The Fairmont West Virginian. (Fairmont, W. Va.) 1904-1914, 1904-04-26
SSIBERIA i N WINTER.
skRcTlc GOLD AND B. lclNEss REIGN
s# FOR FpUR MONTHS.

4s kRCTIC COLD AND lcINESS REIGN
ssS38 FoR 4EpUR MONTHS.
s5zyIadivostolS4aTYpen Is Frozen stir, q
world of Black and Deadly Frost.
5S535 The Way Frozen Food rs Displayed
In the Bnx.,ar-Const Slcd<e Racing.
imagine a black world frozen stun,
and that is V1adivostok in winter.
II. Wherever water once flowed, in bay
or harbor, a wide, gray white road now
runs, and these are the only two colors
lin wide, still world. There are no
III trees. The large forests of which the
S$ old travellers wrote have long since
AZ been cut down for fuel, and the inn
mediate hills behind the town are all
S55as bare as a mans hand. Once behind
these hills the endless rolling plain be-
q gins, which is Siberia, says HerbaGe
Edwards in London Black and White.
4s$s Directly summer is over all the
wealth of flowers which for five short
months have simply rioted in the land
& go black, die out. The earth freezes
stiff. Winter has come, and black ana
4 stiff the world remains. In VladivoStok
there is little snow. Sometimes gray
dust, more like powdered ice than
H snow blows over the land but for the
most part it is q black, not Il white,
world of frost, and in it's way it is
u more impressive. The earth freezes
deep many feet down and is as hard as
iron. The whole harbor turns a kind
N of dull gray. That, too, is frozen deep.
81 To keep any sort of channel open the
n powerful ice breaker has to go through
n its work twice day. Twelve hours or
~ an ordinary winters day is often suth-
II 41,, AVID n
this in a town in the same parallel as
Nfarseil1es.
# To those who have never expert
#&enced it real arctic cold is almost in
conceivable They cannot grasp the
5# difference between 10 and so degrees
of frost. It remains to them merely
one Of numbers. Indeed when once
the winter has gone it is sometimes
q difficult to remember really how cold
& it was. but during the four severe Win
ter months themselves it is very
solid and serious fact. Every night
you go 10 sleep remembering, if you
& are new to such things that n failure
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 inhab1t-
ants sleep on the stoves, and the weak
ones often die. Drunkenness here is
often attended with Il 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
tenings 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
terS until the afternoon. The word
..gutters" is used simply to designate a
d 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
s ing of taking q tumblerful of raw
whisky as a modest "bittcrs' before
Z dinner.
i# When the wind is not blowing the
cold is endurable, though five fur lined
overcoats are not at all an extrfeordt-
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
3 festoons, and the municipality is spar
ed one trouble-it never has to make
away with food gone bad 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 Nladivos-
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.
The great sport of Nla1ivOStok in the
winter is sledG racing and when once
the harbor is frozen over Il proper
course is marked off. and every one
who owns :; horse takes part \ Rus
4 sian horse is a superior brute. He
stands as high and looks as strong as
q cart horse. but he goes like the wind
He will wall, OF. he. will Oh llou but he