been neglected, and then serves
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>“One must keep the men well fed,” she observes.
+“Remember that, Marie, when you get married.”</p>
+
+<p>Marie at the far end of the table nods assent.</p>
+
+<p>“But you must not think of marrying until you
+are told,” adds the banker.</p>
+
+<p>She nods assent to this, too.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t mind him, Marie,” says the official. “He
+thinks he is living in the time of the Seven Boyars.
+Take my advice. Pick out the man you want and go
+for him. You can’t fail.”</p>
+
+<p>“Such ideas to put in a girl’s head!” says his
+sister, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The soup-course is nearly over, when suddenly the
+banker ejaculates, and jumps up to welcome some
+new arrivals.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, father!”</p>
+
+<p>He runs to a sturdy benignant-looking old man,
+and kisses him on both his white-bearded cheeks,
+then does the same to the little old mother.</p>
+
+<p>“Come in, come in; we are just beginning.”</p>
+
+<p>At once the table is in a state of unstable equilibrium.
+The old lady is steered to a chair at the
+head, and the rest are pushed along to make room.
+The father makes his way, under similar escort, in
+the direction of the vodka-bottle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span></p>
+
+<p>“No French brandy for me!” he says, and puts
+the fiery Russian liquid where it will do the most
+good. He, too, goes to the far end of the table.</p>
+
+<p>The student tells in a low voice that the newcomer
+is a veteran of Sevastopol, was once the
+personal friend of Czar Alexander, the Liberator,
+and was decorated by him for gallantry at Plevna.</p>
+
+<p>“What a splendid old Russian he is!” one thinks,
+noting all the kindliness and courtesy of his honored
+age, and the grip of a bear-trap in his hand. Yet
+there is an indescribable air of melancholy about
+him, as if a great sadness were being bravely and
+uncomplainingly faced. A remark from the hostess
+turns you to her.</p>
+
+<p>“Father is one of the Colonization Commission.
+We are all very much interested in hearing about
+his discussions with the settlers!”</p>
+
+<p>“Colonization for the settlers or for the exiles
+here?” you ask.</p>
+
+<p>“It is the government assistance for the voluntary
+emigrants, not for the unfortunate ones.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the latter must be a problem in themselves?”</p>
+
+<p>Madame seems embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>The student leans over and in a low tone whispers:
+“His youngest son, the brother of Vladimir, is
+in hiding, is under sentence of death. They don’t
+speak of him here.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has just come from the Governor,” adds
+Madame Karetnikov, “who is a great friend of his.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
+The Governor has heard from Petersburg that they
+may bestow the cross of St. Stanislaus.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is the autocracy here, which you do not
+know in your country,” adds the student, in a low
+voice. “He is an intimate friend of the Governor
+and two of his sons are officials, yet his last son
+is beyond pardon. The old man himself knows not
+where he is. Yet they decorate the father. He still
+believes in the Emperor.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do not let my nephew talk politics to you,” says
+the hostess, rather anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Valerian is silent.</p>
+
+<p>A supplementary tureen of soup makes its appearance,
+and the two newcomers are served with
+it. The rest of the party have advanced to boiled
+sturgeon, with a thin sauce, compensated by Russian
+Château Yquem from the Imperial domain
+in the Crimea. Roast beef follows the fish, with
+the old general and his wife at length even with the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>Then come duck and claret, and finally dessert
+and champagne. The toast of the evening is drunk
+to the old general, who brightens as the meal advances.
+In the big reception-room, Turkish coffee is
+brought, which is poured from the brazen ladle and
+served in exquisite little cups without handles.</p>
+
+<p>“We got them in Damascus on one of our trips,”
+says the host.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation goes round the table. The official is
+in eager talk with Madame Karetnikov about a common<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
+friend in a smart Petersburg regiment, who has
+got badly in debt.</p>
+
+<p>“He ought to apply for a transfer to the Siberian
+service. The officers get more pay, and it costs less
+to live,” she is urging.</p>
+
+<p>“But for Serge we must consider how much
+greater is the cost of champagne here,” retorts the
+official.</p>
+
+<p>“We can marry him to Katinka, and make her
+father get him a promotion,” the sister suggests. “I
+think he ought to have left the army and gone into
+the contracting,—every contractor I know is as
+rich as sin and goes to Monte Carlo.”</p>
+
+<p>So the conversation rambles on. Cigarettes are
+passed. The hostess will not have one.</p>
+
+<p>“I used to smoke, but it is so common now,”
+she explains. “Every peasant’s wife hangs over
+her oven with a cigarette in her mouth. Even a
+vice cannot survive after it has become unfashionable.”</p>
+
+<p>The host comes up to show you his curios.</p>
+
+<p>“This Alpine scene is one of Segantini’s. We got
+it in Dresden before he had earned his repute. I
+am very proud of my wife’s discrimination. The
+statuettes are from a little sculptor in the Via Sistina
+in Rome. Rien d’extraordinaire. The vase
+came from the Imperial Palace in Peking. I bought
+it from a Cossack for fifty kopecks. I have been
+told it belongs to the Tsin Dynasty, and is better
+than those they have in Petersburg Hermitage.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span></p>
+
+<p>So you are shown the spoil of two continents in
+connoisseur purchases.</p>
+
+<p>“Hardly to be suspected in Irkutsk,” he allows,
+complacently.</p>
+
+<p>Every year host and hostess visit the Riviera,
+taking a turn at Monte Carlo and Nice and Cannes.
+The banker speaks English, French, German, and
+Italian fluently, and half a dozen other languages
+passably. His wife acknowledges only French and
+Italian.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation turns to the idealism of Pierre
+Loti’s description of the road to Ispahan. The
+banker has followed this road himself, and he has
+a much less poetic memory of it. The veteran—his
+father—is not up in French or English, but he has
+a good knowledge of German left from academy
+times. In this language he tells of the old days of the
+serfs and of the Crimea. He talks with the kind
+frankness of age that does not need self-suppression
+to prompt respect. When the guests rise to leave,
+and the buoyancy of the entertainment is passed,
+his cloud comes back. His voice has just a touch of
+bitterness as he says good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad we can welcome to our country a man
+traveling for pleasure. So many who come are here
+under less pleasant auspices.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>De svidania</i>,” you say at last to everybody, and
+out you go into the midnight frost. The droshky-driver
+is still there waiting. He has slept since
+you entered, unmoving through the hours. “<i>Gastinitza<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></i>,”
+you direct; and he drives to the hotel
+through the bleak starlit night.</p>
+
+<p>Valerian comes a few days later to visit us, and
+volunteers to be our guide for Irkutsk.</p>
+
+<p>“If I miss a few days at the Academy, what
+matter? I shall improve my English,” he explains.</p>
+
+<p>Valerian is typical of the student class, all ideal
+and aspiration. He has gathered the heat of the
+epoch, and has concentrated it upon his philosophy.
+He is saturated with the French Revolution. Does
+he mention Danton, for example, it is with intentness
+of loyalty for the great Mountain speaker,
+which makes one almost think that the year is 1792,
+and that the place is sans-culottic France; “debout
+contre les tyrans!” He sings fiercely with his comrades,
+to the tune of the <i>Marseillaise</i>, the Russian
+revolutionary anthem, ending it with a swirl. “For
+the palace is foe to our homes!” America he considers
+one of the free nations, but he has reserves.
+Though he is not at one with our political system,
+yet he thinks that all learned about it is a great gain.</p>
+
+<p>“Your land is free politically,” he specifies, “but
+it is not yet emancipated from capital,—it is not
+free socially. You have an industrial feudalism and
+a proletariat. So will it not be when we have won
+our revolution.”</p>
+
+<p>Many are his anecdotes of the uprising of 1905,
+whose tragic drama will never be fully pictured and
+whose history is to be gleaned only from the mouths
+of cautious witnesses.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f14">
+<img src="images/fig14.jpg" alt="chita">
+<p class="caption">THE ORGANIZERS OF THE CHITA REPUBLIC</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p>
+<p>“We rose at Irkutsk, many of us, students and
+workmen, but General Müller had a strong garrison
+of troops here. We tried them, but they would not
+come over. They shot down our men and dispersed
+all the meetings, and now he is Governor in the
+Baltic Provinces. They say that when he was
+drunk, he would shoot accused men in his own railway
+carriage; “the butcher!” we of the Cause call
+him. At Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk the city was held
+for weeks by our party. The railway men would not
+run troop-trains and the Government was paralyzed.
+Chita was held by a Revolutionary Committee of
+Safety. We manned the entrances with artillery.
+We took turns watching, and ran the whole city, not
+touching the money in the Treasury. But we were
+few, and word came that the insurrection was everywhere
+broken. Müller was marching from Irkutsk,
+and Rennenkamp came back with the troops from
+Manchuria. He promised moderate terms to all
+but the leaders. The townspeople were afraid, and
+rose against our men. Many were taken. Many fled
+away and got to Japan and America. Some were
+shot and some were sent to the Yakutsk. So it was
+crushed, and our great chance was gone.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will it come again?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ni snaia!</i> The workmen are ready. The intellectuals
+are ready. The peasants back in Russia cry
+for land. Perhaps they too will be ripe next time,
+and the soldiers will be with us. In any case Siberia
+has seen the red flag float over the Chita Republic.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p>
+
+<p>Many-faceted is the life in a Siberian city. In
+numerous ways it seems feverish and abnormal, for
+it represents the young blood of a capable race
+struggling upward, and knowing that in much its
+battle is desperate. The towns have hardly yet got
+settled methods; they are outgrown villages where
+men of all stamps, who have become enriched in
+the new land, come for the pleasures or the benefit
+of a less monotonous existence. The traditions of
+peasant origins survive in the conditions and general
+civic neglect.</p>
+
+<p>Irkutsk, once its novelties have become familiar,
+has lost its charm. That it is provincial is no discredit,
+but its amusements are of the grosser order,
+unredeemed by wit. Every evening the tawdry
+dining-room at the hotel echoes the songs and noise
+of the revelers. The same circle attends the theatres.
+The students discuss hotly the rights of man
+and the Valhalla prepared for all martyrs, and
+calm simple wholesome life seems to be reserved
+for the workaday world which moves on its slow
+toilsome upward way in silence.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, to-night an unwonted stir at
+the Hôtel Métropole. The corridors are thronged.
+A Russian friend points out the notables. The blue-uniformed
+official yonder with the gray mustache
+and the row of glittering orders on his breast is
+the Governor-General. Half a dozen members of the
+local bar, in frock-coats, pass through. In the dining-room
+a young lieutenant, dashingly clad in long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>
+maroon coat with the row of silver-topped cartouches
+and the clattering sabre of the Emperor’s Cossack
+Guard, is being deferentially entertained by officers
+of the garrison. Three officials are taking champagne
+with two beautifully gowned women, Parisiennes
+even to their long pendant earrings. The hotel-pages
+in fresh red blouses and high boots pass here and
+there with messages. The waiters, with intensified
+deference, glide among the crowd in its many-colored
+uniforms and glittering war-medals.</p>
+
+<p>“Who has arrived?” we ask, surveying the scene.</p>
+
+<p>“A member of the Imperial Cabinet.”</p>
+
+<p>The announcement of his name has a personal
+interest and memories of earlier stays in Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The Minister’s life has been a romance indeed.
+Disagreeing with his family through liberal ideas,
+he went in 1862 to Birkenhead as a locomotive
+engineer, to the United States, to Argentine, and
+returning to Russia worked up from a very small
+government position to be chief of all the Russian
+roads, railways, and telegraphs, and Minister of
+Ways and Communications in the Czar’s Cabinet.
+His brain threw the line of rails over half a continent.
+On the outbreak of the Japanese War he was called
+from his retirement to the colossal task of bringing
+to the front across the width of Asia half a million
+men, their artillery and arms, their food, their transport,
+all on the one line of rails. He has served under
+three Emperors and is life-member of the Senate.</p>
+
+<p>You send a card in through one of the attachés.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>
+In a few minutes there is delivered to you the
+Prince’s card, across which is written: “At noon.”</p>
+
+<p>At the hour appointed you mount to the apartment
+overlooking the Bolshoiskaia. Guards at salute,
+staff in brilliant uniforms, secretaries and
+callers in full dress,—the antechambers are full.
+You pass through to the furthermost room.</p>
+
+<p>In a nest of books and maps, with blue-prints outspread
+on floor and chairs and sofas, is an elderly
+man in a plain frock-coat, without a ribbon or a
+button to hint his honors. He is vigorous, hearty,
+simple, almost unchanged from your earlier acquaintance,
+his keen flashing eyes hinting ever a
+reverse side to the great repose of his manner.</p>
+
+<p>Personal questions occupy the first minutes, but
+presently we are into larger themes, and you begin
+to feel subtly the man’s power. He has come on a
+special tour, to inspect, with his own practiced eyes,
+the projected double-tracking of the Siberian Railroad.
+Every brakeman and locomotive engineer,
+every traffic superintendent and division manager
+along the route knows he could step down from his
+private car and handle the levers and give them
+directions. His mind is a very vortex of ideas, and
+his range of conversation reflects world-wide interests.
+The talk gets to the American political situation
+and the race-problem. Later it shifts to the
+Japanese War, and he tells of some of his experiences
+getting the troops into Manchuria. A mention of
+the overland road to China awakens reminiscences.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It was long before the railroad that I went over
+that route first,” he says. He tells of his months-long
+horseback ride beyond Baikal before the railroad
+went through, inspecting the trade-route and
+the prospects of the country. By and by the conversation
+has got to the special problems of the
+Slav. With the straightforward frankness of a great
+nature which wishes the best for his country, he
+tells of the Russian aspirations from the standpoint
+of those who are facing the problems of the
+nation in their fact and practice.</p>
+
+<p>“I too,” he says, “was once for changing much in
+a little time, and worked to free the serfs and to
+start the elective Semstvos throughout the Empire.
+Alas! so much that they want is possible to no government!
+One cannot by enactment abolish want
+or bring all men to a <i>niveau</i>. We are trying to give
+every man the chance to rise, unchecked by any
+administrative barrier. But one sees as he lives
+longer that all which one wishes cannot come at a
+<i>coup</i>. Great changes, great improvements, I have
+witnessed, but they have not come by violence. We
+must keep order, and hand on to our sons an undivided
+Empire of the Russias.”</p>
+
+<p>You leave this patient builder of the new order
+alone amid his maps and studies in the idle Sunday
+city. As you descend the steps, a black-capped
+student passes the door. He is humming the forbidden
+<i>Marseillaise</i>.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c4">IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">SLEDGING THROUGH TRANSBAIKALIA</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE sledge-route that leads to the Chinese
+frontier goes southward from Verhneudinsk
+across the territory of Transbaikalia. In old days
+one reached its starting-point by traversing the
+frozen Lake Baikal in sleighs, muffled in furs against
+the sweep of the terrible winds, with plunging ponies
+at full gallop.</p>
+
+<p>Now, after mighty effort and at monumental
+cost, the line of the great railroad has been driven
+through the last obstacles that blocked an open way,
+and trains carry the traveler through the deep cuts
+and tunnels that pierce the barrier crags around
+the Holy Sea.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the express that one takes at the Irkutsk
+station to reach the ancient fort, but the daily post-train,
+the servant of local traffic. Luggage-cumbered
+passengers crowd into the cars wherever there is
+a place. A few, and these mostly officials, establish
+themselves in the blue-painted first class. Many
+press into the yellow second class—merchants,
+lesser chinovniks, tradesmen, popes, and children on
+their way to the city schools. Swarms pour into
+the green wooden-benched third, where the thronging
+tousle-headed emigrants patiently huddle closer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>
+to give room to newcomers. Next to the engine,
+with its big smokestack, is the mail-wagon, on
+whose sides are painted crossed post-horns and
+the picture of a sealed letter. Behind this, with a
+sentry on guard, is the baggage-car. The sinister
+compartment of drawn shutters and barred windows
+is for the prisoners. In this princes or artel-workers,
+their identity unsuspected, can be run across a continent
+to their unknown places of exile.</p>
+
+<p>The post-train starts from Irkutsk occasionally on
+time. In general, along the local line the time-table
+is about as reliable a guide as the calendars sold to
+the mujiks, with weather prophecies for each day
+of the year. Fifteen miles an hour is mean speed.
+Stops may be for minutes or for hours. One settles
+down therefore in the attitude sacred to a yachting
+cruise,—foie gras and bridge, if it is calm; double
+reefs and pilot-bread if it blows up. The high
+heavens alone know when we are to get in, and
+nobody cares. It is not unpleasant withal to sprawl
+over a great broad couch, and as the train crawls
+forward watch the white highlands slowly unroll,
+the towering cliffs and peaks with spear-like pines
+driving up through the snow, and the icy lake
+below.</p>
+
+<p>For meals, one dashes out during the station-stops,
+and before the third bell gives warning of the
+start, devours meat-filled <i>piroushkies</i> and swallows
+lemon-tinctured tea at the long buffet-tables decked
+with hollow squares of wine-bottles, and beer from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+the seven breweries of Irkutsk. If one has a teapot
+he can get boiling water from the government-furnished
+samovar, and milk from the peasant-women
+who stand in booths hard-by. He can add
+salt fish and hot fowl, together with rye-bread and
+butter, and then consume his rations at leisure in
+the compartment. At night the seats are let down,
+and one sleeps in fitful naps among the hills of baggage.
+When morning comes, an hour-long procession
+forms to take turns at the wash-bowl with its
+trickle valve, in a towelless, soapless, and cindered
+lavatory.</p>
+
+<p>We leave Irkutsk at ten in the morning, and reach
+Verhneudinsk at seven next day, covering in
+twenty-one hours the 446 versts. Here is the last
+of the railroad. With troika, sledge, and tarantass,
+by highway and byway, over frozen rivers and
+camel-tracked trails, we must now follow the old
+road into the heart of Asia.</p>
+
+<p>The post-station that serves as point of departure
+for the sledge journey lies some distance away, at
+the edge of the town. An <i>isvoschik</i>, after due bargaining,
+proceeds to transfer thither us and our
+dunnage-bags.</p>
+
+<p>As we ride through the town, just waking for the
+day, the streets, the lamps, the telegraph-wires, the
+comfortable houses,—each and every symbol of
+civilization takes on a new significance now that it is
+to be left behind. On the parade-grounds the recruits
+are at the morning drill, shouting lustily in unison,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>“<i>Ras, dva, tre!</i>” to keep the step. We pass the barracks,
+the shops with their brightly illustrated signs,
+and ride under the wooden yellow-painted Alexander
+Arch.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f15">
+<img src="images/fig15.jpg" alt="station">
+<p class="caption">BAIKAL STATION</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter2" id="f16">
+<img src="images/fig16.jpg" alt="highlands">
+<p class="caption">THE HIGHLANDS OF TRANSBAIKALIA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Soon we reach a street of low log houses, and a
+lofty boarded enclosure is ahead. At its gateway is
+swinging a black signboard, painted with post-horn
+and the Czar’s double-headed eagle. “<i>Postava
+Stancie</i>,” is inscribed over the lintel. Between the
+black and white-striped gate-posts we swing into
+the courtyard. To the left stretches a low log house.
+To the right, along the wall, are ranked sledges. In
+front are the stalls. Grooms, whip in hand, stand
+around in the courtyard, muffled against the cold.</p>
+
+<p>“Is the <i>gaspadine</i> going on?” one of them asks.</p>
+
+<p>On the reply, “Yes, at once,” he scurries off to
+start harnessing, and you shoulder open the low
+felted door of the post-house and enter the big
+waiting-room.</p>
+
+<p>“Three horses?” asks the young black-mustached
+agent within.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, a troika sledge.”</p>
+
+<p>He turns to the book of registry attached to the
+rough table by a long cord fastened with a big red
+seal, and begins to write.</p>
+
+<p>“The name?” he asks. It goes down.</p>
+
+<p>“The destination?”</p>
+
+<p>“The Chinese frontier at Kiahta.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your first relay-station is Nijniouboukounskaia,
+twenty-seven versts.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span></p>
+
+<p>The fare is set out in a printed placard posted up
+on the wall; as is the price of a samovar, fifteen kopecks,
+and all the other items that the traveler may
+require.</p>
+
+<p>The agent hands you the slip: “One rouble,
+eighty-two kopecks, for two persons, the <i>gaspadine</i>
+and his courier”; something under three cents a
+passenger-mile.</p>
+
+<p>As you wait for the harnessing of the post-sledge,
+the courier overlooks anew the bags and counts
+out again the parcels. As light as possible must
+be the impedimenta. Now is the last chance for
+change.</p>
+
+<p>The big station-clock ticks on. The agent moves
+about in the warm dusky silence of the house. The
+courier straps tighter the dunnage-bag.</p>
+
+<p>“Look that your furs are snugly fastened,” he
+says.</p>
+
+<p>There is trample of footsteps by the door. A fur-clad,
+ruddy-faced driver stumbles in, makes the
+sign of the cross before the ikon on the further wall,
+and beckons to you.</p>
+
+<p>“Ready!” he says.</p>
+
+<p>Three shaggy ponies stand hitched to a wooden
+sledge, not high like those of city <i>isvoschiks</i>, but
+low and shaped like a wide bath-tub. The bottom
+is cushioned with hay and you are to sit some six
+inches above the runners. The bells hanging from
+the big arched <i>duga</i> over the centre horse jingle as
+he frets. The side horses, that will run loose between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+rope-traces, look around at the <i>yamshik</i> who
+stands by. He holds in his mittened hands four
+reins of leather, twisted into ropes—two for the
+centre trotter, one each, on the outside, for the gallopers.</p>
+
+<p>You climb into the nest of rugs and furs superimposed
+upon your baggage! The <i>yamshik</i> leaps
+to the precarious perch that serves as his seat.
+The whip falls, and with a bound the horses are off.
+Always one starts at top speed, however bad the
+way. Always one finishes at a gallop, however jaded
+the horses. It is the rule of the Russian road.</p>
+
+<p>With bells jingling, the driver shouting to clear
+the way, and a white cloud rising behind, the sledge
+skims out between the log houses which flank the
+straggling street. Dogs bark and the idle passers-by
+stare. Fur-covered pigs scramble up with a squeal,
+and scurry from their resting-places in the road.
+Girls, with shako-capped heads, peer through the
+windows. Little chubby boys, in big brown felt
+boots, cheer.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the uttermost houses of the town are left,
+and emerging we plunge into the country road
+through open fields, dazzlingly, blindingly white.
+The trotter’s legs seem to move too fast, as if seen
+in a cinematograph. The gallopers, free of all weight
+and held only by the two traces which fasten them,
+outrigger fashion, swing on like wild ponies of the
+steppe. Crude and massive as the sleigh may look,
+its burden is almost nothing on the hard compacted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+snow. The horses in the rush through the bracing
+air seem to be the incarnation of the wind. A rut in
+the glistening road does not produce a disjointing
+shock, for, as a huntsman’s bullet glances from the
+skull of a wild boar, so the sleigh glides into the air
+and swiftly down again at a long low angle. It is
+a fact of “flying.”</p>
+
+<p>The cold is intense. After an hour of riding you
+have learned a certain lesson which adds to your
+experience. Whether the traveler shall make this
+winter journey equipped with full camp-kit, portable
+stove, folding-forks, thermos bottles, and shell-reloading
+tools, or Tatar fashion, with a rifle and a
+haunch of mutton, is important but not vital. Let
+him make sure, however, that the huge all-enveloping
+sheepskin overcoat is at hand to supplement the
+coats beneath, and that a shaggy sleeping-rug is
+provided in addition to the blankets. One obstinate
+newcomer started with the insistence that a mink-lined
+Amerikanski overcoat, with two heavy rugs
+as lap-robes, would be ample. After an hour on the
+road, he turned into a peasant’s hut to thaw out
+upon boiling tea, while the driver went back to the
+town to buy the hairiest robe and coat obtainable.
+These were thenceforth worn on top of the initial
+outfit. Siberia for a midwinter sledging journey
+exacts this tribute of respect.</p>
+
+<p>For versts the winter road follows down along the
+river between towering pinnacled rocks, where in
+summer eagles nest. The cliffs are vividly spotted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+with orange and green lichens; below they are fretted
+with the scourings of ice brought down in the spring
+freshets. All along beside the road are the familiar
+pine-saplings planted in mounds by the villagers to
+guide the way. In the vast monotony and drifting
+snows travelers would be lost but for these landmarks.
+Along the fertile river valleys hamlets are
+thick. A cluster of houses is met every six to ten
+versts. Presently the road leaves the river and bends
+to the left, cutting across fields. When it quits the
+bank, it climbs sharply a five-foot ascent. The driver
+does not even slacken speed. At the turn he swings
+the sure-footed ponies suddenly, and takes the
+slope, letting the outrigger bring up against a stiff
+clump of bushes. There is a crash, the sleigh has
+caromed off at right angles, nothing has befallen,
+and we are on again.</p>
+
+<p>Verst after verst of plateau goes by, with rounded
+rolling hills of dimpled snow, treeless, houseless, a
+barren waste. Then comes a crest so steep that the
+horses can only toil up it at a walk, and the passengers
+must climb beside them. The forest closes in
+as the height is mounted,—white leafless birches
+and dark green pines. The light snow is seamed with
+rabbit-runs, and here and there are the far-spaced
+tracks of deer or wild goats.</p>
+
+<p>A mound of stones and a small pole with a Buddhist
+prayer-flag—for here is the ancient home of
+the Buriats—mark the top of the ascent. There is
+a moment’s halt while you climb in and the driver<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>
+tightens the saddle of the centre horse; then down
+the giddy descent we sweep, in full gallop once
+more. The pines flash past, and you hold your
+breath in fear of the smash that must come should
+a horse fall, should a trace break, should a side rut
+swing the sledge over. One is, however, so close to
+the ground that an overturn is usually harmless,
+save to the clothes and the nervous system, both of
+which are at a discount in Siberian sledging. Then
+too the outrigger arrangement is such that the craft
+turns a quarter of the way over and slides on the
+supplementary runner until it rights.</p>
+
+<p>The cold is intense. One wipes away the snow
+from his fur collar, and the dampness on the handkerchief
+has caused it to become frozen stiff. It is a
+crackling parchment that goes back into the pocket.
+Eyeglasses are unwearable, for the rising vapor
+from one’s breath is caught and frozen on them in an
+opaque film. Fingers exposed but a moment become
+numb and useless, and uncovering the hand is an
+agony. Gradually as you ride, through the great
+felt boots, the triple flannels, the camel’s-hair stockings,
+the fur-lined gloves, the coats and rugs, the
+cold begins to bite. You have become fatigued and
+depressed of a sudden. The driver points to your
+cheek, where the marble whiteness is eating into the
+flesh, and bids you rub it with snow. An involuntary
+shudder grips and shakes you relentlessly from
+head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>It is time to stop. If you try to go on beyond the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+next station you will, if the gods are lenient and you
+do not freeze, get out nerveless and trembling, not for
+hours to rally strength and energy. The chill will
+cling, however hot the post-house oven. Even now
+you are weak, beaten down, querulous, in a sudden
+feeble old age. The shudder means that the human
+animal is near his endurance limit.</p>
+
+<p>On an urgent call, with special preparations, you
+may travel for a hundred hours, night and day,
+without halt save for change of relays. Physically,
+it is possible to fight cold for a time. You can run
+along in all your furs beside the horses, you can beat
+your arms together, and rub nose and cheeks to
+keep the blood in motion. You can drink copious
+glasses of scalding tea in the post-houses, and live
+by stimulants on the road. Through ceaseless vigilance
+and resolution you can keep from freezing, even
+while intense fatigue creeps on and vitality is going.
+But the persistent awful shudder is Nature’s red lantern.
+Run past it if you must,—it is at your peril.</p>
+
+<p>Dark against the snows, now a low-lying village
+comes into sight,—Nijniouboukounskaia,—and
+among its first log houses is one bearing the post-horn
+signboard. A cry rouses the jaded horses to
+a gallop, and covered with snow, the sledge sweeps
+into the yard. Steaming and frosted white, the
+animals stand with lowered heads. Stablemen run
+to unharness them. Stiff with cold and muffled like
+a mummy, you clamber out, and on unsteady legs
+mount the steps to the felted door of the posting-inn.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+In the big bare room, beside the warm oven, robes
+and overcoats can be thrown off. A red-capped girl
+loads the samovar with glowing brands from the
+fire, and sets it humming for tea. Brown bread is
+produced and eggs, and a great bowl of warm milk.
+With these, and the contents of your bag of provisions,
+can be eked out a welcome <i>obeid</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For the night’s rest one need not seek a bed.
+There is never a spring to ease the bones from
+Verhneudinsk to Kiahta. There was discovered
+just once on the journey—at Arbouzarskie—an
+iron skeleton, bearing to a spring bed about the relation
+that the three-toed Pleistocene prairie trotter
+holds to a modern horse. The post-keeper had carefully
+hewn with his axe five pine planks to cover the
+gaunt limbs of it. The voyageur slept on the soft
+side of these timbers. Bed and board are synonyms
+in Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>For a couch there is to-night the narrow wooden
+law-provided bench, or—a less precarious perch,
+and equally resilient—the sanded floor. For bedding,
+one has one’s own blankets and coats. What
+if the shoulder slept on numbs with one’s weight,
+or the corner of the soap-box in the traveling-bag,
+serving as a pillow, dents the tired head! One
+draws off felt boots and some of the outer layers
+of clothes, rolls the sheepskin about one, covers
+the head with a blanket, and sleeps like the forest
+bears in their winter dens.</p>
+
+<p>Just before daybreak is the best time to start, so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>
+that one can cover the most road possible while the
+sun is up. At ten or eleven, an hour’s stop for lunch
+is advisable, and then on again until sundown. It is
+better not to travel after nightfall, as the cold is so
+much more intense. We dedicate the evening to
+hot tea, and then turn to the blankets and the
+bench.</p>
+
+<p>The stretch between Verhneudinsk and Troitzkosavsk,
+officially rated at two hundred and
+eighteen versts, is really somewhat longer. A run of
+average record took from 4:20 <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> Tuesday to
+11:30 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> Thursday—forty-three hours and ten
+minutes. This included all relaying, seven hours a
+night for sleeping, dinner and breakfast halts, two
+accidents (an overturning and a broken runner),
+and one calamity—a Siberian who snored. The
+actual driving-time, over a road for the most part
+hilly, was twenty-two hours, five minutes, or just
+about ten versts per hour.</p>
+
+<p>Horses stand always ready, with special men at
+hand to harness. Drivers swing on their shaggy
+greatcoats, and with almost no loss of time one is
+out of the shadowed courtyard and on the road
+again in the dazzling whiteness of the winter day.</p>
+
+<p>In traveling “post,” however, with relayed
+sleighs and big empty guest-rooms, one does not
+become acquainted with the life along the way. One
+has only hurried glimpses of slant-eyed Buriat
+tribesmen, of galloping Cossacks, trudging peasants,
+post-agents, girls who carry in samovars and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>
+silently steal out, rosy-cheeked boys on the streets,
+and women at the house-windows. To know the
+people and see their daily life one must get away
+from the beaten highroad, strike out from the government-regulated
+inns, and blaze one’s own path
+into the interior.</p>
+
+<p>First, you get a low passenger-sledge, long enough
+to admit of stretching out, and without too many
+projecting nails on the inside; then, three good
+ponies of the hardy Cossack breed, that are never
+curried or taken into a stable through the bitterest
+winter. The best animals procurable are none too
+good for climbing the passes away from the river-courses.
+The whole outfit can be bought for three
+hundred roubles in any of the interior towns.</p>
+
+<p>For drivers, there is a class of <i>yamshik</i> teamsters,
+who spend their lives guiding the sledge-caravans
+which carry the local traffic. One of these men, Ivan
+Kurbski, can guide you through a whole province,
+and lodge you every evening with some hospitable
+friend or recommended host. Whether he has himself
+been over all the changing by-paths in the
+wilderness of the Zabaikalskaia Oblast, or whether
+he mentally photographs the directions of his friends
+regarding each village, is an unsolved mystery.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f17">
+<img src="images/fig17.jpg" alt="sledging">
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fig18.jpg" alt="sledging">
+<p class="caption">SLEDGING SOUTHWARDS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the day’s journey is done, Ivan will drive
+slowly down the crooked street of the village he has
+settled upon for the night’s repose, looking keenly
+for landmarks visible only to him in this country,
+where every village and every house is mate to all
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>the rest. Sometimes he will ask a question of one of
+the innumerable urchins. But generally he seems of
+himself to hit upon the desired domicile. Day after
+day he will take you the sixty versts, lead you to the
+village stores to replenish the supply of candles or
+sugar, bring you surely to food and shelter at night,
+and take off all the burden of care for the outcome
+of each day’s journey.</p>
+
+<p>If for the third member of your personal suite you
+can get an old-time servant to keep the guns clean,
+build the camp-fires when midday tea is to be taken
+out of doors, bring in the baggage and rally the best
+resources of each halting-place, you are doubly
+lucky. You will be sedulously tended, and be
+treated partly as a prince, partly as a helpless baby.</p>
+
+<p>Of this order is Jacov Titoff. Not the smallest
+personal service that he can render will you be permitted
+to do for yourself. The telling of unpleasant
+truths will be carefully avoided, however certain the
+ultimate revelation. Though honest beyond question,
+he pays you the naïve compliment of relying
+upon your generosity in all the little matters that
+concern provisions and petty luxuries. He will open
+the package which he is carrying back from the
+<i>torgovlia</i> to extract matches and cigarettes for his
+own delectation, and will rifle unstintingly the reserve
+of canned <i>sardinki</i>. He cheerfully freezes
+himself waiting for deer, and stumbles up miles of
+snowy mountain in the beats. He is always in good
+humor, and without complaint for whatever comes.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>
+He is ready anywhere, at any time, to sleep or drink
+vodka.</p>
+
+<p>Thus outfitted and manned, take your place, muffled
+in furs, and seated on the felt sleeping-blankets.
+Guns are at your side, the bag of provisions is in
+front, your own little ponies paw the snow. They
+start off now, trotting and galloping beneath the
+<i>duga</i>. The air is frosty, clear, and thrilling as wine;
+the snow is feathery and uncrusted, as when it fell
+months back; bells are jingling, and the driver is
+crying his alternate endearments and curses upon
+the shaggy ponies. Down the long rock-flanked
+river valleys, amid birch and pine forests, you will
+skim, by unwonted paths, through out-of-the-world
+villages, to see in their own homes the red-bloused
+peasants, the women spinning at the wheel, the
+peddlers and priests, the traveling Mohammedan
+doctors, the rough Buriats, miners and merchants,
+along the white way.</p>
+
+<p>The smooth main road is left now for newly
+broken sledge-trails across fields and over snow-covered
+marshland. Every available river is utilized
+as a highway, for along its winding length the
+path, smooth and level, is marked like a boulevard
+by the evergreen saplings planted by villagers to
+guide the winter traveler. One can pierce the districts
+flanking the Chickoya’s gorges, reachable at
+other seasons only by breakneck climbs. And one
+can see the real Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>On this first night of his incumbency, Ivan Kurbski<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>
+lodges us with friends. He leaves us for a moment
+while he enters the yard by the wicket-gate to
+make due announcement, and the ponies hang their
+tired frost-covered heads. Your own bows under
+an equal fatigue. But the wait is very brief. Soon
+the big double gates of the log-stockaded courtyard
+open. The horses of their own accord turn in, and
+swing up to the steps of the house. You are handed
+out like an invalid grand duke, and are welcomed at
+the threshold, with a hard hand-shake, by a red-bloused
+peasant who ushers you up the steps, across
+the low-eaved portico, and through the square felt-padded
+door into the big living-room.</p>
+
+<p>As we all enter, Ivan and Jacov, caps in hand,
+bow and make the sign of the cross toward the
+grouped ikons high up in the corner opposite the
+door. The saints have guarded you on the way—are
+not thanks the devoir? Then you, as head
+of the party, must salute, with a “<i>Zdravstvouitie</i>,”
+your host, the old <i>Hazan</i> father of the peasant who,
+wearing a gray blouse sprayed with vivid flowers at
+breast and wrists, sits on a bench beside the window.
+Now you may sit down beside the massive table on
+the other bench, which is built along the whole
+length of the log walls, and survey the curious world
+into which you have fallen.</p>
+
+<p>A woman of middle age, clad in bright red, is busy
+with a long hoe-like instrument pushing pots into
+a great square oven six feet high, ten feet to a side,
+and spotlessly whitewashed. To her right, in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>
+room beside the oven, is a girl of fifteen or sixteen,
+rolling brown rye-dough on a little table, in perilous
+proximity to a trap-door leading into some dark
+nether region. An old bent woman gravitates between
+the two. Glancing up, one meets the wondering
+eyes of three sleepy blinking urchins, who peer
+down in solemn interest from a big cushion-covered
+shelf, two feet beneath the ceiling. Looking about
+to locate the muffled sound of crows and clucks, one
+discovers, beneath the oven, a corral of chickens,
+pecking with perky bills at the whitewash for lime.
+On the floor is sitting a little girl crooning some
+endless refrain to a baby in a sapling-swung cradle.</p>
+
+<p>“The <i>gaspadine</i> will take <i>chai</i>?” asks the patriarch.
+From the woman’s room beside the oven the
+girl brings a samovar. She sets it on the floor, beside
+an earthenware jar standing near the door, and
+dips out the water to fill it. Then with tongs she
+takes a long red ember from a niche cut in the side of
+the oven, and drops it down the samovar funnel.
+Round loaves of frozen rye-bread are brought out
+and set to thaw. A plate of eggs is produced from
+the cellar. One rolls off as the girl passes, and falls
+to the floor. Instinctively you start. Not so the others.
+The egg has dropped like a stone and rolled
+away. But it is quietly picked up and put to boil
+with the rest. It is frozen so solidly that there is
+not even a crack on the shell.</p>
+
+<p>Jacov meanwhile is making earnest inquiry of
+the “old one.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span></p>
+
+<p>“How are your cows, Dimitri Ivan’ich? Your
+horses, are they well? And your sheep? All well?
+And have you had good crops? Is there still plenty
+of pasture-land in this village? <i>Good!</i> <span class="smcap">Good!</span>—and
+how is your wife?”</p>
+
+<p>Poor withered wife; she is bustling around looking
+after the children, and trying to help her daughter-in-law.
+Not so the “old one,” the ancient man of
+the family to whom these courteous questions are
+addressed. The patriarch stopped his labors at fifty,
+and sits slumbering away his second prospective
+half-century in honored idleness. “Everybody
+works but father!”</p>
+
+<p>The samovar is humming now, and the table is
+decked with a homespun-linen cloth ready for the
+<i>obeid</i>. The first formality, as dinner is about to
+begin, must be observed. The various members of
+the family turn, one after another, toward the
+ikons, reverently crossing themselves. Then the host
+produces a bottle of a colorless liquid, shakes it up
+and down, and brings the bottom sharply against
+his palm. The cork shoots out, and he pours into a
+little glass a drink of the national beverage, vodka,
+which one is supposed to swallow at a gulp.</p>
+
+<p>Every time a guest enters, a bottle of vodka is
+brought out, costing 49¼ kopecks, half the average
+day-laborer’s pay in this district. On feast-days the
+visitors go from house to house drinking,—and
+these <i>prasdniks</i> number some fifty-two days in the
+Russian year. Every business deal is baptized with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>
+vodka. Every family festival, the return of a son
+from the army, the marriage of a daughter,—all
+are vodka-soaked. As one passes through villages
+on a saint’s day, he may meet a dozen reeling figures
+and hear the maudlin songs from the courtyards
+where the men have gathered. The part played by
+vodka in the people’s life is appalling.</p>
+
+<p>In the house now, all, beginning with the “old
+one,” partake of this stimulant, solemnly gulping
+down their fiery potions. Then the family sits down
+in due rank and order, the “old one” in the cosiest
+corner, with the samovar convenient to his hand.
+You, as the guest, are beside him on the bench that
+lines the wall, then comes Jacov, next the son, then
+Ivan Kurbski the <i>yamshik</i>, and on stools along
+the inner side of the table, the grandmother and
+assorted infants. The mother alternates between
+the table and the oven.</p>
+
+<p>The samovar is tapped for tea as the first course
+of the evening. For all who come, tea is the obligatory
+offering, in a cup if the visitor be familiar, but
+for special honor in a glass with a ragged lump of
+sugar hammered from a big cone-shaped loaf. This
+one nibbles as he drinks, for sugar is a luxury, not
+to be used extravagantly. The brown rye-bread,
+which has been thawed at the gaping oven-door, is
+next brought out, and raw blubber-like fat pork, in
+little squares, eaten as butter, and boiled potatoes,
+and the boiled eggs, curdled from the freezing.</p>
+
+<p>At Little Christmas, the <i>prasdnik</i> day which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>
+comes in early January, <i>pelmenis</i>, or dumplings, egg-patties
+(grease-cooked), and meat will be served,
+with cranberries and white bread. In Butter-Week
+everybody gorges on buttered <i>blinnies</i>, or pancakes,
+garnished with sour cream. Even a substance showing
+rudimentary traces of a common ancestry with
+cake may be produced.</p>
+
+<p>As the shadows of the northern evening close down,
+a piece of candle is lighted to-night in our honor.
+Generally the burning brands for the samovar,
+propped in a niche cut at the height of a man’s
+shoulder in the outer edge of the oven, throw the
+only light. Presently the candle is used up and
+the brands give a fitful flame, leaving the corners
+black as Erebus.</p>
+
+<p>From the baby’s cradle comes now a plaintive cry,
+and one of the little girls goes over to dandle it. Up
+and down, to and fro, for hours together she works,
+singing her monotonous lullaby. The children, who
+have been lifted down from their eyrie above the
+oven, play on the sanded floor. The men remain
+oblivious and smoke their pipes, letting fall an occasional
+word, which comes forth muffled from their
+great beards.</p>
+
+<p>Ox-like, all sit for a while, sipping occasional cups
+of tea. Then the woman and the girl go out and get
+wood, remove the pots from inside the oven, and
+build up a roaring fire. The children are rolled up
+for sleep in their little blankets on the floor. The
+men reach for their furs and felts. They go to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>
+left of the oven, the women to the right, and the
+children are between, making a long row in front of
+the fire. Soon all are sunk in heavy sleep. The little
+girl alone sits up to rock the baby. As you doze off
+in the genial warmth of the newly-stoked oven she
+is still crooning her lullaby in the dim fitful light of
+the firebrands.</p>
+
+<p>Through the long night all lie like logs. Toward
+morning, as the oven’s heat dies down and the bitter
+cold creeps in, sleep becomes uneasy. One stirs and
+then another. Finally the woman rises and wakes
+the girl, and they go out into the cold for wood and
+water. Presently the men bestir themselves, get up,
+and wait for their tea. The rising sun of another day
+casts its rays through the windows.</p>
+
+<p>As the sleepers one by one arise and stretch, their
+blankets are folded by the watchful woman of the
+house, and thrust up on the children’s shelf. Some
+of the men go across the room and let the water
+from the little brass can in the corner trickle over
+their hands. Some do not do even this.</p>
+
+<p>For the outlander of washing proclivities, peculiar
+problems are offered by a country of no wash-bowls,
+no soap, only occasional towels, and the tea samovar
+as the only source of hot water, a copious draft
+on which not only postpones breakfast but compels
+some of the women of the family to go out and chop
+ice for a new supply. Necessity evolves the tea-tumbler
+toilet method as our solution. You borrow
+one of the precious tea-glasses from the old woman,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>
+fill it to overflowing with warm water from the samovar,
+and prop it up on the window-sill. The top
+inch of water is absorbed into a sponge which is put
+aside for future use. Into the remaining two and
+a half inches a soaped handkerchief is dipped, with
+which one washes one’s face, touching tenderly the
+spots recently frozen. The reserved sponge will do
+to rinse off the detritus of this first operation. Two
+and a quarter inches of water are left, of which half
+an inch may be poured over the tooth-brush. With
+an inch and three quarters left, one has ample to
+lather for a shave, as well as to wet the nail-brush
+which is to scrub one’s hands that will be rinsed
+with the sponge. Half an inch remains finally to
+clean the brushes and razors. “There you are!”
+With two glasses one may have a bath.</p>
+
+<p>When the breakfast of rye-bread and tea is ended,
+the men go out to their various winter tasks, of
+which the most serious is felling trees in the forests,
+cutting them up, and getting home the wood. The
+women keep stolidly at their cooking, cleaning,
+child-tending, and turn to the spinning-wheel and
+hand-loom when other work does not press.</p>
+
+<p>In the weeks that follow, each night brings us to
+a different home, but never to a changed environment
+or atmosphere. This type of life is found,
+not only among the Trans-Baikal peasantry, but
+throughout all Siberia. The log houses down
+the long straggly village streets look out upon the
+same wooden-walled courtyards,—the women peering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>
+from their little windows as the sleighs jingle
+past. The same ikons with burning lamps look
+down as you enter; the same whitewashed oven
+and shelf and cradle are there as you push open
+the felted door. The women of each district wear
+the same traditional costume. The bearded host
+produces the same vodka. One of the most impressive
+sights, when one drives out before dawn
+into the frosty air, is to see at almost the same
+moment from every chimney the black smoke roll
+upwards, then dwindle to a thin gray streak. Each
+woman has risen and heaped green wood into the
+cooking-oven. It is as if one will actuated simultaneously
+all the people.</p>
+
+<p>At places the master of the house has a trade,
+shoemaking or saddlery, and the big living-room
+is littered with pieces of leather and waxed cord as
+he stitches. Sometimes there are hunters in the
+family, and ancient flintlock muskets rest on the
+antlered trophies. The men gather together occasionally
+to drive deer. But in general, as the winter
+is the men’s idle time, a little wood is cut, the
+cattle are seen to, and for the rest, talk, tea, and
+tobacco, until it is time to eat and sleep once more.
+The women on the other hand seem to be always
+occupied, but they are not discontented.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f19">
+<img src="images/fig19.jpg" alt="peasant">
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fig20.jpg" alt="storekeeper">
+<p class="caption">SIBERIAN TYPES<br>
+<span class="more">PEASANT<br>
+VILLAGE STOREKEEPER</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The customs and institutions which bind together
+the household group are unique. In all families the
+<i>Hazan</i> is supreme. To him first of all, strangers pay
+their respects. To him every member of the household
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>comes for advice as to whom he or she shall
+marry, and which calf shall be sold. Howsoever
+hard of hearing he may be, there is related to him
+all the events of the neighborhood with infinite
+minuteness. He is the repository of all moneys
+earned by logging for a neighboring mine-owner, or
+for bringing out to the railroad the sledge-loads of
+rye. As head of the family he can summon a forty-year-old
+son from the merchant’s counter in Krasnoyarsk,
+or his nephew from the fur-traffic in Irkutsk,
+and bid him return to his peasant hut. If a grandson
+wishes to go to Nerchinsk to seek his fortune,
+the “old one’s” consent must be obtained before the
+youth receives his passport. It is all at the patriarch’s
+sovereign pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>We come one day upon a vexatious example of
+this ancestral authority. A report reaches us, by
+chance, of a hibernating bear’s hole some fifty versts
+away, which one of the peasants has located. The
+host, noting our interest, asks:—</p>
+
+<p>“Would the <i>gaspadine</i> like to hunt him?”</p>
+
+<p>There is no question on this score, so the peasant
+is quickly brought to the hut. Numerous friends
+crowd in with him, for one person’s business is
+everybody’s business in these primitive communities.
+For a liberal equivalent in roubles the man
+agrees to act as guide, and the start is to be made
+early next morning. All is arranged and he goes out
+with his body-guard to make the necessary preparations.
+By and by there is a stir. Our sledge-driver<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+comes in with a long face. Then half a dozen
+peasants add themselves to the family quota in the
+hut. Soon more come, until the stifling room is as
+populous as a Mir Assembly. They are all talking
+at once, and there is a great hubbub. At length one
+voice louder than the rest seems to call a decision
+for them all. They turn backward again, and with
+many gesticulations bustle through the felted doors
+into the snowy streets, and through the village to a
+house which they enter in a body as if with intent of
+sacking it. Instead they bring out and over to our
+hut a slight bearded old man, bent with the weight
+of many winters—the father of the peasant guide.</p>
+
+<p>Humble but resolute, he faces the assembly.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I cannot consent that he lead the <i>gaspadine</i>
+to the Medvetch Dom.”</p>
+
+<p>“But assure the ‘old one’ that his son will only
+point out the den and then go away.”</p>
+
+<p>The “old one” answers:—</p>
+
+<p>“The bear does not come to steal my pigs. Why
+should I get him shot? Besides, a bear chewed up
+three Buriats last year. It would be sad to be devoured
+even for the <i>gaspadine’s</i> fifty roubles.”</p>
+
+<p>The reward is doubled, and forty kopecks’ worth
+of vodka produced. Many advisers give aid, and one
+suggests that “the son may mount a tree one hundred
+<i>sagenes</i> from the mansion of the bear!”</p>
+
+<p>But still the father refuses. “No, I will not allow
+him to take out his horse and hunting-sledge.”</p>
+
+<p>The son, whose half-dozen full-grown children are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>
+looking on, shakes his head dolefully. A big eagle-nosed
+peasant, of hunting proclivities, comes in.</p>
+
+<p>“I will give my hunting-sleigh if he will go,” he
+calls.</p>
+
+<p>But the shrill voice of the “old one” rings out
+again, “I do not consent. I do not consent. My son
+shall not go to the mansion of the bear.”</p>
+
+<p>The guide shrugs his shoulders. We have hit the
+ledge of Russian authority. No one will budge.
+The old man has his way.</p>
+
+<p>As is the management of the household, so is that
+of the village. While the <i>Hazan</i> rules over the common
+property of the family (<i>izba</i>), the village elder
+(<i>Selski Starosta</i>) is guardian over the grouped
+households which make up the Mir. As the household
+goods belong to no one individual, but are common
+property, so the land farmed by the villagers
+is a joint possession whose title rests with the commune.
+The family is held for the debts and behavior
+of all of its individuals; and similarly, with certain
+limitations, the village community is answerable
+for the taxes and discipline of each of its members.</p>
+
+<p>On a humble scale it is the spirit of socialism
+incarnate. Within the commune no capitalistic
+employers, no wage-taking worker-class, no castes
+exist, and no individuals are born with special privileges.
+No distinctions of rank or fortune lift some
+above their fellows. The manner of living is the
+same for all. Each head of a family has a right of
+vote, and elects by the freest, simplest means his own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>
+judges and village rulers. The land, the source of
+livelihood, is divided among the producers by their
+own unfettered suffrage.</p>
+
+<p>The chief man of the community—he who
+drums out the voters to the Mir, lists those who do
+not work sufficiently on the pope’s field, and reports
+the toll of taxes to the Government—is simply an
+elderly peasant clothed with a little brief authority.
+There is no household in the average village which is
+looked up to as more genteel than the rest. No such
+distinctions as prevail in America will reveal that
+such a farmer’s family is musical and well-read, such
+another has traveled to Niagara Falls, such a third
+has blue-ribbon sheep. In Russian peasant circles
+all is equality, almost identity.</p>
+
+<p>Here is presented the best example in the world
+to-day of an applied system based upon the communistic
+as opposed to the individualistic theory. It is
+therefore of more than local interest. Most apparent
+of all results is the economic stagnation which
+has accompanied the elimination of special rewards
+for special efforts. The man, more daring or more
+far-sighted than his fellows, who would take for himself
+the risk of a new enterprise, who would mortgage
+his house to buy a reaper, or would seek a
+farther market, is fettered by his plodding neighbors.
+His financial obligations, if he fail, fall on the others
+of a common family, whose members have a veto on
+his freedom of action. His own and his neighbor’s
+fields by the allotment are proportioned in extent to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>
+the old hand-labor standard. A machine has few to
+serve until the fields are readjusted to a new standard.
+While technically a man may buy or rent
+lands outside the commune and may introduce a
+new rotation of crops or agricultural tools, actually
+the inertia of the peasants bound to him by the
+brotherhood of the Mir weighs the adventurous one
+hopelessly to the earth. Who can persuade an assembly
+of bearded conservatism-steeped “old ones”
+to buy for the Mir the costly new machines? Perhaps,
+with the visible demonstration of profits which
+private enterprise could make under an individual
+régime, the doubting elders might consent. But who
+is there to show them when every village checks
+back the swift to the lock-step of the clod?</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it simply in material things that communism
+manifests its lotus-fruit in these country hamlets.
+Ignorance, unashamed, broods over them one and
+all. What a dead level is revealed by the fact that
+one peasant in a populous village on the Chickoya,
+our guide upon a shooting-trip, could not tell time
+by a watch, and had never seen such an invention.</p>
+
+<p>Some instances are related where the more ambitious
+men of a Mir have clubbed together to bring in
+a teacher at their own expense. The Semieski, or
+“Old Believers,” big, red-bearded, obstinate men,
+settled in Urluck in the Zabaikal, who dissent from
+the sixteenth-century revisions of Bishop Nikon, will
+not send children to Slavonic schools and may have
+schools of their own. But these cases are rare.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>
+There is among the peasantry almost no education
+and comparatively little desire for it, yet how far
+this sentiment is from being a racial or national
+failing the crowds that come to the city universities
+bear ample witness. In one of the villages a teacher
+from Chita is established in the side room of a peasant’s
+house, wherein one night we sojourn. He has
+been appointed by the Commissioner of Schools of
+the Cossack Government. He is of a good Nerchinsk
+family and is brother to an elector of delegates to
+the second Duma. He is one of the “Intellectuals”—the
+student class which forms almost a caste by
+itself. A free-thinker, keenly interested in the rights
+of man, a Social Democrat by politics, he goes shooting
+on Sunday with some peasant cronies. He plays
+Russian airs on his <i>balilika</i> and gets the peasant’s
+daughter to dance for the guest. He produces specimens
+of antimony and chalcopyrite, and discusses
+the geological probability of finding silver or platinum
+ores in these districts. Photographs of the
+amateur-kodak variety are along the walls, and on
+a table in the corner are a mandolin and a pile of
+books. We pick up a volume,—“L’Évolution de la
+Moralité,” by Charles Letourneau. The young
+owner, who consumes a prodigious number of Moscow
+cigarettes, tells of the indifference to education
+among the people.</p>
+
+<p>“Here we have a school in a big village, with two
+other communities near by. There are easily five
+hundred households,—with how many children in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>
+each, you can see. Yet we have but thirty boys at
+school. What can we do?”</p>
+
+<p>He is discouraged, this single “Intellectual” of
+Gotoi. Profoundly solicitous for the future, an
+idealist, boundless in hopes for the good of his race,
+he sees the younger generation submerged at the
+threshold of opportunity by the inertia of the old.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What good will it do for him to read?’ ask the
+peasants, when I urge, ‘Send your boy to the
+school.’ What can I say? The boy comes from my
+class after two years, and goes out with the men.
+He has no money to buy books if he wants them.
+No newspapers come to the village, no printed matter
+whatever, save that on the pictures which they
+buy in the fairs. In a few years all I have taught is
+forgotten. The darkness is over these villages. One
+must lift them despite themselves.”</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the range of the village communes, no
+people show a more eager zeal for knowledge and
+study. In the cities almost all of the younger generation
+can read and write. The school-boys, with
+their big black ear-covering caps, smart blue coats,
+brightened with rows of brass buttons, and knapsacks
+of books, are one’s regular morning sight.
+“Realistic” and “Materialistic” schools are established
+in many towns.</p>
+
+<p>The apathy of the rural element is to be laid
+at the door of the system which hinders those
+within the confines of the communes from reaping
+the fruits of special sacrifice and effort. No one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>
+attempts to raise himself in the Mir, where the
+dead weight of those bound to him is so hopeless.
+If any boy, brighter than the rest, follow some
+lodestar, it must be to a city. The aspirant must
+bury ambition, or leave the drudging Mir with its
+toll of taxes and recruits. He will not study law
+before the wood-fire as did Lincoln in his log cabin.</p>
+
+<p>The cloud of deadening communism over their
+lives utters itself in the words continuously on
+the peasants’ tongues. It is the northern equivalent
+for that buttress of despotism—“<i>mañana</i>.”
+The possibility of the Russian condition is “<i>nietchevo!</i>”
+If the red cock (<i>krasnai petuk</i>) has crowed
+and has left the forty householders with charred
+embers where stood their homes, “<i>nietchevo!</i>”
+They build it up of wood and straw, with the oven
+chimney passing through as before. Does a raging
+toothache torture, “It is the will of God,—<i>nietchevo</i>!”
+If the weary day’s climb sees a gameless
+evening, “<i>nietchevo!</i>” If the son is frozen in the
+troop-train, “<i>nietchevo!</i>” If the Little Father send
+to Yakutsk the other one who has gone to the city,
+“<i>nietchevo!</i>” Is the unrevised tax for a family of
+ten men pressing down upon three, “It has got to be
+borne,—<i>nietchevo!</i>” It is this bowing to fate as a
+thing begotten of the gods, when it is a force to be
+fought here on earth; the long-taught submission to
+evil, when evil is to be conquered, to limitation
+when opportunity is to be won,—it is this spirit
+which is holding rural Russia still in her Dark Ages.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span></p>
+
+<p>The origin of the present village-system goes back
+to the time of serfage, when the overlord held his
+dependents herded together for easy ruling. That it
+extended to unfettered Siberia, where the rewards
+of individual effort were so obvious, cannot be laid
+entirely to old custom or government compulsion.
+Nor is it to be explained by the early necessity for
+protection against wild beasts or hostile natives.
+The same dangers threatened the pioneers of our
+own country. Perhaps the Russian spirit of gregariousness
+lies at the root of the fact that in the Czar’s
+domains the peasant lives away from his fields to
+be near his neighbors, while our people live away
+from their neighbors to be near their fields. Whatever
+the cause, the outcome is that practically the
+whole rural population, even in the most thinly
+settled districts, is gathered into villages, and owns
+the lands in common.</p>
+
+<p>The system makes enormously for homogeneity,
+welding, solidarity. The people are a “mass.”
+Units are lost in unity. Nothing save Nature’s imprint
+and law of individuality, that decree under
+which every created thing is some way different
+from every other, keeps the Russian peasant from
+quite losing his birthright. The commune, vodka,
+and resignation are the incubi of Siberia. In the
+towns and cities gather the energetic natures that
+have climbed out and above them. What these
+have done, their allied people—the peasants—can
+do. Beyond the horizon of the latter’s narrow<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+lives lies still the borderland of possibilities. One
+cannot doubt the vigor of the stock, nor the certainty
+of its rise. This quality of rugged worth is
+the basis of all the great advance that the pioneers
+and the city populations have made. It is only
+in the Mirs, frozen fast in their lethargy of communism,
+that resurrection seems such a far-off
+dream. The way is long for the peasants of Siberia—long
+and toilsome. But their vast patience is
+allied to as vast a courage, and both will lift them
+into the larger day.</p>
+
+<p>The measure passed by the last Duma, decreeing
+the division of the Mir lands in severalty, and
+private ownership of property, will be one of the
+most momentous and far-reaching enactments ever
+legislated for a people. It should end for rural
+Russia the stagnation, and open an era of mighty
+endeavor and achievement.</p>
+
+<p>There are many races here among the serenely
+tolerant Siberians, undiscriminated against and uncoerced.
+While one of the Orthodox may not abjure
+the state religion without severe punishment, those
+born to an alien faith are unmolested by official or
+proselyting pope. “God has given them their faith
+as he has given us ours,” is the Russian rule.</p>
+
+<p>This medley of races beneath the Russian banners
+gives to one’s earliest contact the conception of a
+heterogeneous disorganized jumble of nations and
+peoples. But closer acquaintance impresses upon
+one the dominating and surviving qualities innate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>
+in the Slav, whose unalterable solidarity is beneath
+and behind the kaleidoscopic types of aboriginal
+tribes and exiled sectarians. By race-absorption,
+like that which has evolved Celts, Danes, Saxon,
+and Norsemen into English; British, Dutch, Swedes,
+Germans and Italians into Americans, the Slav is
+dissolving, transmuting to his own type and moulding
+to his own institutions the varied peoples.</p>
+
+<p>Though the heterogeneous blood adds to the total
+of Siberian country life, it is the Slavic race that
+determines the permanent order of this great land.
+Primarily too it is the peasantry who shape its
+destiny. Their possibilities are the limit of Russia’s
+ascent. Their condition is therefore of far deeper
+than sightseeing interest to the student. Unlike the
+picturesque peasantry of Holland, here they are the
+foundations of the state, forming not an insignificant
+minority but ninety per cent of the population.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat of a new spirit flickers here and there
+in Siberian hamlets. The peasant is superior to his
+Russian brother. The traditions of serfdom were
+broken by his severance from the old environment,
+and wider lands give him an abundance unknown
+save in a few favored parts of Europe. The political
+exiles have through the centuries added an upsurge
+of independence and personal self-consciousness,
+which is markedly higher than the Oriental humility
+of Occidental Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the criminal, as distinct from the
+political convict, is felt primarily in the cities, such as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>
+Irkutsk and Vladivostok, to which the time-expired
+men drift. The convict element is always met with.
+It has been customary to billet a condemned, who
+was not wanted at home, upon some out-of-the-way
+village, giving him a passport for its confines alone.
+The victim might have been a Moscow professor or
+a locomotive engineer, but in the Mir he must farm
+the land given him. Naturally such seed as this
+planted in Siberian hamlets does not produce the
+traditional peasant faith in God and the Czar so
+faithfully preached by the popes.</p>
+
+<p>Another influence making for upheaval is the
+returning recruit. We are in a peasant house when
+a <i>soldat</i> comes back to the family from his service.
+If he has not brought any great burden of salary, he
+has accumulated tales enough of the outer world to
+hold in breathless excitement the circle of friends
+and relatives which gathers at once when the tinkling
+sleigh-bells and the barking have announced to
+the village his return.</p>
+
+<p>Far down the street is heard the jingle of his
+sledge. It brings every girl to her peep-hole window,
+and every boy from his sawing to the courtyard
+door. At the gateway where the newcomer turns in,
+he is heralded by the commotion of the household
+guardians, wolf-like in appearance and nature.
+Everybody within the important house runs to the
+door. The village knows now which family is making
+local history. The arrival is accompanied already
+by two or three men who have recognized him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>
+as he descends. He tramps in with military firmness
+of tread, head erect. Before he greets the grandfather
+even, he makes the sign of the cross to the holy
+ikons, and, bowing down, touches his lips to the
+floor. Then comes the respectful kiss to the old man,
+next to the mother, while the younger brother, soon
+to go to service himself, stands awkwardly by, and
+the little children look half-dubiously at a form
+scarcely known after his four years of absence.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is a scurrying of the grown and half-grown
+daughters to prepare <i>chai</i> and to produce the
+<i>pelmenis</i> and brown bread. The villagers drift in
+one by one, cross themselves, and speak their greetings,
+until the little house is packed, and as hot as
+the steam-room of a <i>banno</i>. The vodka-bottle is out
+and everybody has settled down for an indefinite
+stay. The soldier’s tales of war and garrison duty
+and government and revolution hold the family and
+the audience breathless through the long evening.
+As you drop asleep, the hero is still reciting and
+gesticulating. The guests in departing will be careful
+not to stumble over you, so <i>nietchevo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the houses where we put up, a shop
+adjoins the big living-room. It has dingy recesses
+from which hatchets and the commoner farm utensils
+can be produced, shelves of homespun cloth,
+and gaudy cottons for the men’s blouses, and beads
+for the women’s bonnets. Here, as in the country-stores
+of our own land, during the long idle winter
+days there is always a crowd and endless discussion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>
+of the village events,—the health of each
+other’s cows, births, marriages, deaths, drafts into
+the army, taxes. Even in this remoteness something
+of the echo of great Russia’s struggle is heard over
+the shopkeeper’s tea-cups. We hum, unthinking, a
+bar of <i>Die Beide Grenadier</i>, in which a refrain of the
+<i>Marseillaise</i> occurs.</p>
+
+<p>A peasant looks quickly up. “It is not allowed,
+that song,” he says.</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is the song of the strikers.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the <i>gaspadine</i> is a foreigner. He may sing
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” says the peasant, “he may sing it, but
+I may not. Would that I might!”</p>
+
+<p>One meets quaint characters in this inland journeying—veteran
+soldiers of the Turkestan advance;
+“<i>sabbato</i> sectarians,” who keep Saturday
+holy rather than Sunday; austere “Old Believers,”
+traveling peddlers, teamsters who have tramped
+beside their ponies over three provinces. One comes
+upon peripatetic Mussulman doctors, in snug-fitting
+black coats and small black skull-caps, who
+show their Arabic-worded road-maps and much-thumbed
+medical works bound in worn leather. Beside
+their plates at table the kindly hostess puts piles
+of leathery bread, unleavened, and made without
+lard in deference to their caste rules.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f21">
+<img src="images/fig21.jpg" alt="peasants">
+<p class="caption">PEASANT TYPES</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A shop in one village is kept by a Chinaman,
+who, lettered like most of his race, seems a far
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>shrewder and more intellectual person than the
+uneducated Russian peasants. He invites the
+stranger to drink tea that his special caravan brings,
+and presents Chinese candy with the courtesy of
+a grandee. When, in reciprocity, the traveler buys
+sugar for his <i>chai</i>, he receives it wrapped in paper
+covered with hieroglyphics and exhaling the faint
+unmistakable Chinese odor.</p>
+
+<p>Going always southward, one begins to meet
+more and more frequently the villages of the Mongol-descended
+Buriats. “<i>Bratskie</i>” (brotherly people),
+the Russians call them, for despite the forbidding
+aspect that flat Mongolian features, high thin
+noses, yellow-brown skins, and big squat bodies
+give them, no more peaceful, harmless, and hospitable
+people exist. They are great and fearless
+hunters, unexcelled riders, and though still only on
+the threshold of civilization, are rapidly moving to
+better things.</p>
+
+<p>All phases of the advance from the nomad to the
+agricultural stage may be studied among them.
+The pastoral Buriats, decorated like the Chinese
+with queues, ride around after their flocks. Their
+villages lie far away from the lines of convoys, unmarked
+on the Ministry map, which one is supposed
+to be following. Each family occupies a little
+windowless wooden hut, some fifteen feet in diameter.
+In front of it is planted a pole, carrying at the
+top a weather-faded pennant, the colors of which
+in Buriat heraldry indicate the tribe and name of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>
+the occupant. Behind the hut are stacks of hay
+and a wooden corral with sheep and horses. Beside
+it stands the summer tent, of felt, looking like a
+great inverted bowl. It is empty in winter, save
+for a shrine with grotesque pictured gods, fronted
+by offerings.</p>
+
+<p>In the homes of these least advanced Buriats we
+loiter no longer than we must. The wooden house
+which shelters them is hermetically sealed, and is
+crowded with people and animals. Fenced off in a
+corner of the first that receives us is a corral of thirteen
+lambs, which at uncertain moments begin to
+bleat suddenly in unison, producing, with startling
+effect, a prodigious volume of sound. When one has
+been roused from sleep half a dozen times a night by
+this chorus, he is strongly inspired to move on. The
+men are out during the day looking to their flocks.
+The women spend a good part of their time sewing
+furs or making felt. They are very unclean, and it
+is a decided relief to get out of their homes, to which
+the cold compels one to have recourse on a long
+journey. In spring, with great and understandable
+relief, these semi-nomads take to their felt tents and
+move where fancy and pasturage dictate.</p>
+
+<p>One grade higher are those Buriats who have
+learned some rudimentary farming from the Orthodox.
+You will see the men threshing on a level floor
+beside the corral. They are dressed in long blue or
+magenta fur-lined cloaks and colored cone-shaped
+hats. Other Buriats are permanently resident in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>
+the Slavonic settlements, and send their rosy-faced
+children to school. They mix with the Russians,
+subject to almost no disabilities, and their better
+classes contract inter-racial marriages, which seem,
+to an outsider, at least, completely happy and
+successful.</p>
+
+<p>It is no small thing, this which Russian rule has
+done for the Buriats. A people whom any other nation
+would spurn in racial ostracism, perhaps would
+eliminate, live side by side with the good-natured
+Slav in perfect accord, progressing in civilization
+and material well-being as high as the individual
+can aspire to and attain.</p>
+
+<p>They are ruled by their own chiefs, whose sway
+is tempered by the benevolent supervision of the
+general government. They are represented in the
+Duma by men of their own selection. They freely
+worship the Buddhist Burhan in their lamasery
+near Cellinginsk, without pope to preach or missionary
+to proselyte. Their easy citizenship is unharassed
+by money taxes, and their only obligation
+is Cossack service in the army. But Cossack service
+to a Buriat is what a picnic is to a boy. Riding
+around on horseback, rationed by the Government,
+visiting a city with real tobacco and vodka sometimes
+attainable, sleeping on a straw-stuffed mattress
+with no tethered lambs to murder sleep, when
+they are used to a sheepskin on the dirt floor,—all
+this is luxury of blissful memory, during the years
+of the reserve. The net result is that the Buriats<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>
+are entirely content. They are progressing all along
+the line, and are being made useful to the nation,
+not by unpayable taxation, but by the service which
+they are so especially fitted to render.</p>
+
+<p>As one nears Chinese territory, by the lower
+waters of the Chickoya River, the villages of Slavic
+colonists who hold their land on tax-paying peasant
+tenure, have given place to the Buriat tribesmen and
+to the <i>stanitzas</i> of the Cossack guard that occupy
+the pale of land flanking the frontier. Within this
+border-belt, every village <i>stanitza</i> holds its quota of
+Cossacks. These soldiers are for the most part descendants
+of the levies from the Don region, transplanted
+to the Trans-Baikal by the Government’s
+despotic hand in the eighteenth century, and since
+then forming an hereditary military caste. Many
+of them are bearded Slavs, indistinguishable, save
+for their accoutrements, from their more peaceful
+neighbors. Others are of a peculiar cast of countenance,
+due to the mixture with the Asiatic tribes in
+ancient times, when the hunted people fled to their
+ancestors’ asylum, the territories beyond the Volga
+and on the Don. There is great variation in type
+among the imported Cossacks. Most are Orthodox,
+but a very large number are “Old Believers,” or
+Semieski. In all the houses now hang the yellow cap
+and the uniform coat, which must be ever ready
+against the call of duty. Arms are in the corners of
+the rooms, and everything has a military look, in
+marked contrast to the peasant homes. Crude,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
+highly-colored prints of Japanese defeats, which
+circulated broadcast in Russia during the war, share
+the attention usually devoted exclusively to holy
+ikons. Portraits of Generals Linevitch and Kuropatkin,
+and Admiral Alexiev, are tacked to the
+walls. In one house we saw hanging a prized silver
+watch, one of those distributed by General Rennenkamp
+among the soldiers of his command.</p>
+
+<p>One of our Cossack hosts is an old man, Orthodox,
+and of Russian origin, but with some ancient Asiatic
+blood, for only a stringy beard grows on his kindly,
+wrinkled face. With reluctant pride he tells of his
+three sons away on service, leaving but himself and
+two daughters at home. With frank happiness he
+shows you his medals. Every soldier at the front
+received a round brass service-medal; his, however,
+a silver cross with St. George and the Dragon on it,
+is given for valor. He will not drink the vodka he
+offers you,—rheumatism. But in order that you
+may smoke some alleged tobacco that greatly interests
+him because he gathered it himself by the roadside,
+in Manchuria, he starts up his pipe despite the
+dust-induced coughs that it begets. He is a kindly,
+loquacious old man.</p>
+
+<p>Another Cossack, privileged to the broad yellow
+top on his cap and the yellow stripe on his trousers,
+is, for the time, our guide and gun-carrier. His
+flat strongly-mustached face is open and ingenuous.
+He tells of his <i>sotnia</i> in Manchuria.</p>
+
+<p>“I was with Mitschenko at the front during the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+war, in his great raid,” he says. “Ten of our <i>sotnia</i>
+of a hundred were killed, forty wounded. We got
+behind the Japanese and burned four hundred of
+their wagons. We had two hundred rounds of cartridges,
+and more when we wanted them. But food
+often not, and meat sometimes not for two months.
+We had thirty Buriats in our hundred, but the Verhneudinsk
+Polk were almost all Buriats.”</p>
+
+<p>In one house where ikons, oven, bench, and
+stockade reveal the Slav peasant’s home, the mirrors
+are shrouded for their forty days’ veiling. It
+is a place of death. The owner was a full-blooded
+Buriat married to a Russian woman. In silent grief
+she plods through her mechanically-executed duties.
+Their son, in red blouse, is in prayer beside his
+father’s body. They have pressed us to remain.
+The advent of strangers seems to distract their
+thoughts a little. From outside comes a hail, and
+heavily there dismounts from his pony an old grizzled
+Buriat Cossack. He has ridden two hundred
+versts to pay this last respect to his friend.</p>
+
+<p>His military training makes the Cossack a little
+less gentle than the average peasant. When off duty,
+hen-roosts near a garrison are in some danger. For
+the rest, he is naturally brave, generous, and will
+share the chicken he has just ridden forty versts to
+lift. He will give his pipe to be smoked, and will
+behave with a thoughtfulness and courtesy that is
+not found in finer circles. His children have the free
+unrepressed air which speaks of genial home kindliness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>
+and sympathy. His wife is far from being a
+mute drudge.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly this is not the Cossack of legendary
+fame, the “implacable knout” of the czars. It requires
+almost courage, in the face of the savage of
+literary tradition, to assert that the Cossack is other
+than a dehumanized monster of oppression. Why
+then did he cut down with utter ruthlessness the
+helplessly frozen grenadiers of the Grande Armée?
+Why will he massacre indiscriminately men, women,
+and children on his path from Tien-tsin to Peking?
+Why will he beat with his knotted whip the striking
+girl students of Kiev? Who shall tell? To a certain
+extent he is callous to suffering because of a defective
+imagination. He will ride his best horse to death
+if need be. Loving it, he will yet leave it out in
+weather forty below. He is cruel, often, because he
+has not the substituting gift needed to translate
+another’s suffering into terms of his own. He is
+valorous because, even so far as regards himself, he
+cannot think beyond the immediate privation into
+the future of imaged dread, so he goes fearlessly into
+unpondered peril. He offends the traditional ideas of
+humanity and civilization in killing people, because
+of his failure to recognize a wider radius of sympathy
+than circles his own tribe. But if the tribe
+circumscribes his idea, the nation circumscribes the
+sympathies of others who make tariffs to crush an
+extra-national industry and raise armies to destroy
+a foreign liberty. But if outside the Cossack’s recognized<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>
+circle, you are to him beyond the pale, in
+his home, you are, <i>ipso facto</i>, a member of the tribe,
+a brother in whose defense he will gayly risk his life,
+and spend his substance.</p>
+
+<p>The deeds that are recalled to the Cossack’s
+discredit often fall for judgment really to those
+who plan and issue the orders which loyalty makes
+him obey. Where his allegiance has been once
+given, there it remains. His <i>hataman</i> is more than
+a superior officer; he is the chief of the clan, the
+head of all the tribe, and the subordinate is united to
+him by the traditions of centuries of mutual dependence.
+Where other than blood-kin officers are put
+over the Cossack he mutinies, as when, in Manchuria,
+Petersburg-schooled lieutenants were drafted
+and raised to command. But give him his own rightful
+chief, then if the Cossack is told to do something
+it is done. He will cross himself and jump from the
+tower, as in Holland did Peter the Great’s guardsman
+at the word of the chief to whom he had given
+his loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>The savage valor of the warriors in Verestchagin’s
+picture, <i>The Cossack’s Answer</i>, is typical of the
+spirit of these soldiers. Surrounded by battalions of
+the foe, fated to annihilation when the summons to
+surrender is rejected, the leaders, laughing uproariously
+in approval, hear their <i>hataman</i> dictate the
+insulting reply that dooms them all. If one would
+ride to China he can have no better guards and comrades
+than the Cossacks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span></p>
+
+<p>We are close to the border now, climbing the last
+crest which separates the Chickoya from the Cellinga
+Valley, our toiling tired ponies white with frost.
+All day the long sweep of the hills has been taken
+through heavy snow. The landscape is barren, desolate,
+and lifeless save for the occasional sight
+of a distant Buriat horseman. The sun is slowly
+sinking.</p>
+
+<p>The crest at last! The driver points with his whip
+to the dark masses of houses below, wreathed in the
+curling smoke of the evening fires. Here and there
+is a brilliantly painted building or tower, and sleighs
+and horsemen are passing in the streets. “Troitzkosavsk!”
+he says. He points further ahead to
+another more distant town, whose most dominant
+features are the great square tea-caravansaries and
+a mighty church, green-domed, with a gilded far-glimmering
+cross. The huddled houses end sharply
+toward the south, as if a ruler had marked off their
+limit in a straight stretch of white. Along this pale
+are little square sentry-boxes, striped black and
+white. In the evening sun a distant glint of steel
+flashes from the bayonet of a pacing sentry. “Kiahta!”
+the driver says. Then, across the white
+strip where a wooden stockade girds a settlement
+of gray-walled compounds, fluttering with tiny flags,
+gay with lofty towers and temples flaunting their red
+eaves, he points a third time: “Kitai!” (China).</p>
+
+<p>He picks up the reins, and lifts the whip;
+“Scurry!” he cries to the horses. The ponies leap<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>
+forward, throwing their weight against duga and
+collar, and we sweep down the hill toward the nearest
+Russian town, Troitzkosavsk, four versts from
+the border.</p>
+
+<p>As we come down to the main road hard-by the
+town, officers of the garrison drive past with their
+spick-and-span fast trotters, city-wise, as one sees
+them in Irkutsk. Behind rolls a Mongol cart driven
+by a burly Chinaman. A Buriat, come to town to
+replenish his supply of powder and ball, follows on
+his shaggy pony.</p>
+
+<p>Down a long street, flanked first by log cabins
+with courtyards and fences like those in the peasant
+villages, then by stucco-plastered houses, cement-walled
+government buildings, and great whitewashed
+churches, we pass and reach the centre of
+the town. Then we turn up a side street to the house
+of a mine-owner, to whom we are accredited.</p>
+
+<p>Nicolai Vladimirovitch Tobagov meets us at the
+door of his log house, clad in gray flannel shirt and
+knee-boots. A not unnoteworthy product of Siberia
+is this man,—squarely built and yet wiry, with
+nervous strength expressed on his bearded face. He
+is self-made, risen from the masses. A peasant-boy,
+he started life as assistant to a surveyor, learning
+to read and write by his own efforts. During this
+apprenticeship he studied his chief’s books on geology,
+by the light of the brands for the samovar
+in the peasants’ houses where they were billeted
+nightly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span></p>
+
+<p>He located placer gold in a number of spots, at
+a time when the oblast was a lawless “no man’s
+domain,” without any legal means in existence for
+acquiring title to property. Guarding in silence his
+secret, he waited years, until at last a mining-law
+was enacted for the oblast where his prospects lay.
+When this law ultimately made private ownership
+possible, he started in to realize. A friend lent him
+the money for a mill, which he constructed, according
+to book-descriptions, on the model of those in
+California. At first it failed to work, and broke
+again and again. His riffles were set too steeply.
+They had let the gold scour away, and his neighbors
+reported that there was no gold to collect.
+But he fought it through to victory, returned every
+borrowed kopeck with interest, bought new machines,
+and prospered; till now, besides controlling
+several mines, he possesses a great domain in the
+river valley, some hundred versts away, with fields
+of wheat and rye and hay-meadows.</p>
+
+<p>When the visitor has stamped the snow from his
+felt boots and emerged from his shaggy bearskin
+coat and hooded fur cap, he enters the main room,
+with its walls of great logs bare of ornament and
+showing the scorings of the axe, but clean as new-planed
+wood can be. Between the chinks straw and
+moss are packed to keep out the cold. Two great
+benches flank the sides of the room. Not a picture,
+not an ornament, not a curtain, not a drapery, not
+a shelf, breaks the plainness of the log wall, but here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>
+and there are hung guns and rifles. In essentials
+this large house does not greatly differ from the
+typical peasant’s dwelling. But a copy of the
+“Sibir” newspaper lies on the table, and photographs
+of the female members of the family are
+added to the many reproductions of relations in
+military dress, which the photographer has touched
+up with brilliant dashes of red, to pay tribute to the
+coat-lining, and white to indicate the gloves. Lamps
+replace the lowly tapers, and they burn before more
+gorgeously gilt ikons. The windows are double,
+with cotton-wool and strips of colored paper between.
+This is a great improvement on the single
+ice-crusted window, with its perpetual drippings
+down along the sill. There are the little sheet-iron
+stoves, whitewashed after the tradition of the oven;
+chairs with backs, as well as the square stools; and
+small rooms curtained off from each other. A clock
+hangs on the wall, and there are carpets on the floor.
+A large table stands at one end, on which is the
+ever-boiling samovar, which is nickel instead of
+brass.</p>
+
+<p>We are made acquainted with the wife of the
+host, a stout matron of fine domestic proclivities.
+Though of humble origin, she has discarded her
+peasant shako and bandana-handkerchief headdress
+for a bonnet, and dispenses, as to the manner born,
+many luxuries. On the other hand, she has lost the
+robustness which keeps her peasant sisters fresh and
+hearty. Sewing-machines, and beds, and servants,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>
+must exact toll even in Siberia. Her boys are clean-cut
+and intelligent. They go to school and are the
+future “Intellectuals” that are seeding Siberia. Sixteen
+children—eleven Nicolai Tobagov’s own, five
+adopted in open-hearted generosity—sit down to
+four very solid meals a day in the big hall. Ivan
+Simeonski, <i>optovie</i> and <i>argove</i> merchant, and Nicita
+Baeschoef the lieutenant, traveling west on furlough,
+are stopping in this friendly house, and many
+other guests are here. The hospitality of the household
+is conducted on a scale of patriarchal magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>Before our furs are fairly off, the host has called
+aloud for <i>obeid</i>. One’s first formality is, as usual,
+to salute the ikons and the guests. One’s second
+is to escape the scalding vodka, seventy proof, and
+then begin with the <i>zakuska</i> of ten cold dishes on
+the side table. There is black caviar from the
+Volga, though the rapid diminution of the supply
+has raised the price to ten roubles a pound. There
+is red caviar from the Chickoya, cold mutton, cold
+sturgeon, sardines, ham, and sliced sausages made at
+home. The latter must be abundantly and appreciatively
+sampled, because they have been specially
+prepared under the direction of the <i>souprouga</i> herself.
+One stands before the <i>zakuska</i> and dips from
+dish to dish. Next, the guests take the square
+wooden stools and draw up to the great table,
+where the plates are set for the real dinner. Each
+one helps himself to the smoking soup, which is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>
+passed in the tureen. As this is being ladled, a plate
+of round balls comes by, the delicious <i>piroushki</i>,
+dough-shells filled with hashed meat, always served
+with soup. We have entered upon a typical Siberian
+meal, with the boiled soup-meat eaten as the
+second course, and madeira, champagne, claret, and
+rum, indiscriminately offered. A perfect babel of
+conversation goes on, and one is pressed to try this,
+try that, try each and everything of the long menu,
+under the watchful eyes of the kindly host and
+hostess.</p>
+
+<p>At all times of the day the samovar is left simmering,
+ready for any one of the multitudinous household
+to brew tea, and constantly replenished <i>zakuska</i>
+dishes deck the sideboard. Guests, attendants,
+children, and friends come and go in the utmost
+freedom. Such is the <i>Hazan’s</i> life.</p>
+
+<p>In another part of the building there stuffs to repletion
+an army of dependents. Servants, artisans,
+drivers from the caravans which pass up from China
+by the road below the house, a whole other below-stairs
+world is here. Twenty caravan teamsters,
+<i>karetniki</i> or <i>isvoschniki</i> of the sledges and carts that
+fill the ample courtyard, huddle in the back rooms
+for tea. An old bespectacled maker of string-net
+doilies, who reads Alexander Pushkin’s poems, is
+working out a week’s board in the room where the
+chickens are kept. The housewife does not disdain,
+either, to find a place for the traveling <i>sapojnik</i>,
+who will put leather reinforcements on the felt
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>boots which have been worn through at the heel.
+It is a large easy way of living, this of the man who
+holds a leading place in the border city.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f22">
+<img src="images/fig22.jpg" alt="girl">
+<p class="caption"> A CHICKOYA GIRL <span class="pad">TROITZKOSAVSK STUDENT</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A mixture of crudeness and culture, of luxury and
+hardship, of Orient and Occident, runs through the
+quaint fabric of frontier society, with its medley of
+races and types. Fine avenues flanked by stuccoed
+houses pierce the main city. Back of them lie the
+log houses of the plainer citizens, while the outskirts
+are occupied by the felt huts of the Buriats
+and Mongols. Students in uniform elbow Cossacks
+of the Guard, and maidens from the seminary brush
+the Mongol wood-choppers.</p>
+
+<p>“Téatre?” suggests one evening the twenty-year-old
+son of your host. Of course the invitation is accepted.
+At eight o’clock you put on your felt boots,
+and tramp down past dark-shuttered log houses and
+the silent white church into the field, where stands
+a barn-like building placarded with the programme.
+The young guide secures seats at the ticket-counter
+of rough lumber. Seventy-five kopecks they are,
+each. With them are handed out eight numbered
+slips of red paper. Then together you break a way
+to the front rows, through the crowd of burly Cossacks
+of the garrison, bearskin-capped students,
+citizens with shiny black boots, and here and there
+a husky stolid-faced Buriat. Keeping hat and coat
+on, as does every one else, we find seats on the rough
+benches wheresoever we like or can; for nothing is
+reserved save the elevated perch of the musicians,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>
+where a four-piece orchestra drones out a monotonous
+Russian march. What a fire-trap! is the first
+thought. To each of the posts that sustain the
+rafters is fastened a lamp shedding an uncertain
+light on the hangings of bright-red cotton cloth, in
+dangerous proximity to which, utterly disregarding
+the “no smoking” signs, stand the crowd of forty-kopeck
+admissions, rolling and smoking perpetual
+<i>papirosi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As the impatient audience begins to pound and
+stamp, a bell rings, and the curtain rises on two
+comic characters busily engaged in packing for a
+hurried departure from their lodging. The stage
+has become a room, with red-cotton-covered walls
+and bright green curtains. A merchant comes with
+a bill for comestibles six months due. He is quieted
+with extravagant tales of forthcoming change for
+a hundred-thousand-rouble note. The landlady
+enters, and the shoemaker’s apprentice with a pair
+of mended boots. Both are likewise cajoled and
+bullied away. The Jewish money-lender is more
+difficult, but at length, to the manifest delight of the
+audience, he, too, is staved off, and the pair draw the
+vivid green curtains and go out through a window
+for parts unknown, amid much glee and applause.</p>
+
+<p>We now go out to the “buffet” and contribute to
+the dangers of conflagration by smoking an offered
+cigarette. We also add to the theatre’s income by
+buying a glass of hot <i>chai</i> for ten kopecks. Something
+special is in the air for the next act. The audience<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>
+is buzzing and moving in eager expectancy.
+We return to our seats. The curtain rises upon a
+double row of two-<i>pud</i> (sixty-four-pound) weights,
+such as are used at the bazaar to sell frozen beef.
+Amid a thunder of stampings on the plank floor
+one of the escaping debtors of the last act, dressed
+in tights, comes out from behind the green curtains,
+and lifts one of these above his head. Then he poises
+one with each hand. Finally a wooden harness is
+adjusted to his body, and sixteen weights (or about
+half a ton), are heaped upon him by the jack-booted
+Buriat stage-attendant on one side, and the defrauded
+merchant of the first play on the other. It
+is the most unspectacular performance possible, this
+athletic test, but it takes the place of a football
+match in Siberia. The applause is ferociously appreciative.</p>
+
+<p>More <i>chai</i> and cigarettes, and we come back to
+hear a very pretty girl, dressed in the peasant’s
+costume of Little Russia, head a chorus, and to see a
+boy in red blouse and boots dance the wild dervish
+whirl which the peasants of tradition are supposed
+to execute. The boy is in the midst of his performance
+when there is a tumult among the forty-kopeckers
+under the musicians’ eyrie. The latter,
+being human, try to watch what is going on below
+and play jig-music at the same time, and sharps and
+flats fly wide of the mark till the sounds become
+frightful. Everybody jumps up on his bench to see
+a peasant having a turn with a Buriat, and further<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>
+trouble brewing with a Cossack who has got upset
+in the mêlée. There is a chaos of tossing hats and
+brandished fists, and the two armed soldiers who are
+on guard as policemen press in, with gruff shouts to
+make them way. The tumult finally goes out the
+door and into the street, and we turn back to the
+poor dancer still trying to beat out his stunt.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain rises next on the manager, who has
+been up to date weight-lifter, escaping boarder, and
+part of the peasants’ chorus. He is seated at a table,
+looking very ordinary in his street clothes. Behind
+him is another table covered with an assortment of
+crockery, mirrors, spoons, vases, pieces of cotton
+cloth, and a big striking clock. He calls for a volunteer
+from the audience for some unknown purpose,
+and a little rosy-cheeked uniformed Buriat schoolboy,
+who has been peeking behind flapping curtain
+between the acts, responds. The boy reaches into
+a box and pulls out a slip of paper. The manager
+reads a number from it, “<i>Sto piatdeciet sem</i>.” An
+eager voice from the rear answers “<i>Jes!</i>” The
+stage-attendant takes a glass tumbler from the table
+and carries it solemnly to the man who has answered.
+Your host nudges until you comprehend
+that you are to excavate the eight theatre-slips,
+which you do, to find that two only are seat-tickets.
+The rest are numbered billets, and you are liable at
+any moment to receive a perfumery-bottle or a candlestick
+from the lottery which is in progress. The
+scene now takes on an imminent personal interest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>
+shared with the banked forty-kopeckers behind. A
+breathless strain accompanies the drawing of the
+numbers. It mounts to a climax as the big musical
+clock is approached. The fateful billet is at last
+drawn in intense silence. Every eye is fixed on the
+reader. Not a Cossack speaks, not a Mongol moves.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Dvesti tri!</i>” and a sharp “<i>Moi!</i>” tells that the
+clock goes to ornament the table of a burly peasant,
+who grinningly receives it. The tense breaths are
+let out, the forms relax, and the crowd straggles to
+the door, lighting cigarettes and pulling down caps.
+The drama is over. Next morning at eight a soldier
+visits your host with a message from his chief.</p>
+
+<p>“Bring to the police-station the passport of the
+stranger seen with you at the theatre last night.”</p>
+
+<p>A town droshky will take one the few versts to
+Kiahta, where in the Geographical Society’s museum
+is the celebrated sketch of the Dalai Lama made at
+Urga by a Russian artist, when the young Tibetan
+monk had fled before the English expedition to
+Lhassa. Here, too, are ore samples and reconstructed
+Mongolian tents. But it is hard to look at
+fossil rhinoceros-heads and at stuffed sabre-toothed
+tigers and musk-deer when the camel-trains are
+passing and China is a verst away. A courier is
+necessary now, for resourceful Jacov and driver Ivan
+are strangers beyond the border. Perhaps our host
+knows of a man acquainted in Mongolia? He will
+inquire. Next day there presents himself a slight,
+bearded, intellectual man, Alexander Simeonovich<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>
+Koratkov, usually called, for short, “Alexsimevich.”
+Bachelor of forty, educated in the Troitzkosavsk
+“Realistic” school. He speaks, as well as Russian,
+Mongolian, English, French, German, and some
+Chinese. He has translated for the English engineers
+who were brought in to work the Nerchinsk
+mines. He is deeply read in Buddhist mythology
+and sociology. Will he go down into Mongolia with
+you? Yes; and so it is arranged.</p>
+
+<p>Provisions are cheap and abundant in the Siberian
+towns. Sixty kopecks buy a pound of caravan
+tea, seventeen kopecks a pound of sugar, the sort
+that comes in a cone like a Kalmuck hat. It is a
+luxury by warrant of public opinion, so much that
+it has, of note, been served on baked potatoes.
+Before the Buddha pictures of the Buriats, a few
+lumps may be the choicest offering. Flour costs six
+kopecks a pound. Beef, if a great pud-weight forequarter
+is bought at the market, twenty kopecks.
+Frozen butter will cost twenty-five kopecks per
+pound. Eggs, of the Siberian cold-storage variety,
+forty-eight kopecks a dozen. For thirty kopecks
+one gets a piece of milk as big as one’s head. But
+do not try to go beyond the native produce, for
+canned goods, coffee, or sardines. It is bankruptcy
+speedier than buying bear-holes. A big magazine
+will sell pâté de foie gras, imported from France,
+at two roubles the tin; while beneath the Chinese
+caravansaries’ arcade, bales of tea will be sold at
+a few kopecks a pound. One gets cigars in a glass-covered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>
+box, with the government stamp, for a
+rouble and a half, and they will be worth about as
+much as the strings of twisted tobacco-rope which
+the Mongols carry off as their single cherished luxury.</p>
+
+<p>And now for transportation. The sledge can serve
+no more, for the snow goes bare in places along the
+caravan trail. We must have a tarantass, and in
+time one is produced for inspection. A cask sawed
+in half, lengthwise, is the image of its body, a
+lumber-cart the model of its clumsy wheels and
+framework. To the tarantass is hitched the trotter,
+with his big bow yoke to bring the weight of collar
+and shafts on his back rather than against his neck.
+At each side of him, with much such a rig as is used
+to tow canal-boats, are made fast the two galloping
+horses.</p>
+
+<p>When one goes beyond the post-route with his
+own equipage he has, fastened under the driver’s
+seat and behind his own, bags of oats and hay,
+which must serve as emergency-rations for the
+horses against the days in which none can be secured
+along the often deserted trail. Personal provender
+must be likewise stored away, bags of bread,
+frozen dumplings to make soup with, tea, sugar,
+milk-chocolate, milk, candles, cheese, matches,
+kettles, and whatever else one can think of, or that
+the ingenuity of Alexsimevich can devise. Hay is
+piled into the tarantass bottom to supply the want
+of springs.</p>
+
+<p>A driver who knows the trails has been found,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>
+André Banchelski, a tall Siberian, of timbering and
+hunting antecedents, who has a small stock of
+Mongol idioms regarding the price of hay and the
+location of water. He has reached a very good
+understanding with Katrinka, one of the household
+dependents, and Nicolai is taking an interest in him.</p>
+
+<p>To-night we go to sleep on Nicolai’s plank couch,
+ready for the march of the next day. All is ready.
+To-morrow we cross the Chinese frontier.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c5">V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">IN TATAR TENTS</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE shaggy ponies, white with the frost of the
+morning, stand harnessed to the tarantass;
+André in his belted sheepskin <i>shuba</i>, whip in hand, is
+perched on the bag of oats; Alexsimevich sits in
+a greatcoat of deerskin, with only a nose and a triangle
+of black beard visible. The host, in his gray
+surtout, and the red-bloused drivers of the sledges
+scattered in the courtyard, all have left their samovars
+to see the start. The children of the family
+peep from behind the mother with her gray shawl-covered
+head. They group at one side, under the
+eaves of the doorway, while Josef, one of the household
+servants, swings back the ponderous gates.
+The reins are drawn in, the whip is lifted, the horses
+are leaning forward into their collars, when the
+cry of “André!” comes through the opening doorway.</p>
+
+<p>From behind the gathered onlookers, who turn at
+the sound, runs out Katrinka, dressed in her best
+red frock. “André!” she cries. He pulls back the
+starting horses, and Katrinka lifts up to him a little
+bag embroidered with his initials in blue and red.
+“For your tobacco.”</p>
+
+<p>He looks down into her eyes and smiles. “<i>Spasiba</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>
+<i>loubesnaia</i>,” he says, and pushes it into the breast
+of his shuba.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>De svidania</i>, André!” she whispers, then runs
+back, confused.</p>
+
+<p>The teamsters laugh, pleased and amused as big
+children at her blushes, and her brother shouts a
+commentary from the gateway. “<i>Vperiod! vperiod!</i>”
+says the interpreter. He has reached forty
+now without falling before the charms of any Siberian
+girl, and he does not sympathize. “On! on!”</p>
+
+<p>The horses swing out of the great gateway into
+the snowy streets, with “Good-bye! Good road!”
+called in chorus after us.</p>
+
+<p>At a slow trot the lumbering carriage rolls
+through the quiet town, misty in the cold of the
+morning. The row of shuttered shops, with their
+crude pictures of the wares within, are opening for
+the day. The little park with the benches, which
+are trysting-places of summer evenings, cushioned
+now with six inches of snow, and the low log houses
+beyond, loom up and retire rearward, as we pass.
+The white church and the fenced cemetery of
+Troitzkosavsk are left behind, and we are on the
+broad paved road by which a sharp trot of half an
+hour brings us to Kiahta.</p>
+
+<p>Its scattered houses now in turn begin. The big
+tea-compound, of four square white walls, flanks us
+and is gone. The officials’ residences and the barracks
+of the garrison appear and vanish behind.
+The street opens out into a big square, where, shimmering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>
+against the white ground, stands the great
+church of <i>Voskresenie</i>, the Resurrection. On its
+green dome, lifted high in appeal and in promise,
+gleams the gilded cross. In white and green and
+gold Russia raises inspiringly the symbols of Slavonic
+faith before the doors of the heathen empire.
+As we pass the white Russian church, the litany of
+the popes and the answering chant of the choir
+come faintly wafted from within. But even as the
+Christians sing, the clash of distant cymbals and
+the roll of a far-off prayer-drum meet and mingle
+with the echoes. On the hill across the border, in
+vivid scarlet against the snow, with painted walls,
+sacred dragon-eaves, and flapping bannerets, flames
+a Chinese temple.</p>
+
+<p>Here now is the borderland of empires. The neutral
+strip is in front, a hundred <i>sagenes</i> broad. The
+Cossack sentries stand at ease before their striped
+boxes, which face toward Mongolia. Far to the
+east and far to the west are seen stretching the
+long lines of posts marking the boundary. The
+outmost sentry, as the tarantass rolls across the
+strip, hails you with a last “<i>De svidania!</i>” (God
+speed!)</p>
+
+<p>Past the Chinese boundary-post, covered with
+hieroglyphic placards and shaped like the lotus-bud,
+we drive, and in under the painted gateway
+of the gray-plastered wall. No Männlicher-armed
+Chinese regulars, like those that in Manchuria
+throng to hold what is lost, guard this half-forgotten<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>
+road. No sentry watches; no custom-officer
+bids the strangers stop. Through the open gate we
+ride into the narrow street of the trading city of
+the frontier—Maimachen, the unguarded back
+door to China.</p>
+
+<p>In life one is granted some few great impressions.
+None is more striking than that experienced in
+passing beneath the shadow of this gabled gateway.
+Behind are kindred men, the manners of one’s own
+kind, police, churches, droshkys, museums, theatres,
+the whole fabric of European civilization. From
+all these one is cut away in the moment of time
+taken in passing the neutral strip. Two hundred
+yards have thrust one into the antithesis of all
+western experience, into an utterly strange environment,
+where the most remarkable of the world’s
+Asian races lives and trades, works and rules.</p>
+
+<p>Everything which is made sensually manifest by
+sight, by sound, by scent, by action, is weirdly
+alien. You three in the tarantass are as men from
+Mars, isolated, and moving among people foreign
+to your every interest and experience. The solitary
+strangeness of your little party in the tarantass,
+started into a forbidding land, the first confronting
+vision of the eternal Orient—these are the things
+for which men travel.</p>
+
+<p>As you go slowly down the narrow lane-like
+street, you catch glimpses of banner-decked courtyards
+seen through great barred doors in the gray
+mud walls. Here and there a sallow blue-coated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>
+Chinaman, with skull-cap and queue, passes by,
+his folded hands tucked into his long sleeves, fur-lined
+against the cold. Chinese booths and shops
+are open. Waiting traders, seeing yet invisible,
+behind the many-paned paper windows, look outward
+through the peep-hole.</p>
+
+<p>In the city square a halt is made before a Chinese
+store, for a last provisioning. At the entrance half
+a dozen Russian sledges are drawn up. Here can
+be had the supply of small silver coins indispensable
+for the road, canned goods of European origin, and
+a bottle whose contents may be less like medicine
+than is vodka. Though the goods come all the way
+from Peking on camel-back, they are much cheaper
+than the tax-burdened provisions over the border
+in Russia. Indeed many of the main Chinese stores,
+with their surprising stocks of wines and pâtés de
+foie gras, candies, and Philippine tobacco, are supported
+by Russian inhabitants of Kiahta and Troitzkosavsk.
+It is amusing to watch the enveloping of
+champagne-bottles in sleigh-robes, and the secreting
+of cigars beneath fur caps for the return journey.</p>
+
+<p>We stroll a little way down the street, among
+the Chinese booths for native wares, where sturdy
+shuba-robed Mongol tribesmen are bartering sheepskins
+for blue cotton cloth, metal trinkets, quaint
+long-stemmed metal pipes, and wool-shears with
+big handles. They are probably getting deeper in
+debt, as usual, to the wily traders. We pass the
+haymarket in the shade of a ruined temple, where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>
+the Mongols have heaped their little bundles of
+provender.</p>
+
+<p>All the while one has an eerie undefined sentiment
+that something is lacking. It is not that the
+houses which face the narrow main street are low
+and poor, that the gray mud-walled compounds
+are grimly unwelcoming with their closed iron-studded
+gates. It is not that the small stocks of
+goods in the shops tell of a vanished prosperity,
+now that the bulk of the tea-trade has left. It is
+not anything material, but an oppressive indefinable
+feeling that something is lacking. Only when Alexsimevich
+makes a chance remark, do you realize
+consciously what it was you instinctively felt, “It
+is queer to be in a city where there is not a woman
+or child.”</p>
+
+<p>Some have explained the exclusion law which
+controls the situation by the self-sufficiency of the
+Chinese, who wished no real settlement of their
+people here,—the fruit of a pride deep-rooted as
+that underlying the custom which brings every
+corpse back to China for burial. Others, by the
+desire to avoid transmitting to the Empire the diseases
+that are rife in Mongolia. Whatever the basis,
+the regulation is in full force to-day. At one time
+merchants in Maimachen kept their wives across
+the border in Russia, which under a subterfuge was
+not technically forbidden. But the ability to hide
+behind a technicality is a blessing enjoyed especially
+in democracies. It did not go with the chief of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>police, who came down for a squeeze which made
+it more profitable to pay the women’s fare home
+than to continue to offend.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f23">
+<img src="images/fig23.jpg" alt="wayside">
+<p class="caption">A WAYSIDE TEMPLE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Associating with the native Mongol women is
+here precluded by the fact that there are no settlements
+near by from which the Chinese might get
+indigenous consolation. A deserted tract lies behind
+the town. Only camel-drivers, wood-cutters, and
+sellers of cattle come into Maimachen, and they
+leave at night. For though the Mongols, in their
+pointed hats, pass along the streets, none may lawfully
+live within the stockaded walls, and none
+keep shop beneath the carved eaves of the houses
+which flank its narrow streets. This is the prerogative
+of Chinese traders from beyond the far-off
+Wall.</p>
+
+<p>The spectacled merchant Tu-Shiti, who has become
+prosperous from the sale of Mongol wool,
+retakes for a visit, every two years, the long camel-trail
+to Kalgan and China. The tea-trader, Chantu-fou,
+drinks his wares alone. The slant-eyed
+clerks and booth-keepers trotting down the streets
+in their skull-caps, hands tucked up the sleeves of
+their blue jackets, plan no theatre-parties or amity
+balls, or sleigh-rides in the biting air, as over the
+way in Kiahta. The seller of sweetmeats will never
+be told to be sure and inclose the red and black
+New Year’s card. There is no red-cheeked Chinese
+boy to smile as he munches your sugar; to puzzle
+over your ticking watch as at Kotoi, or to tease<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>
+the tame crane in the courtyard. Not a girl appears
+on the narrow streets. It is the sentence passed
+upon the generations of Chinese who have gone to
+Mongolia, that no woman of their race shall pass
+the Wall. And so it must remain, for never a home
+will be founded till China, the unchanging, shall
+change.</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth through the thoroughfares go
+the little men with the queues flapping against their
+backs and their sallow uncommunicative faces.
+Are they thinking of the time when they will have
+made their little fortunes and can get back to
+China to enjoy them? As they wait for customers
+in the little booths, do they plan the homes which
+none of their blood may ever possess in Mongolia?
+When they sleep on their wooden platforms, do
+they dream of faces in the Kingdom of the Sun?
+Never will one know. Around the thoughts of the
+Chinaman arise the ramparts of his isolation. What
+he believes, what he hopes, what he dreams are not
+for you. The soul of China is behind the Wall.</p>
+
+<p>The tarantass rolls out of the quaint weather-worn
+gateway of the woman-less city of Maimachen.
+“How much they miss!” says André, filling his
+pipe from the new pouch. “How much they escape!”
+retorts Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>When in hot haste Pharaoh ordered out his great
+war-chariot to pursue the rebellious Children of
+Israel, and thundered through his pyloned gateway
+with plunging horses urged by the shouts of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>
+his Nubian charioteers, he must have experienced,
+despite contrasts, much the same physical sensations
+as those which we feel when the tarantass
+starts in full gallop across the level plain to the
+distant range of mountains; but where Pharaoh’s
+robe was white with dust, ours is white with snow,
+and the sun, which baked his road, makes ours
+endurable.</p>
+
+<p>The horses leap free under the knotted lash of the
+Siberian driver. With the rumble of low thunder
+the ponderous wooden wheels bound over the rutty
+road, hurling the springless tarantass into the air
+and from side to side. You brace yourself with
+baggage and hold to the sides, but toss despite all,
+like corn in a popper. The hay on which you sit
+shifts away to one side, leaving the bare boards to
+rub through clothes and packs. A sudden splinter
+makes you jump like a startled deer beside the
+way. In this noisy tarantass, down the narrow
+road grooved with the ruts of the Mongol carts
+and sledges that have gone northward, you tumble
+and groan and bump and roll out across the open
+country.</p>
+
+<p>There is a wide plain from Maimachen. It climbs
+into the first barrier-range and the forest belt of
+Mongolia, whose plateau is the third terrace in the
+rise of land from the low frozen flats of the Northern
+Lena to the Roof of the World,—the Himalayas
+of the south. The northern city of Yakutsk is at
+a very low elevation, only a few feet above the sea.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>
+Irkutsk on the fifty-second parallel is 1521 feet in
+altitude, Troitzkosavsk on the fifty-first is 2600,
+Urga on the forty-eighth 3770, Lhassa 11,000 feet.</p>
+
+<p>Far to the northwest, Mongolia is a forested fur
+region; far to the south is Shama—the desert.
+Here at the north and east the forested belt of the
+Siberian highlands south of Baikal breaks off almost
+at the boundary.</p>
+
+<p>Snow is over everything, but thinly. It has been
+worn away on the road, leaving brown patches
+over which the tarantass, mounting the long slope
+with horses at a slow trot, lugubriously thuds. A
+long stretch of straggly trees and stumps tells of
+Kiahta peasants going over the border to cut wood
+where no timber-laws limit. Up and up we go,
+the way steeper every <i>sagene</i>,—afoot now and the
+horses leaning and pulling at the traces. Finally
+silhouetted against the sky appears a rough pile
+of stones. At its top bannerets are waving from
+drooping poles. It is the Borisan on the summit of
+the pass to which every pious Mongol adds an
+offering, until the pile is many feet high, with stones,
+sticks, pieces of bread and bones. Some throw
+money which no one save a Chinaman will commit
+the sacrilege of touching; some give a Moscow
+paper-wrapped sweetmeat, some a child’s worn hat
+or yellow-printed prayer-cloths waving on their
+sticks and fading in the wind;—everything is
+holy that is given to the gods.</p>
+
+<p>A piercing wind, searching and paralyzing,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>
+meets the tarantass beyond the crest at the southern
+border of the forest: it is Gobi’s compliments
+to Baikal, the salute of the great desert to the great
+lake. The horses stumble through the drifted snow,
+scarcely able to walk. The driver, blinded, half-frozen,
+keeps to the general direction of the obliterated
+trail. Barely one verst an hour is made,
+until, under the shelter of the bald white range of
+hills, the road reappears and the wind is warded off.</p>
+
+<p>A rolling plain between the heights is the next
+stretch of the way. The afternoon sun, dimly
+bright, creeps haloed through the lightly falling
+snow. Deep in the mist appears a dark moving mass.
+It grows, focuses, and takes shape into a shaggy
+beast of burden, and camel after camel emerges
+from the haze, loaded with square bales of tea.</p>
+
+<p>“Ask if there is shelter near,” you shout to the
+muffled head of the interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>“I will ask,” he replies. Then to the caravan
+leader: “<i>Sein oh!</i>” he cries in greeting.</p>
+
+<p>The foremost camel stares stonily as its Mongol
+driver twitches the piece of wood which pierces its
+upper lip, and the whole train stops.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Gir orhum beine?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ti, ti, orhum beine!</i>” comes the answer. “It is
+close at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>Forward the caravan slowly paces, each camel
+turning his head to stare as he passes out into the
+mist again. One of them has left a fleck of blood in
+each print of his broad spongy foot which the driver<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>
+will cobble with leather at the next halt. Along their
+trail you drive southward. The mist is clearing as
+you rise, and the sun shines down on the snow which
+has crystalized in little shafts an inch high. These
+spear-shaped slivers have a brightness and a sheen
+of extraordinary brilliance, and like prisms show
+all the colors of the rainbow. They cast a gleam,
+as might a mirror, a hundred yards away. It is as
+if upon the great white mantle had been thrown
+haphazard treasuries in rubies and emeralds and
+diamonds and opals,—myriad evergrowing rivals
+of Dresden regalias. The sun goes down with its
+necromancy. Beyond, the soft blanket enfolds the
+rolling hills. It drapes the rocks and weaves its
+drooping festoons about the barren mountain-sides.</p>
+
+<p>“Mongol <i>yurta</i>!” calls André, turning to point
+out with his whip the low dome-shaped hut, black
+against the darkening sky. On its unknown occupants
+we are to billet ourselves, sheltered by the
+rule of nomad hospitality. As the tarantass nears
+the wattled corral, the watchful ravens stir from
+their perches. The picketed camels turn to stare.
+A gaunt black hound stalks out, with mane erect
+and ominous growls.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Nohoi</i>,” cries out Alexsimevich, to the inhabitants
+of the hut; then adds to you, “Very bad
+dogs! It is a Mongol proverb: ‘If you are near a
+dog, you are near a bite.’”</p>
+
+<p>Beneath an osier-built lean-to a woman is milking
+a sheep, with a lamb to encourage the flow.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>
+She calls a guttural order to the dog, which slinks
+back. Then she comes to the wattled fence, while
+the sheep which has been getting milked escapes
+to a far corner of the yard. The woman’s head is
+curiously framed by a triangular red hat, and
+silver hair-plates, which hold out like wings her black
+tresses. The shoulders of her magenta dress are
+padded up into epaulettes two inches high. She
+is girded with a sash.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Sein oh!</i>” says Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Sein!</i>” she answers, and opens the gateway to
+the enclosure around the hut.</p>
+
+<p>André drives in among the sheep and cows, and
+you climb lumberingly down with cold stiffened
+limbs. André puts his whip upon the felt roof, for
+it is a deadly breach of etiquette to bring it into
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>“You go in,” said Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>It is like entering a kennel, this struggle through
+the narrow aperture, muffled to the eyes in double
+furs and awkward felt boots. As you straighten up
+after the crawl through the entrance, a red glare
+from the fire just in front meets the gaze. Stinging
+smoke grips the throat; you choke in pain. It blinds
+the smarting eyes. You gasp and stagger. Then
+some one takes your hand and pulls you violently
+down on a low couch to the left, where in course of
+time breath and sight return. There is no chimney,
+nor stack for the fire of the brazier, which stands in
+the centre of the hut. One can see the open sky<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>
+through the three-foot hole above. The smoke,
+finding its way toward this aperture, works along
+the sloping wooden poles which form the framework
+of the felt-covered tent, filling the whole upper
+section with its blinding fumes. To stand is to
+smother. Sitting, the head comes below the smoke-line.</p>
+
+<p>With recovered vision, one can look around within
+the hut. The couch of refuge, raised some six inches
+above the floor, is the bed by night, the sitting-place
+by day. Against the wall at the left hand, and
+directly opposite the door, is a box-like cupboard,
+along whose top are ranged pictures of grotesque
+Buddhist gods, before whom are little brass cups
+full of offerings, millet or oil, in which is standing
+a burning wick. Beside the door is a shelf loaded
+with fire-blackened pots and kettles. Branches of
+birch for fuel are thrown beneath. On the far side
+of the room, three black lambs, fenced off by a
+wicker barricade, are huddled together, quietly
+sleeping.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f24">
+<img src="images/fig24.jpg" alt="belle">
+<p class="caption">A MONGOL BELLE AND HER YURTA <span class="pad2">A ZABAIKALSKAIA BURIAT</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Seated beside the fire close by is the girl of nineteen
+who has just saved you from asphyxiation.
+The long fur-lined working-dress, common to all
+ages and sexes of Mongols, is buttoned on her left
+side with bright brass buttons, and is belted in with
+a sash. She has not the padded shoulder-humps,
+nor the spreading hair arrangement, which gave to
+her mother, who welcomed us, so weird an appearance.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>Her complexion is swarthy like an Indian’s, not
+the Chinese chalky yellow, and she has red cheeks
+and full red lips. Her eyes are large and black.
+The rest of the party have stayed a moment outside
+to ask about hay and water. You have made
+this solitary and awkward entrance. The girl has
+no more notion than a bird who the strange man of
+another nation may be, who has stumbled into her
+home. But it does not trouble her in the least. For
+a moment she looks you over calmly, with a smile
+of amused curiosity, rolling and wringing with her
+fingers a lambskin which she is softening. Then
+composedly she bids you the Mongol welcome,
+“<i>Sein oh!</i>” and holds out her hand. Her grip is as
+firm and frank as a Siberian’s.</p>
+
+<p>Now Alexsimevich comes tumbling through the
+door, and next André. Both are used to these huts,
+and artistically stoop below the smoke-line. All our
+impedimenta—blankets, furs, pots, kettles, bread-bag,
+rifles—are heaped in a mound within the space
+between the couch and the tethered lambs. The
+girl has not stirred from her work.</p>
+
+<p>“They are friends of yours then, Alexsimevich?”
+you ask.</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, I never saw them,” he answers. “Any
+one may take shelter in any <i>yurta</i> in Mongolia.”</p>
+
+<p>A small head suddenly makes its appearance
+from the pile of rugs on the sofa opposite on the
+women’s side of the tent. There emerges, naked save
+for a bronze square-holed Chinese <i>cash</i> fastened<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>
+around her neck, a little slant-eyed three-year-old.
+The water in the small cups offered to the <i>dokchits</i>
+has long been ice, and one has full need of one’s
+inner fur coat and cap in the hut, where the entrance,
+opening with every visitor, sends a draft
+of air, forty degrees below zero, through from the
+door to the open hole which serves as chimney.
+And still this tot can step out naked and not even
+seem to feel it.</p>
+
+<p>“The child’s name?” asks Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>“Turunga,” replies the girl.</p>
+
+<p>“And your own?”</p>
+
+<p>“Sibilina,” she says, and smiles.</p>
+
+<p>Turunga carefully inspects you, and solemnly
+accepts a lump of sugar which she knows what to
+do with, even if it is a rare luxury offered to gods.
+She sits down, in an evidently accustomed spot on
+the warm felt before the brazier, to play with the
+scissors-like fire-tongs, carefully putting back the
+red coals that have fallen out on the earthen platform.</p>
+
+<p>The tarantass-driver, having piled up your impedimenta,
+excavates from its midst the bag of rye-bread,
+which he sets to thaw. He gets next the
+little bag of <i>pelmenes</i>, the meat-balls covered with
+dough-paste which you carry frozen hard. The
+mother comes in from under the <i>yurta’s</i> flap, and,
+placing a blackened basin over the brazier, puts
+into it a little water and scours diligently with a
+bundle of birch-twigs. She brushes out this water<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>
+on the earthen floor near the entrance. This is
+the picketed lamb’s especial territory, to which the
+felt rugs before the couches and the altar do not
+extend. A big bag of snow which she has brought
+from outside is opened and the chunks are piled
+into the basin, where, while one watches, it melts
+down into water.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Boutzela! boutzela!</i>” she cries soon, holding a
+lighted sliver over the basin to see by: “it boils.”
+Into the Mongol’s pot go our <i>pelmenes</i>, to brew for
+a few moments. An accidentally trenchant description
+of Siberian <i>pelmenes</i> was given on the quaintly-worded
+French bill of fare in the hotel at Irkutsk:
+“Meat hashed in bullets of dough.” They come
+out, however, a combination of hot soup and
+dumplings, very welcome after the long cold day’s
+drive across the plains, the frozen marsh, and the
+rolling hills. The wooden Chinese bowls from the
+bazaar at Troitzkosavsk are filled now with our
+hostess’s big ladle, and the application of warmth
+inwardly gradually thaws the outlying regions of the
+body.</p>
+
+<p>But there is trouble in camp. Turunga is moved
+by the peculiar passions of her sex and her age,
+curiosity and hunger. It does not matter in the
+least that she has home-made <i>pelmenes</i> every two
+or three days—she wants these particular meat-balls.
+The little mouth begins to pucker and the
+eyes to screw up. No amount of knee-riding by
+the mother takes the place of the <i>pelmenes</i>. We fill<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>
+a heaping ladleful and André furnishes his own bowl.
+The mother receives it, holding out both her hands
+cup-fashion as is the etiquette, and Turunga is
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>The mother looks kindly to the stranger and
+smiles at André, then throws more sticks of the precious
+firewood on the embers. André has caught,
+likewise, the not unadmiring glance of the young
+maid. The girl who waits in Troitzkosavsk is not
+the only one who appreciates our six-foot Siberian
+hunter.</p>
+
+<p>The dog barks in the yard, but without the menace
+which hailed us, and the crunch of a horse’s hoofs
+sounds on the frozen ground outside. The flap
+opens, with its inrush of freezing air. Stooping,
+there enters a typical Mongol, squat of figure, round
+of head, with broad sunbrowned face and a short
+queue of black hair. He wears a funnel-shaped hat,
+magenta-colored, and is enveloped in a long <i>shuba</i>,
+with brass buttons down one side like a fencer’s
+jacket. About his waist is a sash with jingling knives
+and pouches. He is the head of the family, come in
+from herding his horses. He turns back the long
+fur-lined cuffs which have protected his gloveless
+hands, and stretches out both his arms for you to
+place your hands over his. It is the man’s ceremony
+of welcome. Then he produces a little porcelain
+snuff-bottle. This must be received in the palm of the
+right hand with a bow. It is to be utilized, and passed
+back. If the herder is out of snuff, the bottle is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>
+offered just the same and you must appreciatively
+pretend to take a pinch. Such is etiquette.</p>
+
+<p>The soup is gone now; the pot, cleaned out for
+the tea, is again on the boil and the leaves are thrown
+in. André has borrowed a hatchet from his host,
+and has chopped off a piece of milk, which goes in
+as well.</p>
+
+<p>It is in order to ask the new arrival, Subadar
+Jay, to pass his wooden cup for some of the beverage.
+He takes it and the lumps of sugar without
+a word of thanks. The Mongol language has no
+expression to signify gratitude. Silence does not,
+however, mean that he does not appreciate. The
+dozen pieces of Mongol sandal-sole bread which
+he gives you later are worth two bricks of tea in
+open market, and this current medium of exchange—caravan-brought
+tea—is worth sixty kopecks
+the brick. No small gift, this bread, to an interloping
+stranger who is brewing tea by his fire, and
+camping unasked on his bed. A Tibet-schooled
+lama knows the Buddhist maxim, “Only accomplish
+good deed, ask no reward.” But the unlettered
+Mongol layman knows its practice.</p>
+
+<p>Little Turunga has played naked before the fire
+long enough now; she is caught up; her reluctant
+feet are put into the boots with pointed upturned
+toes, and her body into a miniature sheepskin
+“daily,” such as her mother and father wear. The
+little girl is as smiling and shy and coquettish as
+any child of white skin and complex clothes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Will you sell Turunga for a brick of tea?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no,” says the mother, gathering the little
+one quickly up into her arms, while the rest of the
+family smile at the offer and her solicitude. “No,
+no, not even for ten bricks!”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody laughs, Turunga with the rest, in a
+child’s instinctive knowledge that she is the centre
+of admiring attraction.</p>
+
+<p>Far more petting than the Russian babies get is
+lavished on the little Mongols. Perhaps the much
+smaller families (only two or three children to a hut)
+allow more attention per capita. The mother hands
+Turunga over to her father,—unheard-of in Siberia,—and
+he plays with the child, giving her pieces
+of sheep’s tail to eat from his mouth, answering her
+prattle or baby-talk and endless questions. At night,
+about eight o’clock, the mother takes the child to
+the couch and they both go to sleep, Turunga
+cuddled warmly under her mother’s <i>shuba</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we men sit cross-legged by the fire
+and talk of many things,—of the pasturage for
+the sheep, of the snow on the road, of the beauty
+of the housewife’s silver headplates, of water and
+roads, of whether or not the Mongol <i>dokchits</i> on the
+altar are like the Gobi wolves that hate Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to note how some of the words
+used (few, however) have a familiar sound—although
+there is said to be no common ancestry
+with the Indo-Germanic tongues; perhaps it is only
+the instinctive sound-imitation which makes the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>
+Mongol baby cry “Mama” to its mother, as does
+the child in Chita and in Chicago. “Mine,” for
+instance, is <i>mina</i>; “thine” is <i>tenei</i>. A horse or mare
+is <i>mari</i>. The word for “it is,” “they are,” is <i>beine</i>,
+a fairly respectable form of the verb “to be” in
+Chaucer’s English.</p>
+
+<p>The grammar is delightfully simple. In the vernacular
+there is no bothering about singular or plural.
+“One hut” is <i>niger gir</i>; “two huts,” <i>hayur gir</i>.
+“Milk” is <i>su</i>, and apparently the word for “water”
+was formed from it—<i>ou su</i>. If one wants to know
+whether it is time to throw in the meat-balls he says,
+“<i>Ou su boutzela?</i>” with a rising inflection (“Water
+boils?”) and the answer is, “<i>Boutzela</i>.” The “moon”
+and a “month” are <i>sara</i>, and the years go in cycles
+of twelve. If one wants to compliment the host on
+the excellence of the sandal-shaped bread which he
+hands out, loaded with gray chalky cheese (<i>hourut</i>),
+one says, “Bread good be” (<i>Boba sein beine</i>); this
+gives him great pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the written numbers are somewhat like
+ours: 2 and 3 are nearly the same, but they have
+fallen forward on their faces; 6 has an extra tail.
+When the teapot overturns, they say “<i>Harlab!</i>”
+to relieve their feelings. There is no word for “so
+good,” “farewell,” or “much obliged.” These are
+just squeezed into the heartiness of the final “good”
+(<i>sein</i>). So when one leaves, he holds out both arms,
+palms up, for the host to put his own upon, and
+says loudly, “<i>Sein oh!</i>”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span></p>
+
+<p>A not unbarren amusement is to study out one’s
+own derivations for some much-explained words.
+<i>Tamerlane</i> is often given as meaning “the lame.”
+Why does it not rather come from <i>temur</i> (iron)
+and mean “man of iron,” as the ruler of the Khalka
+tribe was called Altan Khan, the golden king? The
+Amur River has <i>khara-muren</i> (black water) usually
+given as its derivative root. Why not the Mongol
+word <i>amur</i>, which means simply “quiet”?</p>
+
+<p>In the hut to-night, while we are comparing
+mother tongues, the brazier-fire has burned to red
+brands. The girl reaches into a basket beside the
+door for pieces of dried camel-dung, and puts them
+on, that the embers may be fed and live through
+the night. These <i>argols</i> do not smoke; she may
+close the chimney-hole with the flap of felt, and the
+hut will be kept somewhat warm through the night.
+The Mongols prepare for sleep: they take off their
+boots, and slip their arms from the sleeves of their
+fur <i>shubas</i>, in which they roll themselves up as we
+in our blankets. But how hardened they are to the
+cold! A naked arm will project and the robes become
+loose, but they do not wake.</p>
+
+<p>We keep on all our inner clothing and roll ourselves
+about with skins until we are great cocoons.
+André gives a good-night look to his horses; then
+he, too, lies down. With our heads beside the altar
+of the gods, we sleep, in the Mongol’s <i>gir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>How cold it is in the morning when we wake!
+The embers have burned to a gray ash; the iciness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>
+of the waste outside has gripped like an octopus
+the little hut, and sucked its precarious warmth
+through the night-long radiation. The chimney-hole
+is open again, and the mother is starting a blaze
+with her few pieces of birch firewood. André has
+gone out to harness the horses. He has left the
+door flap a little wrinkled, and the wind whirls
+through it and up the chimney, keen as a scimitar.</p>
+
+<p>Alexsimevich is getting out the tea-bowls and the
+bread. You put a reluctant hand from under the
+blankets and seize your fur cap. Then you disengage
+the inner fur coat from its function of coverlet,
+and struggle, sleepy-eyed, into it. If you have
+the moral courage to take off these friends in need,
+and the inner coat and sweater, to get a bowlful of
+snow-water, and hunt among the baggage for soap
+and a towel, all at five o’clock in the morning of this
+freezing weather, then you have full license to call
+the Mongols dirty degraded heathen. If, however,
+you sit and shiver, and promise yourself that you
+will bathe at Urga, it is elementary fair play to be
+discreetly silent about the little failing of your
+hosts. You will rejoice, too, in open admiration
+of courage, when you find, as you sometimes will,
+a clean-shaven well-groomed lama, or a washed and
+combed village belle, on the road to the sacred city.</p>
+
+<p>“Ready,” says André. You finish a goodly
+portion of rye-bread and several bowls of Alexsimevich’s
+tea, while he is carrying out the luggage
+and making a pyramid of it in the tarantass. You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>
+put both hands out to shake those of Subadar Jay,
+of his wife, and Sibilina. You give a last chunk of
+sugar to little Turunga, and crawl out under the
+tent-flap. The family calls “good-bye” from the
+gateway as you climb in. Then up the hill you start,
+for the next day’s ride.</p>
+
+<p>It is slow to travel by this schedule. One can advance
+by day and rest by night, but daylight travel
+and night sleep, while most comfortable for a man,
+are the least efficient for a horse. If progress be
+the aim, one must adopt the teamster’s system.
+This involves a start at midnight, and eight hours
+of travel at a slow trot,—six to seven versts per
+hour. Then, at eight in the morning, a halt for
+the ponies. One hour they stand in harness, before
+getting their quarter <i>pud</i> of hay; after which
+comes water, and finally, seven and one half <i>pfunde</i>
+of oats. Four hours of halt are involved, in which
+one can roll up in his blanket and sleep. Then off
+again for eight hours of trot, and another four hours
+of halt at eight in the evening. So the watches go,
+with some hundred versts made daily.</p>
+
+<p>Noon to-day finds us climbing the hills on foot,
+to stretch our cramped limbs and ease the horses,
+as in old times the English tourists climbed the St.
+Gothard on the way to Italy. We are chilled, and
+racked by the jar of the road, and glad of even
+strenuous freedom. Presently we get on again, and
+ride down the far slope. It is the camel-boat of the
+steppe, this tarantass.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p>
+
+<p>A solitary gnarled tree shows in the waste of
+snow—the one seed that lived, on the barren waste,
+of all that the Siberian winds had brought. An
+eagle is watching from its upper branches. Further
+on are higher hills, with trees growing on their
+northern declivities alone. No foliage can stand the
+sun, which steals the moisture and bakes the rocks
+on the southern slopes. As we pass one of these isolated
+groves, the bald trees are seen to be packed
+with old nests; for the birds from miles around come
+hither, as the only refuge for their eggs. Deer watch
+us, standing ten yards off; for these Mongols are
+poor hunters and their religion sanctifies life. A lama
+may not kill even a fly: it might be his own father,
+transmigrated into this form for insufficient piety.
+A big white hare starts through the trees, stops,
+and runs again. Thousands of little marmots scurry
+to their holes in the plain at the alarm of the tinkling
+bells. A kite soars with a marmot writhing in
+his claws. Big gray jack-rabbits bound along the
+road ahead. A troop of partridges let us pass
+their wallowed holes six feet away. They peer up,
+their heads protruding from the snow, their yellow
+aprons glistening like shields, tame as guinea-fowl.
+At length we drive into Zoulzacha village.</p>
+
+<p>One becomes after a time somewhat of an adept
+regarding quarters. To-night the village gives a
+chance. The most promising exterior is selected,
+and driving up, we prepare to enter. Cold and
+cumbersomely muffled, you worm under the felt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span>
+hut-flap, and see through the pungent smoke of
+the brazier a dim figure seated to the left of a veiled
+altar. Bowed over a red-beaded rosary, he is
+chanting in a low voice, a weird oft-repeated phrase.
+He ceases as you struggle in, becomes silent, and
+looks up. “<i>Amur sein!</i>” he salutes in quiet greeting,
+and motions you to a place on the low sheepskin-covered
+couch, to the right of the altar, opposite
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The open smile of his welcome shows white teeth
+hardened by the tough biscuit of his daily diet.
+You note next, with the pleasure born of seeing
+anything good of its kind, the light color and unwrinkled
+features of this young man of twenty-five.
+The gaze of his brown eyes is direct and frank.
+He is clean-shaven, his hair is close-cropped, and
+he has the appearance of a well-groomed horse.
+In contrast with the smoke-blackened, hardship-wrinkled
+faces of the older Mongols, his is as a drink
+from a clear mountain spring after stale drafts
+from a long-carried canteen. His color is that of
+an athlete trained under the suns of the running-track.
+His features are defined, the nose not so flat,
+the eyes larger than the usual Mongol type. His
+expression is earnest and sincere as he now stands
+up in his robe of rich orange, trimmed and girdled
+with red.</p>
+
+<p>He welcomes the guests without question,—it
+is the rule of Mongol hospitality, but you feel for
+the first time what an intrusion it is for your great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>
+Russian tarantass-driver to shoulder his ponderous
+way into the home of a stranger, loaded with your
+bearskin rugs and rifles and bags of bread, and to
+pile them loutishly on the native’s couch. At the
+other huts wherein you have lodged, this sentiment
+has not come so strongly. Poor places they were:
+the hardship-lined faces; the soiled and ragged robes
+of the women, the threadbareness of the heaped-up
+sheepskins on the couch, all these revealed that
+your two-headed eagle of silver was needed, and your
+coming a windfall. But here are no sheep fenced
+in, making one feel that standards are superfluous.
+The fuel is put away in a basket, the bright fire-irons
+are ranged in a row. The couch of polished
+wood is orderly, and the skin-rugs on it are folded
+in their places. The little chests of drawers are
+brightly polished, and the yellow cap, with its
+lining of fox-fur, on one of them is new and clean.</p>
+
+<p>But most of all, in the proprietor himself is there
+an air of freshness and cleanliness, of youth and
+vigor, and of self-confidence. When you burst
+into a place like this, covered with snow and muffled
+up in furs, disturbing the master of the house at
+his prayers; when your driver lays the uninvited
+mattress down in the warmest place, a man cannot
+but feel like a thrice-dyed barbarian bounder,
+even if the home be a fifteen-foot felt hut open
+at the top, and situated on the borders of the Gobi
+Desert. So feeling, the first impulse is to let the
+host know that you are not quite, of intent, what you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>
+are by accident,—a big hulking foreign savage. So
+you hastily think over what you can give to put
+yourself less at a disadvantage. The prized reserve
+of milk-chocolate comes to mind. “Will the host
+have some?” you ask.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Da blagodariou!</i>” he answers in Russian, to
+your surprise.</p>
+
+<p>With mixed gladness at having made good thus
+far in any event, and regret at the diminished store
+of this commodity, you take a little spoonful of the
+snuff which the host is now offering in a beautiful
+porcelain bottle, patterned in flowers. Then you
+come back with a cigarette. Most of these people
+know what cigarettes are, though some smoke them
+with their noses.</p>
+
+<p>“No, thanks!” and he points to his closely-cropped
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Alexsimevich, who has followed into the hut, explains:
+“You speak to a priest, he does not smoke.”</p>
+
+<p>A screen hangs before the altar opposite the door.
+You look hesitatingly at it. Without demur, the
+lama, at the visible interest, draws back the veil.
+There, in painted grotesqueness, is Janesron, the
+red god of Thunder, and bearer of the lightning
+sword. He glares down with his three eyes upon
+the sunken orbits of a sheep’s head, laid out as an
+offering. Black Gumbo, the six-armed good spirit,
+is also there, and both are surrounded by attendant
+demons. All are pictured artistically, the
+minute detail of Tibetan workmanship showing in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>
+their squat bodies. The polished wood of the frames
+is as finely wrought as a Japanese sword-hilt.</p>
+
+<p>On the box-top, beneath the gods, are set out in
+neat array the best of Mongol dainties. These are
+disposed in little polished brazen cups shaped like
+wine-glasses. There are raisins and dried plums,
+caravan-carried from the far-off Middle Kingdom,
+and lumps of sugar brought down from Russia in
+some trader’s pack. Millet fills one cup, water another;
+each symbolizing some ancient seizin. A
+wick, sunk in oil, flares in the centre, and casts a
+flickering, uncanny light upon the deities. Spread
+on a low seat, six inches above the felt rug on the
+floor, are rows after rows of <i>boba</i>, the gray Mongol
+biscuits, in shape like the thick soles of a sandal.
+As a centre-piece between the stacked loaves rests
+the brown roasted sheep’s head. It is the feast of
+the New Year that this unusual volume of offerings
+betokens. The old year of the Horse passes with
+the rise of to-night’s new moon. The leap-year—that
+of the Ram—will then begin. All the families
+in the <i>eimucks</i> of Mongolia will feast on the
+grosser part of the offering which now lies in its
+ranked regularity undisturbed. For the present the
+priest takes light refreshments while waiting for
+his midnight rite.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you have some of the tea that has been
+brewed for you by the old mother while you were
+looking at the altar?” asks Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>It has been made, not from the loosely-packed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>
+leaves, but from the hard tea-bricks. A chunk of
+this has been cast into the great iron bowl over
+the brazier when the fagot-fed fire has melted the
+ice and has brought the water to a boil.</p>
+
+<p>Solemnly you are presented a wooden bowl of
+tea, which you receive in both hands, and as solemnly
+sip. The evening meal is cooked and eaten, your
+sugar reciprocating the lama’s tea.</p>
+
+<p>As the evening wears on, amid the smoke of
+cigarettes and brass-bowled pipes, the lama brings
+out quaint paper slips of Buddhist prayers.</p>
+
+<p>“You are interested?” He will write for you a
+charm. “<i>O mani padmihom</i>,” he tells you. “The
+Buddhist prayer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, thou jewel in the lotus-flower, hail!” says
+the interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>It is mighty, this ancient Buddhist prayer, which
+is murmured by so many millions from Japan to
+Persia, from Malay to Siberia. It is symbolic,
+esoterically, of much. The jewel is the soul, the
+lotus is Buddha, the prayer, a wish that the spirit
+be in them which was in <i>Saka-muni</i>, their Lord.
+On endless rosaries this prayer is told. It is on the
+lips of priests and women, it is carved around
+the stones which travelers throw upon the <i>obos</i>, the
+“high-places” of Old-Testament record. It is
+murmured by the pilgrims as they prostrate themselves.
+The disciplined body, the praying tongue,
+and the mind intent on sacred things, all incline
+the soul to the acquirement of merit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span></p>
+
+<p>The lama draws now with his quick hand, trained
+to the Tibetan script of the Urga monastery-school,
+sketches of his temple, <i>Zoulzacha Soumé</i>, of his
+people’s summer tent of cloth, and winter hut of
+felt. He writes out the Mongol numerals, and explains
+the cycles of years, in answer to questions
+regarding the New-Year festival. He describes the
+puzzling element-and-animal system, by which the
+<i>chére mari</i>, or earth horse, is 1907, the <i>chére khoni</i>,
+or earth ram, is 1908, and so on through a sixty-year
+epoch.</p>
+
+<p>He quotes Mongol proverbs come down from
+old priests and rulers: “One may buy slaves, but
+not brothers,” and, in the spirit of Macchiavelli,
+“You can govern a State by truth as well as you
+can catch a hare with an ox-cart.”</p>
+
+<p>Now it is nearing moonrise. From his rolled purse
+the priest draws a small slip of paper ruled into
+a half-inch checker pattern, in every square of which
+there is a symbolic group of letters. The lama consults
+this. Then he brings from the chest beneath
+the altar a long narrow box in which are strips of
+faded paper thick as parchment. On these in red
+and black are traced quaint characters, written, as
+is our script, from left to right. The priest selects
+a dozen of his long sheets and puts them carefully
+on his couch. He touches the box to his forehead
+and restores it to its place. Then he turns and speaks
+to the interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>“The lama must make ready for the night of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>
+New Year,” you are told; and as you look, off comes
+the red sash and yellow robe. The young priest stands
+up in his vivid blue jacket and walks to the entrance
+of the <i>gir</i>. From a cupboard he takes a towel, and
+from the fireplace, ashes. Pouring warm tea into
+a wooden bowl, he scrubs hands and face with the
+vigor of an athlete after a run. Then back to the
+cupboard he goes, and off comes the blue jacket for
+a clean new silken one. A rich yellow robe is donned.
+A bright silver knife is slung upon a new red sash
+which girdles his waist; and smart and erect as an
+officer of the Guards, the lama steps over, prostrates
+himself before his deities, then goes out
+into the night to his temple service.</p>
+
+<p>“Creeds are many, but God is one,” murmurs
+Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>It is regrettable that the rule of lama celibacy
+prevents the arrangement of the usual kidnapping
+marriage-ceremony between this young priest of
+Zoulzacha, and Amagallan (blissfulness), the belle
+of the Odjick encampment. It is early in the first
+moon, Sara, of the year of the Ram, and holiday
+still reigns in Mongolia. Doubtless she, too, is a
+sooty Cinderella at other times; but to-day she is a
+reigning princess, dressed in the best that a father,
+owner of a hundred sheep, can furnish. A bright
+new blue coat, lined with fine white lamb’s-wool, is
+belted around her rather ample waist with a red
+sash. Her boots are of evident newness. But the
+triumph, the chef d’œuvre, is her pointed red hat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>
+made of the brightest Chinese silk. It is topped
+with a gold and black knot and is garnished with
+gold braid. The flaps, turned up at the sides and
+the back, are of a long silky dark-gray fur. A broad
+red ribbon fastened behind is brought forward and
+rests on her breast. She has a feminine eye to its
+brilliant contrast against the blue dress. Two long
+tassels of pearls, set in coral-studded silver earrings,
+frame a rosy, laughing face; for Amagallan is exhilarated
+with the consciousness of being very well-dressed.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of two young herdsmen in dark red
+and blue, and one lama of the first degree,—and
+consequently not estopped from the race, like a full-fledged
+priest,—bears testimony to the effectiveness
+of the costume and the girl. The wiles with
+which she distributes a smile to one, a dried Chinese
+plum to another, and a mild frown to a third, reveal
+even more the universal woman. Amagallan is not
+at all averse to adding to her string three masculine
+Russians. There are only two foreign nations
+in Mongolia, Chinese and Russians. Into the latter
+class come all stray visitants—Americans, Buriats,
+and Troitzkosavsk teamsters. The girl stands up
+now and greets this American with a frank hand-shake.
+She invites him to sit down with the rest.
+Since there is scriptural permission to eat meat offered
+to idols, the fact that the evening’s feast has
+stood at the feet of Buddha need not deter one from
+partaking of the little dumplings, gray cheese, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>
+dried fruits. Amagallan hands them out on one of
+those sole-shaped biscuits, which serve as plates
+until one has eaten what is on them, after which
+they go down themselves. A fat sheep’s-tail is sliced
+for your benefit, while a coarse lump of dusky-looking
+sugar is an ultimate delicacy, eaten as candy.
+Muddy brick tea follows, of course. The Mongol
+bread is good, but it takes resolution to do one’s
+duty by the gray cheese, the resin-like desiccated
+milk, and the sheep-fat just seethed.</p>
+
+<p>A chatter of conversation goes on, the neighbors
+drift in and out, and those of our <i>gir</i>, as the evening
+wears on, make excursions to the other huts and
+exhibit and drink more muddy tea for politeness’
+sake. The hostess in each tent shakes your hand
+before feeding you. The formality makes you temporarily
+one of the tribe and family, to be treated
+with courtesy and hospitality. Thus you are taken
+into the social life of a simple affectionate people.</p>
+
+<p>We meet in one hut a traveling friar who has
+tramped sturdily from Tibet, pack on back and
+prayer-beads on arm, begging, praying, selling relics
+claiming to cure rheumatism, and the eye-diseases
+which the smoky huts induce. He carries on a pole
+an image of Gumbo and others of the <i>dokchits</i>, together
+with a hodge-podge collection of rosaries,
+strips of silk, bells, beads, pipe-picks, etc. These
+are jingled during parts of his prayer, where it is
+necessary to keep the god attentive.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f25">
+<img src="images/fig25.jpg" alt="mongol">
+<p class="caption">A MONGOL “BLACK MAN”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In one hut they are playing the age-old game of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span><i>tawarya</i>. A bag is produced containing hundreds
+of sheep’s-knuckles, colored blue. Everybody gets
+a handful. Then a girl holds out her fistful of them,
+and each man guesses the number. There is a rapid
+fire of shouted numerals,—“<i>niger, hayur, urbu,
+durbu!</i>” The one who guesses correctly gets the
+handful of knuckles. This person next holds out
+his fistful, and so it goes. It is an uproarious sport,
+interspersed with quite unnecessary grabbings of
+disputed handfuls,—part of the game that Amagallan
+is playing, even if not germane to <i>tawarya</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Finally through the darkness you make your way
+back to the <i>gir</i> in which you are billeted. The
+wreathing smoke from its dome is illuminated to-night
+by the beams from the fire below. It rises
+in dimly bright convolutions, beautiful in its small
+way as the great Northern Lights. You spread your
+felt on the floor of the tent and roll up in your rugs.
+The teamster needs a timepiece to regulate his hour
+of harnessing, for you must start at daybreak.
+Leave your watch for him on the altar of the <i>dokchits</i>.
+It will be safe in this hut by the desert of
+Gobi, among the remnant of the Golden Horde.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>The days’ marches have taken us well up among
+the ridges of the Kentei Mountains. To the eastward
+is the peak which, despite the claims of Urga’s
+Holy Mountain and of a site near Tibet, has the best
+authority for being the burying-place of Genghis
+Khan.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span></p>
+
+<p>In 1227 the great conqueror died. The confused
+records tell of his body’s being taken northward
+to a mountain which was the heart of his empire,
+from whose slopes sprang the sources of the three
+great Mongol rivers,—the Tola, the Onon, and the
+Kerulon. Beside its sacred lake the Manchu Amban
+of Urga sacrifices annually to the Nature-spirits. It
+is both a survival and a memorial to the bloody
+sacrifice of every living being on the road to the
+grave,—a tribute which tradition says the guards
+of Genghis Khan’s funeral cortège offered to their
+departed chief.</p>
+
+<p>Huts are far apart in these highlands now, and the
+whistling winds pierce the very marrow. The tired
+horses can hardly crawl forward on the doubtful
+trail. Far up in the heights, beside an old caravan-route,
+superseded by a newly-cut artery of travel,
+we come very late upon an ancient wooden shrine.</p>
+
+<p>The worshipers have gone. They lived their time
+in a village near by, but with the exhaustion of
+pasturage for the flocks, under nomad necessity
+they moved. A new camel-road was tramped out
+by drivers, who must find shelter amid habitations.
+So in the shrine, long unpainted, the smiling Buddha
+presides now over his famished altar.</p>
+
+<p>Very, very old, very, very poor, is Archir the
+warden, who welcomes you. For forty years he has
+watched in his <i>gir</i> by the dragon-gargoyled gate.
+The spear with which he stood to his post of old
+is blackened, and its red tassel is dulled and faded.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>
+A tattered fringe is along the edge of the felt door
+to his <i>yurta</i>, and holes are under its walls close to
+the ground. His pile of wood is pitifully small, and
+few are his sandal-sole biscuits. His <i>shuba</i>, sheepskin-lined,
+is blackened with the soot of years.</p>
+
+<p>Archir refuses courteously what he knows is a
+rare foreign delicacy, a Russian cigarette. “A lama,”
+he says, “may not smoke.” But his own hospitality
+is of the thoughtful kind which comes from the
+heart. He hands you a sheepskin softened by
+long massaging between his trembling old hands,
+that his own covering, not your coat, be burned
+by the sparks from the brazier. He notices that
+your tea-bowl is awkwardly held, and he brings a
+little table to put before you. He sees your driver
+fumbling for a match to light his pipe, and reaches
+him a coal with the fire-tongs. He clears his couch
+that you may sit in comfort. He offers you the
+first use of his fire for cooking.</p>
+
+<p>In the old days many came to pray to the smiling
+Buddha. The drivers of the tea-caravans from far-off
+China left their offerings of fruit and silk scarves.
+The herdsmen whose lambs had lived well through
+a bitter winter gave sheep fat of tail to the two
+yellow-robed priests who chanted and clashed the
+cymbals through the long days and into the nights.
+The little boys dedicated to the gods, shaven-headed,
+rosy-faced, crooned their lessons in the
+Tibetan tongue, sitting on the floor of the big blue
+school-gir beside the shrine. Every day pilgrims<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>
+on their way to Urga stopped to pray in the <i>soumé</i>,
+and filled the tent of the young guardian with eatings
+of noodle-soup and drinkings of tea, with gossip
+and with song.</p>
+
+<p>But all is changed now in his little hut. The rule
+of non-marriage he keeps in the spirit, where so
+many lamas observe it only in the morganatic letter.
+This has left him alone in his old age, and
+pitifully solitary now that even the dwindling
+camel-trains, of whose tea-traffic the Manchurian
+Railway has robbed them, pass by no more. The
+priest is unfed even by pilgrims. These have gone
+with the rest to the routes of a better prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>Archir has seethed his evening meal of sheep-meat
+and flat pieces of dough. He has let the fire die down
+to embers, and has pulled the covering over the
+round hole. The freezing winds very soon make
+his hut so cold that one feels like a thin shaking
+uncovered creature even beneath the heaped furs.
+One’s ungloved hands grow numb as he lies by the
+brazier.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning we too depart, and like the Roman
+legionary beside the Vesuvian gate of Pompeii,
+the old priest waits, alone, unquestioning,
+uncomplaining, till a greater God than he of the
+<i>soumé</i> shall send the summons of relief.</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>The mountain-ranges, one after another, stretch
+their towering barriers across the path. They trend
+northeast and southwest, as in Siberia. First comes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>
+the Sharan Daba, the white range, whose pass leads
+down to the Iro River, rich in alluvial gold. The
+streams flow westward into the Cellinga, whose
+waters empty into Lake Baikal, and thence by the
+Angara River, into the far-off Arctic Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Ridge follows ridge now, and valley follows
+valley,—narrow cuts, with shallow streams, and
+huts clustered upon their sides. Out from the almost
+deserted borderland, the Mongol encampments are
+not unfrequently pitched where there is water for
+the flocks. If any wood be near by, it is well, since
+then the dried dung can be reserved for the smokeless
+evening fire when the top hole is closed.</p>
+
+<p>When the steep mountain climb has been passed,
+it is as if a gateway had been opened through the
+constricting ridges. The broad valley of the Haragol
+stretches out. Down, down, we go, onto a plain,
+in the centre of which we come to an enclosure with
+a high mud wall and a peaked gateway, gaudily
+decked with red banners and vivid placards. Outside
+the mud walls of the compound, far and wide,
+are checker-board squares with irrigation ditches
+between. Huge stacks of hay and straw are piled
+up near the gate, the wonder and envy of the
+nomads, who never have more than the scantiest
+store. Within are booths facing the courtyard. A
+little temple occupies one corner. Two-wheeled
+carts are drawn up along the wall. Troughs and
+picket-poles are ranged in line, ready for the caravans.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p>
+
+<p>Now, around the tarantass, there gather from
+their threshing the dwellers of the compound,—coolies
+from the far-off Pink Kingdom, with puffy
+blue trousers and tight-buttoned jackets, flail in
+hand and metal pipe in mouth. They stare stolidly
+without comment at the frost-covered horses, the
+robes, and the bearded strangers. Expressionless
+they stand watching every movement. Alexsimevich
+asks a question; no one answers. We sit for
+a moment mutually expectant. Not one of the
+Chinese stirs or speaks.</p>
+
+<p>Then André swings down and leads the team
+through the gateway into the compound. Alexsimevich
+leads the search for shelter. We cross
+the courtyard to the building which serves for the
+lodging of travelers. Its walls are of mud, and a
+big adobe chimney projects up one side. Beneath
+low eaves a small window with white paper panes
+blinks like the sightless eyes of a blind man. We
+stoop, pushing open the crudely pivoted door,
+enter the smoky chamber, and the door swings
+back behind.</p>
+
+<p>We are standing in what seems an unreal world—a
+stage-scene or a cavern from the Arabian
+Nights. In front and on each side close in dark
+windowless walls. Behind comes a feeble light
+from the little paper-paned window. In the dimness,
+a flickering fire throws fitful gleams on dusky figures,
+idols, and wearing-gear hung on pegs driven into
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span></p>
+
+<p>As your eyes become accustomed to the gloom,
+the details take shape. A clay stove is to the left.
+Fagots are heaped beside it, copper kettles rest
+upon its top, pigtailed figures are crouching around.
+In front, a platform, raised four feet above the clay
+floor, occupies the whole width of the room and extends
+back into the darkness. A group of men are
+seated, cross-legged, around a little brazier, smoking.
+Others are lying rolled in blankets.</p>
+
+<p>With our luggage André staggers in. No one
+stirs. Some of the group around the stove turn their
+heads to look, but that is all. André heaps the food-bag
+and blankets in a vacant spot on the <i>kang</i>. We
+make room on the stove for our pots to boil the
+water for tea. On this self-elbowed place amid the
+rest we sit cross-legged, propped against the clay
+wall. The smoke from the oven, led under the <i>kang</i>,
+warms it so that the outer coat can come off. A
+little tabouret some six inches high stands in a corner,
+and serves as a table for the repast.</p>
+
+<p>The shelter is far better, as comforts go, than any
+of the Mongol tents. The icy wind that sweeps the
+latter is barred off. There is a stove to replace the
+nomad’s brazier; a warm <i>kang</i> instead of the floor
+to rest upon. But how different is the spirit of the
+hosts! There are no frank hand-clasps here, no interested
+gossip and inquiries of the adventures by
+the way. No generous bringing out of fat sheep’s-tails
+and snuff-bottles for the guests’ delectation.
+You cannot but have the feeling that these people<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>
+are as indifferent to your existence as they are to
+the pariah dog that howls outside the walls. They
+are exclusive, non-welcoming,—these Chinese.
+They are strangers to the land, self-sufficing in their
+toilsomely cultivated rye- and wheat-fields, an isolated,
+womanless, working settlement.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the better quarters and comfort which
+these inns afford, one prefers to go to a Mongol tent
+and be among men more human, if less civilized.
+When the bread is thawed and the tea is boiled, we
+eat, pay the Chinaman who gave the wood, and
+with a sense of relief go out again to the tarantass
+and the road.</p>
+
+<p>For versts now the way is along the alluvial plain,
+seamed with irrigation-ditches and dominated by
+several of these walled Chinese factories. As the sun
+goes down, however, there appears a solitary building,
+and André gives a glad shout, seeing that it is
+built of wood and has windows and big centre
+chimney. “<i>Russky dom!</i>” he cries.</p>
+
+<p>A low mud wall surrounds the enclosure. Inside
+some quilts are hung in the air, that the cold may
+kill the vermin. A big black dog comes up, but unlike
+the scavenger beasts of the Mongol encampments,
+it signals welcome with friendly tail-waggings and
+good-natured barks, approaching at once as if accustomed
+to kindly treatment.</p>
+
+<p>The quilted door of the house opens. A booted
+figure appears with the familiar red blouse, and the
+Russian greeting hails you, “<i>Zdravstvouitie!</i>”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span></p>
+
+<p>“An Orthodox Buriat,” says Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>We mount his wooden steps, shake his hand, and
+enter the big warm room.</p>
+
+<p>It is as if one were back in Siberia. The Buriat’s
+Siberian wife, in shawl and kerchief, is busy at the
+whitewashed oven. Brilliantly-colored comic prints
+detail the misadventures of the young recruit, with
+doggerel ballad rhymes beneath. Chickens peck
+beneath the stove, the samovar hums on the table,
+and figures sipping tea are grouped around it on
+the benches, or are lying on the floor enjoying the
+genial warmth.</p>
+
+<p>“Hail, Alexsimevich!” comes a voice; and a tall
+bearded Siberian, dressed in a Mongol robe, rises.</p>
+
+<p>“Aha, Vladimir Vassilivich!” answers our interpreter.
+“Good-day!”</p>
+
+<p>A volley of questions at once overwhelms him.
+The party has been long away from Kiahta, and we
+have the latest news.</p>
+
+<p>“A Kiahta merchant, my friend, and his son,”
+Alexsimevich explains.</p>
+
+<p>Overcoats are being doffed, mufflers unwound,
+and boots kicked off. The babble of talk continues.
+A place is made for us at the table, and glasses of
+tea, with immense slices of cheese and ham, are
+placed before us. When more tea and cigarettes
+have completed the repast, Alexsimevich paces up
+and down, relating with dramatic gestures the latest
+gossip from Troitzkosavsk.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his narrative, which all are following<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span>
+with great interest, there comes an incident of
+heightened vividness.</p>
+
+<p>“Sh—sh!” a warning signal sounds. One of the
+auditors points to a shape rolled in blankets, and
+lying on the bench.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Gaspaja</i>” (a lady), they say.</p>
+
+<p>Alexsimevich completes his tale in a lower tone
+and with more artistic circumlocution.</p>
+
+<p>But it is the other side’s turn to tell a tale, for
+why, in the ferocious cold of midwinter, with—save
+for this one Buriat’s house—the Mongol huts
+only for nightly shelter, why does a lady come
+down here?</p>
+
+<p>The merchant explains: “She has twisted her
+knee-joint, and in Irkutsk, in Tomsk even, the
+Christian doctors cannot heal her. A lama tells us
+that warm sulphur-water will soften the sinews, and
+the bone can be brought back into place. We go to
+the warm springs of the Holy River. I have been
+there in old times, and I know the way.”</p>
+
+<p>With pathetic eagerness the party has gone to do
+the lama’s bidding, and bathe in the Mongol Jordan.
+Evening comes. The lady’s bench is pulled over
+close to the oven. The merchant and his son lie
+down beside it on the floor. Servants and drivers
+roll up at their feet, and all sleep, in amity.</p>
+
+<p>It takes resolution to awake at daybreak and
+leave the luxury of this shelter. But when horses
+are harnessed, riders must ride. The rising sun
+comes up over the white plain. The Buriat waves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>
+“good-bye” from his doorstep; the dog barks in
+farewell, and we lumber on southward.</p>
+
+<p>A sugar-loaf hill marks the end of the valley. We
+turn up now into the mountains, the driver somewhat
+in doubt as to the way. A boy of about fifteen
+years, a yellow-robed lama novice, rides by.
+Alexsimevich hails him to ask the road to Urga.
+A complicated explanation follows, hardly understood.</p>
+
+<p>“I show you,” says the boy.</p>
+
+<p>For a dozen versts he rides along on his pony
+beside us, chattering and laughing. When, after
+a devious trail, the pass is in sight, he starts off, and
+will not, at first, accept any present for his trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Valley follows valley now, the trail fairly well
+defined. Mongol huts give a chance for rest and for
+cooking. A welcome is bidden us in each, the nearest
+water is shown, and invitations to come back are
+freely extended.</p>
+
+<p>There is now one last range to cross, the Tologoytou,
+highest and steepest of all. Even the
+mounted Mongols, who have caught up with our
+toiling tarantass, swing off and climb afoot. Trees
+are on either hand, and the white wall-like face of
+the barrier passed in the morning seems a bare verst
+away. There comes a whole slope of boulders and
+rocks, jagged and broken, like the moraine of a
+glacier. And then, at long last, we reach the high-heaped
+Borisan at the summit, with its fluttering
+prayer-flags. The foremost Mongol throws on a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>
+rock, leaps upon his pony, and rides twice around
+the mound.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Argila! argila!</i>” (bridles free! bridles free!) he
+cries, and trots down behind the crest.</p>
+
+<p>We, too, throw on a stone, and take the steep
+descent.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the low rolling ridges below is the white
+of the Holy Mountain, topped with green foliage.
+Here one may not kill the thronging hare and deer
+and pheasants. As we gallop down, the <i>obos</i>, the
+white memorial monuments, take shape from the
+snow. In the dark-gray dimness of the city beyond,
+green and gold roofs become distinct, lighted by the
+last glow of the sinking sun. Huts cluster close now
+along the road, and the shadows of innumerable
+dogs pass and mingle and pass again, where the gray
+mud walls and houses begin to be continuous. In the
+dim twilight the tarantass thunders into the great
+wide way which ends in the main street of Urga.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred feet broad is this street. Mud walls
+twenty feet high flank it. The gates to the enclosures
+are closed. The fast-fading light discloses
+hardly any passers-by. Save for a distant tom-tom
+there is deep silence brooding over the city. A great
+empty square is entered, where a few figures are
+passing in the distance. We approach one of these,
+who upon our question lurches up to the tarantass.
+He is a Russian clad in Mongol <i>shuba</i>, rather the
+worse for liquor.</p>
+
+<p>“I will show you,” he says amiably.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p>
+
+<p>Affectionately leading the horses, he reels down
+one dark alley, then down the next, until we come to
+a second broad street and to an enclosure with a
+lantern-lighted gate. A cry brings at length a stir
+within. The gate swings open.</p>
+
+<p>“The <i>Varlakoff</i> house!” says the guide thickly.</p>
+
+<p>The tarantass is led in, and we stumble through
+the darkness into a Russian home of some pretensions.
+In the main room is a lamp and a table
+covered with a red cloth. A glass of tea is available
+and is quickly swallowed. Then, tired out, we roll
+up in our blankets, on the floor, and drop off to our
+first night’s sleep in Urga, the Holy City of Mongolia.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c6">VI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">THE CITY OF THE REBORN GOD</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE murmur of many voices pierces the blanket
+over your head. Sleepy-eyed in the warmth,
+you peer out from the chrysalis of coverings to watch
+the people moving about. Alexsimevich has extricated
+himself from the mound which he constructs
+nightly on the floor, out of luggage-bags, felt mats,
+rugs, and overcoats. Under all the heaped wrappings
+that he uses in the icy Mongol tents, he has
+camped and slept close up against the white wall
+of the oven. Truly the Siberian is brother to the
+salamander. He pulls on now his big felt boots and
+runs a pocket-comb through his beard.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of our host, come to the door for a survey,
+notes progress and returns to the female region.
+The Hazan Varlakoff, gray-bloused and wearing
+deerskin boots, enters next. He lights his first cigarette;
+his wife with the bowl of sugar and the plate
+of bread follows. She has gotten up earlier than her
+husband, so she is several cigarettes ahead, but he is
+cutting down the lead.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps one had better get up one’s self. It is
+an easy operation here. “Getting up” consists in
+emerging from the rolled blankets and stretching.
+“Dressing” means pulling on boots. One can wash<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>
+over in the corner, where the brass can lets out a
+trickling stream of cold water when the needle-valve
+underneath is pushed up.</p>
+
+<p>The samovar hums on the red cotton cloth of the
+table. Varlakoff moves along to make room. From
+the little pot of infused tea your glass is partly
+filled; then you place it under the spigot for hot
+water, and the beverage is ready for sipping. No
+lemons are here, as in Russia. In a few Chinese
+shops one can buy spherical citrons, but they are
+like unripe oranges, and are a luxury as great as
+pineapples in old New York.</p>
+
+<p>A wool-buyer from Kiahta reaches for the bowl of
+broken loaf-sugar, and holds it for you to choose the
+piece whose size pleases best. The housewife comes
+from the kitchen over by her oven-door, bringing
+some crestfallen cake which she has made in your
+honor.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Kuchete! kuchete!</i>” she commands, arms
+akimbo, puffing contentedly on her cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>We revel in the luxuries of Varlakoff’s room;
+warmth such that we may take off the cumbersome
+outer coats; chairs to sit upon, instead of crouching
+cross-legged; hot samovar-made drinks, and
+a chance to wash in water. The latter is a privilege
+which can be appreciated only after a period of
+ablutions in lukewarm tea. We stretch out and
+bask and sip, and whiff <i>papirosi</i> in epicurean idleness.</p>
+
+<p>As we luxuriate, one by one the neighbors of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>
+Russian colony come in, to hear the news of Kiahta
+from Alexsimevich. The expedition has become
+part of the gossip-transportation system. Half the
+population of Kiahta must have sent messages here,—half
+the Russian traders in Urga have come to
+receive them. First, there is the general news dispensed
+into the expectant ears of the group at Varlakoff’s.
+Alexsimevich is for an hour the cynosure.
+Questions and answers flash back and forth, going
+off sometimes explosively like fireworks. Then follow
+the special events and the individual messages.
+At last these are all detailed. Now come invitations
+from various men to visit their houses “Will the
+<i>gaspadine</i> come?”—“The <i>gaspadine</i> must see the
+city.”—“<i>Da! da!</i>” echoes the group.</p>
+
+<p>Varlakoff goes out for his stick and overcoat.
+The wool-merchant gets into his fleece-lined <i>shuba</i>.
+He achieves the feat by the usual Siberian method.
+Putting the garment over his head, he pushes his
+arms through the sleeves, and gradually struggles
+and writhes up into it as one gets into a wet bathing-suit.
+Alexsimevich finishes his fourth glass of tea,
+lights one of the <i>Hazan’s</i> cigarettes, and worms his
+way also into his deerskin greatcoat. Then out we
+go into the bright sunlight and the snow-covered
+streets.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f26">
+<img src="images/fig26.jpg" alt="gigin">
+<p class="caption">TEMPLE OF GIGIN, URGA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The houses of the Russian quarter of Urga were
+only glimpsed in the dusk of last night. We have
+daylight upon them now. Squat whitewashed buildings
+they are, with neatly paned windows and big
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>square chimneys. Across the mounds and hillocks
+of a broad street is the one-storied Russian Club,
+where one may drink vodka, play billiards or cards,
+and while away the winter evenings. Further on is
+a row of shops. The bearded owners stand behind
+their counters, dressed in belted Mongol <i>shubas</i> and
+Russian fur caps. The doors to all the shops are
+open, that the Mongols, perplexed with knobs, may
+not take their trade elsewhere. Enameled kettles are
+hanging in festoons down the walls. The shelves
+are crowded with bolts of vivid-colored cotton cloths
+to be sewed into <i>shubas</i> by the Mongols who ride
+in to buy. There are big cases of sweetmeats, Moscowski
+caramels, acceptable offerings to the grotesque
+<i>dokchits</i> on the family shrines. Russian
+monopoly tobacco is there, in stamped paper
+packets for the delectation of Muscovites and Buriats
+who have the taste and the means, and villainous
+South-China tobacco and snuff for native
+purchasers. One can get vodka almost as bad as
+that of Siberia, and far cheaper, for it is compounded
+by a local distiller who rejoices in an excise-less
+market. Foreign brandies and wines fill big
+walls of shelves.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Zdravstvouitie!</i>” one of the merchants calls,
+hailing our party.</p>
+
+<p>“It is Vassili Michaeloff, old friend of mine,” says
+Alexsimevich. “Let us go in.”</p>
+
+<p>We enter and are led back into the private part of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span></p>
+
+<p>“<i>Chai!</i>” shouts the host to somebody behind the
+oven.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Haracho</i>,” comes the answer.</p>
+
+<p>We all sit down. If any purchasers drift into the
+shop, they can wait until we get through our visit,
+or they can go down the line. For wherever the
+Eagles are planted, the Russian joyfully drops his
+business to entertain a friend. At the call of “tea”
+the shovel goes into the ditch, the ledger onto the
+shelf, the pen into the potato. If “<i>chai</i>” interferes
+with business, cut out business. Nor does it matter
+in the least that we have just had breakfast; by the
+rule of etiquette we must be entertained. “Tea”
+consists first in a ceremoniously clinked toast
+drowned in vodka. Then appears the samovar in
+charge of the woman of the house, the glasses, and
+the sugar. Next follow the cigarettes. The talk is
+animated, for its local history absorbs each little
+world. The fact comes out that the cousin of
+Michaeloff has bought a new pair of horses for
+a hundred roubles. The price, the quality of the
+animals and of the man, all go into the crucible.
+Kiahta beer arrives as the conversation turns to the
+death of one Ivan Vladimiraef, which it is agreed
+was not unnatural, since he had reached the age
+of ninety-odd years. Still the provisions come.
+The good wife brings in a heaping plate of lard-impregnated
+Hamburger steaks, called “cotlet,”
+which Alexsimevich attacks as if his last meal were
+half a day instead of half an hour distant. Other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>
+bottles accumulate to help out the dwindling
+flagon of vodka. We enter upon Château Yquem,
+Pomeranian, and Caucasian claret. Then cakes are
+set out, and more tea, and finally a quart bottle of
+champagne.</p>
+
+<p>Alexsimevich stands to his guns like the 38th
+Siberians at Tien-tsin. But it is hard for any one
+of less rigorous training in this sort of thing to hold
+even the straggler’s pace at nine o’clock in the morning.
+Mentally we hoist the flag upside down, and
+wink at Alexsimevich as the outward and visible
+sign of the inward and spirituous distress. He takes
+the rest of the champagne in a last gulp, and with
+a series of thanks we gain the entrance to the
+shop, where two Mongols and a Buriat are waiting
+patiently, looking vacantly around at the
+crockery.</p>
+
+<p>We are shown ceremoniously to the door, shake
+hands, remark about the weather, give our compliments
+to the wife, and depart. When at the corner,
+we glance back. Vassili Michaeloff is still standing
+on the threshold; his three customers too are looking
+out leisurely at the people passing.</p>
+
+<p>“We have thrown his business out of gear,” we
+remark to Alexsimevich.</p>
+
+<p>He seems surprised.</p>
+
+<p>“There is plenty of time. Why should they mind
+waiting? <i>Nietchevo.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Another host is overjoyed to see us, for an engineering
+problem of great perplexity is, he tells us in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>
+due course, harassing his mind. No one in Urga can
+help him out, but perhaps we will.</p>
+
+<p>“The Chinese governor, the <i>Zinzin</i>, wants to
+make an automobile line from Kalgan,” the host
+announces. “I saw an iron bridge once, so I agreed
+to build him one over the Lara River. Have
+you ever seen an iron bridge? How shall I do
+it?”</p>
+
+<p>You allow that you have seen an iron bridge,—that
+you have even gone across one. You suggest
+that much depends on the river. “How wide is it,
+for instance?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not picked out the place for the bridge
+yet,” answers the host; “but the river is somewhere
+between sixty and three hundred feet wide.
+Have some vodka?”</p>
+
+<p>“And how deep is the water?” you ask.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,”—after much thought,—“it is deep
+in the middle and shallow at the edges. Have a
+cigarette! Have some tea! If we build this bridge,
+the <i>Zinzin</i> will give us a decoration. How much
+will the bridge cost?”</p>
+
+<p>“That depends upon what sort of bridge you
+build, and how long it is, and how much material
+you use!”</p>
+
+<p>Alexsimevich comes in.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, the more iron you use, the more the
+bridge costs,” he observes.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Navierno! navierno!</i> you speak sagely, Alexsimevich.
+That is what I told the <i>Zinzin</i>.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It must have piers and abutments,” you venture.</p>
+
+<p>“But the <i>Zinzin</i> does not like piers, because the
+water was not made to put such things into. Yet
+I said with you, one must always have piers. Here
+is brandy. Take a few sardines!”</p>
+
+<p>The problem certainly needs something special
+for its elucidation. You ponder, and Alexsimevich
+and the host breathlessly watch the hatching of your
+official pronunciamento.</p>
+
+<p>At last you deliver yourself.</p>
+
+<p>“Find out how wide and deep the river is. Then
+write to a steel-manufacturing company, to quote
+prices. They will send a blue-print of an automobile
+bridge of the specified length, together
+with the weight of the steel. You can buy pieces
+to build it at so many kopecks a pound, just like
+butter.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, my friend, you do not know how great a
+service you have rendered! What a providence is
+your coming! Pray, have some cognac! Will they
+send me a picture with piers,—a picture that I can
+show the <i>Zinzin</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,—yes, indeed.”</p>
+
+<p>“I go to-morrow to tell him of this.”</p>
+
+<p>We are once more in the street and the banded
+escort is turning into still another Russian’s house.
+Their idea of sightseeing is apparently to take tea
+with every Russian in the place. A mild desire is
+registered to come in contact with some of the other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>
+people. The idea strikes them in the light of a
+strange new doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>“You wish to see Mongols?” one asks. Though
+surprised, they acquiesce amiably. “To-day they
+have holiday; you are favored. Go see the doings
+and make me visit later,” says the disappointed
+third host.</p>
+
+<p>Then the wool-merchant speaks.</p>
+
+<p>“Near by is the great temple of Urga, which few
+have seen, for it is one of the most holy places of
+the Lama faith. It is the temple of Maidari, the
+Future God. If the <i>gaspadine</i> wishes to see it, I,
+who have bought wool from the uncle of the keeper
+of the gate, can gain admittance.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f27">
+<img src="images/fig27.jpg" alt="urga">
+<p class="caption">TEMPLE IN THE URGA LAMASERY</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>For this we start. The Russian section, made
+up of shops with posters and signs in Slavonic
+letters, and homes with centre chimneys and little
+square panes of glass, is left behind. Through a
+long dark lane we come out into the main thoroughfare
+of Mongol Urga. The town is in festival for
+the New Moon. The streets are ablaze with color.
+Red posters are on every door and wall. The brilliant
+picture is framed by the snowy girding hills
+and the green trees of the Holy Mountain to the
+south. The tomb-like altars on the plain are dazzlingly
+white against the gray-plastered fronts of
+the houses behind. The gilded gargoyles of the
+temples flash in the sun. Down the main street,
+a hundred feet broad, go bevies of girls, their hair
+bedecked with the gaudiest ornaments of silver and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span>pearl, their silken robes striped and banded in
+green alternating with yellow and blue and gold.
+Lamas stride here and there dressed in bright
+orange robes and hats, their silver knives hanging
+at their sides. Great shaggy-haired dromedaries
+swing past. Horsemen, robed in vivid scarlet and
+blue and magenta, dash at full gallop across the
+wide open <i>piazza</i> in the centre of the town. A
+donkey-cart is driven slowly along, crowded with
+brightly-dressed girls. A squad of Chinese cavalry
+trot by in white jackets, red-lettered. Two of the
+Cossack garrison swagger past. A bearded Siberian
+trader strolls across, clothed in the dark Mongolian
+cloak which most have adopted, going toward the
+Russian quarter we have just left. A string of oxen
+plods by, drawing cartloads of wood.</p>
+
+<p>Walking on, we come to a long line of kiosks
+which a continuous procession of pilgrims in holiday
+attire is entering. In each booth is a cask-shaped
+prayer-wheel, a magnified model of those which
+women carry, twirling them in their hands as they
+walk.</p>
+
+<p>Along this main square of Urga, and girding her
+city stockade, are hundreds of these cylinders. All
+the day long, men and women are going in and out
+from one kiosk to another, turning. Some say that
+formerly one could enter a great Tibetan temple only
+after saying a prayer so long that even a Grand
+Lama’s memory could not carry it. So, for convenience,
+a cylinder with the written text was set<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>
+up at the temple gate. By degrees it became the
+custom, without reading it, to rotate the petition
+for a blessing. Others say that the wheels are
+whirled in literal obedience to Buddha’s precept to
+“turn over and over his words.”</p>
+
+<p>Alternating with the wheels are stone shrines
+graven with Tibetan characters, before which, on
+wooden couches, silken-dressed women are abasing
+themselves in abject worship. A long line of pilgrims
+is doing the circle of the city. They stand,
+then drop prostrate in the snow. Rising, they
+move conscientiously forward to where their heads
+touched, and again lie prone, making thus a penitential
+circuit of the stockade. Most are in deadly
+earnest. Some, hired for a proxy service, steal forward
+a few inches on each prostration.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly three distant guns boom out.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Scurry, scurry toda!</i>” says the wool-merchant.
+“Quick, this way. He is coming.”</p>
+
+<p>You hurry forward to where a trail leads across
+the square. Afar off, in the direction of the Holy
+Mountain, is seen a band of galloping cavalry. The
+Mongols on horseback around you are drawing
+rein. The pilgrims are looking toward the approaching
+cavalcade. Brilliant red and yellow are the robes
+that flutter as the body-guard ride. Now a rumble
+of wheels is heard among the clattering hoofs.
+Preceded by twenty horsemen, followed by twenty
+more, rolls down a Russian droshky, with a yellow-robed
+lama driving. Propped among the multicolored<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>
+cushions sits a clean-shaven, silk-robed
+man, with puffy cheeks and tired eyes. The European
+watch which he carries hangs in anomalous
+awkwardness at the breast of his robe; his leg is
+propped on the front seat, as if he were lame.
+Most turn their backs to him in Oriental honoring;
+many prostrate themselves in the snow; every
+horseman in the square has dismounted.</p>
+
+<p>“He drives from his palace beside the Holy
+Mountain to the temple on the hill beyond the
+city,” says the wool-merchant.</p>
+
+<p>“But who is it?” we ask, as the last galloper rides
+by.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian looks at us as an old Roman might,
+if in the Forum we had not recognized Cæsar.</p>
+
+<p>“That! That’s Gigin, the Living God! That’s
+Buddha come back to earth,—Gigin!”</p>
+
+<p>You stand a moment to take it all in. Then,
+despite your purpose of respect, a smile works to
+the front.</p>
+
+<p>At once the wool-merchant laughs gleefully.
+“Ask Varlakoff about the Buddha,” he chuckles.
+“Varlakoff sold him his ponies for ten thousand
+roubles. My friend showed him a picture of the
+ponies, little horses, you know, and Gigin told him
+to get them. They had to send to an island of
+Europe, Scotland. But Gigin was very pleased.
+He said Varlakoff was the only man who had never
+lied to him.”</p>
+
+<p>The expression of the wool-merchant was that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>
+worn according to tradition by the Roman
+augurs.</p>
+
+<p>“When there is not a holiday, the people have
+the market here in this square,” the merchant continues.
+“I was here in the bazaar with a friend last
+week, and we heard a commotion over by that
+prayer-wheel. We went up, to find that two of the
+Buddha’s lamas were borrowing a fine horse, worth
+three hundred roubles, which belonged to a Mongol
+woman. It was all she had, she told us, and it was
+being taken to the Living God’s stables. The woman
+was in great distress.</p>
+
+<p>“‘It is mine. I will appeal to the Consul,’ said
+my friend.</p>
+
+<p>“The Gigin’s men could not take a Russian’s
+horse, so they had to give it up. The Mongol woman
+came and wept on him, she was so glad. She brought
+a gift to my friend. Generally the Gigin returns
+such borrowed booty when he has used it a while,
+but often not. Anything that is new, the God will
+buy. These pilgrims, you see, bring him offerings.
+Kalmuks come all the way from the Volga, Manchus
+make pilgrimages, Buriats come down from north
+of Baikal, and tribesmen from Tibet. He has half
+a million roubles a year from his priests, and he
+does not care for anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>Becoming more and more steeped in celestial
+gossip, we go past the gray-plastered compounds
+piled high with wood and timber, a main export
+of Urga. Tall masts with logs suspended from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>
+them are the signs. We reach at last a big stockaded
+courtyard, the beginning of the monastery
+quarters.</p>
+
+<p>“Come, look in here!” says the guide.</p>
+
+<p>You peer through the gateway at six of the biggest
+bronze <i>burgoo</i>-kettles that ever existed outside
+an ogre’s kitchen. Each kettle can hold a couple
+of cows.</p>
+
+<p>“It is to feed the monks,” says your companion.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongols are going up to the vessels, with
+buckets suspended to the end of a milkmaid’s yoke.
+They dip up a load. The soup looks like gray
+tapioca pudding. What it is made of remains one
+of the secrets of the monastery, whose chef is stirring
+the mixture with an oar.</p>
+
+<p>A big stockade, enclosing tents and peaked <i>soumé</i>,
+from which the sound of chattering is heard, appears
+ahead. As we approach, a whole hive of boys
+swarm out and scatter in all directions. Some are
+in red, some in yellow, some wear ordinary Mongol
+caps, some wear high, yellow sugar-loaf fools’-caps,
+which fall over on one side. These are the
+novices in training for the lama hierarchy.</p>
+
+<p>The first-born of each family must by immemorial
+custom become a lama. In babyhood and
+boyhood one of these dedicated children is clad in
+yellow robes and is especially tended. “<i>Ubashi</i>,”
+he is called. When about ten years old the boy goes
+to school, at Urga. He becomes a <i>bandi</i>, or student
+of the prayers and of the Tibetan language. He runs<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>
+about as those we have just seen, and at about
+twenty he becomes a <i>gitzul</i>, or first-degree lama.
+Now he shaves head and beard, and wears a brilliant
+yellow and red robe. Next he takes the more advanced
+examination and catechism, and becomes
+a full priest, or <i>gilun</i>, forbidden to marry, to kill, or
+to work. He may continue his curriculum in one of
+the departments of the lamasery, studying divinity,
+medicine, or astrology.</p>
+
+<p>In the divinity course a lama will memorize
+Tibetan prayers, and pore for years over the big
+holy books which lie within the chests of the lamasery
+chapels. He will repeat the creed over his beads,
+in rapt self-hypnotism, meditating in celestial holiness.
+He will pray down rain for the grass, and will
+exorcise glanders from the ponies.</p>
+
+<p>A priest taking the medical course will gain a
+knowledge of the innumerable herbs that grow on
+the Tibetan mountains, many of which are of great
+value as drugs, and are known only to these monastic
+seekers. Massage, warm sulphur baths, and
+waters, are part of his pharmacopœia. Mixed with
+genuine instruction in anatomy and medicine, he
+will be taught the incantations that cast out <i>tchutgours</i>,
+or evil spirits, the words of power to be written
+on rice-paper and rolled into a pill for the patient
+to swallow. He will learn what devil is responsible
+for the disease which has brought low the lusty
+herdsman, and the right order of image to make
+for allaying the infernal anger. He will be taught
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>when the fever crisis is at hand, so that the cymbal-clashers,
+the drum-beaters, and the prayer-wailers
+may assemble, and by these holy noises and a
+transcendental counter-excitement, lift the patient
+over the fever-point.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f28">
+<img src="images/fig28.jpg" alt="pilgrimage">
+<p class="caption">A PROSTRATING PILGRIMAGE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If he elects astrology, he will be instructed in
+casting horoscopes of unfailing value, in reading the
+stars, predicting their future stations and the coming
+of eclipses. He will be prepared to declare the
+reasons for visitations of murrain and to track
+the trail of straying camels.</p>
+
+<p>Divers are the paths of knowledge, but all may
+lead to the honor of Grand Lama, head of a monastery,
+or member of the college of <i>shabniars</i>, who
+form the Council of the Living God. And when the
+great reaper has called the high priest from his
+earthly glory, a whitened tomb will be raised to
+his memory just outside some town along the camel-trail,
+while his ashes will be moulded into briquettes
+and godly images, to rest before the gods in the
+shrine of some <i>soumé</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We have arrived at the gateway to the great
+temple. The wool-merchant disappears inside to
+work his pull. A young lama comes out to the door,
+smiles at the foreigner, and then goes in again, and
+you tremble lest your advent is being announced to
+some other than the one man who can supposedly
+be “fixed.” This is the most important temple of
+Urga, forbidden to foreigners, and seen through
+good fortune by a few only of the old residents.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>
+But every gate they bar to hate will open wide to
+love—and a ten-rouble note. The merchant comes
+back.</p>
+
+<p>“We can go in while the lamas pray,” he whispers.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle appears, with an expectant look on his
+face, and motions us in through the darkness to the
+anteroom of the temple sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>From the chamber curtained off at one side comes
+a low swelling chant.</p>
+
+<p>“Service begins, you may see it from here,” the
+lama says, just above his breath.</p>
+
+<p>Your station is in darkness, but just the other side
+of the curtain are the lamas, and their apartment
+is lighted by windows. Two rows of benches extend
+the length of their chamber, leaving an aisle between
+them, reaching from the door to the altar. A score
+of priests in yellow robes, with red sashes slung
+tartan-fashion over a shoulder, are sitting on these
+seats facing each other. They are ranged evidently
+in the order of their ages. Two old <i>giluns</i>, fluent in
+the Tibetan litany, sit next the altar. Then come
+younger lamas, the <i>gitzul</i>, not yet full priests.
+Finally next to the door are <i>bandi</i>, ten or twelve
+years old, intense in youthful delight that their part
+in the ceremony is to pound as lustily as they can
+the big prayer-drums. The service begins with the
+chanting of a ritual in form not unlike the Slavonic
+litanies of Siberia. At appointed times it is necessary
+to call the god’s attention to the fact that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>
+something is going on in his honor. At once a most
+deafening clamor begins. The small boy with a
+drum is drowned out by his big brother, further
+up the line, who officiates upon a huge wooden
+cornet, and by his uncle with the conch-shell or the
+cymbals. The droning of prayers is like the buzz
+of hiving bees. There seem to be no responses, but
+all of them read together. Presently comes a sudden
+clamor, almost like a fire-alarm; then the
+crash and the droning suddenly cease.</p>
+
+<p>“It is over!” says the guide.</p>
+
+<p>The lamas file out by a further door, and we tiptoe
+in to inspect the holy of holies at the heart of the
+great lama sanctuary. In the dimness one sees first
+before him the table for offerings, on which are the
+two main sacerdotal instruments,—a silver bell
+and a silver handle like a carving-knife-rest,—and
+row after row of targets made of dough-paste, of
+brass cups filled with oil to serve the tapers, of millet,
+rice, currants. Behind this altar, towering far up
+into the hollow of the dome, is the bronze colossus
+of the smiling Buddha, Maidari, the Future God.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty feet in height, the figure is, cross-legged,
+with open, painted eyes. From Buddha’s hands
+hang long silken streamers. One of very fine quality
+is embroidered with the ten thousand gods.</p>
+
+<p>“This,” the priest whispers, “is a present from
+the Dalai Lama.”</p>
+
+<p>A great festival takes place in summer in honor of
+this god, who will rule a myriad years hence, when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>
+the race of giants descends to kill mankind and
+to people the earth with their own kindred. The
+Gigin’s elephant is brought out, and he himself
+takes the lesser dignity of a carriage in deference
+to Maidari. Even the gods of the present must
+honor the gods of the future.</p>
+
+<p>The Gigin’s throne is to the left of the statue.
+It has triple silk cushions. Around are twelve
+colossi of Buddha, some ten feet in height, and entirely
+gilt save for the red lips and the eyes. The
+hands are held in differing positions, folded, outstretched,
+pointing. Here and there a silk scroll is
+hung.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the sanctuary are lined with shelves
+like a book-store, and these are loaded with statuettes
+of the ten thousand gods.</p>
+
+<p>We tiptoe back the way we came, and are soon in
+the street of the monastery. The uncle has seen us
+safely away. We betake our route from the Mongol
+toward the Russian section.</p>
+
+<p>“You saw the throne cushion of Dalai Lama?”
+the wool-merchant asks. “They have put it back
+now. Gigin kicked it out of the temple when Dalai
+Lama left. The Angleski drove Dalai Lama from
+Lhasa, and he came to Urga to visit Gigin, because
+here is the second great Buddhist holy place. Now
+Dalai Lama is very monkish, very austere, and always
+prays and fasts. But our Gigin”—here follows
+another expansive smile—“Gigin rode out
+with his Council, the <i>shabniars</i>, and took some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>
+of Pokrin’s best champagne in the cart, for they
+would not have it in Lhasa. Dalai Lama was very
+stiff. Gigin asked him, ‘Have a drink!’ Dalai did
+not understand, for drink is forbidden. Then he
+asked him again, and Dalai Lama refused rebukingly.
+They came to Gigin’s palace at the foot of
+the Holy Mountain, which is built like the Russian
+consulate. After the prostrations, Gigin said to
+Dalai that he had come far and few women were on
+the road and those mostly old and ugly. Dalai Lama
+refused that too. Cigarettes and snuff, and canned
+tomatoes he offered, but Dalai Lama refused them
+all. Then, in the Assembly of the Lamas, Dalai rebuked
+Gigin, and made him sit below his servants in
+penalty, for Dalai Lama is more of a god than Gigin.
+All the pilgrims came to offer gifts to Dalai Lama,
+and Gigin did not get his. For months Dalai Lama
+stayed here. Afterwards he went away to China.
+Gigin came to this temple then and kicked Dalai
+Lama’s throne, throwing it down. He celebrated in
+the summer palace when Dalai Lama left, for he was
+very happy.”</p>
+
+<p class="gtb">******</p>
+
+<p>Mongol Urga is left behind, and we reënter the
+Russian town. A hail from one of the passers-by is
+not long delayed. “Will you have <i>chai</i>?” he questions.
+He is an alert-looking Russian, smartly clad
+in a <i>shuba</i> of green leather trimmed with sable.</p>
+
+<p>“Must we eat any more dinners to-day?” we
+inquire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Only tea,” is the reply. It is not quite reassuring.</p>
+
+<p>“That is Pokrin, the one that sells to the Gigin,”
+the wool-merchant whispers. “Go with him: he can
+tell you some tales.”</p>
+
+<p>Obviously one must not miss the acquaintanceship
+of this modern Ganymede, cup-bearer of the
+many-bubbled French nectar and jugged ambrosia;
+so on we march to his compound.</p>
+
+<p>Pokrin was on his way to a business appointment;
+but no rendezvous will interfere with prospective
+<i>chai</i>. He hangs his coat back on its peg,
+bids his wife start up the samovar, and produces the
+vodka-bottle. Yes, his family is very well, and he
+is very busy buying hides. We talk up and down
+and roundabout numberless themes, and at last
+venture: “The Gigin!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, the Gigin was here to see me only a week
+ago.”</p>
+
+<p>We bow our recognition of the host’s great importance,
+and he is started; soon he buckles down
+into the story.</p>
+
+<p>“The Buddha came up in his carriage with his
+lamas riding beside him, and they tied their horses
+all around here in front. Then Gigin came in, walking
+softly because of his gout, and he said, ‘Let us
+drink together like friends, without quarreling.’</p>
+
+<p>“I brought out the drinks, and we sat down,—Gigin
+and I with the lamas around us. Gigin likes
+best the strong drinks,—not vodka, but cognac
+and sweet champagne. Very many bottles we drank,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>
+Gigin and I. And at last I fell asleep. But Gigin
+drank still. Then he too fell asleep. In the morning
+the lamas carried him to his carriage, and back he
+drove to the palace, with the people lying down in
+the street as he passed. All the next day I had a
+very bad pain in my forehead, and it felt large.”</p>
+
+<p>By non-Siberian standards Alexsimevich should
+be on the way to similar symptoms in the near
+future. For the purveyor to the Divinity has produced
+an assorted collection of his wares which
+are being sampled with due diligence. Cold meats
+and wheat-bread appear on the table with the samovar.</p>
+
+<p>“We must eat, or he feels badly,” whispers
+Alexsimevich, as he makes a sandwich, an inch and
+a half through, which is about the depth of brandy
+in the Siberian highball.</p>
+
+<p>Other neighbors drift in as the afternoon wears
+on. The talk turns to that greatest of local events,
+the Metropolitan Handicap of Mongolia, under the
+high patronage of the Living God. Things become
+decidedly stimulating, and the recitals lively. Everybody
+is living over the excitement, ejaculating and
+gesticulating. The child-quality in their minds keeps
+so vivid their impressions, that the scenes are projected
+almost as by a cinematograph.</p>
+
+<p>From hundreds of miles around, the herdsmen
+have assembled. The plain before the city is a riot
+of color, as the horsemen ride here and there. In
+the centre of the field is the gay pavilion for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>
+yellow-robed bishops and cardinals from distant
+lamaseries, guests of the great Gigin.</p>
+
+<p>All through the morning, hundreds of riders and
+horses have been making for the starting-point,
+twenty <i>li</i> (about seven miles) distant. The jockeys
+are the smallest boys available: young red-cheeked
+lamas, perched bareback on the shaggy racing-ponies.
+The monks, who are stewards of the course,
+have with much shouting finally, at the hour, lined
+them up in a long row, facing Urga. One thousand
+ponies have been reported as entering. It is a regiment
+of boys. A signal starts the whole cavalcade
+together. The thousand small jockeys shout at
+once. A thousand whips come down on flanks. Two
+thousand heels dig into the ponies’ withers. Over
+the irregular plain tear the racers, dodging around
+gullies, stumbling in marmot-holes, galloping helter-skelter
+amid furious yells. At length they come
+within sight of Urga. Crowds, mounted, have gone
+out to follow them in. The shouts redouble, the
+people become frantic; the riders yell at one another,
+and the horses are as wild as their masters.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shabniars</i> and cardinals get to their feet as the
+cavalcade appears. The Living God’s heavy eyes
+brighten up with interest. His chief soul-mate
+waves a jewelled hand and chatters excitedly with
+a lama of the guard. The foremost rider is close at
+hand now, the jockey, wriggling like an eel and almost
+on the neck of his pony, yelling and slashing.
+The field thunders behind. The leader nears the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>
+pavilion, his pony is on the fierce final spurt,—a last
+cut of the whip, and in triumph, amid the deafening
+roar of the populace, the winner passes the line.
+Many other riders come in at his heels, but most
+straggle off to either side of the course when they
+see that the finish is lost. The victor is caught up by
+the priests and is brought before Gigin, where he
+lies on his stomach in adoration. He receives a gift,
+and is pensioned for life. The horse’s owner receives
+a good price for the animal, which is added to the
+Gigin’s stable. The mule-cart of the Buddha is then
+brought up and he is loaded in. The yellow bishops
+mount their steeds, and back to his palace goes the
+Living God. Thus ends the great Urga race.</p>
+
+<p>There are other athletic tournaments during the
+season; most important of these is the championship
+wrestling-bout, which every year decides
+whether laymen or clergy are the better sportsmen.
+The Gigin’s pavilion fronts a ring, with dressing-tents
+on either side. From one emerges a layman.
+He advances by huge jumps and prostrates himself
+before the deity. Next, palms on the ground, like a
+great frog, he leaps into the ring. The chosen lama
+executes the same pass from the other side. They
+meet, jumping like game-cocks, with quick breaks.
+At length the clergyman gets a leg. In an instant he
+heaves up on it, and over goes the black man,—out!
+The whole assembled populace raises a stupendous
+howl. Bout succeeds bout, with differing
+champions and varying issues. Partisanship is intense.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>
+The clergy usually win in these matches, and
+have long held the championship.</p>
+
+<p>One guest tells to-night of the photographer who
+bribed a lama, and got the first photograph of
+Gigin. The tale runs that this man, a Russian, secured
+admission among a crowd of pilgrims, and
+snapped the god, unawares, among his entourage
+of priests. This photograph, enlarged and colored,
+is the one now hawked to the Mongols, and which
+they set up for worship among their other gods.
+The lama was beheaded, they say. That was several
+years ago, however: since then Gigin has been
+photographed at the races and elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>At last we break away from the group and return
+to our lodgings at Varlakoff’s.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f29">
+<img src="images/fig29.jpg" alt="lama">
+<p class="caption">A GRAND LAMA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>We are informed next day that among the invitations
+so lightly and uncomprehendingly accepted
+was one to take dinner with the mayor of
+the Russian settlement. We are expected therefore
+toward evening. So, late in the day, we gird
+on our greatcoat and move out heavily. Down the
+street we fare forth to the house of the host. A
+fine well-fed man is this mayor, with the cordial
+grip and the slow smile of good-fellowship. He wears
+a very long beard. He has taken a fancy to the embroidered
+green and pink Chinese ear-tabs as a substitute
+for the big fur cap of his own people. The
+ear-tabs are about as appropriate to his burgomaster
+build as baby-blue ribbon on the tail of a
+fighting bull-pup. Otherwise, deerskin boots and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>hunting-coat, he is the real Siberian. In the mayor’s
+large sitting-room, along the wall against which the
+table stands, is a rank of bottles of divers heights
+and fatness, like recruits out for their drill. The
+samovar of shining brass leads the array. Four
+different-sized glasses stand at each plate, and the
+intervening area is covered with platters of sausages,
+cheese, bread, sprats of every conceivable variety,
+and a medley of cold <i>zakuska</i> dishes.</p>
+
+<p>The mayor reaches for the vodka.</p>
+
+<p>“Please, none!” we blurt out.</p>
+
+<p>The mayor looks hurt. Then an idea takes form
+in his head, and he shouts something to his Chinese
+boy, who promptly shuffles through the door into
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the window we catch a glimpse of him turning
+into the establishment across the way, where
+Pokrin’s clerk sells the wherewithal to make a
+Russian holiday. The Chinese boy emerges with
+a bottle, and trots back across the street with the
+curious gait made requisite by the unattached thick-soled
+slippers. He shuffles into the dining-room and
+makes space for one more bottle. Whiskey! The
+mayor has bethought himself of the English label,
+and has sent for it, on the theory that not to drink,
+like not to sleep, is unbelievable.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently one must again sidestep, so <i>chai</i> is
+besought and got down. Our virtue is rewarded,
+for the host smiles and is content.</p>
+
+<p>“Poor Pokrin!” he says presently, reminded of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span>
+the man by the beverage. “He made over a hundred
+thousand roubles from selling things to the
+Gigin. But now he can’t think of any more things
+to sell. You saw the Gigin’s new droshky? But that
+isn’t like selling an elephant or an electric-light
+plant. Pokrin is down to pelicans and fountain-pens.”</p>
+
+<p>He shakes his head sympathetically, and reaches
+anew for the vodka-bottle. He goes on reminiscing,
+half-cynically, half-regretfully, of the past, while
+dinner to serve the appetite of a Cyclops keeps
+coming on.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the repast cries arise outside. A
+Mongol with a flow of language is heard calling
+aloud for “<i>Bulun Darga!</i>” (fat policeman.)</p>
+
+<p>“They are after me,” says the mayor resignedly.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongol comes hurtling in, pushing past the
+Chinese boy.</p>
+
+<p>“Fat policeman,” he cries; “Red Mustache
+and Long Nose and Blue Coat are drunk, and are
+disturbing my <i>gir</i>. Come quickly, O Lord, fat policeman.”</p>
+
+<p>The mayor sighs. “I go”; then he turns to us.
+“Will you accompany me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Gladly, if we don’t have to eat any more.”</p>
+
+<p>The mayor considers this a back-handed compliment
+to the amplitude of his hospitality and
+smiles.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>V period</i>, it is not far.”</p>
+
+<p>He puts on his huge greatcoat, draws on his ponderous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>
+boots, takes a heavy stick, and in vividly
+embroidered Chinese ear-tabs stands ready to follow
+the Mongol. We shoulder open the felted door.
+From the low-ceilinged recess between this and the
+outer door he produces two other big sticks, like
+pilgrim’s staves. These he hands to his visitors.</p>
+
+<p>“For the dogs!” he explains.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongol’s hut is soon reached. It is in frightful
+disorder, and vodka-bottles are strewn around.
+The mayor looks up in a little book to see if Krasni,
+young Agueff, and Pugachev are not, as he suspects,
+the men who in native nomenclature are
+called Red Mustache, Blue Coat, and Long Nose.
+He finds that he has rightly surmised.</p>
+
+<p>“I know them,” says the mayor. “They will
+come around to me in the morning. I will tell them
+to make the Mongol satisfaction. When they come
+back and say he is satisfied, I tell them to be good
+and to do this no more. <i>Nietchevo!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The irate man is jollied along, and is told that it
+will be fixed up soon. Consoled and soothed by the
+protection of authority, he admits it was not so bad
+after all, and he bids us, as we leave, a grinning
+“<i>Sein oh!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” says the mayor, “will you not come and
+see Urga at night?”</p>
+
+<p>He leads along an icy back street, black as a canyon,
+with the bulging mud-plastered walls, twenty
+feet in height, so close that a cart can barely pass
+between them. Not a light is seen save as a ray<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>
+pierces the shuttered planking of some compound
+door. Distant clanging of cymbals and far-off
+echoes alone break the stillness. Out from the gloom
+of the street we come into the open <i>piazza</i>, half a
+verst wide. It is unshadowed, and less dark. Threading
+the heaped-up refuse we stumble on. The black
+crows, with lancet-like blood-red beaks, which search
+the heaps by day, are gone. The black cannibal dogs
+wake and growl as we approach.</p>
+
+<p>“They are afraid of a stick and don’t generally
+attack people. But, if several do come at you, crouch
+down and stay perfectly quiet,” the mayor counsels.</p>
+
+<p>He then tells of the Cossack who last year, passing
+by a dog that did not move aside, drew his
+sabre and struck the beast. As soon as the other
+dogs smelled the fresh blood, they became mad,
+and half a dozen came at him. He put his back
+against the wall and slashed among them. Many
+he cut and wounded, but more came and more, in
+an instant. Soon he was pulled down, for hundreds
+were upon him.</p>
+
+<p>A big black-furred brute looks insolently at us
+as we pass.</p>
+
+<p>“They do not bury the dead here, you know,”
+the mayor says. “The corpses are taken to the
+mountain northward outside the town, and are left.
+It is cold to-night. There will be death in the
+market-place where the poor lie shelterless. And
+the dogs wait beside them.”</p>
+
+<p>A little way off, where the prayer-wheel stands,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>
+is the twinkling light of a shrine. The new moon
+and the few brilliant stars are frigidly distant.
+They cast a pale white glow now on the dimly outlined
+walls and huts. A beggar, lying unseen, calls
+suddenly as we pass his heap of sodden hides. The
+six-foot Siberian hunter by our side cries out as
+he stumbles over and beholds a something, partly
+eaten, guarded by a great cannibal dog.</p>
+
+<p>If the thought of the rights of man has drowned
+sympathy with all that concerns the government
+of Russia, visit Urga at night, and the Cossack of
+the Russian Guard, swaggering along among the
+Chinamen,—this Cossack whom you have heard
+execrated as the “knout of the Czar,”—will look
+to you like a Highlander at Lucknow. The chance
+to absorb an unwholesome amount of tannin by
+way of a samovar, and to sleep on the floor beside
+the oven in the whitewashed house of Michael
+Varlakoff, will become a privilege more prized than
+any possessed by His Holiness, the Living God.</p>
+
+<p>The section of the Russian colony in which we
+have been lodging consists of five hundred-odd
+traders. They have drifted down from Siberia, and
+on the free ground of taxless Urga have established
+their shops of gaudy European cloths, enameled
+cooking-utensils, candles, and cutlery. These Russians,
+whose whitewashed many-paned houses fill
+a quarter of the town, have not the large interests
+watched by the English merchants, who dot the
+globe with their agencies. They are small Trans-Baikal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>
+shopkeepers, transplanted bodily. They
+build their houses in the Siberian way, and their
+wives toil personally at the oven. They wear
+blouses and felt boots as the house-dress, and keep
+the ikons in the corner. Prosperity is evidenced in
+the striking-clocks, the lamps, nickeled samovars,
+and curtained double windows. But they are still
+not many removes from the peasant.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, another section of Urga’s Russian
+colony, grouped around the consulate, a large
+compound situated a verst east of the Mongol town,
+which was built in 1863, and was fortified in 1900,
+against the Boxers. Within this compound are the
+Orthodox Church, the Russian doctor, the rooms
+of the twenty Cossacks of the Guard, and the great
+empty barracks of the two <i>sotnias</i> that were sent
+here in Boxer times, and were, to the regret of their
+compatriots, later removed. The barracks are still
+ready for any future visits, and the breastwork, with
+its stake and fosse lined with barbed-wire, is
+equal to any force which from a five-hundred-verst
+radius can assemble against it.</p>
+
+<p>In this quarter, the Russian consul is autocrat.
+He is the official notary, without whose stamp no
+contract is legal, the chief of police, the guardian of
+orphans. Around him revolves the society of the few
+dozen mondaines of Urga, whose personnel consists
+of the officials, the garrison officers, and some half-dozen
+commercial agents, single generally, or with
+distant families. They conduct their bachelor quarters<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>
+through Chinese servants, and their cuisines are
+helped out by all the canned and bottled delicacies
+that can be ordered from the frontier. The gold-mines,
+and the extensive wool-trade which produces
+a commerce of twenty to thirty millions, demand
+that first-grade men watch the interests of the great
+companies which handle the business. So men of
+the best cosmopolitan Russian type come, at salaries
+proportioned to their sacrifice. They gather in the
+consulate evenings, or sit in the fenced-off boxes at
+the theatrical performances, which periodically come
+down from Kiahta.</p>
+
+<p>A few families who have made their sixteen-day
+camel-trip from Kalgan and Peking have foregathered
+here with their household goods and gods.</p>
+
+<p>Buttressed by the companionship of books, this
+other class lives in splendidly-furnished rooms, with
+pictures purchased in Paris, statuettes from Rome,
+and grand pianos drawn for days over the passes
+by laboring oxen. One converses at the consulate in
+French, the mother tongue of none, but the common
+tongue of all. The few favored guests, who are invited
+of necessity over and over, play chess endlessly
+in the evenings. The ladies read the latest
+French novels, or sing the songs that distant friends
+have sent from the Riviera or St. Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>They drive in imported carriages and sleighs for
+the afternoon airing, and bemoan Nice and Monte
+Carlo in winter over the pages of Zola’s “Rome.”
+The men subscribe extensively to English, French,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>
+German, and Russian periodicals. They invite such
+relatives as can be persuaded for lengthy stays, and
+shower a guest with the hospitality of old claret,
+caviar, and the varied courtesies which the rarity
+of visitors from the world inspires. They take long
+adventurous horseback trips in the dull season,—explore
+forgotten monasteries, study the Tibetan
+inscriptions, print monographs on the folk-tales,
+and dream of promotion and Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>The consulate has one uniquely circumstanced
+personality, whose career is a romance of Eastern
+adventure. Born in the Baltic provinces, he studied
+in the Oriental training-schools, and entered the
+Russian diplomatic service at Peking. Here he applied
+himself indefatigably, until he knew the
+Chinese language as did hardly another European.
+He could write the ten thousand ideographs, and
+could speak flawlessly the Mandarin and the popular
+dialects. He went to Mongolia and mastered its
+languages also,—its spoken idioms and its written
+grapevine letters. Then, with his diplomatic entrée,
+his knowledge of men and tongues, and the initiative
+of an adventurer, he launched his grand coup in the
+palace of Peking.</p>
+
+<p>He carried away the sole right to the gold of two
+<i>eimucks</i>, a territory as large as France. Not a Chinaman
+may pan the metal, not a Slav may open a
+mine, save through this concessionnaire. A third of
+all gold washed,—these are his terms to those who
+would lease from him; just double what he pays the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span>
+Peking Yamen for his privilege. Fortune upon fortune
+he is reported to have made, and the Chinese
+gold-washers and the Russian miners who lease from
+him have gathered their own stakes, too, despite the
+Cæsar’s tribute which he exacpts of all that they
+produce.</p>
+
+<p>He has spent large sums in bringing down machinery,
+to do on a great scale what the shallow
+veins of ore demanded should be done on a limited
+scale. An abandoned gold-dredge lies far up the Iro
+River, transported piecemeal at exorbitant expense
+over the hills. Traction-engines are here, which
+could not cope with the Mongol roads. They consumed
+forty days going one hundred and twenty
+miles to the largest mine. Now they lie rusting in
+their sheds. Thousands of ox-carts were engaged for
+hauling in the various purchases. River steamers
+and great oil-drills scattered over northern Mongolia
+are relics of his ambition.</p>
+
+<p>His brick house, finely furnished, and his brick
+smelter stand hard-by the consulate. The Russians
+tell of masons imported from Sweden to build them.
+The life-history is a bizarre record of great things
+attempted by a man whose overleaping ambition
+stopped nowhere, and whose expenditures more
+than once brought him down. But his interesting
+meteoric career continues, and twenty <i>pud</i> of gold
+are said still to come down yearly from the mines to
+the most picturesque character in Russian Urga.</p>
+
+<p>We drive down with one of the officials, to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>
+present at another of the events in Urga’s meagre
+happenings—the arrival of the mail.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian post, one delivery a week, crosses
+Mongolia. The horses bring in three mails from the
+Russian frontier. From Urga to Kalgan, the camel-post
+guarded by Cossacks, traverses the great desert
+of Gobi. Save the Imperial Chinese telegraph, it is
+the only regular method of intercourse with the outside
+world. The two thousand-odd roubles a year
+paid by Russia as a subsidy are a small expenditure
+for the opportunity of accustoming the people to
+her service, and for controlling the avenues of news
+and communication.</p>
+
+<p>The post-office is at the consulate, and a new postmaster
+has just been installed. Thereby hangs a
+tale which is poured into your ear before your stay
+in Urga has been much protracted.</p>
+
+<p>A telegram came from Irkutsk to seize and bring
+to Verhneudinsk as propagandists the postmaster’s
+son and daughter—twenty-one and eighteen.
+Twenty Cossacks surrounded the house at three in
+the morning. The two were arrested, taken to the
+mayor’s house, and lodged there. The next day they
+were started on the trail to Kiahta. Once over the
+border, there would be no more hope. Quickly
+the leading men of the colony assembled and telegraphed
+the Russian ambassador at Peking, knowing
+that if the ambassador had official cognizance, he
+could not safely authorize an arrest on Chinese soil
+by the Cossacks of the Guard. The response was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>
+delayed, but there was pressure enough upon the
+consul to get the prisoners held at the mining-camp
+beyond Iro until the answer was received. At
+length the ambassador replied that Chinese suzerainty
+must be respected. The two were free. But
+the father had been advised to resign his post and
+accept a station which was offered him at Kalgan,
+where there were only three Russians, all warranted
+proof against propaganda.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the Russian consulate, six versts, is the
+Chinese town called, as are many of these trading-posts,
+Maimachen, or place of trade. One can get
+there by the solitary Cossack-driven droshky that
+the Russian colony supports. But more appropriately
+we go on pony-back, borrowing an army-saddle
+and a purple fleece-lined <i>shuba</i>, whose skirts reach
+around the knees, and whose long sleeves fold over
+the hands, keeping a rider reasonably warm in cold
+weather.</p>
+
+<p>The houses of Mongol Urga are soon left behind,
+the stockaded lamasery is passed on the left, and
+we are on a big open plain. A few minutes’ gallop
+takes us past the consulate. Beyond it stands a
+compound girded by a stockade of saplings, within
+which are the low mud walls of straggling houses,
+amid which the gilded eaves of a more pretentious
+residence lift themselves above the rest.</p>
+
+<p>A troop of pig-tailed horsemen trots past: the
+white tunics of the riders are covered, back and
+breast, with red ideograph letters, which stigmatize<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>
+the bearers as of the lowest caste—soldiers of the
+Celestial service. The man in front holds aloft a
+gilded pear-shaped standard, and between the ranks
+lumbers a covered cart with closed shutters. The
+cavalcade wheels to the right and turns in, dipping
+the standard as they pass under the gargoyle-tipped
+beams of the gateway. Servants come running out
+of the great house. From the cart is helped down
+a Manchu of pallid face and short gray mustache.
+That wooden house, girded by mud huts, is the seat
+of government for this greatest <i>eimuck</i> in Mongolia.
+The figure robed in cheap blue cotton is lord of life
+and death, the <i>Zinzin</i>, Viceroy for the Emperor of
+China.</p>
+
+<p>This Manchu Viceroy, and his <i>Tu-T’ung</i>, or lieutenant-governor,
+who represents Chinese authority
+in the city of Kalgan, are responsible for the collection
+of tribute, the administration of justice in the
+cities, and the maintenance of order. Over the Chinese
+inhabitants in the Maimachen the rule through
+the agency of the prefect of police appointed by the
+Viceroy is direct and absolute.</p>
+
+<p>Over the Mongols, Chinese rule is exercised in
+an irregular nebulous fashion, with some force in the
+centres and almost none in the outlying districts,
+where the old nomad organization of society, with
+princes, barons, or <i>tai-tsi</i>, clergy, and ordinary black
+men, still persists. A code of Chinese laws exists,
+but in general justice is dealt out by the local
+princes, or <i>guns</i>, who receive also the cattle-tax in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span>some districts, and who go by turns for a year to
+Peking in symbol of homage.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f30">
+<img src="images/fig30.jpg" alt="mandarin">
+<p class="caption">CHINESE MANDARIN <span class="pad">GIGIN, THE LIVING BUDDHA</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>These Mongol <i>guns</i>, ruling over each of the <i>hushouns</i>,
+or counties, which compose the <i>eimucks</i>, are
+under feudal obligations to the Chinese Emperor.
+Their visible subjection to China consists of ceremonial
+visits with tribute, for which the Emperor’s
+return gifts are of far greater value. A total of
+one hundred and twenty thousand <i>lens</i> of silver
+($90,000) goes yearly from the Emperor to the
+nomad nobility. A khan of the first rank receives
+two thousand <i>lens</i> ($1500) and twenty-five pieces of
+silk; lesser gentry in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>This primitive aristocracy lives in barbaric state,
+with splendid carpets, silver-inlaid furniture, and
+jeweled accoutrements. The women are sometimes
+very good-looking. They are laden with ornaments,
+furs and silks, and have a spot of carmine on each
+cheek, which is the prerogative of a princess. But
+the normal imagination does not go beyond the gir
+as a dwelling. Finely fitted it may be, yet it remains
+a one-room hut, with the open brazier in its centre.
+Their wealth is in ancestral ornaments, and in the
+flocks and herds of their private domains. Their one
+relic and memorial of a past sway lies in the custom
+under which the Chinese rulers call by the old Mongol
+names the <i>eimucks</i>, which were the ancestors’
+kingdoms. That of which Urga is capital still bears
+the name of Tu-she-tu.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongol lords are responsible for the feudal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>
+army, and a caste of bannermen exists, who are
+paid nominally two ounces of silver per month and
+a supply of grain, with the corresponding duty of
+keeping their bows and arrows in order. In the
+Tu-she-tu khanate of the eastern Khalka tribes,
+there are twenty banners, each under an hereditary
+<i>yassak</i>, or tributary prince. In 1900 some banners of
+the Barukhs turned out to fight Russians, but they
+made no showing whatever, and hurriedly returned
+after a skirmish with the Cossacks. Spears and
+arrows are the only weapons the Mongol army can
+show.</p>
+
+<p>While this feudal system applies in general to the
+whole <i>eimuck</i>, in Urga the Gigin has a unique position.
+The city is a great monastery, practically all
+of the permanent native population of fifteen thousand
+being priests. The laymen who are there are
+mostly pilgrims, or dependents upon the Church.
+Over these the Gigin is master, so that Urga is
+known as “The Holy Living God’s Encampment.”</p>
+
+<p>Over the Russians and the Buriat tribesmen, the
+Chinese have no actual sway, and from them they
+collect no taxes. The Russian consul is dictator
+to this little flock; and behind his stockade, where
+the tricolor waves, rally the Orthodox in times of
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>Across from the <i>Zinzin’s</i> doorway is a spiked
+stockade. Inside, where they have been thrust
+through a hole just big enough for a man’s body, are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>
+the miserable criminals. In the big pit dug with
+their naked hands, the wretches cower, shelterless,
+under the terrible cold of winter. They live or die
+there, sometimes fed by the charity of Mongols,
+sometimes forgotten, sometimes purchasing miserable
+fragments of offal with the unstolen remnants of
+the prison allowance. Few waste sympathy on the
+inmates. The low level of existence of those outside
+makes the place perhaps less terrible than it would
+be to people who had known other conditions. It is
+a grim Chinese jest, this loathsome prison for those
+who have stolen bread in the market-place, set opposite
+the palace of the grafting governor who has
+filched the tribute of Tu-she-tu.</p>
+
+<p>From the Chinese city now, there begins to come
+the distant throb of drums and clash of cymbals.
+Three gorgeous Mongols gallop past in their splendid
+free-reined horsemanship. A sentry stalks to
+the door of the stockaded prison, and looks toward
+the gray walls and temples of Maimachen. The procession
+of the New Moon is to pass to-day.</p>
+
+<p>You leap onto your little Mongol riding-pony, and
+spurring him into a gallop, hasten along the way to
+the Chinese city. He tears down the broad road.
+The resplendent trotting horsemen take the pace as
+a challenge, and yell joyfully for a race as their whips
+come down on their own horses’ flanks. Mongol
+girls walking hand in hand along the highway scatter
+and call out as the riders clatter by. It is contagious.
+Soon a score of riders are shouting, shaking bridles,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>
+and lashing ponies, and it is a cavalcade of racers
+that gallops up to the gate of Maimachen.</p>
+
+<p>How different is this Chinese settlement from
+Mongol Urga! It is a magnified replica of the city
+at the frontiers. Instead of the straggly avenues a
+hundred yards broad, with cañon-like alleys flanked
+by high mud walls, all the streets are so narrow that
+two strides cross them. They are lined with miniature
+booths. Through the bars of their paper-paned
+windows one sees the little delicately-tinted pictures
+of pagodas and of Chinese girls, in quaint sweeping
+outlines. Red and black and gold, the New Year
+placards flame on every post and wall. Lanterns
+are hung before the gateways; green saplings stand
+sentinel by the doors; and in the unshuttered compounds
+innumerable lines of gaudy banners are
+seen, strung from side to side across the courtyards.
+From the houses come from time to time a thrumming
+and a picking of strings in minor music,
+broken by an occasional clang of cymbals or a
+drone of beaten drums. You pass a temple of marvelously
+carved wood, wrought into curves and
+flowers and arabesques, with eaves turning out into
+open-mouthed dragons. Everything is brilliant in
+paint and gilt—a blazing kaleidoscope of color.</p>
+
+<p>In a friendly courtyard the horses are tied, and
+you walk into the teeming streets. All the Chinese
+of Maimachen and half the Mongols of Urga have
+come out to-day. Here is a little shifty-eyed Chinese
+clerk, in his low shoes, with white soles several<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>
+inches thick, his white stockings, tied at the ankle,
+showing below the baggy trousers.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a young Mongol lama, who hails you gleefully
+with a Russian word which he has learned from
+a Buriat, and points out where the procession will
+emerge. A Mongol woman passes, gorgeously
+dressed in flowered yellow silk, with red, sable-cuffed
+sleeves so long as nearly to touch the ground,
+and her head cuirassed with the burden of silver
+ornaments. She smiles at the burly Mongol camel-driver
+who so openly admires her.</p>
+
+<p>A Chinese merchant, with red-buttoned cap, attended
+by a servant, is pushing through the crowd.
+His looks are surly; perhaps he is thinking of the
+whereabouts of his own establishment in this carnival.</p>
+
+<p>Though the rich and wifeless Chinese may acquire
+Mongol companions, they cannot buy or give
+affection. For a poor Mongol, who has the sincerity
+and humanness which the Chinaman withholds,
+one of these Mongol concubines will either deceive
+her master, or, if he object too vigorously, will strip
+herself of his presents and go to her lover’s <i>gir</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A big Celestial with a fuse comes hastily through
+the gateway from which the procession is to emerge.
+The crash of his firecrackers startles the Mongol
+ponies pushed close along the houses. Beneath the
+multi-colored gateway, next pour out a score of
+horsemen with pennanted spears. They ride two by
+two, in white coats with red letters on their breasts.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span>
+Then comes a crowd of footmen, who fill the street
+in a torrent. The curious Mongols press to each
+side, and watch the procession of their alien overlords.
+Two ranks are robed in vivid red, and carry poles
+with big gold knobs. Blue-coated Chinamen, with
+cymbals and shrilling fifes, follow; then come more
+horsemen; then the great silken umbrella, and a
+gray-mustached dignitary on horseback,—the
+chief of police; next, more fifers and wand-carriers,
+six abreast. With fireworks and clashing music,
+the vivid ranks in red and blue, and yellow and
+gold, and green and purple, and every other conceivable
+combination of hues, make their way around
+the stockade and back again through the gated city.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd seems to be trending now toward a
+brilliantly colored archway spanning the main
+street. With the Mongol holiday-makers we follow
+along into a cloistered courtyard flanked by peaked
+temple-like houses. A crowd of Chinese is pressing
+around some one clad in blue, who has just stepped
+out between the beater of a tom-tom and an artist
+with a big pair of cymbals. A preliminary flourish
+introduces the performer—a pasty-faced young
+Chinaman. He starts a rhythmic chant whose cadence
+is within a note or two of one of the old crooning
+Negro melodies of our South. Over and over
+again he chants it. A poet this is. He has conned
+his verses, and now comes out to sing them. He
+ends with a special swirl in what is evidently a very
+comic climax. The drum and cymbals crash out
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span>once more, and another chanter comes—this one
+old and feeble, with a curiously penetrating voice.
+He drones a long hexameter-footed epic, in which
+the harsh Chinese <i>gh</i> and <i>wh</i> sounds are not so
+coarsely enunciated as in the poem of the first reciter.
+“That is one of the old legend-singers,” you
+are told. It is such a ballad as Homer sang, or the
+Welsh bards chanted. It is the poetry and the history
+of the long past, the immemorial past, far before
+the infancy of other nations; for China keeps alive
+her antiquity, and in her old age never forgets.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f31">
+<img src="images/fig31.jpg" alt="archway">
+<p class="caption">CHINESE ARCHWAY, URGA MAIMACHEN</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This week there can be no buying or selling. The
+Moon must be honored, but visits are in order.
+Your friend brings you to meet a leading Chinese
+merchant. At the house, a grille of thick wooden
+bars runs down to the street level from the eaves
+just above one’s head. Looking through them, one
+can see over the little square window the most delicately-traced
+pictures on a white background. The
+panes are of paper, all save one, which is of glass, so
+that the owner may see if, coming down the street,
+any one turns and climbs the three steps into the
+ordinarily wide-open door of his house.</p>
+
+<p>The home of our host, which is likewise his office,
+is finely fitted up and faultlessly clean. His light-blue
+silk robes are immaculate. Two servants wait
+at table, bringing in the best of China tea and
+French “petit-beurre” biscuits for our delectation.
+Everything is appetizing and orderly.</p>
+
+<p>As we are sitting over the cups with the Chinese<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>
+merchant, the boy comes to announce visitors, and
+two blue-robed fellow countrymen enter. One has
+a strip of light-blue silk laid over his two arms,
+which he stretches out. The host extends his own
+arms and receives it, then gives it back to the newcomer,
+who goes down on one knee and again presents
+it. The merchant takes it a second time and
+bows, this time retaining it. The two guests bend
+and leave the room. “New Year’s presents,” the
+merchant explains. Again the boy comes in and announces
+a guest. A Mongol messenger enters, goes
+down on one knee, and presents a red slip, black-lettered.
+“Visiting-card,” the host explains. Then,
+with a smile, “White, like yours, not polite.” He
+accepts this too. “<i>Ch’ou Ta-tzu!</i>” (the dirty Tatar!)
+he says as the latter leaves.</p>
+
+<p>The calls continue, and our visit. The host is
+charming, cultured, educated; he speaks English
+well, and lacks in no attention. But you wonder if,
+when you leave, he is not going to murmur about
+you, “Yong-kwei-tsz!” (foreign devil!)</p>
+
+<p>Throughout all intercourse with these Chinese,
+one has always the uneasy consciousness that one is
+doubtless, as with the card, unwittingly offending.
+There are three hundred rules of ceremony, three
+thousand formulæ of behavior, regulated by a classic
+tradition. The ritual is so drilled into the Chinese
+as to become instinctive. Celestial breeding would
+dictate that the little formalism which precedes a
+rubber, “May I play to hearts, if you please?”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span>
+be stretched to cover every action of life. The left,
+not the right, is the place of honor, and to enter
+a room facing wrongly is a slight. An irregular
+method of folding a red New-Year’s card, and the
+failure in writing to raise one character above
+the level of the rest, are breaches of etiquette.</p>
+
+<p>For our race there is always felt, behind the soul-mask
+of Chinese eyes, a contempt. The kindness
+of our host to-day is unfailing. Yet we are not at
+ease or sure of the ground. Errors, condoned to
+keep face, are often inwardly resented. If you put
+your hat on the Mongol’s altar, everybody in the
+hut will yell out for you to take it off. When you
+remove it, they will nod understandingly as the interpreter
+explains that the ignorant foreigner transgressed
+inadvertently. Forthwith all is forgotten in
+an enthusiastic discussion of the last case of botts
+among the horses. But with these Chinese one
+can never tell if, by taking a chop-stick between
+the wrong fingers, one has not intimated that the
+host’s grandfather was a cross-eyed coolie soldier.
+No one will challenge or set a man right, but the
+breach will be silently resented, though the tea continues
+to be smilingly offered.</p>
+
+<p>The old-time Chinese dealers at Urga grew enormously
+wealthy in the tea-trade to Kiahta. These
+have mostly gone back to China. But there are still
+a number of the better-class merchants whose wares
+are sold to the traders and by them to the Mongols.
+The house of Liu-Shang-Yuan claims two hundred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span>
+years of establishment. The Urga people are still
+prosperous, for great sums in religious tribute come
+from all Mongolia to this Lourdes of Lamaism.
+There are also many Chinamen who make large
+profits from wool.</p>
+
+<p>Of a total trade in Urga estimated at twenty-five
+million roubles per year, nine tenths is in the hands
+of Celestials. The remainder is Russian, for the
+Mongols are entirely without a merchant class. Of
+the exports, wool is the main item. Some two hundred
+thousand <i>puds</i> are sent from Urga annually,
+four fifths of which go to the United States.
+While cotton cloth, cutlery, kitchen-utensils, and
+other European goods come down from Russia, the
+bulk of the imports are brought from China by caravan,
+through Kalgan. Silks come from Shanghai,
+and tea from Hankow, passing via Peking. There is
+trade, too, with Ulasati in western Mongolia. It
+is the centre of a fur and hide country which is
+isolated from outlets toward Russia by the high
+mountains, and must send caravans to Kiahta. Its
+communication with China is either by Urga and
+Kalgan, or by the caravan-route further south.</p>
+
+<p>When the holiday-time is over we see more of the
+Chinese traders. Sitting in the shops, with one of
+these, and glancing out over the little counter of the
+sales-room, we converse as the customers come and
+go.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian in his shop shows all he has of wares,
+the red and magenta cloths, the enameled kettles,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span>
+the cutlery and sweetmeats. But the Chinaman
+wraps his goods in hieroglyphic-covered papers, and
+all that can be seen are rows of long-stemmed brass-bowled
+pipes, and an array of silver and bronze teapots
+on shelves at one side. Very rare things, too,
+our Chinese host can produce. Shanghai silks of
+finest texture, ten roubles the <i>arsheen</i>; jade mouthpieces
+for the pipes at a hundred <i>taels</i>; Hankow
+tea culled from the tenderest shoots. Everything is
+labeled and systematized in the Chinaman’s place,
+and he goes at once to the packet which he wishes to
+show.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen Chinese, with bright blue silk jackets
+over their black surtouts, invade now the home of
+the merchant. The red knot on their black skull-caps
+and the length of their queues and finger-nails
+show them to be men of some importance. They
+take off the bright-colored ear-tabs as they enter.
+They are down to buy wool. To-day they visit,
+next week they will trade. Then all but one will sit
+in the outer shop, while the spokesman alone will go
+into the inner room and confer with the merchant.
+From time to time the spokesman will go back to
+the party and consult, till in the end the bargain is
+made. They will all hold to the agreement, too,
+whichever way the market goes. For in this the
+Chinese are inflexibly honest. A local Chinaman
+dispatched a mounted messenger the six versts to
+Urga, to return to us twenty kopecks which he had
+overcharged by a slip of his abacus-adder.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span></p>
+
+<p>Yet the Scotch engineers saw shells in the arsenals
+loaded with clay when the native troops went
+against the Japanese. The English miners in the
+Province of Shan-tung have had their profits cut
+to nothing by the official “squeezes,” and Chinese
+have bought in the depreciated stocks.</p>
+
+<p>The ethic code of the squeeze seems to be very
+nice. It is a point of honor, almost always scrupulously
+observed, that the first-fruits of official graft
+go to repaying the one who advanced the money
+to buy the office. A Chinaman, who could not be
+trusted to administer honestly a trust fund of a
+hundred <i>taels</i>, will repay this obligation to his
+backer. Thus must he keep face.</p>
+
+<p>From the tax-appraiser who numbers the sheep
+to the civil governor who receives the lumps of
+silver tribute for transmission to Peking, every
+official gets his squeeze. They say in the <i>eimuck</i> of
+Ulasati, where sables are part of the tribute, that
+the officials take out the best furs and put back
+poor skins to keep the number the same; and in
+Urga, that the enormously rich administration takes
+a Tammany third of the tribute. There has never
+been a viceroy yet, it is reported, who has left
+Mongolia poor. Yet each official plays straight
+with his backer, his “belly-band.” Very curious
+is this race, and there live few Westerners who can
+at all understand it.</p>
+
+<p>We ride back in the evening from the Chinese
+city (for none may stay for the night), buried in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span>
+recurring reveries. How brightly glitters the face,
+and how barren is the heart in Maimachen! Never
+the thousand ties of kinship and affection, never the
+thrill of citizenship, never the love of a home. How
+little generosity, too, or sympathy for the people of
+the land! The Mongols are but “tame barbarians,”
+as of old were stigmatized the tributary Formosans.
+Now and then one finds a Chinaman out among the
+nomad Mongols. Perhaps he may be a watcher at a
+distant temple, perhaps a telegraph-operator on the
+two lines that go, one to Kalgan and Peking, one to
+Kiahta and Russia. Always he is something solitary—different.
+There is an almost sinister splendor
+in this aloofness—this self-sufficiency of walled
+cities and compounds where none but Chinese may
+dwell. What a rebuff of nationhood in the gates
+that shut out at night all save the alien outlanders!
+What contempt in the law that no woman of China
+may come among these Mongol people, as if the
+very air were contamination! How the natives are
+silently despised, whose bodies in death go to the
+dogs, while the Chinaman’s, in a casket, is sent back
+over the long leagues to his home!</p>
+
+<p>The homeless, wifeless, Chinese city, with the
+quarter of Mongol women without the walls,—it
+is in many ways typical of all Chinese rule in Mongolia.
+For, as the Celestial trader defaults in the
+duty of marrying the Mongol mother of his children,
+so China defaults in many of the duties that are
+inherent in suzerainty. One resents the heavy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span>
+Chinese yoke on the necks of these simple frank-hearted
+Mongolians. They are a race of great good-humored
+children, and they are exploited while
+disdained.</p>
+
+<p>We are thinking of this unfairness as we ride back
+along the road to Urga. Behind is the distant
+Chinese city, the Manchu Viceroy’s straggling
+palace, the picketed prison-stockade. Before is the
+drooping tricolor banner of the Czar, and the white
+and green of the Greek Church, with its far-seen
+golden crucifix. A crowd of brilliantly-clad Mongols,
+lamas and laymen and girls and youths, are
+strolling back from Maimachen. They are laughing
+and chattering, and in uncouth playfulness are
+pushing one another about across the road.</p>
+
+<p>Half a dozen of the <i>Zinzin’s</i> Chinese foot-guard
+are likewise coming from Urga, stolid-faced, superior.
+As they reach the tumultuous band it sinks into
+silence, and the men crowd to the side of the road
+that the Chinese may pass.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f32">
+<a href="images/fig32big.jpg">
+<img src="images/fig32.jpg" alt="wall">
+</a>
+<p class="caption">THE GREAT WALL</p>
+<p class="caption"><span class="greentext sans">(click image to enlarge)</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>They tramp by without a glance. Then out from
+the Russian barrack-gate swings a little Cossack in
+his great black sheepskin hat, gray tunic, clattering
+curved sabre, boots and spurs. He is one of the
+Zabaikalskaia Buriats, whom Russians call Bratskie,
+the brotherly people. He speaks a tongue so similar
+to the Mongol that all these people can understand
+him. They look up to him as a rich relative,
+fortunate in overflowing measure. For on the pilgrimages
+of Buddhist Buriats to Urga, their wives
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span>have told the wondering Mongol women of the
+sewing-machines which they have at home to stitch
+linings, and have allowed the visitors to peep into
+their mirrors. The Mongol men have admired the
+Buriats’ breech-loading rifle, worth six horses at
+current quotations. They have enviously heard tell
+that in Russia one pays no cow-<i>alba</i>, but the young
+men get a uniform and free food when they ride
+out to give their Cossack service to the Czar. They
+have listened to Buriat boasts of the warm houses of
+Siberia, and stacks of hay, and stored-up harvests.
+So Mongols smile when the Buriats come to their
+<i>girs</i>. They say, “Rich smooth Buriats! Great lords!
+Give candle, give sugar, give tobacco, give vodka.”</p>
+
+<p>Has not a little Zabaikalskaia Buriat reason to
+swagger when he starts from the Russian barrack-gate
+to see his lady in Urga? And should a Cossack
+of the Czar step aside for a Chinaman in the shadow
+of the Eagles? Head erect, with a look to right
+and then to left, hand on sabre, he swings straight
+down the centre of the road, and right through the
+Chinese soldiers. Without dispute they open a way.
+He chucks a not unwilling girl under the chin as he
+passes the Mongols, and he is good-naturedly hailed
+by the rest: “Hello, Cossack! Why so fast? She
+has gone away with a lama.” And he goes a bit
+faster toward Urga.</p>
+
+<p>These Cossacks, terrible in war, friends and
+equals with the conquered in peace, are those who
+have held the Russian vanguard in this march to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span>
+China,—the march which began when the two
+<i>hatamans</i> of Moscow, commanded by Ivan the
+Terrible, started in 1507 on their long tramp eastward.
+The Cossacks it was whom Yermak led to
+the conquest of Sibir. Through them, in storm and
+stress, despite oppression and convict-gangs, with
+faults and failings, omissions and commissions, the
+advance of Russia has been the way of civilization
+where none could otherwise have come.</p>
+
+<p>“It will mean much when a Russian railway follows
+our trail from Kiahta,” says Alexsimevich;
+and André adds: “They will all be glad when the
+Cossacks come to Kalgan.”</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c7">VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">RUSSIA IN EVOLUTION</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">N</span>EW times have come to Russia with the events
+that have halted her armies. The Slav, looking
+and reaching outward, has been hurled violently
+back upon himself, and he turns to look inward.
+The stream of Slavic civilization still flows eastward.
+But now held back at the frontiers, its tide is rising
+behind the impounding barriers and is lifting on its
+wave the level of national life. Its scour is undermining
+here and there, its laden currents are depositing
+and filling in the interstices of the social
+fabric. The struggle is intensified to achieve representative
+government, to secure administrative
+reform, to relieve the distress of the peasantry. The
+people are in evolutionary throes and are sweeping
+forward in the arts of peace, in the science of government,
+and in the myriad lines of internal development.</p>
+
+<p>The movements of empire-advance have been
+noted because they have been conspicuously visualized.
+But the economic and social growth have
+been only slightly regarded by our western world,
+intent upon great events, crises, conflicts lost and
+won. The seizure of a hamlet in Manchuria has
+obscured the founding of twenty cities in Siberia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span></p>
+
+<p>The continent-cleaving Siberian Railway has now
+revealed, in the Russian occupation of northern
+Asia, not an exploiting colonial enterprise, but a
+race-movement akin to the European invasion of
+our Aryan ancestors. The upward struggle of a
+people striving to find itself is embodied in imperial
+rescripts and armed revolts, in dumas and dynamite,
+where rival titans grapple for the throw.
+There is now therefore in the world a more earnest
+watching of this metamorphosing Russian people.
+What are the types of civilization, the beliefs, the
+manners of thought, the institutions that are to
+hold mastery over the largest area on the globe
+occupied by a single nation?</p>
+
+<p>To comprehend a people and the course of its
+evolution one must pierce below the surface of
+ephemeral and contemporary incident, and probe
+the primitive racial elements. Russia is to-day
+iceberg-like. The crumbling, upper ice, honeycombed
+by eating waves, is exposed; but submerged
+and unseen is the massive blue block beneath.
+Because rotten surface-structures are obvious, many
+fail to appreciate what lies in the depths. There
+comes understanding for much when one sounds the
+ancient sources in race-history.</p>
+
+<p>From the earliest times Russia lay across the path
+of incessant invasion from Asia. In 1224 the Mongols
+swept down upon the old Scythian plains.
+There were no mountain fastnesses in which the
+sparse population could defend itself. The followers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span>
+of Genghis Khan, through the years that followed,
+destroyed town after town,—Bolgari, Suzdal,
+Yaroslavl, Tver,—devastated Volkynia, and Galicia,
+until all Russia, save Novgorod, was brought
+under Tatar rule. Their devastations cut off the
+population of whole provinces, and changed old
+Russian cities, such as Kiev, to hybrid towns of
+Asiatics. At Sarai on the Volga, for two centuries
+Tatar sovereigns ruled; and here from being pagan
+they became adherents of Islam. Russia’s foreign
+master was confirmed in a religion as antagonistic
+as was his race. To these aliens Russia gave humiliating
+homage and paid tribute, and from their
+khans her czar received permit to rule. Thus in
+her infancy she had a foreign race, not as servile
+members of the humble labor class, but in the wild,
+fierce scourge of conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout this period many Russian princes
+married into noble Mongol families, and Mongol
+officers formed alliances with the Russian boyars.
+The Muscovite aristocracy had already grown into
+strong Oriental proclivities from contact with its
+southern neighbor, the Byzantine, and these became
+confirmed under the Tatar. One czar, at
+least, Boris Godunov, was of Mongol birth. Incessant
+war harassed the people. Alexander Nevski,
+of Novgorod, beat back the Swedes; but, abasing
+himself, he went to the Tatar khan with the
+tribute of a country too feeble still to resist him.
+By and by Russia began to rally and to strengthen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span>
+her centres, Novgorod, Kiev, and Vladimir. Moscow
+arose—that small destiny-city where Simon
+the Proud, even in vassalage, dared to dream of
+unity and nationality, and took the title of “Prince
+of all the Russias.” His grandson made the first
+great stand against the Mongols and won in the
+field of Tula, which, with the fights of Alexander
+Nevski, gives to chroniclers and bards their early
+Russian ballads, or <i>bilinî</i>. Moscow, punished
+cruelly, was razed almost to the ground. But the
+Bear was aroused and goaded into desperation.
+Russia reeled to her feet, and for nearly a hundred
+years she fought, she lost, she fell; but she rose again
+and fought on, until at last the power of the Tatar
+terror was broken and the tyrant was driven over
+her border. Still, for a hundred years more, she was
+forcing back his inroads, and rescuing the winding
+trains of her children, toiling over the southern
+steppes to be sold as slaves at Kaffa. This was
+Russia in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>That Europe was spared this, she owes to the
+Russian. Through those crucial centuries when the
+Slav, weak, torn, anguished, beset with foes around
+and foes within, was standing grimly at the perilous
+portal of civilization, Europe, within the temple,
+safe by his grace, was privileged to work up into
+light, to cement her nationalities, to effect the liberation
+of her masses, and to develop her intellect
+into the magnificent promise of a printing-press,
+a people’s Bible, and a Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span></p>
+
+<p>But to the brave warden of that portal there was
+not the sweetness and the light. For him were the
+seams and the scars, the mutinous passions of
+the strife. Long after the clouds of the Dark Ages
+had cleared from the face of western Europe, they
+hung over Russia. The Slav was back in his Dark
+Ages yet, heir only to a barbaric experience. Here
+he must start, where Europe had started nearly a
+thousand years before, where America, in the favor
+of Providence, was never to be called upon to start.
+For him were the memories of subjection and the
+blood of contention; but also, in relief, to him were
+the stolid patience and endurance which were to
+serve him so well. He groped along in the shadow
+until the coming of the great Peter.</p>
+
+<p>But now arose a man. He, too, had dreamed
+the dream of empire,—vast, masterful. He set
+about making his dream real. He found Russia a
+small inland state, torn by faction, barbarian, and
+Oriental. Though himself the descendant of a long
+line of Byzantine kings, half monk, half emperor, he
+saw with the insight of genius, and he knew that
+that way did not lie greatness. Therefore fully and
+fiercely he broke with the past and set himself to the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>Between him and that future stood the Strelitz.
+The walls of the Kremlin, and the Red Square told
+the doom of their barring conservatism. He warred
+with the Turk, he fought the Cossack, he routed the
+Swedes, again and again, taking whole provinces on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span>
+his Baltic outlet and securing the coveted Neva.
+He embroiled himself with Persia, and through
+Baku opened a way to the Caspian. Then, with a
+high hand, he swept out the customs that made for
+Orientalism. He broke the seclusion of women, the
+prostrations, banished the caftan, the beard, and
+the flowing robes. He lifted his people bodily
+and violently out of their past, and set them down
+face-front to a new order. The Russia he had
+received a province, he left an empire. The Russia
+he had received Asiatic, he left European, and
+already a force in Europe. And when arose one of
+his own blood—a reversal—who would undo the
+herculean labor of this master-builder, who would
+give back to Sweden those priceless, wave-washed
+Baltic provinces, and, restoring the capital to Moscow,
+return to an Oriental estate, the patriot was
+stronger than the father, and at the price of his
+son’s life he bought the progress of Russia. Here in
+this man, who died in 1725, we can truly say that
+Modern Russia begins.</p>
+
+<p>Through this skeleton history can be traced the
+structure of the modern state, as in the struggle for
+survival may be found the root and early warrant
+of her governmental system. Every element, physical
+and ethnic, was, and still is, a handicap. Russia
+is not protected by the ramparts of the sea; she is
+surrounded on all sides by nations with whom her
+history has been that of perennial conflict. In place
+of a compacted, well-peopled country, she has an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span>
+empire extended gradually from frozen Nova
+Zembla to Afghanistan, from the Danube mouth
+to Behring’s arctic sea. She is a land of many distinct
+peoples, as foreign to each other as Lithuanians
+and wild Kirghis; as alien in religion as
+Catholic and Mohammedan. She is divided into
+one knows not how many tribes, numbers of them
+completely barbarous. Her eastern and south-eastern
+frontiers call for defense across vast and
+vacant stretches. Her northern and western borders
+are occupied by Finns and Poles, unforgetful forever
+of their own days of sovereignty, naturally and
+rightly jealous for the memories and the prerogatives
+that are its legacy.</p>
+
+<p>With the eastern problem living from the first on
+her immediate border, with her many tribes wayward,
+Russia early strove to fuse her empire into
+national unity. In old Poland had been seen the
+fearful price which feebleness and disunion pay to
+fate. How much greater was the menace to polyglot
+Russia, were her master-grip to relax! That she
+should hold a strong hand over the elements that
+ever threatened her disruption was the first national
+necessity. This supreme obligation to herself in her
+entirety compelled a firm, commanding, centralized
+authority. The mould that was to shape such metal
+had need of rigidity and unyielding strength. To
+meet these race-desires, not as a purposeless tyranny
+but as the fruit of a long evolving system, arose the
+autocracy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span></p>
+
+<p>The system reached its climax in the most absolute
+administration of modern times at the period
+of the American Revolution; the “Government
+Statute of 1775” meshed all things and all men into
+the institutions of despotism; Russia groaned under
+the iron rule of a Nicholas, yet rejoiced in the belief
+that strength was there, and sure defense from
+domestic disunion and foreign aggression; then, in
+the Crimea, came a revelation of the inefficiency of
+the bureaucratic juggernaut. Despite the stubborn
+valor of the defenders of Sevastopol, despite the
+gallant efforts of the aged autocrat, the glory of
+Russia went down in the blaze of her city and her
+fleet.</p>
+
+<p>The old régime had failed. Even the Czar, before
+he died, could read the lesson but could not
+act. How pathetic the words of the failing monarch:
+“My successor may do what he will, I cannot
+change.”</p>
+
+<p>With the accession of Alexander to the throne
+in 1855, on the sudden death of Nicholas, came the
+first effective steps toward modern institutions.
+The young czar, a self-declared friend of progress,
+raised regally the standard of reform. All Russia
+rose to the hopes of his idealism. Corruption in
+office, which had before been rampant, was crushed
+out by the sheer force of public opinion. Pamphlets
+circulated freely, uncensored. Meetings were everywhere
+held to discuss the varied plans of a vivified
+government. With a whole nation become to a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span>
+degree transcendental, the Czar began his reign and
+his reforms.</p>
+
+<p>First of all for righting, as it was first in evil, came
+serfdom. Summoning commissions of his ablest
+advisers, seeking counsel of the proprietors and
+their coöperation in an act of self-abnegation, the
+Czar proceeded to the execution of his great task.
+For three years every side and every phase of the
+problem was studied. Then at length with a fundamental
+law which forecovered every detail of the
+situation, Alexander II put his signature, February
+19, 1861, to the great Ukase of Liberation.</p>
+
+<p>In Russia’s past there is much to answer for
+before the judgment-bar, in omission and in commission.
+Yet, giving but justice to ruler and people,
+it must be allowed that the measure which freed
+the serfs ranks, with Magna Charta and the American
+Constitution, among the mightiest agencies of
+advance that mankind has ever known. A dependent
+population of nearly forty-six million souls was
+given liberty. The great act was accomplished
+peacefully, and the measures were executed without
+any trouble worthy of the name, in a spirit equitable
+to the old owners as well as to the serfs. Not
+alone were the latter released from bondage, they
+were provided, one and all, with land and livelihood.
+They were given, in everything that concerned
+their local administration, entire freedom
+from interference by their old masters or by the
+members of the Administration. The righteous deed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span>
+that the American Republic achieved nearly three
+years later liberated but one ninth the number of
+the Russian bondmen. It did so at the cost of the
+deadliest fratricidal war of modern times, and the
+impoverishment of one quarter of its people. All
+the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau through the
+Reconstruction period could not insure to a tithe
+of the Negroes the opportunity for a livelihood,—this
+that Russia provided inalienably for each of her
+liberated. To this day the American Negro in many
+places is under special civic disabilities more galling
+than those imposed anywhere in the Russian
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The protection of the former serfs was skillfully
+arranged by grouping them in self-governing village
+communes, to which land enough was given on a
+long-term repayment basis. In each, by an assembly
+composed of all the heads of households, periodic
+allotments of the common territory were made to
+the individuals. Compact economic units, whose
+property could not be sold, were built up against
+alienation of the land or poverty-induced peonage.
+The rendering of justice in local disputes was delegated
+to the peasant courts,—the only tribunals
+in Russia, save the National Senate, from which
+there is no appeal.</p>
+
+<p>The Mir, complete within itself, was responsible
+to the Imperial Government for good order and the
+taxes, and was secure from molestation provided
+these duties were fulfilled. Its inhabitants, united
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span>and independent, were able to resist any encroachment
+by their former masters or by neighboring
+landlords.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f33">
+<img src="images/fig33.jpg" alt="kremlin">
+<p class="caption">THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is not unworthy of note that up to the present
+time the liberties in economic matters thus granted
+have rarely been infringed by the authorities, nor
+have the village assemblies been exploited as a play
+in politics or to attain personal ends. While agriculturally
+and industrially the communal land provisions
+have become insufficient, cramping, perhaps
+baneful, and no longer necessary now that society
+is in equilibrium, nevertheless the germ of free institutions
+fecundated in the Mir, when dissociated
+from its communal features, is admirable still, and
+is capable of becoming the foundation for real self-government.</p>
+
+<p>Plans for provincial assemblies as a further extension
+of local home rule had been under consideration
+since 1859. On January 1, 1864, an Imperial
+Ukase was promulgated instituting Semstvos in
+thirty-three governments. To this assembly, proprietor
+and peasant, rich and poor, elected their
+representatives. Each Semstvo was to appoint its
+own executive to carry out the laws it decreed.</p>
+
+<p>The jurisdiction of this assembly, though confined
+to local and non-political matters, was wide.
+Rates, streets, convocations, posts, sanitary measures,
+famine-relief, fire-insurance, schools, agricultural
+improvement, all land, house, and factory
+taxes (those upon imperial as well as those upon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span>
+private domains), were given into the Semstvo control.
+It was granted partial powers over various
+other minor matters. It exercised practically all
+the economic and social functions of local governmental
+activity save what fell to the Mirs. It was
+welcomed as an epoch-making institution. The
+liberal press of the period hailed it as a living
+guidon of the upward way, as the blessed daylight
+of a constitutional government.</p>
+
+<p>So indeed it might have become. In the new
+Emperor’s mind there germinated a whole peaceful
+revolution. He had plans for new courts of justice,
+reorganization of the army, reform of the civil
+administration, and popular representative government,
+with an elected national chamber.</p>
+
+<p>But in the midst of his reforms broke out the
+Polish insurrection. The Czar had granted to the
+Poles elective councils in each district of government
+and in the chief cities; he had appointed a
+Pole his Minister of Public Instruction, and had
+made many concessions to their old language. Iron
+and blood crushed out the insurrection, but it had
+brought to the great Czar Liberator the conviction
+that liberty spelled disunion for Russia, and this
+belief was never to be dispelled.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the Semstvo assemblies, no longer uplifted
+by the old generous enthusiasm of the sovereign,
+pressed little by little the dead weight of executive
+officialdom. One by one their functions were lopped
+away. More and more the selection of delegates was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span>
+transferred to the administrative officials. The
+marshals of noblesse became chairmen, the governors
+vetoing overlords. Before the death of Alexander
+II, his once-cherished creations had lapsed
+from independent state legislatures into anomalous,
+semi-advisory councils, discussing roads, land-taxes,
+agriculture, and schools, and controlled by the
+land-owning nobles and the governors. Semstvo
+and Mir and Assemblies of the Noblesse became
+ornamental trimmings to the colossal edifice of the
+bureaucracy.</p>
+
+<p>The assembling of all the functions of government
+into the hands of the executive became again
+the guiding principle of this system. “The Council
+of State,” whose office was that of discussing the
+budget and law-making proposals, was the simulacrum
+of a parliament. The Senate, which gave
+decision on special points appealed from the lower
+courts, and whose promulgation of all enactments
+was the hall-mark of their legality, was a form of
+supreme court. But both hung from above rather
+than rested on a substructure. They were substantially
+cut off from popular influences, their
+function was secondary action following origin in
+the executive bureaus. The Imperial Autocrat,
+deriving his right from Divinity alone, exercised, in
+addition to his executive functions and his duties
+as supreme commander of the armed forces of the
+State, those powers which by a segregation of functions
+would have fallen to the legislative bodies and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span>
+the judiciary. In this, the ten ministries were his
+main agencies.</p>
+
+<p>Under this system, legislation was inaugurated
+through the presentation of a project to the Czar
+by one of his ministers, or by outside petition, or
+perhaps by the imperial wish.</p>
+
+<p>The proposed enactment, if the Czar ordered it
+to be further examined, was referred usually to an
+Imperial Commission of Study. Debates followed
+in the Advisory Council of State, and the completed
+bill, as framed by this body, was signed by the
+Emperor and became a ukase, to be formally promulgated
+by the Senate and enrolled as part of the
+law of the land. Interpretations of law were made
+by the Ministers, which none might gainsay. Thus
+was the legislative function absolute.</p>
+
+<p>In the provinces the three functions of government
+were equally centralized. A governor (almost
+invariably a general or an admiral) through his
+subordinate executive officers duplicated in microcosm
+the system of the capital. The dependent
+Semstvo was his Council of State, the dependent
+judges composed his Senate, the dependent Semski
+Natschalniki, his executive ministers. Into his bureaus
+came the details of provincial government save
+such matters as the villagers settled in their own
+Mirs. The troops of the district were at his call, the
+gendarmerie under his orders carried out the judicial
+arrests and the drumhead condemnations that
+sent so many thousands along the road to Siberia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the placing of these proconsuls and their sustaining
+soldiery was applied the Roman rule,
+“Divide et impera.” The head officials of the provinces
+were from distant parts,—the Governor
+of Warsaw from Tiflis, the Governor of Odessa
+from Samara, the Governor of the Amur from the
+Baltic. The Orthodox Cossacks of the Don were in
+force among the troubled Poles and Jews of the
+western governments; the drafts from the peasantry
+of Little Russia garrisoned Tiflis and Turkestan,
+and Siberian regiments watched the Austrian frontier.
+Even the popes sent to petty village congregations
+were generally of far-off origin.</p>
+
+<p>Though power was thus alienated from the
+people, the bureaucracy, by other agencies rooted
+deep in human nature, had twined itself around the
+daily life of society.</p>
+
+<p>Every ambitious man in his profession, as he
+succeeded, was marked for promotion. Not only
+to office-holders and soldiers, but to everybody,
+throughout the whole social fabric, were “chins”
+or graded ranks given. Here for example is a selection
+from one of the lists of the Czar’s Christmas
+announcements:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Appointed members of the Council of State: Privy
+Councilor Kabylinski, and Von Kaufman, Senator, Minister
+of Public Instruction, President of the Supreme
+Court.</p>
+
+<p>Decorated with the St. Stanislaus Order, First Class:
+Major-General Hippolyt Grigerasch, Director of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span>
+Department of Physics and Electro-technology at the
+Nicholas Engineer Academy and School.</p>
+
+<p>Decorated with the St. Vladimir Order of the Third
+Class: Major-General Michael Hahnenfeldt, on the staff
+of his Imperial Highness the Supreme Commander of
+Guards in the St. Petersburg Military District.</p>
+
+<p>Valentin Magorski, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine,
+Chief of the Veterinary Staff.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander Pomeranzev, Professor of Architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Dimitri Sassiyadke, Governor of Radom.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Mardarjev, Censor of Foreign Papers and
+Journals.</p>
+
+<p>Advanced to the ranking Chin of actual State Councilor,
+hereditary “honorable citizen” Constantine Popov,
+founder and director of the Tea Emporiums.</p>
+
+<p>Raised into hereditary “honorable citizenship” of the
+3d gild, the Archangel merchant Emil Brautigam.</p>
+
+<p>Given personal “honorable citizenship,” Vladimir
+Ritimoun, Proprietor of the Wollner Typographical
+Establishment; Karl Volter, Captain of the steamer
+<i>Emperor Nicholas II</i>, of the Riga Navigation Co.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When a professor from his books was called up
+before the highest provincial dignitary to have
+pinned on his lapel for honorable service to the
+Empire the Order of St. Stanislaus, it was hard for
+him not to have a warm sentiment for those who
+had so signally recognized his talents. When on the
+document which recorded the promotion of a royal
+prince to a colonelcy was enrolled the name of a
+tradesman; when a neighboring doctor was raised
+his step in civil rank, each felt the touchstone. All<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span>
+who had served well in their respective positions
+might hope to be on the honor list, and this was the
+most effective tribute to the weakness, the worth,
+and the ambition of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>In Russia, as in France under Napoleon’s iron
+yoke, there was a welcome to every sort of ability,
+and its elevation to posts of the highest trust. The
+aristocracy sought for was one of power, not that
+of a small birth-caste. A fundamental democracy
+ran through society. Save for a few of the Guards
+regiments, the army was officered by poor men. The
+Cossacks’ officers were chosen from among their own
+people and were state-trained. In the knapsack of
+every soldier was Skobelov’s baton; in the desk
+of every chinovnik, Witte’s portfolio.</p>
+
+<p>So stood the bureaucratic edifice, complete in
+itself. Here and there a popular embellishment
+was added, perhaps to strengthen, often to conceal;
+but in grim reality it formed no part of the structure.
+Thus the Russian Empire finished out the
+nineteenth century. With the twentieth the system
+had come to trial for its stewardship.</p>
+
+<p>In the great reckoning are elements both of good
+and of evil. The liberation of the serfs and all that
+went with the emancipation stand as a credit. It is
+a further vast credit that Russia has made, held
+together, and civilized an empire of over eight and
+a half million square miles, with a population of
+over one hundred and forty million souls; that to
+the internal development of her splendid resources<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span>
+the Government has vigorously set its hand, seeking
+for her rivers unhampered navigation, for her
+canals larger passage, for her deserts great irrigation
+works. Already the Siberian Railway links
+the Baltic and Pacific; already on the southeast the
+tracks creep to the threshold of Kashmir, where
+some four hundred miles separate the Russian lines
+from those of British India. This gap once crossed,
+Calcutta becomes but eleven days distant from
+London. It is still another credit that, despite
+Slavic limitations and financial loss, in the face of
+Western invention and competitive leveling, the
+country of the cheapest telegraph and the cheapest
+railway rate was until recently not America but
+Russia. It is a credit that the public land has been
+put so efficiently and generously at the disposal of
+the people, that any emigrant expressing a genuine
+purpose of settling will be given, wherever he may
+select it in Siberia, a liberal homestead, and he will
+be conveyed to it over the Trans-Siberian Railway
+for a sum less than the cost. He is not only allotted
+his homestead, but he is supplied with seed, grain,
+tools, and advances for his first years of marketing.</p>
+
+<p>It is again a credit that the governmental attitude
+to the industrial classes has not been one of oppression.
+True, work-hours are unrighteously long and
+certain strikes have been put down arbitrarily.
+Still the Russian labor laws and arrangements for
+the settlement of labor difficulties are in many features
+conspicuously statesmanlike and just. Some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span>
+years since, a body of Belgian miners, fifty or more,
+with their families, were transferred from the collieries
+of the Meuse to the Donetz Basin. Recently
+these miners, at a meeting of the directors’ board,
+presented a memorial to this purport: “How happy
+are we who are no more in Belgium, but who live
+and work in Russia! No longer must we support
+the socialistic committee. On the day of pay we
+put our hands in our pockets and have it for our
+wives and children.”</p>
+
+<p>The other side of the ledger is, however, not
+without weighty items. While no system of government
+can legislate prosperity, the public welfare
+is rightfully the first test, as it should be the first
+consideration, of an administration. Despite her
+immense territories, her vast mineral deposits, her
+fertile soils, her navigable rivers, her abundant
+timber, all the natural sources of national wealth,
+Russia is very poor. The peasants have more than
+doubled in number since the allotment of communal
+fields that followed the emancipation, and they are
+in general want. Vast stretches, whole provinces,
+are subject to periodic famine. Millions of the
+people are constantly on the brink of starvation.
+Manufacturing is, as a rule, desultory, undeveloped,
+and, in general, unprofitable.</p>
+
+<p>The per-capita wealth of Russia is estimated at
+but two hundred and seventy-five dollars, as compared
+to Germany’s seven hundred dollars, France’s
+eleven hundred and twenty dollars, and England’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span>
+twelve hundred and thirty-five dollars. The savings-bank
+deposits reported for all Russia average but
+$2.75 per man, while in France they average $20.82,
+in England $15.00, and in Austria $15.68.</p>
+
+<p>The degree of administrative responsibility for
+this condition is of course not to be definitely laid
+down. Much manifestly is due to natural conditions,
+national character, and historic handicaps; and
+some of the resultants would be the same under any
+administrative policy. Russia in her great area has
+had a sparse population. She has not, like her sister
+nations, and preëminently America, been able to
+lay the rest of the world under teeming contribution
+to her citizenship. She has had only her natural
+increase, and no such record as that of the United
+States has been possible. The Slav is not commercial,
+but agricultural. He has remained poor, and
+has had relatively very small resources to devote
+to what have proved our two greatest developing
+forces—internal improvement and education.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, a matter directly involved in government
+that, with this low standard of national
+living, there is the correlated fact of extremely high
+national expenditure. An immense budget of two
+billion roubles, ordinary expenditure, is annually
+met, which the war-loans raised to a total, for some
+years, of over three billions.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f34">
+<img src="images/fig34.jpg" alt="types">
+<p class="caption"><span class="more">DRAGOON <span class="pad3">CONSTABLE</span></span></p>
+<p class="caption">RUSSIAN TYPES</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is the general belief that a large part of the
+public funds is frittered away in needless waste, with
+multitudes of idling clerks and sinecure officials.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span>Granting the benefit of doubt, assuming that the
+Administration’s corruption and inefficiency are
+exaggerated, and supposing that the public money
+is in the main honestly and productively spent, it is
+still a very serious question if any public service
+rendered by the agents of Government can correspond
+to or justify the immense burden of taxation
+heaped upon a people whose economic distress is so
+terrible.</p>
+
+<p>The weight of the tax-levy crushing the peasants,
+whose improvident habits aggravate their want,
+is, for most, unescapable unless they follow the emigrant’s
+road to Siberia. The rate-gatherer can take
+anything the mujik has, save his last coat, his last
+horse, his seed-grain for next year. He is, with fateful
+frequency, forced to hire himself out to whoever
+will use his services, and this during the brief summer
+season which is so supremely essential if he is
+to attend to his own crops and fields. One landowner
+relates that he has seen paid an average of
+five roubles ($2.50) a month for farm-laborers, including
+men, women, and children, during June,
+July, and August.</p>
+
+<p>Under the old system the method of rate-levy
+on the “souls” in a family weighed inequitably.
+Census revision was delayed in one instance, personally
+related, by over twenty-three years. A family
+taxed, twenty-three years before, on a father,
+four brothers, and two adult sons,—seven souls,—was
+still assessed for seven males, whether the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span>
+family had increased to twenty, or been reduced
+to one. Each member of the household was responsible
+for the total.</p>
+
+<p>It is related that whole families in Samara, reduced
+by the fearful cholera epidemic of some years
+back from scores of men to a dozen or ten, had to
+leave their home-country for Siberia to escape the
+load of their dead brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Discussing the economic loss of the years of military
+service, one of the country nobles related an
+incident. He told of ordering the dead leaves and
+branches cleared out of his lake. Ordinarily, he
+said, he did not go near the work or let the peasants
+come near his château, for there was a good deal of
+class-hostility where he lives. But he was interested
+in the lake because the branches were killing some
+specially cherished fish, so he went down through
+the woods and was surprised to see nobody working.
+All the men were crowded round a peasant
+whom he had cited as an example of those who,
+though unlettered, had great capacity. This man
+had served seven years in the navy and could neither
+read nor write, a commentary upon what the service
+training was. He was declaiming on politics, and
+the squire stepped behind a tree, for the peasant
+spoke musically and well. The man was telling
+about his naval service: “Seven years on the boats
+I have been, brothers, and every three months I got
+ninety kopecks to buy a string for the crucifix and
+to cut my hair. I had no money for tobacco, none<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span>
+to send home to my wife in all this time, and I came
+home without a kopeck. Seven years of my life I
+have given to the Czar. What has he given me?
+What has he given you?” The landowner stepped
+from behind the tree and faced the group of startled
+peasants. “You have heard, your honor? Well it is
+true, it is true!”</p>
+
+<p>The measure which under existing land-conditions
+would most directly raise the standard of life is the
+improvement of the mediæval agricultural system,
+and this depends upon the intelligence of the people
+at large. Scientific farming needs technical knowledge,
+yet of the great sums collected, a very small
+portion goes to education. The Nation spends for
+it but forty-three million roubles, the Semstvos but
+twenty million roubles, or together one eighth of
+the military budget.</p>
+
+<p>A tedious, inefficient course in Slavonic, with the
+prayer-books as text, a smattering of modern Russian,
+sometimes mathematics as far as multiplication
+and division,—this is the state education of
+the privileged few of the peasants’ children. Whatever
+small amount of real knowledge is gained is
+quickly submerged in the ocean of ignorance at
+home. The percentage of illiteracy is very great.
+The record gives Switzerland five, Germany seven,
+Great Britain ten, France fifteen, Russia eighty-four.</p>
+
+<p>It is argued that for the bulk of the population,
+under existing material conditions, schools are of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span>
+small use. The lack, in the general poverty, of the
+very primary materials,—paper, pencils, books;
+of proper shoes and clothes; the unsuitableness of
+the houses of the peasants as places for the children
+to prepare their lessons in, with no spot to put their
+books or to do their tasks and with no available
+light—all these things strike at the very root of
+education. The population must be raised economically
+to the point where the elementals of existence
+are assured, before the incidental costs of schools
+can be met by the peasantry. However, there has
+been coming to Russia during the last generation, in
+a great wave, the kind of education that made the
+American West—the education of expansion, of
+the founding of towns, the planting of new industries,
+the building of new railroads, the opening of
+better navigation-routes, the enlistment of foreign
+capital; all the intelligence and enlightenment that
+attends a real industrial, commercial, and material
+quickening.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond these social and economic factors a large
+count is set against the bureaucratic system for the
+conduct of administration. The suppression of personal
+liberty, of freedom of speech, the abuse of
+power by arbitrary officials, remorseless repression,
+ruthlessly carried out, racial oppression, frightful
+cruelty in the prisons and exile stations;—it is
+a terrible indictment that has been drawn. The
+close of the Japanese War opened a new “Smutnoe
+Vremya,” or time of trouble. Industrial wars, riots<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span>
+in Baku, uprisings in the Caucasus, seizure of cities
+by Social Democrats,—so went the disturbances
+throughout Russia, the white terror above grappling
+with the red terror beneath.</p>
+
+<p>The situation which the forces of order were
+required to meet was extraordinary. The balance-wheel
+of the human mind, and all sense of proportion
+among classes of the people, seemed at times to
+be lost. Barbaric as the administration condemnations
+undoubtedly were, the individuals were not
+infrequently innocent only by curious standards.
+In a broad view one must confess that on both
+sides were rights and wrongs. The system, far more
+than individuals, was at fault. But while a system
+so linked to violence and oppression could not longer
+be suffered, the way out could not come through
+yielding to men in insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>Salvation lay along the path that the Emperor
+opened. His rescript of October 17, 1905, proclaimed
+a National Duma.</p>
+
+<p>The pregnant clauses in the summons to a national
+legislature were these:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>We direct the Government to carry out our inflexible
+will in the following manner:—</p>
+
+<p>1. To grant the population the immutable foundation
+of civic liberty based on real inviolability of the person
+and freedom of conscience, speech, union, and association.</p>
+
+<p>2. To call to participation in the Duma those classes
+of the population now completely deprived of electoral
+rights.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span></p>
+
+<p>3. To establish it as an immutable rule that no law can
+come into force without the approval of the State Duma.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The ebullition of sentiment that followed these
+decrees was extraordinary. All the bitterness and
+discontent that had weltered through the years of
+distress were metamorphosed into a glowing hope.
+Ambition and aspiration became a fervor. The
+delirium went electrically through all classes during
+the few following weeks of uncensored press and
+unfettered meetings. The educated were fed with
+every sort of essay upon what would be the result
+of the new order, and exhortation to keep spread
+the young wings for national ascension. Among the
+unlettered peasants, pictures circulated showing
+glorified cartoons of the risen Russia. One of the
+most widely distributed of these celebrated the Imperial
+Svoboda Manifesto. The genius of the Slav
+stood forth: one hand rested on a tablet marked
+“Zakon” (Law), the other unfurled a banner inscribed
+in blazing red letters, “Svoboda” (Liberty),
+below which followed freedom of speech, of forming
+associations, of holding meetings, of religion, the
+inviolability of the home, and amnesty for political
+prisoners. Peasants and workmen were grouped
+around, and above them stood an heroic figure representing
+the Duma which was to halo all national
+activity with law. The rising sun, illumining the
+Tauride Palace, cast its glow and glamour over
+the prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>The ukase had gone forth to give the widest representation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span>
+at the polls. The command was followed
+out in a system by which every class had
+its own deputies in the nominating colleges that
+elected the Duma members. Among the peasantry
+each <i>volost</i> had two deputies; every thousand industrials
+had one, the nobility, the salaried clerks, the
+bourgeois in the cities, the Cossack stanitzas, the
+boards of trade, the universities, the Holy Synod,
+the aboriginal Buriat tribesmen,—each had special
+representation. Uninterfered with for the most
+part by officialdom, all Russia crowded to the polls,
+every man believing that his ideal was now, at last,
+on the eve of realization. The peasants who called
+for land, the workmen who wished for higher wages,
+the Intellectuals with their slogan of universal education,
+the submerged races with dreams of reborn
+nationalities, the ambitious with visions of power,
+the venal with hopes of plunder, each and all thought
+their hopes were to spring at once into the actual
+and the visual.</p>
+
+<p>In such a fever-time the men to whom official
+service meant the slow toilsome improvement of
+conditions by self-sacrificing devotion to the routine
+of administration, who could offer as pre-nomination
+pledges only earnest study and conscientious action
+on the legal matters presented, were passed by in the
+hot aspiring canvass for delegates. Those who believed
+all things and promised all things, whose fervency
+of expectation fed the universal hope, whose
+preaching held that, the way once cleared, Russia<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span>
+could at a bound reach the plane to which other
+countries had so long and toilsomely struggled,
+those of fiery faith which would consume every
+obstacle—these were the men whom the people
+ratified and whom the nation sent to St. Petersburg
+for the first Duma.</p>
+
+<p>It was a band of hot heads and eager hearts
+that assembled, echoing their constituents’ desires,
+crying for all things and at once. They were saturated
+with the history of the French Revolution,
+they felt confident that their coming meant the end
+of the old régime, and belief in their own power was
+the pledge of the future. Their first official act
+threw down the gauntlet to autocracy. In the reply
+to the Crown, passed during their first day’s session,
+the final paragraphs read:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>The most numerous part of the population, the hard-working
+peasants, impatiently await the satisfaction of
+their acute want of land; and the first Russian State
+Duma would be recreant in its duty were it to fail to
+establish a law to meet this primary want by resorting
+to the use of lands belonging to the State, the Crown, the
+Royal family, all monastic and state lands, also private
+landed property, on the principles of eminent domain.</p>
+
+<p>The spiritual union of Russia’s different nationalities
+is possible only by meeting the needs of each one of them,
+and by preserving and developing their national characteristics.
+The Duma will try to satisfy these wants.</p>
+
+<p>Sirs, the Duma expects of you full political amnesty,
+as the first pledge of mutual understanding and mutual
+agreement between the Czar and his people.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was apparent that if these clauses did not contemplate
+the confiscation of private property, which
+was openly advocated by the peasant deputies, and
+the substitution of a “spiritual union” of Russia’s
+subsidiary peoples for the real hegemony, there was
+fair <i>prima-facie</i> evidence for thinking that they did.
+While a general amnesty would render less than
+justice to a large number of citizens, it would cover
+as well the bomb-shell anarchists, whose imprisonment
+was as necessary to the protection of society
+as that of any other dangerous criminals. The
+tenor of these demands, the speeches of the deputies,
+and the avowed desires of their majority, brought
+matters to a crisis. Not alone the autocracy, but
+national unity, and the jurisdiction of the courts,
+were called openly and violently into question.
+When such a challenge is offered a government, it
+must answer or abdicate.</p>
+
+<p>Unostentatiously, the Imperial Administration
+poured troops into St. Petersburg from Kronstadt
+and the northern garrisons. The governors at Moscow,
+Odessa, Warsaw, and the big industrial centres
+were notified to concentrate their loyal regiments.
+The whole country was mapped out like a checker-board.
+It was now only a question of when the
+authorities would act.</p>
+
+<p>On the night of July 8, the troops in St. Petersburg
+were called to arms. They marched with
+machine-like precision to appointed stations throughout
+the city. With the dawn every strategic point<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span>
+was held by the soldiery, and a battalion ringed
+about the deserted Duma hall. In the silence was
+read the imperial rescript. The first Duma had
+ceased to exist.</p>
+
+<p>The dissolution of this national parliament had
+come as a stroke of lightning. The venerable representative
+Petrunkevitch told how he was awakened
+at five in the morning with the news that the city
+was under martial law and that soldiers with fixed
+bayonets were at the Duma doors. Hurried consultations
+were held with groups of colleagues, and
+finally the word was passed to meet at Viborg in
+Finland. At the little inn there, the pressing crowd
+of one hundred and sixty-nine fugitive deputies
+signed their manifesto. It called for the cessation
+of tax-payments, the refusal of conscription, and
+reclaimed the freedom of Russia. But the insurrection,
+the uprising in their support! Not a regiment
+came to assist them, not a city rallied to their
+call, not a Mir responded. For a few weeks the
+signers were free. Then the police took them, one
+by one.</p>
+
+<p>Dully unprotesting, the public received the news
+of the dissolution of the Duma and the arrest of
+the deputies. The majority of Russians did not
+want disunion, did not want the overthrow of vested
+rights. Each wanted some specialty of his own.
+Yet here was the resultant of each constituency’s
+crystallized desires. The people had accepted the
+leadership of those who had held out great hopes,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span>impotently. The Government had crushed the men
+whose power meant social and economic, as well as
+administrative, revolution. In the blow it had perforce
+shattered the dreams as well.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f35">
+<img src="images/fig35.jpg" alt="moscow">
+<p class="caption">STREET SCENES IN MOSCOW<br>
+<span class="more">THE TVERSKAIA GATE<br>
+LOUBIANSKAIA PLACE</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Humiliated by the contemptuous condemnation
+of their chosen representatives, bitterly disillusioned,
+the people at large stolidly acquiesced in the extinction.</p>
+
+<p>The voting for the second Duma, which followed
+some months later, was almost perfunctory. Those
+who had chronically wished to agitate, and those
+put forward by the Administration in an effort to
+pack the membership, composed the bulk of the
+deputies. Moderates, hopeful of progress with
+order, stayed at home, disgusted with both sides.
+The result was a second violent, wrangling Duma,
+offending like the first, and in its turn ignominiously
+snuffed out.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1907 saw universal disappointment,
+cynicism, and skepticism. In the literature, the
+lassitude of the nation was shown, and morbid
+despair reflected the thwarted hopes, the agonies,
+the confusion of the people. The bitterness in the
+<i>Lazarus</i> of Andreyev, the decadence in the <i>Sanin</i>
+of Artzybashev, mirrored the people’s mood, and
+the shadow of a dark destiny brooded over all. To
+fill the cup, the reaction, coldly triumphant, was
+able to bring the members of the first national parliament
+before the bar for high treason in signing
+the Viborg Manifesto.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the stifling Hall of Justice in St. Petersburg,
+like a resurrection of the first Duma, sat the hundred
+and sixty-nine signers, grouped as of old by
+party affiliations. Each man was called upon to
+justify his actions. Many had signed the Viborg
+document in the belief that the people would rise
+in bloody rebellion, and they issued what was, to
+their fevered view, advice of moderation. One
+deputy after another stood erect to answer for his
+deeds. If the men had been carried from liberty
+into license, at least they had been fired by intense
+belief in themselves and in their mission.
+Impressive were the solemn declarations of those
+who expected nothing less than long imprisonment
+for speaking out, now, a defiance to the ruling
+power. It was currently rumored that should the
+former President of the Duma, Dolgoroukov, justify
+his action, his penalty was to be three years’
+imprisonment; the others would serve one; while
+liberty was reported to be the bribe for any who
+would confess a fault. Yet almost to a man these
+old deputies rose to declare that they still stood by
+all that they had done.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not care, and do not care if our action was
+unconstitutional. We found that we must rely,”
+said Nabokov, “on the highest law, the will of the
+people.”</p>
+
+<p>Kakoshtin, of the Cadet Party, and a professor
+in Moscow University, declared: “Whatever fate
+awaits us, it will be nothing compared to the sufferings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span>
+of our predecessors who have fallen in the
+fight for liberty.”</p>
+
+<p>Three members of the “Group of Toil” declared
+that the first Duma would be an encouragement to
+the people to overthrow the present system.</p>
+
+<p>Mourontzev, and Prince Dolgoroukov were there,
+leading members of the first Duma. Petrunkevitch
+ended his speech: “If you open for us the doors of
+the prison, we will quietly enter with the knowledge
+that we have fulfilled a duty to the Fatherland.”</p>
+
+<p>Burning words these, but they waked not an echo.
+The Administration was in complete control of the
+situation. Repression was the order of the day, repression
+as widespread and efficient as in the days
+of Nicholas I; the autocracy, buttressed by an army
+which, however lacking in discipline and supposedly
+honeycombed by disaffection, nevertheless rallied
+still to the command and service of the master.</p>
+
+<p>At this time there was issued the call for a third
+Duma. As Prime Minister sat cold Stolypin, whose
+reputation as a governor-general was the reverse
+of liberal. He had risen by virtue of rigid efficiency.
+His best friends did not know his beliefs. He had
+dissolved both the first and second assemblies, and
+had done his best to pack the third. “I want a
+Duma that will work, not talk,” he declared.</p>
+
+<p>The murmurers said that the Russian Parliament
+had become a farce; that the administrative officers
+were following to the best of their ability instructions
+from St. Petersburg to deliver a roster of safe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span>
+men; that those who had agitated unwisely were
+being removed from the likelihood of candidature;
+that the Senate, with its membership of retired
+officials, had so construed each provision of the
+election law that the unquiet classes were as far
+as possible disfranchised; that every influence was
+being used to make the third a “dummy Duma,”
+hopelessly manipulated into the reactionary camp.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout this time of shattered ideals and
+discouragement, a very small band of real believers
+still held high the torch of faith. Most prominent
+among them was Alexander Goutchkov, he who
+among the Moscow Constitutional Democrats (the
+“Cadets” of the earlier times) had in a critical
+Polish debate of the party spoken and voted alone
+for a united Russia.</p>
+
+<p>When at length the third Duma had assembled,
+the so-called Octobrists or Moderates, who had a
+small plurality, prepared a reply to the Speech
+from the Throne. Very respectful it was, with no
+demand for general amnesty or suggestions of confiscation
+or national devolution. It read in part:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>We wish to devote all our ability, knowledge, and
+experience to strengthening the form of government
+which was given new life by the Imperial will; to pacify
+the Fatherland, to assure respect for the laws, to be a
+buttress for the greatness and power of indivisible Russia.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Unexceptionable, this, to the higher powers, save
+that in the preamble in the original draft, the Czar’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span>
+historic title of “Autocrat” had not been given him.
+A debate followed, and brought about the declarations
+which defined the parties of the third Duma.
+Bishop Mitrophane, of the Right, or reactionary
+party, rose. He said in the name of his group that
+the Address to the Throne must contain the phrase
+“Autocrat of all the Russias.” Lawyer Plevako
+seconded, threatening to secede if the proper title
+were not incorporated. Paul Milyoukov spoke hotly
+for the opposing Cadets, asking whether the country
+was or was not under a constitution. He declared
+the new election law to be contrary to the
+original ukase and an act of force. Others of the
+Left, among them orator Maklakov of the Cadets,
+declaimed against the election law by which this
+Duma was constituted. They were not politic,
+these spokesmen, but harsh and dogmatic, yielding
+none of the courtier-respect that makes up for so
+much absence of real yielding. For the Octobrists,
+Alexander Goutchkov led the debate. His speech
+revealed that they operated, not with the bludgeon,
+but with the Damascus blade. They were of flexible
+obstinacy and opportunism, stirring up no
+sleeping dogs, bending to rise again. Goutchkov
+slipped adroitly into his speech the disputed word
+constitution, thus: “We do not believe that the
+Czar’s power has been diminished. The Emperor
+has become free, for the Constitution has delivered
+him from court camarillas and the hierarchy of
+chinovniks.” Thanks largely to his tact, the Octo<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span>
+brists won. The Address, without “Autocrat,” was
+passed by a vote of two to one. But it passed at
+the cost of self-separation by the right wing of the
+reactionaries, who withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>The answer of the Administration came sharply
+from Prime Minister Stolypin:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>The manifesto of imperial power has borne witness
+at all times to the people that the autocratic power,
+created by history and the free will of the monarch, constitutes
+the most precious benefit of the political state
+of Russia; for it is this power and this free will that are
+alone capable, as the tutelary source of existing constitutions,
+of saving Russia in times of trouble, of guaranteeing
+the state from the dangers that threaten it, and of
+bringing back the country to the way of order and historic
+truth.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>He called upon the Chamber to incorporate the recognition
+of the “Autocracy.”</p>
+
+<p>A hundred members protested. Many of the
+Cadets walked out. To the Octobrists, barely a
+quorum, fell the humiliating duty of recalling their
+own address and of inserting, despite the scorn, the
+fateful word. So shaken was the group itself by the
+conflict that of its one hundred and sixty members
+but ninety-five united in the caucus that elected
+officers and committee members. Alexander Goutchkov
+was chosen chairman, Baron Meyendorf, Priest
+Bjeloussov, and Radsjauko, officers. Among the
+heads of committees were Prince Wollanski, and
+Peasant Kusovkov. In spite of the stigma of reaction<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span>
+popularly imposed upon them, these were not
+unrepresentative men.</p>
+
+<p>The distracted Duma got slowly under way, and
+the Prime Minister brought before them his proposed
+policy of administration.</p>
+
+<p>M. Stolypin’s address to the Duma, November
+16, 1907, stated that:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>1. The destructive movements of the party of the
+extreme Left have resulted in brigandage and anarchy.
+Order will be the first duty of the Government.</p>
+
+<p>2. Agrarian relief is the first necessity, and this by
+a system of small proprietors.</p>
+
+<p>3. Local self-government and administrative reforms
+will be formulated and presented to the Duma.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Business got centred on these practical subjects.
+Discussions as to whether or not there was an autocracy
+gave place to famine-relief measures and railway-rate
+studies. The absenting delegates of the
+Left and Right, who had retreated to their tents
+in the wrangle over the Czar’s titles, and had left
+the forlorn little band of constructive Octobrists
+to carry on the work of legislation, now returned.
+The proceedings began to take parliamentary
+form.</p>
+
+<p>The Budget came on, the Ministers of the Government
+presenting their projects for discussion. In
+the heat of debate, the Minister of Finance, M.
+Kakovtsev, exclaimed, “Thank God, we have no
+parliament yet!” The fact that an Imperial Minister
+was presenting his budget to an elected assembly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span>
+showed the reality, but the war on names rose
+up afresh. The Duma officially declared the Minister’s
+expression unfortunate. He threatened to
+resign unless the house apologized. The Left again
+exploded in outcries, called out that the Duma was
+a farce, threw in their votes as more fuel for the
+flame of discord, and deserted the hall when they
+were in the minority. Still the little band of
+moderates chose the self-abnegating, unspectacular
+part, and gave the apology that avoided a
+crisis.</p>
+
+<p>But now came up a matter wherein the dispute
+was not over a name or a title, but a reality. The
+Government, upheld by the Czar, the Court, and
+much public sympathy, proposed a programme for
+a new navy. It called for the immediate allocation
+of one hundred and eleven million roubles, and the
+expenditure in ten years, of over a billion roubles.
+In the state of the country this entailed a fearful
+burden, perhaps the loss of the gold standard. The
+outwardly supine members, in rows like grenadiers,
+voted against the project. By 194 to 78 it was lost.</p>
+
+<p>The Minister of Finance shortly afterwards undertook
+to issue railway bonds without the Duma’s
+consent. With a rebuke, for which this time no
+apology was asked or given, his estimate was cut
+down by one rouble, and voted. The Amur Railway
+was authorized, though three hundred million
+roubles are its prospective toll. The sole remaining
+Pacific port of Russia, Vladivostok, is thereby<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span>
+linked with the Irkutsk and Trans-Baikal districts
+of Siberia, and so doubly insured against an eastern
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>After a lengthy session the third Duma adjourned,
+but not by violence. It could show as results two
+hundred bills passed, a budget thoroughly scrutinized
+and ratified, and much faithful work in committee.
+More important still, the Parliament, by
+forbearance and patience, had made itself a part of
+the machinery of government, and had shown that
+a national legislature did not mean expropriation,
+and a partitioned Russia.</p>
+
+<p>At the end, fiery Maklakov of the Cadets, he who
+early in the session had cried out that all was a farce,
+admitted that “the third Duma has lost none of its
+rights, it is systematically extending them.” All
+honor to those whose self-suppression and patience
+won.</p>
+
+<p>The thin edge of the wedge had been driven in
+under absolutism by the third Duma, but little
+could one foresee that a half-dozen quiet blows
+would, during the fourth Duma’s session, bring autocracy
+to the greatest crisis it has encountered since
+it decreed a legislature. The heart of the situation
+lies in a naval bill submitting to the Duma matters
+which the Constitution reserves to the control
+of the Emperor. Strangely, too, the Czar is himself
+the abettor, if not the originator, of the supplanting.</p>
+
+<p>In May, 1906, the Czar decided to create the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span>
+“Naval General Staff.” One hundred thousand
+roubles a year were needed, and the money must
+be sought of the Duma. The first two assemblies
+being so violent, the measure lay in abeyance, to
+the great injury of the service. Since the regeneration
+of the navy was one of the measures made painfully
+necessary by the Japanese War, M. Stolypin
+had a bill drafted, in three clauses: one ratifying
+the creation of the “Naval General Staff,” a second
+furnishing an annual sum for its operation, a third
+supplying a fund for contingencies. No feature of
+the creation, save the financial aspect, came at all
+within the legal jurisdiction of the Duma. Yet the
+Premier had the organization itself brought before
+the Assembly.</p>
+
+<p>The deputies criticised the institution, modified
+it, sliced the estimates. Assuming the judicial functions
+of a court of last appeal, they voted the
+money and passed the bill, which M. Stolypin then
+submitted to the upper chamber. In view of the
+overstepping of domain, the bill was, after a lucid
+exposition of the law by the ex-Controller-General,
+thrown out.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was next submitted to the Czar himself,
+who authorized its reintroduction in the Duma.
+A second time the measure was passed and sent
+to the Council. M. Durnovo, ex-Minister, ablest of
+the Conservatives, and candidate for the Premiership,
+made a notable speech. He proved clearly the
+trespass upon the rights reserved to the Crown,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span>
+showed that such precedents would build up an artificial
+claim which could not later be combated, while
+the allowance of participation in one instance gave
+a warrant for demanding interference in any and
+every proposal. The bill was a blow at the very
+heart of monarchical government, and a degree of
+democracy not allowed even in republican France.
+But, defiantly, M. Stolypin held his ground. The
+anomaly was presented of Conservatives decrying
+the Premier for undermining the dynasty, with the
+Emperor himself supporting the culprit. Thus has
+the former government minority been converted
+into a majority,—the measure passed by the small
+margin of twelve.</p>
+
+<p>The reactionaries have bitter feud with this Premier.
+He has, it is allowed, so enlarged the functions
+of the deputies by handing over to them, one after
+another, the vital prerogatives of the autocracy,
+that no later action can ever disestablish the Duma.
+The Empire is now governed through a unified
+cabinet; the important prerogative of appointing
+the governors-general has been exercised by the
+Premier, rather than by the Czar, since June 16,
+1906. Russia has marched far on its upward
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Great, however, is the task ahead. Of all that the
+Duma can achieve the country has supreme need.
+The agrarian question calls aloud for solution, and
+the peasants’ future depends on land-relief. The
+Emperor has given instructions for the sale of most<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span>
+of the Crown domains and those of the Imperial
+Family. The nobles are being encouraged to sell to
+the tenants, on notes guaranteed by the Imperial
+land bank. Firm and able hands must guide this
+improvement, promoting the division of estates
+left to run wild, but avoiding the pitfalls of threatened
+property-rights.</p>
+
+<p>Individual enterprise must be awakened, which
+will in the end bring about more scientific rotation
+and intensive farming. The old system leaves
+fallow thirty-three per cent of the arable land—an
+area equal to the whole ploughed acreage of the
+United States. In western Europe but seven per
+cent is fallow, and the value of the harvest per acre
+in Russia is less than a third that of Germany. The
+policy adopted in the Agrarian Law of November
+9, 1906, for the gradual breaking-up of the communistic
+Mirs, and the division of the common lands,
+at the villagers’ option, into freehold plots, is a wise
+one. In 1907, the year following the law’s promulgation,
+2617 peasants, in the government of Ekaterinoslav
+had become individual proprietors. Under
+the Land Act of 1909 one million farms had been
+taken up for private ownership in the first six
+months of the law’s operation.</p>
+
+<p>Emigration to the vast untilled fields of Siberia
+should be carried on with all the efficiency of which
+the Government is capable. That this is in progress,
+the figure of four hundred and ninety-one
+thousand emigrants for the first seven months of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span>
+1908 attests. Fifty-nine thousand homeseekers were
+sent by villages which wished to emigrate thither
+<i>en masse</i>. But care and providence must follow
+the movement, and insure that the settlers are
+equipped with the means for safe and permanent
+establishment.</p>
+
+<p>The race-question calls also for a righteous solution.
+The future must bring the repeal of the old
+bureaucratic laws of Jewish exclusion, and end the
+vicious circle of oppression and terrorism against
+this much wronged people. The chaotic finances
+of the Empire must be regulated by years of patient
+work, such as that of the last Duma, through
+whose agency there is now, for the first time in
+twenty-two years, a budget surplus.</p>
+
+<p>The Duma members, to whom these all-important
+tasks fall, must plough the fields in all their
+armor. The autocracy is not their greatest enemy.
+The history of parliamentary government demonstrates
+again and again that in an ordered community
+authority gradually reverts to the national
+representative assembly. Little by little power
+slips away from the throne. In England, in 1686,
+the reign of James II could show Jeffreys’ Bloody
+Assizes; yet five years later the Parliament was in
+full and permanent control of the government.</p>
+
+<p>The preservation of the country from the nether
+chaos is, however, a mightier problem. Before the
+ship of state rides safe in the harbor of true representative
+government there must come a critical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span>
+period when the administrative powers are not
+firmly clasped by the hand of either autocracy or
+duma. This hiatus-time, when iron repression
+ceases and sober self-rule begins, is yet to come.
+Those who must tide the nation over it are such
+as those pathetically few Octobrists, unpopular because
+of their bending, craven-seeming policy, and
+because of the unfree elections that gave them place.
+Will such a group, when the crucial hour strikes,
+be allowed peaceably to pilot the vessel? Or will
+red-handed revolution wrench from their grip the
+tiller, bereft of the guidance of autocracy? Is it to
+be evolution or revolution?</p>
+
+<p>One cannot deny that a free election to-day would
+throw out the toiling Octobrists and put in a membership
+like that of the first Duma. These constructive,
+unvisionary men are not loved, nor is their
+progress likely to make them so. They exist as the
+ruling factor only by virtue of election manipulations
+and legal interpretations. With this essentially
+temporary support taken away, the group
+would be powerless, for every indication shows
+that the people would not support them or their
+policies.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f36">
+<img src="images/fig36.jpg" alt="types">
+<p class="caption"><span class="more">PEDDLER <span class="pad4">POLICEMAN</span></span></p>
+<p class="caption">RUSSIAN TYPES</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Even Moscow, their former stronghold, fell away
+in the 1909 elections. There is throughout the country
+an undercurrent of fierce demand for an immediate
+millennium, with Liberty as the guiding grace
+and some particular party as its escort. A song that
+has become almost an anthem, “Spurn with us that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span>ancient tyrant,” chanted softly by the school-boys
+to the tune of the <i>Marseillaise</i>,—this tells the tale
+of what is in the air, and in the blood of the people.
+The most poorly-suppressed desire is insatiate to
+hack away with one blow the abuses that have,
+through the centuries, rooted themselves deep in
+Russian society. The experience of the various revolutionary
+and terrorist movements proves that their
+votaries are capable of daring any death for their
+creeds, and of swimming to their imaged goal in a
+sea of blood. Let the conservative Octobrist group
+once succeed in concentrating power in the Duma,
+and then let a free election substitute for them such
+men as were in the first Duma, and the Russian
+Revolution has become a fact.</p>
+
+<p>It is a commonplace to compare the situation
+with that of France in 1790. There is, however,
+one fundamental difference. France possessed a
+numerous and economically powerful bourgeoisie,
+from whom political rights had been withheld.
+This class included many strong men moved to
+a unity of political desire. They were able in the
+first place to work up into a place of dominance.
+After the interval of supplanting terrorism, they
+retook by their own efforts the power which, save
+for the periods of despotic militarism, they have
+since maintained. In Russia the conservative middle-class
+is numerically very weak, and its representatives
+are unable to seize and hold control
+themselves. They possess it now only precariously,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span>
+by the external propping of weakening absolutism.
+Will Russia’s Octobrists, after performing the function
+of filching power from the autocracy, meet,
+at the hands of a new Robespierre, the fate of the
+high-idealed Gironde?</p>
+
+<p>One cannot yet answer. But whatever the harvest,
+the work of the third and fourth Dumas, carried
+out in harmony with the Imperial Ministers,
+has shown that the last dread arbitrament of social
+war need not come. Revolution is the final recourse,
+to be undertaken only if a political and social situation
+is so desperate that all other means must fail.
+Such is not the case in Russia. There are administrative
+abuses there. But governmental restrictions
+press rather less than one might imagine upon the
+plain workaday people; and compared to those
+of other nations, they are not exceptional save in
+degree. It is the educated and so-called upper
+classes who complain. Taxes elsewhere than in Russia
+are burdensome and sure as death. Emigration
+to Siberia will give any peasant the legal privilege
+of escaping taxation, which in America is the prerogative
+of her absentee plutocracy alone. The
+exile system, dwindling for years past, has now
+been in effect abolished by the refusal of the Duma
+to make an appropriation for its continuance. The
+press-censorship is only the open operation of influences
+tacitly accepted elsewhere—such as in
+the United States left the Tweed Ring so long
+uncriticised. The much-condemned passport is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span>
+actually of no more inconvenience than showing a
+railway ticket, and it does not come within “forty
+<i>sagenes</i>” of the custom-house inquisition which
+faces every American citizen on his return home.</p>
+
+<p>It is not an error to say that in many matters of
+individual liberty the Slav enjoys more than the
+American. In the treatment of subject nations, reliable
+and neutral witnesses declare that Russia does
+not approach the rigor of the Prussian bureaucracy
+in Alsace. Many of the Empire’s restrictions are
+those which obtained throughout Europe fifty years
+ago—abuses common to a certain stage of civilization,
+and of public opinion. These melt away in
+newer customs, for time is curing much. Once the
+chariot of progress is started, many evils right
+themselves in the natural and inevitable upward
+pressure, and many slough off unnoted. It is not so
+many years back that in America a black man could
+be deported to malarial lowlands more deadly
+than Siberia’s steppes; not so long ago that the
+English Parliament passed an act requiring all
+railway-trains to be preceded by a man carrying
+a red flag. Like the seignorial rights of Germany’s
+feudal states, anachronisms become outgrown, and
+fall away.</p>
+
+<p>In Russia, unfortunately, the onslaught against
+iniquitous human laws is overcarried into a blind
+charge against Nature’s laws, which no revolution
+can repeal. The protest against dire artificial abuses
+is mixed with a rebellion against the curse of Adam.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span>
+It is the fearful fact of life that the destiny of the
+majority is anxiety, dependence for daily bread on
+other men, grinding incessant toil remunerated by
+a bare livelihood, a barring-back from the fullest
+personal capacity and possibilities through poverty,
+parentage, environment, and lack of opportunity.
+The forces of Nature and primal competition put
+so many limitations upon every one’s action that it
+is hard to say which are due to the tyranny of men,
+which are the handicaps born of the nature of things.
+The cry for deliverance is rising equally in the workhouses
+of Scotland, in France, where thirty-five
+per cent of the land is owned by great proprietors,
+in the slums of New York City, and in the rice-fields
+of Japan. A government under the present
+system can but do its best to develop men’s capacities,
+and to give them a fair deal. All that the
+best of modern societies has succeeded yet in
+securing to the mass of mankind is the chance to
+get their sons the education which will enable them
+to vanquish some of the limitations, security for
+the person, and protection from robbery of the
+cruder sort.</p>
+
+<p>Capacity and opportunity can come but by
+slow degrees. When one sees the numbers and the
+types in the villages, men of latent capacities undoubtedly,
+but swamped by the spirit of <i>nietchevo</i>
+and with all their enterprise sapped in the stagnant
+communism of the Mir, he realizes the futility
+of a sudden change and the hopelessness of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span>
+germinating by political pellet the leaven of progress
+in the hundred and forty millions.</p>
+
+<p>Rulers may be changed by revolution. But the
+real quickening of the people to their great future
+must come and is coming by the slow, sure way of
+evolution.</p>
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c8">VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">THE STORY OF THE HORDES</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>MONG people so peaceful and subdued as are
+the latter-day Mongols, it is hard to realize
+that the race has had a past which in tradition at
+least goes back to the infancy of history. According
+to legend, the Chinese, the first reputed offspring
+of the Mongols, preceded by three hundred years
+Egypt’s earliest dynasty. They antedate Abraham’s
+assigned epoch by twenty-six generations. They
+claim to have continued before Marathon a longer
+time than has elapsed from the foundation of Rome
+to our own era. Yet they yield not even to the Romans
+preëminence of arms, for they won and ruled
+an empire in extent and population the greatest that
+has ever existed. Mongols have led the world’s
+mightiest armies; their hosts have carried the ox-hide
+banners over every great European state but
+Spain and England, and into every Asian country
+except Japan.</p>
+
+<p>That the march of Mongols down the long way of
+history has been so little appreciated is the sword’s
+obeisance to the pen. Save for the mendacious memoirs
+of Tamerlane, and a few Ouighour inscriptions
+in Central Asia, chronicles there are virtually none.
+So story has found a peg for the clipped tails of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</span>
+Alcibiades’ dogs, but scarcely a word for the deeds
+of those who won the world from the Yellow Sea to
+the Baltic, from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic. Only
+where the annals of the race have been written in the
+blood of the peoples they conquered are the events
+to be traced; only by assembling the alien and hostile
+evidences of the encircling nations can one shape
+the outline of Mongolia’s mighty past. History
+takes from the Confucian Book of Records the
+story of the earliest emigration to the east; from
+Herodotus the descent upon Mesopotamia and the
+struggle with Persia on the west. It gleans from
+the Chinese archives the doings of the Hiung-nu—the
+Huns; from the documents of the Byzantine
+Empire the descent on Europe of the same Mongolian
+“Scourge of God.” It culls from Arab historiographs
+the facts of the southern conquests of
+Genghis Khan; from Russian monasteries the tale
+of the northward march of his lieutenant Batui.</p>
+
+<p>The outlines of Mongolia’s career are patched
+and gathered from her frontier lands, yet silhouetted
+against the far recesses of time they grow steadily
+clearer and more colossal.</p>
+
+<p>In the year given by most as 2852 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, a tribe,
+whose earliest folk-lore and traditions point to an
+origin in the cradle of the Hordes near Urga, was
+pushing seaward down the valley of the Yellow
+River. Like the children of Israel, they were in
+constant conflict with the “barbarian” aborigines.
+This tribe became in due time the Chinese nation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</span></p>
+
+<p>Through fifteen hundred years the descendants
+of the invaders wrought out a dimly comprehended
+civilization on the banks of the Hoang-ho. Behind
+the imposing national legend, hallowed by the
+mist of centuries and focused by images of their five
+Hero Kings, one may see the fact of strong, brave
+rulers striving for their people’s advance. A real
+statesman was the original of the demigod Shinnung,
+“holy husbandman,” the introducer of agriculture,
+in whose honor every spring a furrow is
+ploughed in the soil of his temple courtyard by the
+Emperor of China. A father in the flesh was that
+“Nest-builder” who watched the birds construct
+their homes, and on that model taught his people to
+make the wattled and plastered huts one sees to-day.
+The mystic queller of disastrous inundations, Ta-yu,
+founder of the house of Hia, was the first hydraulic
+engineer, the dykes of whose successors embank the
+treacherous Yellow River. He it was who hung at
+his door a bell which any of his subjects might ring,
+to obtain immediate attention, and who would
+leave his rice to answer a call to secure justice. Kie
+likewise wears human lineaments, he who made a
+mountain of meat and a tank of wine, and then, to
+please a frail companion, had his courtiers eat and
+drink of them on all fours like cows. There is an
+historic background to the rising against the tyrant
+under Shang, who later offered himself as a human
+sacrifice for rain in time of famine, and a kindred
+note in the story of Chou-siu, sold to misfortunes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</span>
+by a woman whom he loved and immolating himself
+in his royal robes when the rebellious vassals were
+closing in around him.</p>
+
+<p>As the years pass, the histories become clearer and
+more direct, and the legendary aspect of exploits
+falls away. The Commentaries of Confucius deal
+with events as tangible and exact as Luther’s Reformation:
+they give the records of kings, and their
+daily doings two thousand years before our era.</p>
+
+<p>In 1122 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, with Wu-wang of the dynasty of
+Chu, the Chinese nation emerged as a civilized state.
+It was organized on a feudal system, not dissimilar
+to that built up by Japan’s powerful Daimios. Under
+this single dynasty the Celestial Kingdom began
+a period of 873 years of development, marked by the
+writings of the great sages. Lao-tse, founder of the
+Taoist religion, with its watchword of “Tao” (reason),
+but its quick degeneracy to forms and idol-worship,
+was the first of the Chinese philosophers in
+point of time. He was at the zenith of his repute
+around 530 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> He had a young disciple struggling
+through poverty to an education, “Master Kung,”
+known to us under the Latinized nomenclature of
+Jesuit missionaries as Confucius.</p>
+
+<p>The youth eagerly conned and meditated upon
+Lao-tse’s abstract speculations; but, unsatisfied, he
+began the studies and compilations from the ancients
+which to this day constitute the foundations
+of Chinese literature, etiquette, religion, ceremonial,
+and policy of government.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</span></p>
+
+<p>Confucius was at once the world’s greatest college
+professor and its most influential editor. His school
+instructed three thousand pupils in ethics and
+etiquette. His writings have influenced more minds
+than those of any other human individual, and
+his supremacy is the triumph of uninspired work.
+His moral tone is lofty,—as witness his “Do not
+unto another what you would not have done to
+yourself,”—but his life brought no great new
+message.</p>
+
+<p>“I am a commentator, not an originator,” he
+said of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mang-tse, “Master Mang,” whom we know as
+Mencius, followed “Master Kung” by one hundred
+years, applying, as a practical reformer, to the
+society of the day, the maxims of his enlightened
+philosophy, rebuking princes and giving to the
+Chinese world the last of its classics.</p>
+
+<p>In the glories of the Chu Dynasty, China, the
+earliest offshoot of the Mongol race, reached its
+literary and philosophic climax.</p>
+
+<p>In Turan, now called Turkestan, and in Mesopotamia,
+a western division of the Mongols appears
+about 640 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> It is making an incursion into the
+declining Empire of Assyria, over which Nebuchadnezzar
+is soon to rule. Nothing of detail remains,
+only the record of the devastating inroad over the
+mountain; but it locates at this date the southwestern
+frontier of Mongol dominion.</p>
+
+<p>Scythia, north of the Black Sea, reveals them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</span>
+next. The sketch is drawn by the master-pen of the
+Greek father of history in his description of
+the expedition of Darius, 506 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> “Having neither
+cities nor forts, they carry their dwellings with them
+wherever they go,” Herodotus writes, describing the
+nomad foes of the Great King. He relates that they
+are “accustomed, moreover, one and all of them, to
+shoot from horseback and to live not by husbandry,
+but on their cattle.”</p>
+
+<p>This was the enemy against whom Darius planned
+a campaign, whose object was to free from the menace
+of the Scythians north of the line of advance his
+prospective expedition for the conquest of Greece.
+From the bridge of boats over the Hellespont, beside
+which Miltiades watched, the great Persian marched
+to the Don River, the nomads always retreating.
+Darius finally challenged the Scythian king to stand
+and fight, or to accept him as suzerain. To this
+message Idonthyrsus replied: “This is my way,
+Persian. I never fear men or fly from them, nor do
+I now fly from thee. I only follow my common mode
+of life in peaceful years. We Scythians have neither
+towns nor cultivated lands, which might induce us,
+through fear of being taken or ravaged, to be in any
+hurry to fight with you. In return for thy calling
+thyself my lord, I say to thee, ‘Go weep!’”</p>
+
+<p>All the Asian steppes were open to the ever-retreating
+nomads: Darius was obliged to halt.
+Hereupon, the Scythian prince, understanding how
+matters stood, dispatched a herald to the Persian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</span>
+camp with presents for the king. They were “a bird,
+a mouse, a frog, and five arrows.”</p>
+
+<p>Darius was at liberty to deduce whatever explanation
+he chose. He retreated, the Scythians
+hounding his army on. He found his bridge over
+the Bosphorus safe, and returned to Persia to
+prepare the Athenian expedition that ended at
+Marathon. The Scythians remained: they were left
+leading their flocks as of old over the unconquerable
+steppes.</p>
+
+<p>By these echoes of clashings with other nations,
+the first-known streams of Mongol outflow are dimly
+followed to the Caucasus Mountains and the Black
+Sea on the south and west, bounding Scythia; to the
+Hoang-ho Valley, in which were living the metamorphosed
+Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>But the rolling hills south of Lake Baikal, the
+source of the race-stream, still poured out fresh
+hordes, which periodically overflowed in roving
+nomad bands, harrying the plainsmen. While the
+feudal states of China struggled and fought among
+themselves, now coalescing under the “Wu-pa,” the
+five dictators, now uniting under a Prince Hwan
+of Shan-tung into a temporary Chinese Shogunate,
+there came down upon the fertile lands and populous
+cities wild horsemen, sparing none, burning,
+looting, riding away. “The Hiung-nu descended on
+us,” appears again and again in the history.</p>
+
+<p>At length, about 246 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, arose the short but
+glorious dynasty of Ts’in, under China’s king, Shi-hwang-ti.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</span>
+He was a man of action. He compacted
+a centralized monarchy from the many princedoms,
+drove back the nomad Hiung-nu beyond the Yellow
+River, built the Great Wall, and by his glorious
+exploits blazoned into Europe’s vocabulary,
+the word China—Ts’in.</p>
+
+<p>In Sz-ma Ts’ien’s history, a striking incident,
+revealing the Great Emperor’s limitations, is graphically
+told.</p>
+
+<p>“Li-se, the councillor, said, ‘Of old, the Empire
+was divided and troubled. There was nobody who
+could unite it. Therefore did many lords reign at
+a time. For this, the readers of books speak of old
+times to cry down these. They encourage the people
+to forge calumnies. Your subject proposes that
+all the official histories be burned. The books not
+proscribed shall be those of medicine, of divination,
+of agriculture. If any want to study laws, let them
+take the office-holders as masters.’”</p>
+
+<p>The decree was “approved.” The old books of
+annals, the Confucian Commentaries, the Odes
+and the Rituals, to the suppressed execration of the
+learned, fed the flames. The literati who protested
+were warmed, themselves, over the same fires.</p>
+
+<p>But despite Shi-hwang-ti’s signal defeat of the
+five coalescing tribes, and the eighty-two thousand
+severed heads; despite the victories in 214 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, the
+Hiung-nu Empire grew in power, until it extended
+from Corea to Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese “Han” Dynasty, even under the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</span>
+peasant-founder, Lin-pang, who had proven himself
+a thorough soldier, was constantly harried. The
+loss of the old literature continued to be mourned,
+which argues some plane of general appreciation.
+The Minister urged the recall of the Ts’in philosophers
+and the reproduction of the burned books.</p>
+
+<p>“Why have books?” said the Emperor. “I won
+the Empire on horseback.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can you keep it on horseback?” the Minister
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>The literati were eventually recalled. Their support
+was secured for the throne, and the Hiung-nu
+were kept back by art as well as by arms.</p>
+
+<p>At the Emperor’s death, his widow, the Dowager
+Empress Lu, of Borgian repute, was still harder
+pressed by the nomads. Meteh, the khan of the
+invading hordes outside the Wall, ventured to send
+to her a proposal of marriage and tariff-treaty
+couched in Rabelaisian poetry. “I wish to change
+what I have for what I have not.” He followed
+the verses with gifts of camels and carts and steppe
+ponies. In return his messengers insisted on a tribute
+of wadded and silk clothes, precious metals
+and embroidery, grain and yeast, as well as the intoxicating
+<i>samshu</i>. These royal presents and tribute
+were really a trading of goods, a barter, and citizens
+of lower rank, in the fairs beside the Wall, were
+carrying on an equivalent.</p>
+
+<p>More and more oppressive became the demands of
+the Mongols. A band of beautiful maidens, a very<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</span>
+toll of the Minotaur, was exacted yearly. In one
+of the ancient Chinese poems a princess laments the
+fate that condemns her to a barbarian husband,
+a desolate land where raw flesh is to be her food,
+sour milk her drink, and the felt hut her palace.</p>
+
+<p>In 200 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, Sin, King of Han, marched against the
+Hiung-nu, only to retreat after heavy losses, with a
+third of his soldiers fingerless from the cold. Again,
+in 177 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, the Hiung-nu broke a treaty and raided
+across the Wall. A speech of the Emperor, in 162
+<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, is quoted in the Chinese chronicles: “These later
+times for several years the Hiung-nu have come in
+a crowd to exercise their ravages on our frontiers.”</p>
+
+<p>In 141 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, Nu-ti, the fifth of the House of Han,
+assembled a great army of one hundred and forty
+thousand Chinese, and marched against the Confederacy.
+This army, like that of Darius, penetrated far
+up into the nomad’s territory. Scarcely a quarter
+of them returned. But the invasion was not fruitless:
+the Hiung-nu gave allegiance to China.
+Later, in 138 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, largely to turn the left flank of
+the Horde, the Chinese advanced into Corea. In
+119 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> another march to the district north of Tibet
+turned the nomads’ right flank. At length, in 100
+<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, a more northerly Tatar clan, the Sien-pi, came
+down on the broken remnants of the Hiung-nu.
+After thirteen hundred years of power this tribe was
+destroyed. Of the scattered nomads some remained
+to unite with their victorious conquerors; some went
+south to Turkestan; a third group trekked north,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</span>
+and went over the great steppe. Subsequent to 100
+<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, they are found on the east bank of the Volga,
+where during two centuries they temporarily disappear
+from history.</p>
+
+<p>The great Empire of China now existed unmolested
+by the Hordes, and after a few hard fights
+ruled Asia as far as the borders of Persia. Its outposts
+almost met those of the Empire of Rome.
+Both realms were, about this date, in peace and prosperity.
+There is even a record of trade between
+them, the Chinese annals telling of an expedition of
+King An-tun, or Antoninus, in 166 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, to Burmah,
+from which his factors reached the Middle Kingdom;
+and of glass, drugs, metals, and game obtained
+overland by way of Parthia from Ta-ts’in, the Great
+Empire. Pliny writes of silk, iron, furs, and skins,
+caravan-brought from China. So moved the two
+empires until 376 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, when Valens the Irresolute
+reigned in Byzantium. To him came messengers
+bringing word of great alarm from the Danube.
+The whole nation of Goths were on the bank, begging
+a refuge in Roman territory.</p>
+
+<p>“Wild enemies, from where we know not, are
+upon us!” they cried.</p>
+
+<p>The Goths, who were to subvert the declining
+empire, were escaping from before the western division
+of the old Hiung-nu. Valens had the Goths
+ferried over the Danube, and the Huns established
+themselves in the vacated places of what is now
+Austria.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f37">
+<img src="images/fig37.jpg" alt="attila">
+<p class="caption">THE MIRACLE OF ATTILA’S REPULSE</p>
+<p class="caption">(From a painting by Raphael in Vatican)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</span></p>
+
+<p>Amid those hordes arose a leader destined to leave
+a memory in the sagas of the Scandinavian bards,
+in the Niebelungenlied of the Teutons, and a lurid
+trail in the annals of the Cæsars. He called himself
+a descendant of the great Nimrod, “nurtured in
+Engaddi, by the grace of God, King of the Huns,
+the Goths, the Danes, the Medes; the Dread of the
+World,”—Attila.</p>
+
+<p>A profound politician, he alternately cajoled and
+threatened the peoples whose conquest he undertook;
+a true barbarian, no food save flesh and milk
+passed his lips. He and his men worshiped the mysteriously
+discovered scimitar of Mars, and from
+Persia to Gaul, from Finland to the walls of Constantinople,
+his armies ranged. Ambassadors went
+from his Court to China. The great battle of Chalons,
+in which, aided by the Goths, the dwindling
+forces of Rome’s Western Empire won their last
+victory, alone preserved Europe from his yoke. His
+descendants, mixing with succeeding conquerors,
+have remained until this day in the land that is
+called, after their dreaded name, Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>Back to the history of Sz-ma Ts’ien one must
+return for the next harvest of Mongolia’s dragon-teeth.
+The Tung-hu, whose descendants are now
+the skin-clad Tunguses that live far to the north,
+even up to the Arctic Ocean, came down between
+309 and 439 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> upon Manchuria. This occupation
+separated China from Corea, which, thus isolated,
+preserved for centuries the old Han dialect. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</span>
+Tung-hu conquerors established a great kingdom
+extending from the Japan Sea to Turkestan. From
+380 to 580 they ruled the northern kingdom of
+China proper. The leading place among those who
+composed their empire was held by the tribe of Juju,
+or Geougen, whose descendants are now the Finns.
+Subject to the Juju was a Mongol clan descended
+from the old southern Hiung-nu, who lived hard-by
+Mount Altai. They were blacksmiths and armorers
+for the Tung-hu army, and were called Turks.
+Their crescent power gradually supplanted that of
+their masters.</p>
+
+<p>In 480 this people appeared on the border of
+China. By 560 the Turkish Empire had become supreme
+in Central Asia. They pressed upon the nation
+of Avars on the Altai borderland of the steppe,
+until twenty thousand of these, refusing to submit,
+moved westward. Justinian received the envoys
+of the fugitives in 558. They offered to serve him,
+and threatened, if unaccepted, to attack his Eastern
+Empire. Anxious only to keep them away from his
+own domains, and indifferent as to which should
+survive, he sent them to attack his German enemies.
+The Avars, conquering a place in Europe,
+established a powerful nation between the Danube
+and the Elbe, biding their time till with the
+other barbarians they could descend to the spoil of
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>After their rebellious vassals came the Turkish
+envoys, with richer presents to the Eastern Emperor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</span>
+Justin II, and more alarming menaces. The
+military alliance of the Turks was accepted and that
+of the Avars renounced. Kemarchus carried the
+ratification of Rome’s treaty to Mount Altai in
+Central Asia. For many years there was friendship
+between Mongol and Byzantine, mutual alliance and
+trade.</p>
+
+<p>In 618 the great T’ang Dynasty arose in China,
+whose fame is suggested in the fact that the only
+Cantonese word for a Chinese nationality is “Man
+of T’ang.” The energetic Li-shi-min subdued the
+Manchurian Tunguses, and in 630 a great battle
+broke the Turkish power. China once again was
+supreme from Corea to the borderland of Persia.
+During the T’ang Dynasty, Kashmir in India, and
+Anam were captured by the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>There followed now a period of centuries when the
+breeding-place of the Mongol’s wolf-born hordes
+ran barren. In unchronicled obscurity the skin-clad
+herdsmen lived out their generation. To the feeble
+Ouighour confederacy fell the sceptre of the steppes.
+The old territory of the Hiung-nu khans and the
+Turkish Supreme King was split into little chief-governed
+principalities. Manchus and Tung-hus,
+rallying again, alternately ruled and harried China.
+Avars and Huns occupied their distant conquests.
+But in the vast stretch between, the tribes were in
+a bewitched sleep. The people and the qualities that
+made the old armies were there; the breed of shaggy
+ponies which they rode was there; iron reddened<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</span>
+the hill-slopes, waiting to be hammered into spears
+in the Altai forges; China and Europe were as ripe
+for the spoiling. All that the Mongols needed was
+a leader.</p>
+
+<p>In a quaint chronicle of the Middle Ages we read
+of how he came. When the French took Antioch
+from the Turks, one Can Can ruled over the northern
+region out of which the Turks had originally
+come. To the old kindred in this hour of need
+they sent for aid. Can Can was of the Cathayans,
+a people dwelling among the mountains. In
+one of the valley stretches lived the Tayman tribe,
+who were Nestorians. After Can Can’s death a
+shepherd, who had risen to power among the Taymans,
+made himself ruler as King John. King John
+had a brother named Vut. Beyond his pastures
+some ten or fifteen days’ journey was Mongol; the
+latter described as a poor and beggarly nation, without
+governor or law save their soothsayings so detestable
+to the minds of the Nestorians. Adjoining
+the Mongols were other poor people called Tatars.
+When King John died without an heir, Vut became
+greatly enriched. This aroused naturally the cupidity
+of his needy neighbors. Among the Mongols was
+a blacksmith named Cyngis. Ingratiating himself
+with the Tatars, he pointed out that the lack of a
+governor left both peoples subject to the oppression
+of the surrounding tribes. He got himself raised to
+the double chieftainship, secretly collected an army,
+and broke suddenly upon Vut. Cyngis sent the Tatars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</span>
+ahead now to open his way, and the people
+everywhere cried in dismay, “Lo, the Tatars come!
+the Tatars come!”</p>
+
+<p>While the Turks sought aid of their kinsmen for
+the defense, the French King sent to King John’s
+reputedly Christian kingdom for help to his
+crusade. But Cyngis “Temugin,” the Man, had
+come. As Genghis Khan he was to open up the
+vastest empire the world has ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>In 1200 the young Temugin, in a great battle near
+Urga, defeated Wang Khan, whom modern research,
+vindicating the basis of truth in the old Friar William
+de Rubruquis tales, has shown to have been a
+Tatar prince of the Nestorian Christian faith, King
+of the Kitai or Cathayans, in all probability the
+ruler known to the princes of Europe, through his
+letters to the Roman Pope, as the Christian potentate
+of the Orient, Prester John.</p>
+
+<p>Wang Khan’s skull, encased in silver, graced the
+conqueror’s tent as a first trophy. In 1206, summoning
+all the Mongol chiefs, Temugin took the
+title of Genghis Khan, “The Greatest King.”</p>
+
+<p>His armies were turned next to the reduction of
+his own people, the nomad tribes of the Central
+Asian plains. As one after another was defeated,
+its warriors were incorporated into his growing
+army. When all these myriad shepherds and soldiers
+were gathered in, he directed his march towards
+China.</p>
+
+<p>The Great Wall was as paper to his host. Ninety<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</span>
+cities were taken by storm, never one surrendering.
+For while to the kindred races which he had conquered,
+and which furnished further recruits for his
+armies, Genghis was most merciful and humane, to
+a foreign foe he was indeed the Wrath of God. Once
+he was bought off from the invasion; but again he
+returned to the prey. A way into Peking was opened
+by means of a mine dug under the walls to the centre
+of the city; through it a picked body of Mongols
+entered, marched to the gates, and opened them.
+The savage host rushed in to sack and slay. For
+sixty days Peking burned, and five desolated provinces
+of North China were added to the Mongol
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Mohammed, Sultan of Carizme, who reigned from
+India to the Persian Gulf, was the next objective for
+the Mongols. In the field, by valor and numbers,
+the Khan’s troops defeated all the Sultan’s armies.
+The walled towns were besieged and taken, largely
+through the skill of Chinese engineers. The whole
+great Persian district was harried after the custom
+of the Mongols through four years; for hundreds of
+miles the country was so ruined that to this day the
+old populousness and prosperity have never been
+recovered.</p>
+
+<p>The army of one of the Khan’s generals marched
+north into Turkestan, and subduing many Turkish
+peoples, entered beyond the Caucasus the territory
+of the Polovtisni, themselves Mongols of an earlier
+invasion. The conquest of Russia had begun. A<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</span>
+Muscovite chronicle of those days illustrates the
+utter consternation and surprise of the inhabitants
+at this formidable and sudden incursion: “In
+those times there came upon us, for our sins, unknown
+nations. No one could tell their origin,
+whence they came, or what religion they professed.
+God alone knew who they were.” The people generally
+believed that the time had come foretold in
+Revelation when Satan should be let loose with the
+hosts of “Gog and Magog to gather them together
+in battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the
+sea.” Indeed, in the old map of Tatary, by Hondius,
+the territories of these two fabled worthies are
+carefully outlined in what is now Manchuria.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the Tatarean theory of the Mongols’
+army, the Russian chivalry gathered to the aid of
+the Polovtisni, and collected an army by the lower
+Dnieper. Defiantly they killed the ambassadors
+whom the Mongols sent. The wrathful nomads advanced
+into the Crimea near the Sea of Azov. The
+two hosts met in the fatal battle of Kalka. It was
+the Crécy of Russian chivalry. Hardly a tenth of
+the army escaped. Ten thousand of the men of Kiev
+fell; of the princes, six, of the boyars, seventy, died
+on the field of battle. Matislaf the Bold alone
+made front, and he was treacherously betrayed
+and slain.</p>
+
+<p>The way into southern Russia was now open; yet,
+after their victory in 1224, the Mongols disappeared
+as suddenly as they had come. The hordes had been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</span>
+diverted to complete the conquest of China. For
+thirteen years they were swallowed up by the steppe.
+The son of Genghis, “Oktai,” had succeeded the
+dead conqueror, and had appointed Batui General
+of the West.</p>
+
+<p>Again there was heralded an invasion, this time by
+one of the outlying tribes of Khirgiz on the eastern
+border. The blow was aimed at the very heart of
+Russia. The old Slav ballads, or “<i>bilinî</i>,” tell how
+Oleg the Handsome fell at Riszan. The Tatars
+entered and burned Moscow in 1237. Onward into
+the north rolled their conquest, town after town
+falling. At the Cross of Ignatius, fifty miles from
+Novgorod, the torrent turned, and, sparing for the
+time being the ancient republic, swept to the south.</p>
+
+<p>Against the cradle of the Russian race, the white-walled
+many-towered city of Kiev, Mangu, the
+grandson of Genghis, now marched. By multitudes
+the Tatars carried the walls. Fighting to the end,
+the last defenders went down in a ring around the
+tomb of the great Yaroslav.</p>
+
+<p>Russia was prostrate at the feet of the nomads.
+Her princes became vassals, some to journey as far as
+the Amur to pay their homage to the Great Khan.
+Without the Tatar Emperor’s letters-patent, no
+prince could assume his inheritance. When the
+envoy presented the documents, the nobles had to
+prostrate themselves and accept them kneeling.
+Each Russian city gave its tribute, even the still
+uninvaded Novgorod. Every peasant in Muscovy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</span>
+paid his poll-tax. Indeed, the supremacy of the
+czars of Moscow, when the Tatar yoke was at
+length thrown off, was largely due to the wealth
+which the Romanov family had managed to acquire
+and to hold during their term as tax-farmers of the
+Great Khan. Russian troops, supplied as part of the
+tribute, engaged in the Tatar wars, getting in one
+instance of record their share of the booty—after
+the sack of Daghestan. They were drafted on account
+of their great size and valor into a body-guard
+for the Mongol Emperor in Peking, corresponding
+to the Swiss Guard of Louis XVI.</p>
+
+<p>While the conquest of Russia was being consolidated
+into a permanent Mongol dominion destined
+to endure for nearly two hundred and fifty years,
+Batui led his army on into Poland and Bohemia.
+He took Buda-Pest and devastated the country far
+and wide. The most alarming accounts preceded
+him, which are still to be read in the monkish annals
+of the time. “Anno Domini, 1240, the detestable
+people of Satan, to wit, an infinite number of Tatars,
+broke forth like grasshoppers covering the face of
+the earth, spoiling the eastern confines with fire and
+sword, ruining cities, cutting up woods, rooting up
+vineyards, killing the people both of city and country.
+They are rather monsters than men; clothed
+with ox-hides, armed with iron plates, in stature
+thick and short, well-set, strong in body, in war
+invincible, in labor indefatigable, drinking the
+blood of their beasts for dainties.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, who
+undertook to gather the powers of Europe to meet
+the danger, wrote to Henry III of England:—</p>
+
+<p>“A barbarous nation hath lately come called Tatars.
+We know not of what place or originall. A
+public destruction hath therefore followed the common
+desolation of Kingdomes and spoil of the fertile
+land which that wicked people hath passed through,
+not sparing sex, age or dignity, and hoping to extinguish
+the rest of mankind. The general destruction
+of the world and specially of Christendom calls
+for speedy help and succour.</p>
+
+<p>“The men are of short stature but square and well-set,
+rough and courageous, have broad faces, frowning
+lookes, horrible cries agreeing to their hearts.
+They are incomparable archers.</p>
+
+<p>“Heartily we adjure your majestie in behalfe of
+the common necessitie, that with instant care and
+prudent deliberation, you diligently prepare speedy
+aide of strong knights and other armed Men-at-arms.”</p>
+
+<p>Throughout Europe the dread was universal. In
+1248 Pope Innocent IV sent to the Tatars an embassy
+with money, begging them to cease their ravages.
+Failing, he summoned Christendom. Louis IX
+of France prepared a crusade. The fishermen of
+England could not sell their herrings because their
+usual customers, the Swedes, had remained at home
+to defend Scandinavia. Fortunately, the tide of
+western Mongol invasion had spent itself. After
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</span>wasting the Danube district, the death of the Great
+Khan recalled Batui in 1245.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f38">
+<img src="images/fig38.jpg" alt="ming">
+<p class="caption">ON THE ROAD TO THE MING TOMBS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Syrian archives reveal the Mongols’ next appearance.
+In 1243 Hatthon, King of Armenia, sought
+Mangu Khan at Cambaluc (Peking), praying him
+to fight the Saracens and recover Jerusalem. Mangu
+sent his general, who speedily took Antioch, spoiled
+Aleppo, and sacked the city of Bagdad.</p>
+
+<p>When the latter was stormed, Haloon, the Mongol
+general, ordered that the Caliph be brought alive
+into his presence. There had been found in the city
+a quite surprising booty in treasure and riches.
+Haloon asked why the Caliph had not used his
+wealth to levy mercenaries and defend his country.
+The Caliph replied that he had deemed his own
+people sufficient to withstand the Mongols. Then
+the Khan announced that the precious things which
+had been so cherished would be alone left to the
+miserable man, who was shut into a chamber with
+his pearls and gold for sustenance and perished in
+torments. There was no Caliph of Bagdad after
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, almost simultaneously, there were conquered
+by the Mongols, northern China, Syria,
+Russia, Hungary, and Poland. The stream of
+human blood that it cost is immeasurable.</p>
+
+<p>Of the first conqueror, Genghis Khan, an Arab
+poem says:—</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">On every course he spurred his steed</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">He raised the blood-dyed dust.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</span></p>
+
+<p>The lives of four and a half million people are
+reckoned as his toll on humanity. He had proposed
+to raze every city and destroy every farm of the five
+northern Chinese provinces, to make pasture for his
+nomads, and was only dissuaded by a minister, who
+ventured death in opposing him. It was he who
+ordered the million souls of Herat to slaughter.
+Batui, subduer of Russia, called “Sein Khan” (the
+Good King), is said after the Moscow massacre to
+have received 270,000 right ears. Following his
+fight with the Teutonic knights, near the Baltic,
+nine sacks of right ears were laid at his feet.
+“Vanquished, they ask no favor, and vanquishing,
+they show no compassion.” “The Mongols came,
+destroyed, burnt, slaughtered, plundered, and departed,”
+summarizes an Arab; and the unimaginative
+chronicles of the Chinese tell without comment
+of city after city taken, and their inhabitants put
+to the sword.</p>
+
+<p>Utter ineradicable barbarity would, on the face of
+things, seem to have been the inmost nature of this
+people. Yet only a few years later, when Mangu
+Khan was ruling at Caracorum, the Court had
+become civilized. Forty-one years after Genghis
+Khan’s death, when the great Venetian traveler
+Marco Polo arrived at Kublai’s Court, the palaces
+and the organized statecraft at Peking had become
+a model of efficiency. The Mongols, not as a race,
+but in the sphere of their leaders, had become
+a real nation, not unworthy of its success.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to reconstruct the Tatar capital
+and note its development in half a century. The
+Minorite monk, sent to beg aid from the supposedly
+Christian Mangu Khan for the delivery of Jerusalem,
+wrote a detailed description of the city, Caracorum.
+It had a circuit of three miles and in dearth
+of stone was rampiered strongly with earth. It
+had two main streets: one of the Saracens, where
+the fairs were held and where many merchants
+assembled, attracted by the traffic with the Court,
+and with the continuous procession of visitors and
+messengers; the second chief street was occupied
+by Chinese, who were artificers. The town had four
+gates. In the eastern section grain was sold, in the
+western sheep and goats, in the southern oxen and
+wagons, in the northern horses. Beyond were large
+palaces, the residences of the secretaries. The Khan
+himself had a great court beside the city rampart,
+enclosed not by an earth but a brick wall. Inside
+was a large palace, and a number of long buildings,
+in which were kept his treasures and stores of
+supplies.</p>
+
+<p>Twice a year the Khan held high festival, with
+drinking-bouts whereat Master William, a captive
+taken in Hungary, served as chief butler, officiating
+at the tree which he had devised to pour forth intoxication.
+The ambassador of the Caliph of Bagdad
+came in state, carried upon a litter between two
+mules. Before the Khan, rich and poor in multitudes
+moved in procession, dancing, singing, clapping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</span>
+their hands. The guests brought gifts to the
+monarch. Those of the ambassador of the Turkish
+Soldan were especially rich, but for quaintness the
+Soldan of India scored. He sent eight leopards, and
+ten hare-hounds taught to sit upon the horses’ buttocks
+as do cheetahs. Manifestly it was no raw
+encampment of barbarians, this Caracorum of
+Mangu Khan.</p>
+
+<p>If the Mongol’s Court could, in 1253, show this
+degree of “pomp and pageantry,” how much was it
+exceeded by that of Kublai the Magnificent, visited
+and told of by Marco Polo.</p>
+
+<p>Kublai had established a second seat at Shang-tu,
+and had built not merely a court, but a city. His
+palace was of marble, its rooms aglitter with gold.
+Art had come, and the ceilings were painted with
+figures of men and beasts and birds. Trees of all
+varieties, and flowers, were executed with such exquisite
+skill as filled the traveler, familiar with the
+best products of Italy, with amaze and delight. Sixteen
+miles of park, enclosed by a wall, embosomed
+the palace. Rivers, brooks, and luxuriant meadows
+diversified the landscape, and white stags, fallow
+deer, gazelles, roebuck, rare squirrels, and every
+variety of attractive creature, lent gayety and
+charm.</p>
+
+<p>The Khan rode weekly with his falcons. Sometimes
+a leopard sat a-croup behind him, and was
+loosened at the game that struck his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The tale runs on of the Khan’s silk-corded pavilion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</span>
+in the grove, gilt all over, and having lacquered,
+dragon-pedimented columns; of cave-born rivers
+running deep below the ground; of treasured gems
+and gold.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that Coleridge’s imagination was
+warmed to his dream poem.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">In Xanadu did Kublai Khan</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A stately pleasure dome decree,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Where Alph the sacred river ran,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Through caverns measureless to man,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Down to a sunless sea.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>London’s tortuous streets were to wait two hundred
+years for their first pavement, when Cambaluc’s
+were so straight and wide that one could see
+right along them from end to end, and from one gate
+to the other. In the Khan’s parks, the roads, being
+all paved and raised two cubits above the surface,
+never became muddy, nor did the rain lodge on
+them, but flowed off into the meadows.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to civilization’s wealth and magnificence,
+the Mongols had developed a well-organized
+government. The Khan’s twelve barons exercised
+his delegated authority, as does a modern cabinet
+in behalf of the national executive. Cambaluc was
+policed by a thousand guards. The city wards were
+laid out, for taxation and government, in squares
+like a chess-board, and all these plots were assigned
+to different heads of families. The military
+roads were constantly kept up by a large force. The
+Emperor had ordered that all the highways should<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</span>
+be planted with great trees a few yards apart. Even
+the roads through the unpeopled regions were thus
+planted, and it was the greatest possible solace to
+travelers.</p>
+
+<p>The post, too, was as thoroughly organized as
+Napoleon’s. The messengers of the Emperor, bound
+in whatsoever direction from Cambaluc, found,
+every twenty-five miles of the way, a relay-station.
+Where the route lay through uninhabited deserts,
+the relay-posts were made houses of sojourn. At all
+stations express messengers were in readiness, as
+links in the system for speeding dispatches to provincial
+governors or generals: they were equipped
+with the fastest horses, which stood fresh and saddled,
+ready for an instant mount. The men wore
+girdles hung with bells; when within hearing of a
+station came the sound of jingling and the clatter of
+hoofs, the next man similarly provided would leap
+to his horse, take the delivered letter, and be off
+at full speed. The post covered a full two hundred
+miles by day, and an equal distance by night.
+Marco Polo states that, in the season, fruit gathered
+one morning at the capital, in the evening of the
+next day reached the Great Khan in Shang-tu—a
+distance of ten days’ journey.</p>
+
+<p>Organized charity was instituted by the Mongol
+Khan for Cambaluc. A number of the poorest families
+became his pensioners, receiving regularly
+wheat and corn sufficient for the year. The nomad
+levied as tribute a tenth of all wool, silk, hemp, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</span>
+cloth stuffs, and had therefrom clothing made for
+the indigent of his capital. He had a banking system,
+paper money, a wonderful military discipline,
+advanced astronomy; and he opened the Grand
+Canal to the commerce of the ages. When one
+recalls the epoch at which all this existed, and
+realizes that at that time wolves and robbers disputed
+mastery of the streets of Paris; that the
+Saracens were lords of half of Spain; that Wycliffe
+had not yet published his Bible, and that French
+was the language of the English law courts,—the
+advance attained is hardly short of marvelous.</p>
+
+<p>In nothing whatsoever is the Mongol civilization
+more remarkable and contrasting than in its religious
+toleration—the last acquisition of a civilized
+state.</p>
+
+<p>While the Christian King of France was engaged
+in earning the title of “Saint Louis” by extirpating
+a people of whose creed he disapproved, his
+envoy, the friar, came to a country which had attained
+complete religious liberty and toleration.
+There were “twelve kinds of idolatries of divers
+nations.” Two churches of Mahomet preached the
+law of the Koran, and one church of the Christians
+proclaimed the gospel of the Christ.</p>
+
+<p>He found his own creed treated with especial
+courtesy, the Great Khan subscribing two thousand
+marks to rebuild a chapel on the behest of an Armenian
+monk. He relates that the privilege was
+accorded to the Church of trying any of their number<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</span>
+accused of theft; that the Khan’s secretary and his
+favorite wife were Christians; that a chapel was
+allowed them within the court enclosure; and that
+the Nestorians inhabited fifteen cities of Cathay
+and had a bishopric there.</p>
+
+<p>Marco Polo found the same indulgent tolerance of
+his religion. In Calaci, the principal city of Tangus,
+the inhabitants were “idolaters,” but there were
+three churches of Nestorian Christians. In the province
+of Tenduch, formerly the seat of Presbyter
+John, King George was a Christian and a priest,
+and most of the people were Christians. They paid
+tribute to the Great Khan.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, if the Mongolian attitude toward armed
+nations combating in Christ’s name has been implacable
+hostility, toward those of the faith who
+worshiped peacefully in their midst it has been
+uniformly tolerant, even favoring. The Nestorians,
+who brought their creed from Khorassan in the
+fourth century, had by 500 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> bishoprics in Merv,
+Herat, and Samarcand. The Perait Turkomans as
+a tribe accepted Christianity, and were unpunished.
+That the Faith was liberally treated in 781, under
+the Chinese, is self-acknowledged, on the ancient
+Nestorian stone of Si-an-fu. Headed by a cross,
+there is graven in Syrian and Chinese the Imperial
+decree of 638, ordering a church to be built: it gives
+an abstract of Christian doctrine, and an account of
+the “introduction and propagation of the noble law
+of Ta-t’sin in the Middle Kingdom.” In Si-an-fu<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</span>
+at this time there were four thousand foreign families,
+cut off from return by a northern inroad of
+fanatical Tibetans into Turkestan.</p>
+
+<p>Another monument of 830, found near the site of
+the old Ouighour capital on the Orkhon, and carved
+in Chinese, Turkish, and Ouighour characters, mentions
+the Western religion. A strange sect of Hebrews
+of unknown origin found as well an unpersecuted
+home at K’ai-feng-fu, where the Mosaic rites
+could be performed. To this day a remnant survives.</p>
+
+<p>The same tolerance for alien faiths marked Tatar
+rule in Russia. The Khan of Sarai authorized a
+Greek church and a bishopric in his capital, exempting
+the monks from his poll-tax. Khan Usbek in
+1313 confirmed the privileges of the Church, and
+punished with death sacrilege against it. Kublai
+Khan took part regularly in the Easter services,
+and allowed the Roman missionaries to establish
+a school in Shang-tu.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, reviewing the whole sweep of Asia’s religious
+history, one can hardly escape the deduction
+that if the greatest race of the greatest continent is
+idolatrous, it is not the fault of the Mongolians.</p>
+
+<p>The Nestorian missionaries had an unsurpassed
+opportunity in the fourth century when their faith
+was new and burning, and the world was at peace.
+But stigmatized as heretics after a doctrinal dispute
+which had been settled by the logic of a
+street fight, in which Cyril’s Egyptian bravos defeated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</span>
+the Syrian henchmen of the Patriarch of
+Constantinople, their mother church was driven out
+of the Roman Empire into Persia, where, cut off
+from the support of the main trunk of fellow
+Christians, their organization withered away as
+a lopped branch. The chief congregations in Iran
+and Turan were overwhelmed by the Mohammedans,
+until at length there were left only the
+dwindling congregations in Mongolia, and such
+communities as those on the Malabar coast in
+India.</p>
+
+<p>To-day one hears of interesting discoveries. Now
+it is of the old buried Christian strata among Turkomans
+of Samarcand, of doctrines preserved through
+the fury of Islam fanaticism by families that have
+secretly transmitted Christian worship through the
+centuries. Next it is of Nestorian monks in Asia
+Minor, startled at being able to read the characters of
+Ouighour inscriptions, relics of the writings which
+their predecessors carried to Mongolia. But for all
+practical purposes the Nestorian labors, once so
+promising, are as if they had never been.</p>
+
+<p>Another supreme opportunity for Christianity
+came when Kublai Khan, in 1268, sent west by the
+Polo brothers for Roman missionaries to teach his
+people.</p>
+
+<p>“The Great Khan, ... calling to him the two
+brethren, desired them for his love to go to the Pope
+of the Romans, to pray him to send an hundred wise
+men and learned in the Christian religion unto him,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</span>
+who might show his wise men that the faith of the
+Christians was to be preferred before all other sects,
+and was the only way of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>“After this the Prince caused letters to the Pope
+to be written and gave them to the two brothers.
+Now the contents of the letters were as follows: He
+begged that the Pope would send as many as an
+hundred persons of our Christian faith; intelligent
+men acquainted with the seven arts, well qualified
+to prove by force of argument to idolaters and other
+kind of folk, that the law of Christ was best; and if
+they would prove this, he and all under him would
+be Christians.”</p>
+
+<p>In the advance of Christianity the steps ahead
+have been made not so much by the conversion of
+the people as by the winning of their rulers,—Constantine,
+giving to Rome’s legions the standard of
+the Cross; Clovis; Ethelbert; Vladimir, who drove
+the whole population of Kiev naked into consecrated
+water of the Dnieper; Charlemagne, moving
+against the Saxons with his corps of priests. Where
+these spoke for a hundred thousand souls, Kublai
+spoke for a hundred million. He was able to deliver;
+it was the Pope who did not rise to the occasion. In
+all Christendom Gregory could find but two priests
+to go with the Khan’s messengers, and these turned
+back in the midst of the journey, alarmed by the
+prospect of its hardships. The Khan, who wished
+some religion, sent to Tibet, and received the Buddhist
+missionaries whom he requested. So China,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</span>
+Mongolia, Tibet, and eastern Turkestan are Buddhist
+to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Yet once again the Christian opportunity came.
+The way which had been opened into China by
+Matteo Ricci had been followed by Jesuit missionaries,
+until at the beginning of the seventeenth century
+there were two churches in Peking, some three
+hundred thousand converts in the Empire, and the
+favor of the Emperor Hang was with the Western
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>When Christianity was spreading with cumulative
+rapidity, the Dominicans and Franciscans came in
+and denounced the Jesuit workers for tolerating
+the ancestor-cult of the Chinese, and for permitting
+God to be called “Shang-ti.” In vain the Emperor
+Hang, appealed to by the Jesuits, declared that by
+“Shang-ti” the Chinese meant “Ruler of the Universe,”
+and that the Confucian rites were family
+ceremonies and not idolatry. The rival friars persuaded
+the Pope to proclaim “Tien-chu” the proper
+Chinese word for God, and to condemn all ancestral
+ceremonies. Thereupon, the Chinese Emperor, rebuffed
+and disgusted with all the wrangling fraternities,
+condemned the Christian religion and killed
+the friars, save those whom he wanted for the Imperial
+Observatory.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot but recall an early commentary made
+by Mangu Khan upon the jarring Christian sects
+whose rival dogmas have prevented, and do to this
+day, the common progress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</span></p>
+
+<p>“We Mongolians believe that there is but one
+God, through whom we live and die, and we have an
+upright heart towards Him. That as God hath given
+unto the hand fingers, so He hath given many ways
+to men. God hath given the Scriptures to you, and
+ye Christians keep them not. But He hath given us
+soothsayers, and we do that which they bid us, and
+we live in peace.”</p>
+
+<p>For some years after Kublai Khan’s death, the
+Mongol Empire held its preëminence by inertia
+rather than by strength. Each of the khans had his
+kingdom. Presently the nations that had been subdued
+began to rise against the numerically small
+garrisons of Mongolia. In China, the young Bonze,
+Chu-Yuan-Chang, finally organized a band of Boxers,
+and succeeded in driving out the last degenerate
+Mongol khan from Peking. He united the old eighteen
+provinces and established the Ming Dynasty,
+the tombs and palaces of whose kings are still the
+most celebrated structures of China.</p>
+
+<p>In Russia, Dimitri of the Don gathered one
+hundred and fifty thousand men and defeated the
+Mongols at Kulikovo.</p>
+
+<p>If the old supreme monarch of the north had lost
+his sway, in the south the Mongol race was being
+lifted to its second period of empire under Tamerlane,
+the Iron Khan. His was the history of the first
+Mongol conqueror repeated. The ant that Timur
+watched during his exile, which fell back and returned
+sixty-nine times before it carried its grain of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</span>
+wheat to the top of the wall, was the symbol of his
+early career. Constant obscure tribal conflicts, unsuccessful
+at first, led finally to a gathering of the
+nomads into a terrible invading army. The Golden
+Horde was hurled against Dimitri, defeated him, and
+marched upon Moscow. It was sacked with the horrors
+of Genghis’ days, and all Russia was ravaged to
+the Don and the Sea of Azov. One of Tamerlane’s
+armies traversed the Pamir into India, and, by the
+capture of Delhi, opened the way for the Mogul
+Dynasty of his sons, which was to endure until the
+Indian Mutiny. His Indian army, returning, swept
+a swath of desolation through Persia, Mesopotamia,
+Syria, Georgia, and Armenia. Every city that
+was taken was sacked, and the event commemorated
+by a pyramid of skulls embedded in mortar. One
+hundred and twenty pyramids marked Tamerlane’s
+path through India alone. The Delhi pyramid was
+made from the skulls of one hundred thousand slain
+“with the sword of holy war.”</p>
+
+<p>Bajazet, Sultan of the Ottoman Turks,—themselves
+sprung from a nomad Mongol tribe,—was
+threatened by Tamerlane on the west. In a great
+battle Bajazet was defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Alhacen, Tamerlane’s Arabian secretary, relates
+that the conquered king was examined by his master.</p>
+
+<p>“Wherefore dost thou use so great cruelty towards
+men? Dost thou not pardon sex or
+age?”</p>
+
+<p>Bajazet might logically have responded with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</span>
+a “tu quoque,” but his position did not warrant
+it.</p>
+
+<p>“I am appointed by God to punish tyrants,” continued
+Tamerlane. He had an iron cage made; and
+locked within it like a linnet, the unfortunate sultan
+was carried from place to place, because, in the Tatar’s
+naïvely quoted words, “It is necessary that he
+be made an exemplary punishment to all the cruel of
+the world, of the just wrath of God against them.”</p>
+
+<p>The invasion of China was under way, in 1405,
+when Tamerlane died, leaving a renewed Mongol
+Empire, which stretched from the Hoang-ho to the
+Don, and from Siberia to India.</p>
+
+<p>Here again the descendants of the savage conquerors
+rose to the requirements of their sovereignty
+and obeyed the peaceful and humane maxims that
+each of the two great and warlike and pitiless tyrants
+had bequeathed to his successors. They ruled
+with a fair degree of wisdom and a large measure of
+success. A descendant of Tamerlane was to build
+at Agra, in 1630, the most splendid monument the
+world has ever seen, the Taj-Mahal.</p>
+
+<p>In the century after Tamerlane’s death the
+Hordes split up once more, Ivan the Great of Moscow,
+having consolidated many neighboring princedoms,
+with the nominal consent of his Tatar overlord,
+at length seized the opportunity to refuse the
+payment of tribute. The Mongol Khan had no longer
+the power to compel it at the sword’s point, and
+without a battle the Tatar supremacy was covertly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</span>
+relinquished. In 1480 the long servitude of Russia
+to the alien invader was ended. From this time
+the Mongol nomads appear hardly at all in history.
+They withdrew gradually to their Asian steppes,
+leaving in Turkey, in the Crimea, and in India, the
+kingdoms of their offshoot tribes. Russia and China
+still felt the raids of the horsemen, for the khans of
+the Golden Horde were yet not to be despised.</p>
+
+<p>Fernan Hendez Pinto, the shipwrecked Portuguese
+of the generation after Vasco da Gama, was
+in China in 1542 when Tatars came down and besieged
+it. He saw “an emperor called Caran whose
+seigniorie confineth within the mountains of Gen
+Halidan, a nation which the naturals call Moscoby,
+of whom we saw some in this citie [of Tuymican],
+ruddie, of big stature, with shoes and furred clothes,
+having some Latin words, but seeming rather, for
+aught we observed, idolaters than Christians.</p>
+
+<p>“To the ambassador of that Prince Caran, better
+entertainment was given than to all the rest. He
+brought with him one hundred and twenty men of
+his guard, with arrows and gilded quivers, all
+clothed in chamois-skins, murrie and green. After
+whom followed twelve men of high giantlike stature,
+leading great greyhounds, in chains and collars of
+silver.”</p>
+
+<p>When Yermak cleared the way to Sibir, and
+opened the path that was to lead to the Pacific, the
+Mongols were pushed south. Russians still had
+Tatars all along their frontier, but these were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</span>
+pressed steadily back as the Slavic race advanced
+eastward. The Tatar domains were restricted soon
+to the steppe country and Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p>After Yermak’s time the Mongol power sank. It
+fell further when the Manchus established their
+dynasty in Peking in 1644. So low had its estate
+become that even the old fighting instinct was gone,—all
+the passionate desire for independence that
+has been the Mongols’ birthright since the dawn of
+history. How had it vanished? Christianity had
+not come. Buddhism had come, and it was the tolling
+of the knell for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>The sum of national energy and the heat of the
+new dispensation were diverted into theocracy. The
+meaning of life, its value and its duty, these basic
+ideas which determine the ultimate activities of every
+race, were revolutionized by the new faith. To the
+Pagan the world was good despite its evils; struggle
+against environment measured the worth of manhood
+and freedom was the supreme blessing. To the
+Buddhist, life was an evil in which the soul had
+become enmeshed. The path to release lay not in
+overcoming the environment, but in retreating from
+it within the citadel of the soul. Resignation, self-surrender,
+the yielding of this world to secure the
+other world beyond,—such were the forces which
+transformed the Mongols from the foremost warriors
+into the priest-ridden, subject, unaspiring
+people of to-day. The supreme problem in the
+autonomy of China, and in the subjugation of India,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</span>
+is involved in the point of view of Buddhism and
+its outgrowth in character.</p>
+
+<p>In 1650 a son of the leader, Tu-she-tu Khan, was
+made chief of the Mongol <i>kutukhtus</i>, or cardinals,
+with the title of Cheptsun Damba. This monsignor
+began the Urga hierarchy of Gigins, or god-priests,
+which has continued until the present time, when
+the eighth Gigin reigns at the Holy City. As the
+powerful Tu-she-tu clan lost its vitality, Chinese
+influence made itself felt. This was directed in general
+toward the encouragement of the priesthood,
+whose celibacy and other-worldliness dovetailed
+with Chinese control.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongol khans, becoming through the years
+more and more unwarlike, had grown tired of internecine
+feuds. They were at last won over by
+China to a nominal allegiance and the payment of
+a formal tribute, reciprocating which, imperial gifts
+of tenfold value served as artful bribes. Modestly,
+diplomatically, came King Stork, leaving to the
+local Daimios, seemingly undisturbed, their feudal
+sway. With the coming of the first Manchu governor
+began the present era of Mongolia.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f39">
+<img src="images/fig39.jpg" alt="glory">
+<p class="caption">THE GLORY IS DEPARTED</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As time went on, the Chinese, more astute and
+cunning, took little by little from the careless hands
+of the nomad princes the reins of real political power.
+The native chiefs were wheedled into giving up many
+ancient rights over the vassals, as well as their
+general taxing powers. The celibate priests, who were
+draining the manhood of their idle but powerful
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</span>hierarchy, were subsidized and directed by the interlopers.
+They preached to their confiding countrymen
+obedience and submission. In the Mongol
+Gigin of Urga, the Chinese raised up a native power
+superior to all the old feudal lords, whose armies
+melted away beneath the ecclesiastical dominion.
+When the Gigin became in turn too great a menace,
+they caused it to be decreed that each succeeding
+incarnated Buddha must come from Tibet, and that
+his main powers must be delegated to a “Council of
+Lamas.”</p>
+
+<p>In the train of the Manchus came the Chinese
+traders, polite, supple, calling themselves friends of
+the Mongols, offering their alluring wares on undefined
+credit terms which tangled the unsuspicious
+natives in inextricable usury. Peking-brought gewgaws
+were paid for a hundred times over in the food
+and clothing which the natives kept giving to the
+compounding voracity of the debt.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese coolies pressed up the river-valleys, begging
+land here, intruding themselves there; more
+followed, and ever more, until the best of the pastures
+were filched away, and the nomads, in order to
+exist, were forced to trek to the more distant and
+barren slopes. Deforesting transformed into deserts
+whole provinces. The once famed virtue of the
+Tatar women is forgotten, and every Chinaman has
+his “friend” whom he leaves behind when he returns
+to his native land. The big prosperous Mongol
+families, that early travelers noted, are no more.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</span>
+Two or three children are the most that one sees to
+a <i>yurta</i>, and the population, owing to lama celibacy
+and the decreased means of subsistence, is declining
+from year to year.</p>
+
+<p>This is the people and this the land which sent
+horde after horde through centuries to conquer the
+world; where in half a dozen generations a little
+band of blacksmiths like the Turks could breed a
+nation that would dominate Asia. With narrowing
+means of subsistence, and aliens draining their
+small surplus capital, the Mongol race lies prostrate
+beneath the Yellow Empire. The grim Malthusian
+tenet that the world cannot give food for all its
+children falls short here of the grim actuality. The
+silent invasion of the Chinese has been as ruthless
+as was the march of Genghis Khan. The economic
+garroting of a race is what the world has seen in
+Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p>No longer are there men to lead or men to fight.
+Obediently and submissively the once fierce, ranging
+warriors have yielded to the artfully-imposed yoke.
+The army of unmatched cavalry has become a memory,
+and a nation of fighters has become a race of
+timid herders, with little heart or brain. The sons
+of the old soldiers have learned to shave their heads
+and croon Tibetan prayers, and the fires of a people’s
+ambition are quenched in the creed that makes
+abstention from effort a cardinal virtue, and annihilation
+life’s supreme objective. What there was
+of virtue and of valor lies buried in distant graves.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</span>
+Ringed with the bones of slaughtered captives,
+rusted swords at their sides, they sleep well, those
+old forgotten warriors. In poverty and hardship,
+priest-ridden and debt-ridden, decimated and degenerated,
+their descendants eke out their sterile
+days. But there lingers yet among them a half-forgotten
+memory of the heroic past. The wandering
+chanter still sings in the twilight the old “Song of
+Tamerlane”—Tamerlane who will come again,
+they say, and lead the hordes once more to victory.</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">When the divine Timur dwelt in our tents,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The Mongol Nation was redoubtable and warlike.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Its least movements made the earth bend;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Its mens’ look froze with fear</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ten thousand people upon whom the sun shines.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O Divine Timur, will thy great soul soon return?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Return, return; we await thee, O Timur!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="c9">IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="c sp">CHINA</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">D</span>ESTINY has bequeathed to his once subject-race
+the heritage of Genghis Khan, but whether
+its Manchu possessor can or cannot hold even his
+own birthright is to-day an enigma. The last few
+years have seen the gathering of the eagles, disputing
+the mastery of eastern Asia, where China stands
+against the world. Slav, Saxon, and Frank press
+in, upon the supine empire. Has this yellow race the
+manhood and the capacity to rally against them
+and retrieve its national integrity?</p>
+
+<p>The cession of Formosa after the war of 1895
+began the partition. China’s defenselessness was
+then visualized. The revelation of her easy defeat
+set every predatory nation on the alert. Watchful
+for an occasion, which two murdered missionaries
+supplied, Germany, by clumsy but successful unscrupulousness,
+seized Kiao-chow and two hundred
+miles of hinterland. Three weeks after the bludgeoned
+ratification of Admiral Diedrich’s grab, Russia
+procured the signature of the intimidated Emperor
+to the lease of Port Arthur. France demanded
+and secured the cession of Kwang-chow-wan, on
+the mainland opposite the island of Hainan. England
+acquired the lease of Wei-hai-wei, and continental<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</span>
+territory opposite Hong-kong. Italy came
+to claim as its portion Sanmen Bay; but this at
+least China found courage to refuse.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a period when, backed each by its
+government, invading cohorts of promoters scooped
+in franchises and special privileges of every description.
+The latter part of 1899 saw foreigners pushing
+in from Manchuria on the north, where Russia with
+her so-termed railway guards held the strategic
+route, and from Yun-nan on the south, where
+France was constructing a similar road of conquest.
+It showed four European nations so established
+along the coast that only by courtesy of a foreign
+government could a Chinese vessel cast anchor in
+some of the principal ports of China. It saw a Belgian-French
+railway driving from Peking into the
+heart of the Empire at Hankow; an American line
+started north from Canton to the same objective;
+an English line controlling the territory between
+the main northern trade-centres, Niu-chwang and
+Tien-tsin; a French society in possession of a great
+south-country copper concession; Russians with
+the exclusive right to all the gold in two <i>eimucks</i>
+of Mongolia; and an English syndicate deeded the
+best of the Chinese coal-fields.</p>
+
+<p>The partition was thus far accomplished. The
+continental nations seemed to be ready for all that
+they could get. The strength of Great Britain’s
+traditional position, based upon maintaining the
+integrity of China, was shaken by her lease of Wei-hai-wei,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</span>
+although this lease was to run only so long
+as Russia should hold Port Arthur. England was on
+the point of recognizing openly “spheres of influence,”
+as is shown by the inferential claim to special
+British rights in the Yangtse region set forth in the
+official transactions of Sir Claude McDonald, and
+brought out under parliamentary interpellation,
+when a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the
+Balfour Ministry spoke of “British rights” to the
+provinces adjoining the Yangtse River and Ho-nan
+and Che-kiang.</p>
+
+<p>There was apparently good warrant for the general
+belief that in expectation of an impending partition
+a provisional understanding had been reached
+by the different chancelleries, regarding the share
+of each nation, England being allotted the mighty
+domain from the Yellow Sea to Burma and Afghanistan,
+including all Tibet, as well as six hundred and
+fifty thousand square miles in China proper. In
+general, from Shan-tung inland the valley of the
+Hoang-ho was destined for Germany; the district
+north of her Anamese possessions for France; all
+Mongolia and Manchuria for Russia; Corea and
+the province of Fokien on the mainland opposite
+Formosa, for Japan. Peking and the surrounding
+district, whose disposition was embarrassed by
+jealousy if not by scruples, was alone left for the
+Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>At this critical juncture, when the day of dismemberment
+seemed indeed to have arrived, the United<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</span>
+States came forward in behalf of the “open-door”
+doctrine, as a means of preserving the nationality
+and the integrity of China. In a circular letter to
+the Powers, our Secretary of State, Mr. John Hay,
+asked that adhesion be given in writing to three
+main propositions, appertaining to each country
+“within its respective sphere, of whatever influence.”
+These points were that no treaty port rights
+or other vested interests should be interfered with;
+that the Chinese tariff should be maintained; that
+no discriminating railway charges or harbor-dues
+should be imposed.</p>
+
+<p>America’s might, thrown into the wavering balance,
+turned the scale. Great Britain gave ready
+adhesion. Though the responses of some of the
+other Powers were evasive, none was at this time
+willing to bear the onus of an adverse stand: each
+nation nominally accepted, and the movement
+toward partition was checked.</p>
+
+<p>To most people Chinese matters seemed settled.
+The preservation of a nation had been combined
+with the guaranteeing of a great free market; the
+orgy of grabbing had ceased. Russia, assenting to
+the open door, had promised to evacuate Manchuria.
+The special concessions, though secured by
+stand-and-deliver methods, it was felt would bring
+economic improvements and would furnish to the
+Chinese a demonstration of the beneficent results of
+Western civilization.</p>
+
+<p>It was recognized that there would be frictions:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</span>
+misunderstandings are inevitable when old ways
+are faced with new. The extra-territorial rights of
+foreigners and their converts, absolutely necessary
+to protect their liberties if not their lives, could not
+but create occasional unharmonious situations, in
+which the consuls would have to intervene. The
+severity of the judicial punishment meted out at
+times to rioting cities for harm done to the protégés
+of the Powers was to be deplored, each nation grieving
+at the atrocities the others had seen fit to perpetrate.</p>
+
+<p>But periodic local and temporary disturbances
+had been going on from time immemorial. Did not
+the Chinese realize, we reasoned, that their old corrupt
+government had been given another undeserved
+chance to try and march with the rest of the
+race; that this world is not the place for graft-ridden
+relics from the fifth century <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>? The least
+we felt was that, thanks to the bearer of the “Flowery
+Banner,” the Chinese had been given a last
+opportunity. A self-denying Occident had guaranteed
+the nation’s existence and had presumably
+earned its everlasting gratitude. “Let China get up
+and do something—let it redeem itself.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f40">
+<img src="images/fig40.jpg" alt="bridge">
+<p class="caption">THE BRIDGE AND TABLETS IN PEI-HAI</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A very small circle of Chinese shared this Western
+view, and realized at their true value the mights
+if not the rights. There existed among the literati
+at Peking and in the coast cities the rudiments of
+a foreign liberal party. Recognizing that Western
+methods must come, they had been in favor of accepting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</span>foreign improvements even at the cost of
+railway concessions and the violated dwellings of
+wind and water spirits. When this party won over
+the young Emperor, there began the period of
+foreign concessions. Reforms, too, covering every
+subject, from queue-cutting to postage-stamps, were
+inaugurated.</p>
+
+<p>The summer of 1898 saw the important edict
+which ordered the abolition of the Wen-chang essays
+and the penmanship posts, with the Emperor’s
+personal comment that the examinations should
+test “a knowledge of ancient and modern history,
+and information in regard to the present state of
+affairs, with special reference to the governments
+and institutions of the countries of the five great
+continents, and their arts and sciences.” A Bureau
+of Mines was established, a patent-office, schools,
+a scheme of army reform.</p>
+
+<p>The climaxing decree was the one abolishing
+sinecures. For the Emperor’s unreconstructed
+entourage this last was too much. Foreign aggression
+had embittered to the point of unreason mandarin
+and coolie alike. The <i>coup d’état</i> planned by
+the Dowager Empress, and executed by the reactionaries,
+virtually dethroned the Emperor, exiled
+his advisers, and ended the foreign-encouragement
+reform.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed it was not within human nature for it to
+endure. From the point of view of the party of the
+second part the aspect of the whole foreign relationship,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</span>
+even after the Hay Note, looked very
+ugly indeed. The fact of guaranteed integrity was
+obscured by the <i>laissez-faire</i> of the already consummated
+grabs. The idea that gripped them was
+the humiliation of foreign occupation and foreign
+aggression. It was as if the Russians and the English
+had just seized rival reservations on Long
+Island and the Jersey coast, commanding New York
+City; as if the English had wrenched away Charleston;
+the Germans, Philadelphia; the French, New
+Orleans; and Cossacks were garrisoned in strategic
+points throughout New England. It was as if
+the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway
+were manned and guarded by Slavs, the New York
+Central by Belgians, the Pennsylvania by Prussians;
+as if the Pittsburgh mines were handed over <i>en bloc</i>
+to an English corporation, and the Russians had
+exclusive mining rights to the gold of Alaska’s
+Yukon region. It was as if America’s protective-tariff
+and contract-labor laws were repealed at foreign
+dictation, and a flood of foreign machine-made
+goods and undesired immigrants were poured into the
+unwilling country. It was as if yellow-robed Buddhist
+lamas were everywhere haranguing the Yankee
+farmers, telling them of the fraudulent nature of the
+Christian creed, and urging upon them an approved
+canine method for disposing of deceased ancestors,
+to replace their superstitious funeral services. It
+was as if astrologers, calling themselves engineers,
+were to dig up New York cemeteries in order to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</span>
+erect prayer-wheels; as if the apostates whom these
+yellow priests had drawn into their joss-houses were
+enabled to dodge part of the taxes, which consequently
+fell with added oppression on the rest of the
+people; and as if, when they did something which
+others would in the normal course of events get punished
+for, a lama came before the magistrate and got
+them off. As if the President and the Senate were
+given a weekly wigging by the diplomatic corps, and
+were periodically forced to deed away sections of
+the forest reserve and tracts of particularly desirable
+territory.</p>
+
+<p>With such an aspect as this, which represents
+what in an undefined, bewildered way the Chinese
+saw and felt, it is no wonder that they considered the
+Confucian dictum obsolete: “Do not unto others,
+what you would not that they should do unto you”;
+and joined the patriotic harmonious Fists,—the
+Boxers.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese sentiment was ungauged in the West
+because we had never put ourselves in their places.
+Unforeseen save by a few unheeded Cassandras, and
+unprepared for, there broke out the planless, leaderless
+Boxer Rebellion, grim fruitage of the national
+resentment. A few hastily gathered legation guards
+were alone available for defense. Spreading from
+the Shan-tung Province, where the severity of the
+Germans had goaded the usually peaceable people to
+madness, the I-Ho-Chuan besieged the legations at
+Peking. It was the infuriated and ill-directed rush<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</span>
+of a patriotism real if futile,—a turning against the
+spoilers.</p>
+
+<p>The movement was crushed in a torrent of
+blood, and with a devastation that for long will
+leave its mark upon the northern provinces. The
+closing year of the nineteenth century saw the Taku
+forts stormed, Tien-tsin, the Liverpool of the
+North, taken over and administered by a foreign
+board, Manchuria and Mongolia swarming with
+Cossacks, the Dowager Empress in flight, and her
+capital looted by foreign armies.</p>
+
+<p>The coming of alien soldiery to the Forbidden
+Palace left its impress in the fiercer though more
+carefully smothered hatred of mandarins and people.
+It was still a blind resentment. They were
+injured, stung in all their pride and self-sufficiency,
+but dumb, bewildered, not knowing what to do,
+which way to turn. The liberals with their solution
+were gone; with them had passed the hopes of a progressive
+policy.</p>
+
+<p>The people, perplexed, looked to their reëstablished
+reactionary rulers for guidance. But these
+officials, mostly of advanced age, and steeped in the
+ideas and ideals of the Confucian classics, were anxious
+mainly to close the ears and eyes of the masses
+to the unpleasant realities; to feather their own
+nests and finish off their lives in tranquility.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese Minister to the United States, Wu
+Ting Fang, gives a graphic picture of these Celestial
+Bourbons:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It must be remembered that most of the high
+officials in Peking are born and bred Chinese of the
+old school. All the princes and nearly all the ministers
+of state have spent most of their days within
+the four walls of the capital. They have never
+visited even other parts of the empire, not to say
+foreign lands; nor can they speak any other language
+besides their own. They have absolutely no
+knowledge or experience of foreign ways except
+those who are ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen, and
+the experience of these men has been confined exclusively
+to their official intercourse with the foreign
+representatives at Peking.”</p>
+
+<p>Buttressing their hereditary <i>intransigeance</i>, these
+mandarins had, after the Hay Circular, possessed
+a measure of confidence that their yielding of open-door
+trade privileges to the greed of the foreigners
+had enlisted a combined support which would preserve
+China’s remaining national powers.</p>
+
+<p>But so powerless to fulfill their purposes had these
+paper pledges become, so far was the open-door
+doctrine from settling the situation, that in China’s
+own territory, where by solemn promises of both
+parties no special privileges could accrue, the year
+1904 saw two Powers in the throes of the greatest
+war of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>If the realization of the combatants’ purpose has
+signified much to the nations of the West,—perhaps
+rather to the United States, for the others
+nursed no illusions,—to China it has meant far<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</span>
+more. It has brought for the first time a real and
+general appreciation of the necessity for modernized,
+efficient self-defense.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years of aggression have been needed to
+drive home this knowledge. While the defeats of
+1895 came as a blow to a few keen-minded Chinese,
+to most they were a matter of entire indifference.
+China was not conquered, they reasoned: only two
+provinces took part while the viceroys of the rest
+looked idly on. “That Shan-tung man’s war” was
+the general attitude; “Li Hung Chang’s boats
+beaten.” When it was over, merely Formosa, the
+little-valued island of “tame barbarians,” had been
+lost. The traditional policy of playing off the jealous
+powers one against the other had apparently succeeded;
+it had cleared the Japanese from Corea and
+Port Arthur. China as a nation was hardly touched,
+and multitudes of people never knew there had been
+a war.</p>
+
+<p>The seizures of 1897-1899, coming close upon
+each other, exasperated, but taught no lesson. The
+mass of Chinese, and even those in high official
+circles, believed that a little effort would drive the
+foreign devils into the sea. The march of the Allies
+to Peking stunned them. It was their first facing of
+the fact.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f41">
+<img src="images/fig41.jpg" alt="gate">
+<p class="caption">HSUEN-WU GATE, PEKING</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Russo-Japanese War, and the partition of the
+province that had cradled their Emperor’s dynasty,
+dissipated their fool’s paradise. It was seen then,
+clearly, by all, that China’s only hope of maintaining
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</span>her integrity lay in her defensive power. With
+the object, not of securing the blessings of civilization
+(which the overwhelming majority of Chinamen
+desire no more than we do the Holy Inquisition),
+but of beating away the spoilsmen, the Peking
+rulers turned at length to the survey of their actual
+military condition. As this concerns intimately the
+Chinese internal situation, a summary of it may be
+pertinent.</p>
+
+<p>The Hwai-lien regulars, to the number of twenty-five
+thousand, are well-drilled, and well-armed with
+Chinese-made Mausers. They are stationed in the
+northern provinces, including the Taku and Peht’ang
+forts, the Tien-tsin station, and the neighborhood
+of Peking. These make up the only national
+force of modern troops at the disposal of the Chinese
+Government, but the private armies of various viceroys
+bring up the total somewhat as follows: The
+camps of foreign-drilled troops, formerly Yuan Shi
+Kai’s, probably the best in China, number roundly
+twenty thousand. From the Shen-ki Ying, or artillery
+force, from the camps of the Manchu Banners,
+which the Government is making an effort to whip
+into some kind of shape, from the Imperial body-guard,
+and other scattered and less important
+troops, ten thousand effectives might be culled. In
+the south the Viceroy of Nanking has, all told, some
+twenty thousand more men holding the Wusung
+forts, who may be classed as efficient and well-armed;
+some of these are German- and Japanese-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</span> drilled.
+This total of seventy-five thousand represents
+China’s numerical military strength in effective
+modern troops.</p>
+
+<p>The old hereditary organization of twenty-four
+Banners, adds some two hundred thousand Manchus,
+Mongols, and Chinese,—of the privileged
+soldier caste, which through two hundred and fifty
+years has drawn an annual subsidy of eight million
+taels from the Peking treasury. Billeted as the nominal
+wardens of the provincial cities and garrisoned
+around Peking, these Tatars have become as a rule
+so degenerated by immemorial idleness as to be useless
+save for picturesque parades. The one positive
+element is that they are men under pay, subject to
+order, and available for initial experiments.</p>
+
+<p>The Green Banner, or militia, under the command
+of a general for each province, is theoretically composed
+of a large number of native Chinese. The
+army is made up mainly of officers. The higher
+officials of the Green Banner acquire the pay, commissary,
+and weapon-allotments of their nominal
+armies, and pad the rolls with the names of coolies
+who come out for the annual review in return for the
+small portion of their nominal wage which must be
+spent to keep face.</p>
+
+<p>To expect these men to get out and fight is obviously
+more than they bargained for. The Green Banner
+can deliver about the same relative number of
+actual soldiers per unit of population that a Mississippi
+backwoods county polls for the Republican<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</span>
+party. The most that can be said for the Green Banner
+is that it has a list of men’s names from which
+a certain number of real recruits might be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>The military organization of even the best regular
+troops is feeble. Constant word reaches the press
+of soldiers revolting for lack of pay. In one such
+instance nine hundred men near the Manchuria
+border mutinied and were put down with difficulty,
+tying up the caravans for some time. Aside from
+questions of discipline, and considering number only,
+it is doubtful if, in the whole empire of four hundred
+million people, one hundred thousand decently
+armed and drilled troops could be gathered, in an
+extremity, for defensive purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Drilled and armed men in whatever numbers are,
+however, but one element of a country’s defensive
+power. Organization, transportation, commissary,
+and supply are factors of hardly less importance.
+The troops that get there are the ones which count,
+and even a Chinese army marches on its belly. Russia’s
+defective transport, to mention but one case,
+undoubtedly decided both the Crimean and the
+Japanese wars. The question of territorial defense
+is one of several dimensions, first of which is how
+soon could a given force, with its necessary commissary
+and ammunition-supply, be disposed along
+the various lines of possible attack.</p>
+
+<p>Making the round of the Chinese Empire, it is
+apparent that Tibet and Mongolia, for all the resistance
+that could be made, might be taken by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</span>
+England and Russia respectively whenever they
+were minded to cross the border. The Chinese
+could throw out barring columns no further westward
+than Sze-chuan, no further northward than the
+Great Wall.</p>
+
+<p>On the frontier of Corea, the Yalu River formerly
+defined the first line of defense. But this frontier
+has been moved westward by the Japanese, so that
+it would be a political impossibility to put men there
+even were it practically possible. The present line
+would of necessity be between Shan-hai-kwan and
+Yung-ping. Perhaps withdrawals from the northern
+provinces, the viceroys permitting, might admit
+massing here fifty thousand troops. But this, as
+well as any other possible line, is entirely unfortified,
+giving hardly more advantages to the repelling than
+to the attacking forces. There would be no second
+line of defense, nothing to fall back upon but the old
+Tatar Wall of Peking. Beyond this fifty thousand
+any quota brought from the south would consume
+a very considerable time, probably a month, even
+allowing that their semi-independent viceroys did
+not discreetly hold off altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Further east, at Shan-tung, Germany’s railway
+pierces to the heart of the Confucian province;
+while from the Chinese military centre in Chi-li there
+is no corresponding railroad, Chinese-manned,
+giving them access, were it necessary to repel aggression.
+The Anamese railways afford the French
+means of bringing up troops, where China could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</span>
+assemble an army only after weeks of marching. The
+Burmese frontier of Britain’s dominion is similarly
+vantaged.</p>
+
+<p>The German <i>Land-Wehr</i>, while the first armies go
+to the front, may be called out and mobilized, until
+the whole manhood of the nation is in arms. Such
+a body is nonexistent in the Celestial Empire. Like
+her own lichee nut, once the frail shell of her resistance
+is broken, the meat is ready for the eating.
+Considered solely from the military standpoint,
+aside from reform as such, China is as supine as
+a huge helpless jelly-fish, with disconnected nerve-ganglia,
+and not even the rudiments of a backbone.</p>
+
+<p>For the first requirements of national defense,
+what is necessary? For the north there should be
+a thoroughly drilled and equipped regular army of
+at least one hundred and fifty thousand men, with
+capacity for rapid concentration in the neighborhood
+of Peking. For the south a standing army of
+at least fifty thousand men. An intermediate army
+of fifty thousand more should be available near
+Hankow, capable of being thrown either way.
+The Peking-Hankow railway line must have strategic
+branches to Canton, Shanghai, Yun-nan, and
+Shan-tung. These must be controlled not by foreigners
+but by Chinese. There must exist a reserve
+of, say, five hundred thousand men, at least partially
+drilled, from which to draw reinforcements.
+There must be arsenals able to make all the weapons
+and ammunition for these forces, since foreign<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</span>
+nations will continue to command the sea. The
+sums needed to realize such a programme must be
+available, and China must possess the organization
+and fiscal system for the conduct of a war. From
+this summary it may be seen that adequate defense
+requires a measure of increase in her efficiency that
+is revolutionary. The demand which such measures
+would make upon any nation is stupendous. How
+much more would it exact of China, where for its
+accomplishment every single factor must overthrow
+the ideas, the principles, the very morals evolved
+through centuries in the most conservative race of
+the globe!</p>
+
+<p>At the outset, for the personnel of such a regular
+army, two hundred and fifty thousand adults must
+be transformed from stolid, superstitious field-tillers
+and coolies, never of combative spirit, into
+courageous, disciplined fighting men. Can this be
+done? Some, eminently qualified to judge, answer
+that it can; but Chinese history has not for several
+thousand years furnished many glorious annals.
+Where a stark fight is recorded, as at Albazin, or
+against the Mongol khans in the sixteenth century,
+the warriors have been Manchus rather than Chinese.
+Whenever an aggressive nation, be it Hiung-nu
+or Khitan, Mongol or Manchu, British or Japanese,
+has gone against the genuine Chinaman, the latter
+has invariably submitted. It is only when his subjugators,
+absorbed into the swarming mass of conquered,
+have degenerated, that the native has been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</span>able to rise and drive out his enfeebled oppressor.
+The Chinese have conquered by time and their
+birth-rate.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f42">
+<img src="images/fig42.jpg" alt="peking">
+<p class="caption">PEKING</p>
+<p class="caption">Where the Allies’ main assault was made</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the Chinaman has qualities
+which, translated into military virtues, should theoretically
+give him a great initial advantage over any
+other race. He is comparatively without nerves;
+he can hold a gun without a tremor for what to a
+Westerner is an inconceivably long time; he has good
+eyes and a strong sight; he can be victualed on a
+few handfuls of rice; he is entirely indifferent as to
+where or how he lodges; he is sober and reliable; he
+is a big-bodied man, stronger even, perhaps, than
+the Japanese; he is docile, obedient, and susceptible
+to discipline. Indeed, in all that concerns his physical
+qualities and certain moral superiorities, one
+could not ask for better raw material. When well
+led he has at times done very creditably. A generation
+of such leadership as Yuan Shi Kai’s would do
+not a little toward bringing out what there is latent
+in this people.</p>
+
+<p>If in the army organization the gap between what
+is and what should be is so great, how much wider is
+it in the government organization needed to finance
+reform. The revenues of China are some $100,000,000.
+About $36,000,000 are allotted to military
+purposes. When from this has been deducted the
+eighteen million-odd which go to the generals of the
+Red and Green Banners, there is left, theoretically,
+about $18,000,000 for the real army. Actually there<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</span>
+is efficiently applied probably not over $10,000,000.
+The regular army of Japan—two hundred and
+twenty-five thousand—takes $40,000,000 effectively
+expended. China must begin from the very
+bottom, whereas Japan is simply carrying along. A
+judicious total expenditure of at least $50,000,000 is
+needed for China’s army. With the additional railway
+and arsenal programme, and other concomitant
+work, the demands over and above present outlays
+would reach around $110,000,000. Add this to the
+present budget, less the well-spent ten millions, and
+there is to be reckoned a total budget of at least
+$200,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>Could China raise such a defense-fund on top of
+her present hundred-million-dollar budget? Could
+she cut down on present expenses to help it out?
+The latter might be considered. Theoretically the
+wasted army money of the present budget might
+be saved and applied. Practically the vested interests
+in the graft are so important as to make it
+of infinite difficulty. The mere beginning of sinecure-cutting
+cost the Emperor the actuality of his
+throne and nearly his head.</p>
+
+<p>The list shows other items of expenditure which
+cannot be materially economized. The large and
+growing sum which goes to repay interest, foreign
+loans, and indemnities, cannot be touched, nor can
+the $16,000,000 sent to the provinces for their local
+expenditures. The $8,000,000 for the Peking
+salaries and palace expenses is a fixture. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</span>
+modest and well-administered $3,000,000 of the
+customs expenditures, covering about all the public
+works that China undertakes,—the lighthouse and
+coast-patrol allowances, the mails, the interpreters’
+school,—this cannot be pared. The needed money
+must come if at all by increase of the receipts. One
+is driven irresistibly back to the Government’s taxing
+capacity.</p>
+
+<p>The physical possibility of such taxation undoubtedly
+exists. The per capita revenue which the
+Government receives from its four hundred million
+subjects is but twenty-five cents. The American
+per capita revenue is eight dollars, the Japanese
+five dollars, the Russian twelve dollars, the Indian—perhaps
+in conditions the closest parallel to the
+Chinese—one dollar and a quarter. An extra twenty-five
+cents would raise the Chinese Government well
+above all financial difficulties, and still leave the
+rate far below that of the other great nations of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at the actual mechanism for revenue
+collection, one is met by difficulties which have
+rooted themselves deeply into the system. One
+cannot squeeze any larger proportion of the needed
+sum than the present $25,000,000 from the Imperial
+Maritime Customs. Tariff-rates are fixed by treaty,
+and the collections, under English direction, are as
+efficient as they can become. The likin duties on
+freight during inland transit are such a plague to
+commerce that, far from being increased, they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</span>
+should be swept away altogether as one of the earliest
+of reform measures. This $14,000,000 is produced
+at so heavy a price of fettered and thwarted
+commerce that added tariff would but aggravate
+the strangulation without materially increasing income.
+The opium revenue of $5,000,000 is likewise
+an item which, for the best interests of China, should
+disappear from a reformed budget, and the “foreign
+dirt” from the Celestial domain. In any event
+opium cannot be made much more productive.</p>
+
+<p>After these eliminations there are left items
+which bring in $56,000,000. The sources consist
+principally of the land-tax, the grain-tribute, native
+customs, and the salt gabelle. The returns from
+these factors would require to be nearly trebled, if
+they were relied upon to make up the bulk of the
+needed total.</p>
+
+<p>The method of collection is a further check to
+greater income. The existing machinery of fiscal
+administration operates, roughly, as follows: When
+the funds begin to run short for the usual expense-accounts,
+the various executive boards apply to the
+Board of Revenue. The latter makes a glorified
+guess at the sum which, considering harvests, rebellions,
+and other elements, each province might
+be able to pay. It is thereupon put to the provincial
+officials, consisting usually of a viceroy, a governor,
+a treasurer, and a judge, to supply something approximating
+this sum. The provincial syndicate,
+through the medium of various intermediate officials,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</span>
+such as the <i>tao-tai</i> and the <i>fu</i>-prefect, whose
+powers are nebulous and overlapping, call upon
+the eighty-odd county magistrates for an estimated
+share. The magistrates, <i>shien-kwan</i>, called colloquially
+“father and mother officials,” whose varied
+functions include rendering justice, keeping the
+jail, leading the religious processions, and collecting
+the taxes, send out each his hundred henchmen to
+get the actual money or grain. Of this hierarchy of
+officials not one has a salary which would keep his
+establishment going for a month. Of necessity the
+laborer must draw his own hire first from the harvest.</p>
+
+<p>Under such a satrap system, by the grace of
+human nature, each official takes what the traffic
+will bear, letting pass to the man higher up enough
+to conciliate his claim and to keep face with
+Peking. If the penalties which follow deficient generosity
+to a superior define the maximum contribution,
+the minimum is fixed by the famine or the rebellion
+point. With this method in vogue, it is not
+unreasonable to assume that the amounts gathered
+in the first instance are about as great as can be
+wrung from the people. An increase of the Government’s
+receipts would have to come through shaking
+down the office-holders for a larger share of their
+pickings. Such a revenue as a real reform would
+demand must despoil of vested rights in his livelihood
+every mandarin, viceroy, <i>tao-tai</i>, <i>fu</i>-prefect,
+magistrate, and petty publican in the empire. It
+might be practicable to commute the likin, or inland<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</span>
+octroi dues, for fixed sums by agreement with the
+<i>hongs</i>, or merchant associations. This was done in
+Li Hung Chang’s province, Kwang-tung, where
+$2,750,000 was paid in order to get rid of likin dues
+which netted only $670,000. Enough might be
+raised by this means to pay the officials at just
+rates. Then honest collections might reasonably be
+demanded, and a beginning be made of fiscal reform.
+But it is apparent from these outlines how long
+a way China has to travel before her capacity for
+self-defense is a reality.</p>
+
+<p>The facts are now being comprehended by all
+classes. From the coast cities, a growing number
+of young Chinese have been sent to study abroad,
+mainly in Japan—as many as fifteen thousand in
+1907. Returning, these so-called “students” have
+become the leaders in the boycotts against the
+United States and Japan. They have engaged actively
+in propaganda of a patriotic nature, and,
+more constructively, have translated into their
+mother tongue hundreds of books on history, economics,
+and law, including the whole Japanese code,
+Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Voltaire, Montesquieu,
+the “Contrat Social” of Rousseau, the works of
+Henry George and Karl Marx, and many others
+of the same general nature.</p>
+
+<p>These movements show a widespread public opinion
+friendly to Chinese regeneration. Various administrative
+measures have been inaugurated which
+are yet more promising.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</span></p>
+
+<p>The old method of dividing the Peking Bureau
+into provincial departments, and letting each of
+these care for every sort of business from its special
+province, has been altered. Instead of a bureau
+having general charge over the salt-tax, the customs,
+and the appointments of each province, there
+have been organized ten departments, dealing each
+with its specialty throughout the entire realm. The
+five recently-created bureaus—Agriculture, Works
+and Commerce, Police and Constabulary, Post-Office
+and Education—tell by their names the centralizing
+purpose of the new régime. Formerly five hundred
+clerks attended a department, with office-hours
+from eleven <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span> to two <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> including lunch, smoking-time,
+and due intervals for examining peddlers’
+wares. Now a much reduced force is employed,
+with actual working-hours generally from nine <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span>
+to four <span class="allsmcap">P.M.</span> The foot-binding of children has been
+prohibited; pressure has been put upon the officials
+who smoke opium to abandon it, under penalty of
+dismissal from the service; classical essays as a civil-service
+examination subject are being given up, and
+the education of the Chinese youths abroad is being
+encouraged. A large number of Japanese officers
+have been engaged to train the khaki-clad and
+well-armed Chinese regulars, who have shown excellent
+aptitude. The Government has bought back
+practically all foreign railroad concessions, and all
+the valuable mining concessions except the Kai-ping
+coal-fields.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</span></p>
+
+<p>Even representative government is well under
+way. The Dowager Empress’s edict of August 27,
+1908, by which a nine-year period was set for the
+devolution of legislative powers to provincial assemblies
+and a national senate has been justified
+by remarkable success. The local legislatures,
+elected under carefully restricted suffrage qualifications,
+have grappled earnestly with the economic
+problems of the districts. The senate, of
+thirty-two members, selected by the Prince Regent
+from an elected body, has not yet had time to
+show results, but the calibre of the men in it is
+encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>China is making a real effort to get abreast of the
+times. But never was a nation brought more directly
+before the judgment-bar on the plain test of
+character. Upon the capacity of the race for private
+sacrifice and public honesty rests primarily her
+salvation. Whether China can or cannot rise to
+the task depends upon her own manhood, and no
+one can be prophet of the issue; for all estimate
+of Chinese character is perplexed by that curious
+Eastern subtlety of contradictions which baffle
+understanding.</p>
+
+<p>The inability of the Chinese to keep fingers out of
+the public till is proverbial; yet the very high standard
+of business integrity is universally conceded.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="f43">
+<img src="images/fig43.jpg" alt="palace">
+<p class="caption">SUMMER PALACE OF THE EMPEROR</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The quality of Chinese honesty is attributed by
+some to the local idea of good form, and the obvious
+mercantile maxim that future credit depends upon
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</span>present performance. Bourse operators may be
+scrupulously exact as to obligations which the mere
+lifting of a finger imposes, while engaged in campaigns
+diverting to their private speculations the
+funds of a chain of banks, or looting the values from
+the minority owners of a street-railway.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese business integrity is said to be due to
+the fact that her merchants are of the upper class;
+cowardice in war, to the fact that her soldiers are
+of the lowest caste. In Japan the condition is exactly
+reversed: hence the prowess of her Samurai,
+and the peccability of her clerks—such that Japanese
+bankers employ Chinamen to handle their
+money.</p>
+
+<p>Since the Japanese have built up an effective
+public administration, it is fair to give the Chinese
+the benefit of faith, and to assume that in time they
+too will rally to the task, and make a modern state.</p>
+
+<p>With this should come the Trans-Mongolia Railway:
+opening to the plainsmen of Central Asia a
+prospect of civilization and advance.</p>
+
+<p>Equally or more important, looking at things
+broadly, it would give to the world the best of the
+great Asian trade-routes. Examine a globe and see
+what, in the shortening of distance, this land-route
+to Peking signifies. Note the enormous circumnavigations
+that must be made in going around
+by India and Suez, and measure then the direct
+overland route by the Urga Post-Road and the
+Trans-Siberian Railway.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</span></p>
+
+<p>The bulky freight from the Asian Coast to western
+Europe will still pay tribute to the sea. To compete
+with vessel-transportation, which carries a ton
+from Shanghai to London for seven dollars, the railroads
+over the 7283 miles from Vladivostok to
+Paris would have to make a rail-rate of one tenth of
+a cent per ton-mile; this is impossible when one remembers
+the average American rate of eight tenths
+of a cent. But North China, all North Asia, and
+Europe west of Moscow, are within the railway
+radius of an Urga-Peking line.</p>
+
+<p>From interior China may be drawn the goods for
+half a continent. The tea-freight which Russia receives
+over the long sea-trip to Odessa, or by the
+trans-shipped Vladivostok route, can be loaded
+then at Kalgan on the car that goes to Moscow. By
+it the silks of the Tien-tsin merchants may be rolled
+through into the freight-yards of St. Petersburg,
+and the timberless cities of interior China may build
+with the wood of the Yakutski Oblast forests. By
+it the dwellers in the valley of the Hoang-ho,
+“China’s Sorrow,” may be nourished in their need
+with the wheat of the Angara Valley; the Manchu
+mandarins may be clad in the furs from the Yenesei;
+the ploughshares tempered in Petrovski Zavod
+break the ancient soil of the Chi-li Province; the
+silver of the Altai Mountains make the bangles
+that deck the anklets of the purdah women.</p>
+
+<p>For America the road will open a commercial
+highway into the very heart of a new and expanding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</span>
+empire. American rails may carry American
+cars,—those ever moving shuttles which weave the
+woof of trade. American woolens and felts may
+protect the Siberians against their Arctic cold,
+American machinery mine and refine their gold.
+New England cottons, utilizing the Panama Canal,
+may clothe the myriad coolies of interior China.
+Here is the mail-route of ten days from Paris to
+Peking, against the thirty-five days needed by the
+fastest ships. Here is the quickest passenger-route
+from London to Yokohama. All these potentialities
+lie as the fallow heritage of the Urga Road, if
+beyond Kalgan it is given its avenues to China and
+the sea. It is civilization that must profit when the
+equilibrium of the East is restored, and over the old
+Urga Road China is relinked to the West by the
+trains of the great Asian Railway.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="c sp oldeng large p2">
+The Riverside Press</p>
+
+<p class="c sp less">
+CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS</p>
+
+<p class="c sp less">
+U . S . A
+</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter3" id="f44">
+<a href="images/fig44big.jpg">
+<img src="images/fig44.jpg" alt="asia">
+</a>
+<p class="caption">ASIA</p>
+<p class="caption"><span class="greentext">(click image to enlarge)</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full">
+
+<div class="transnote">
+
+<p class="c">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+
+<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.</p>
+
+<p>Perceived typographical errors have been changed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77082 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77082
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77082)