Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1904-06-16
SIBERIA In WIN 'E,It,2,
ARCTIC COLD AND IclNEss REIGN
III ~. FOR FOUR MONTHS. NJ, ;5S..

WORTH OF bla OK IND Deadly Frost.
The Way Proven Food Is Displayed
I'm the Baxaar-Const SledEe Racing.
Imagine black world frozen stiff,
aAd that is Vladivostok in winter.
Wherever water once flowed, in bay
or harbor, wide. gray white road now
runs, and these are the only two colors
in wide. still world. There are no
trees. The large forests Of which the
old travellers wrote have long since
been cut down for fuel. and the i'm
mediate hills behind the town are all
as bare as mans hand Once behind
these hills the endless rolling plain be-
gins, which is Siberia, says Heritage
Edwards in London Black and White.
| Directly summer is over all the
wealth of flowers which for FIVE short
months have simply rioted in the land
60 black, die out. The earth freezes
stiff. Winter has come. and black and
| stiff the world remains. In Viadivostok
| there is little snow. Sometimes gray
dust, more like powdered ice than
snow, blows over the land, but for the
most part it is black, not a white,
world Of frost. and in its way it is
more impressive. The earth freezes
deep many feet down and is as hard as
iron. The whole harDor turns elnd
of dull gray. That, too, is frozen deep.
To keep any sort of channel open the
powerful ice breaker has to go through
it's work twice day. Twelve hours OF
an ordinary winters day is often sutfi.
Gent to block the passage. And all
this in a town in the same parallel as
Larseilles.
| To those who have never expert
enced it real arctic cold is almost in
conceivable. They cannot grasp the
difference between 10 and SO degrees
Of frost 1t remains to them merely
one Of numbers. Indeed when once
the winter has gone it is sometimes
difficult to remember really how cold
1t was, but during the four severe win
ter months themselves it is very
solid and serious fact. Every night
you go TO sleep remembering. If you
I
of the furnace which heats the house
means death. You might wake first to
know you were frozen or you might
not. In the poorer houses the inhab:t-
ants sleep on the stoves, and the weak
ones often die. Drunkenness here is
often attended with a swift retribu,
ton, which does not in the least pre-.
vent it, and every day in winter people
are taken up frozen from the cutters,
the spirit which is in them only has.
tening the freezing, so that the carts
| which are always sent. round to pick
up the sailors when the crews of the
men-of-war are ashore have to do their
| work quickly. In the summer time,
! when there is not the same need for
hurry, the men often lie about in gut
tiers until the afternoon. The word
"gutters" is used simply to designate
certain part of the roadway. Cutters
as such do not exist. The drunken
ness among all classes of Russians is
simply appalling. Officers think moth.
ing Of taking tumblerful of raw
whisky as a modest "bitters'' before
dinner. 49,
When the wind is not blowing the
| cold is endurable, though five fur lined
overcoats are not at all an extraordi.
nary amount Of winter wrap. You
wear, of course, fur boots, fur gloves,
fur caps. Women have their skirts
and bodices lined with fur. Wildcat,
being both soft and very warm, is Of
ten used for this purpose 1t is quite
astonishing the Partially for such
things as oily sardines that one devel-
ops.
In the winter time the bazaar is real
" sight. Everything is frozen stiff.
The huge, long surgeons from the in
terror stand in rows on their very sharp
pointed noses. Baskets full of little
fishes are piled together like chips of
ice. Frozen birds hang down on long
festoons, and the municipality is spar
ed one trouble-it never has to make
away with food gone bad."5 The
bazaar is almost entirely in the hands
of the Chinese, the tall, dark, rough
Chinese of the north, who live wrapped
up in wadded cotton clothes until they
look like bundles of bedding. Without
the Chinese and the Japanese yladivos.
tok would find it hard to exist They
do all the work of the town. The
Russians garrison and govern it. The
Chinese, the Germans, the Japanese
and the other nations trade in it. r. Z
The great sport of vladiyostok In the
winter is sledge racing, and when once
the harbor is frozen over a proper
course is marked off, and every one
4 who owns horse takes part. "A Rus,
sian horse is a superior brute. He
stands as high and looks as strong az
cart horse, but he goes like the wind
he will walk or he will gallop, but he
does not condescend to do anything be
tween. His harness Is weird and won.
derful and very Russian, consisting
/ primarily Of huge wooden half hoop
over the. head, the keystone OF, the
whole structure, which is attached te
the shafts by winding long, thin straps
backward and forward. 1t takes hours
4 to put this on, is always liable to come
Il 49,. y -