Preface.

There is a country that bears its history impressed on its surface and on the character of its people, that country is Russia. To the traveller from the west, Russian scenery, away from the great towns, has a forlorn, half-savage aspect, as of a land that is only being reclaimed from a state of nature. To understand why this is so, he must keep in mind not alone the harshness of the climate and the sparseness of the population, but also the fact that the tillers of the soil, as a class, are more poor and ignorant and superstitious than the peasantry of the other Christian countries of Europe; that till a few years ago they were serfs, bought and sold with the land; and that even to-day they have scarcely begun to enjoy or appreciate the blessings of true liberty. To know why the bulk of the Russian people are so far in the wake of civilization, one must dip a little into the national history.

It has been thought well, therefore, in an account of the Russian Empire, to embody a sketch of its historical development. Instead of seeking to describe the various provinces in any geographical order, it has been attempted roughly to follow the process of growth by which, from small beginnings, the dominions of the Czar have reached their present vast proportions. The planting of the germs of power in the forests of Novgorod,

vi

PREFACE.

the quarrels of rival principalities on the Dnieper, the
conquests of the half-Tartar czarate on the Volga, the
ambitious strivings of the modern state which Peter
established on the Neva, and the restless aggressions
and annexations that have marked her more recent
history, may be seen to have each had its several influ-
ence in producing that wonderful social and political
phenomenon—the Russia of to-day. In giving some
popular idea of that phenomenon there may probably
be found, notwithstanding the care taken to avoid them,
errors in the grouping, in proportion, and in conception
and presentation of facts; and for excuse, reference can
only be made to the vast dimensions of the subject and
the extreme multiplicity of the details.

But the past of Russia, besides explaining its present,
is of the highest importance in interpreting its future—
a subject which recent events have helped to make
matter of painful conjecture. It is clear that this great
country has reached a crisis in its fate. The three chief
powers to be reckoned with, it would seem, are a corrupt
military bureaucracy, that has almost said its last word—
that is clearly moving towards bankruptcy and ruin; a
people still almost dumb and blind, and only half con-
scious that they have rights and grievances; and a party
of wild political dreamers, strong as yet only by reason
of desperation, that seek, as the sole panacea for the ills
of society, the total destruction of order and law. What
will be the issue of the struggle for Russia it is impos-
sible almost to guess; before it, as a French writer has
said, there rises "an immense note of interrogation."

# THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.

## CHAPTER I.

### THE GROWTH OF TWO CENTURIES.

First the courteous reader is to turn to some old map of the world, say of two hundred years ago, and compare it with the earth as we know it to-day, perhaps the change of all others which would strike him as most marvellous would be the enormous development of the Russian Empire. The face of Europe has been metamorphosed. Powerful states have disappeared, and others whose names two centuries ago were scarcely known have risen into prominent rank among the Great Powers. The vast colonial empire of Britain was then only being founded; and England had yet barely a foothold in India. The great North American Republic had yet a century to wait before its time came to step forth on the stage of history. The coast of Australia had been merely sighted; the Mississippi still rolled its waters from their source to the sea through an almost unexplored wilderness; California was believed to be an island. But incon-

10

RUSSIA TWO CENTURIES AGO.

ceivably great as have been the changes which these
facts reveal, the most "portentous birth" of latter times,
at least in its imposing magnitude, must be pronounced
to be the Empire of the White Czar.

When this country was achieving its "Revolution,"
and laying down on firm lines the foundations of its
national progress and its constitutional liberty, Russia—
Muscovy, as our forefathers would have called it—was a
semi-Asiatic state, still thickly crusted with the rust of
barbarism. Few dreamed of its future destiny, though
its progress had already been rapid and continuous. It
counted for little more in the European "balance of
power" than the Empire of Morocco does to-day, and
was indeed scarcely classed among the European family
of nations. It was still to all intents and purposes an
inland state, with no commerce save what was carried
through the territories of its neighbours. The Kingdom
of Poland had not only a sea-board on the Baltic, but
ports on the Black Sea. The Mohammedan Khanate of
Crim-Tartary interposed between the southern margin
of Muscovy and the Euxine. Fierce, independent Cir-
cassian and Tartar tribes held the country between the
Don and the Caucasus. Sweden possessed not Finland
alone, but Livonia, Esthonia, and the site of the modern
capital of the Czars. Towards the north, on the shores
of the White Sea, the rulers of Moscow had indeed an
outlet to the ocean; but this, and all the channels leading
to it, were closed during the long months of the Arctic
winter.

To the eastward the limits of the empire were less
well defined. The Czars held as much as they were
able of the ground roamed over by the nomad tribes of

THE GROWTH OF AN EMPIRE.

11

the Siberian steppes, and lost no opportunity of tightening their grasp on these loose possessions, and pushing their frontier to the east and the south. The ruler of Moscow was content at first to govern these wild peoples with a slack rein, and exact a very light tribute, if they were but willing to make nominal ac knowledgment of his suzerainty. And so the empire enlarged itself almost insensibly, or at least almost un observed, until Cossack conquest and discovery had, in the course of a few generations, carried the boundary of the Czars' dominions eastward to the shores of Behring Strait and southward to the Altai chain and the river Amoor.

Before Peter the Great's days, however, it is doubtful whether even the Russians themselves knew much of the region beyond the present limits of Europe. Not much more than a century had elapsed since they had shaken themselves clear, after a desperate struggle prolonged through three hundred years, from the yoke of the Tartars of the Golden Horde. It was not till the overthrow of the Mongol Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan by Ivan the Terrible, in the second half of the sixteenth century, that the Russian dominions were carried as far as the Volga and the Caspian Sea, and the princes of Muscovy thought themselves entitled to assume the name of "Czar." Their knowledge of the regions beyond the Ural chain and to the east of the Caspian must have been vague, and their interest in them probably not very keen.

But to the peoples of Western Europe — even to the learned among them—Siberia and the countries of Central Asia were still almost a terra incognita

12

ASIAN MYTHS AND CHIMERAS.

two hundred years back. As in the days of the
Greek and Roman geographers, these remote regions
were the abodes of myths and chimeras. The few
ascertained facts were distorted by fear and prejudice
and by the mists of uncertain distance. The fabulous
races with which the old world writers had peopled
Inner Scythia had indeed disappeared from the maps.
No one now had faith in the existence of the war-loving
Amazons; of tribes that once a year were transformed
into were-wolves, and roamed through the gloom of the
northern forests with the lust of blood and slaughter
glowing in their red eyes; of races that were bald-headed
from birth to old age, or who devoured their parents to
save the expense of burying them. The man-eaters by
the Arctic Seas, the one-eyed Arimaspian who contended
with the winged griffon for the possession of the Mines
of Gold, the dog-headed people, or that still stranger
headless race with a single eye planted in the middle
of the breast who inhabited the innermost recesses of
the desert, had been relegated to the realm of poetry
and fable. Only a few enthusiastic imaginations still
cherished the idea of the Riphæan Mountains, with their
impenetrable wall of snow, behind which, "at the back
of the north wind," dwelt the venerable Hyperboreans
in the practice of all the virtues and in the enjoyment of
eternal calm, in a region where the feathery snow-flakes
fell continually, and day succeeded night at intervals of
six months.

The names and something of the character and
habitat of several of the more important of the tribes
of Northern Asia were known; but concerning their geo-
graphical and political relations and their race affinities

TARTARY AND ITS TRIBES.

13

only the vaguest notions were afloat. A comparatively
short time had elapsed since these fierce barbarians
had precipitated themselves on Europe and laid it waste
up to the walls of Liegnitz; and the flood of Tartar
invasion had barely ebbed back within the limits of
Asia when Czar Peter began to reign. The natural
tendency was to make an exaggerated estimate of their
numbers and their destructive power; and so the picture
that stamped itself upon the popular fancy regarding the
northern and central parts of Asia, and which has con-
tinued to be more or less distinctly impressed there down
to the present day, is that of an illimitable waste, grim,
hungry, and forbidding, and yet, in spite of its barren-
ness, holding within its savage girdle of mountains
myriads of outlandish races with high cheek-bones and
obliquely-set eyes, who are continually engaged in
furious strife with each other, but who might at any
moment unite their forces and pour in a resistless torrent
over Europe or India.

Marco Polo's famous account of his journey across
Asia to the court of the great Kublai Khan at Pekin,
and through the length and breadth of the Middle
Kingdom, was still the chief repository of facts relating
to this part of the world; and so vague was the
information possessed even by the learned two cen-
turies ago, that we find the whole region north of the
Oxus and east of the Ural Mountains, comprehending
modern Siberia and Turkestan, slumped together as
"Grand Tartary." So inadequate was the conception of
the enormous extension of Asia to the northward and
eastward, that the Dutch and English navigators who
strove for more than a century—from 1553 to 1676—

14

THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE.

to discover a "north-east passage" to China and India
by coasting the Arctic shores of Russia, imagined that if
they could only round the cape to the south of Vaygatz
Strait, opposite Novaya Zemlia, and on the frontier of
Europe and Asia, they might then turn their vessel's
head to the south-east and sail directly to Cathay and
the Islands of Spice, and thus completely outdistance
their Spanish and Portuguese rivals in the Eastern Seas,
who had to make the long voyage by the Cape of Good
Hope or Cape Horn. That this ignorance of the actual
outline of the Russian Empire continued down to our
own day was proved by Nordenskiöld, who in his
memorable exploit of threading the long-sought-for
North-East Passage, and circumnavigating for the first
time the continents of the Old World, sailed over
tracts of sea which were laid down in the maps as dry
land, and found a bold and high coast where he had been
led to expect a navigable ocean.

But the knowledge possessed by the rest of Europe
regarding the true kinship and character of the Russian
people themselves, and of the nature and strength of the
power wielded by the Czar of Muscovy, was scarcely less ill
defined than that as to the vast supplementary empire that
was growing up in Asia. The early glories of Novgorod
and Kiev, when the Grand Princes espoused daughters of
the Emperors of the East, and were united by marriage
with half the crowned heads of Europe, had been obscured
or forgotten in the long night of Tartar domination that
followed the invasion of the Golden Horde.

It is true that, having at length thrown off the
yoke of its barbarian masters, the young Muscovite
power bounded along the course marked out for it with

A LONG DEEWAY.

15

gigantic strides. But it had a long leeway to make up. It had to work "overtime," as it were, to bring itself into the same field with its more favoured western competitors. While it was struggling almost despairingly for national existence, they had been passing through rapid changes in their political, social, and intellectual development. Paganism and Mohammedanism were round it on three sides, and in its midst. The race, like the land, was in the primitive stages of cultivation. The intelligence of the people was obscured by the grossest superstitions. The necessity of constantly watching and encountering their terrible Mongol foes turned their faces towards the dark east instead of westward, where the new light was rising. Their political relations were with Asia rather than with Europe. Other countries had long ago received, and more or less successfully absorbed, all the constituent elements of their nationalities. Celts, Teutons, and Slavs had already taken up their appointed places, and were busy adjusting questions of precedence.

Russia, however, was still within the flood-mark of barbarism. The exodus of the nations from Central Asia—the process that had been going on from the earliest beginnings of history, when we see Cimmerians pushed forward by Scythians, Issedones treading on the heels of Massagetæ, and political convulsions within the Wall of China sweeping away the decaying barriers of the Roman Empire, and pouring hosts of Goths, Huns, and Vandals into Europe—was still in active operation there. As had been the case for centuries, these Eastern Slavs had to bear the first shock of the charge of the Asiatic hosts. No sooner was one tribe overthrown

16

OBSTACLES TO PROGRESS.

than the way was left open for another and still stronger
that came on in its turn, to be in turn absorbed or ex-
terminated.

Russia was therefore constantly acquiring from
without, by the westward movement of population
and the eastward extension of her frontiers, vast addi-
tions to her stock of inhabitants. And these were no
longer, as in the earlier immigrations, Aryan peoples of
her own kin, but races of Turanian or semi-Turanian
origin, half-savage Finnish, Mongol, and Turkish tribes,
hard of assimilation into a stable and well-governed
state. She managed to incorporate them. The Russians
have a great natural talent in that direction. Their
stage of progress was not so far removed from that
of the peoples whom they absorbed as to prevent
them from mingling with them easily and on equal
terms. The process of the "Russification" of these alien
nations has been a rapid and effectual one, and has no
parallel in the history of British colonization; but it has,
as a matter of course, considerably impeded the social
progress of the Russian people.

On the other hand, while Russia's political outlook
had been towards Asia, her culture and religion, such as
they were, had been derived from Constantinople. This
fact has had a most powerful influence on the national
life and character, and has formed a main part of the
great wall of division separating Russia from the know-
ledge and sympathy of the rest of Europe. Not only
were there the antagonism of race and religion, and the
difficulties of an unknown language, and even alphabet,
to overcome, but Russia had adopted another type of
civilization, a different standard of taste and morals from

(718)

A "WINDOW TOWARDS EUROPE."

17

her neighbours in the west. Peter the Great was the first who thoroughly understood the great loss that his country suffered from this isolation, or at least he was the first who had the far-seeing sagacity and boldness to set himself with all his might to break down the barriers. Russia had still no foothold on the Baltic. The site of the great capital, which is the most magnificent and enduring memorial of Peter's superb ambition, was a lonely marsh, which had still to be won from the Swede, and that Swede no other than Charles the Twelfth. He chose this spot for the seat of his court and the centre of his power, and he called it "the window" by which Russia would see into Europe, and learn the lesson of progress. It has been in scarcely a less degree a window by which Europe has peered into the interior gloom of Russia, and with a half-sympathetic, half-apprehensive feeling has watched its wonderful brightening. If the heart of Russia still beat at Moscow, her eye and brain, her perceptive and intellectual faculties, were removed to St. Petersburg. She had become at length a European power; and she attracted to herself more and more of the curiosity and wonder of the world, as she strode on from conquest to conquest, while the solid development of her internal strength and the progressive enlightenment of her people almost kept pace with her vast aggrandizements to north, south, east, and west.

We have learned much regarding the Russian land and people since we have been thus brought face to face with them. Scores of observers have noted the peculiarities of the government, religion, and social life. Tourists may now travel with ease from one end to the other of the European possessions of the Czar; while

(718)

2

18

DIVERSITY OF RACE AND RELIGION.

enterprising explorers have penetrated into the remotest
corners of his vast Asiatic domains. More important
than all, a national literature has arisen, in which we
can read more clearly than in a thousand descriptions
what are the aspirations and the mental characteristics
of the race.

Yet it cannot be said that we know Russia and its
people thoroughly, or even well. It is so colossal and so
complicated a phenomenon that is presented to us, that
it is not easy to fix an adequate picture of it in the
mind. From the Danube to Behring Strait, from Arch-
angel to Samarcand, what a "multitude of all peoples
and tongues and nations that no man can number" are
comprised within the bounds of the Russian Empire!
Within are found representatives of all the northern and
eastern and of many of the southern and western races
of the Old World. Every phase of civilization, from the
highest to the most primitive, and nearly every variety
of religion—Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan, Buddhist,
and pagan—are represented. Dr. Latham, as the result
of his ethnological studies, which he admits to be imper-
fect, has reckoned up no fewer than forty-seven "non-
Russian" races dwelling within the bounds of Russia
proper. In Asia, and in the Polish, Circassian, and other
alien European provinces, there are at least as many
more. And in customs, costumes, and languages there is
almost as much variety as in race and religion. The
empire of the White Czar is the bond of union between
two great continents, which are otherwise sharply opposed
to each other in every physical and mental feature. It
leans on one side against the great Wall of China, and
neighbours on the other side with Germany; and it

RUSSIAN SCENERY.

19

shades away so insensibly from Western progress and culture to Oriental immobility, that it is impossible to put down the finger anywhere, and say, "Here Asia begins."

Not less striking is the diversity of scenery comprehended within the Russian Empire. Busy sea-ports on the Baltic and Euxine, with quays lined with steamers and crowded with merchandise, and trackless Mongolian wastes, where the solitary traveller may ride for many days without encountering a human habitation; garish new cities, where streets and boulevards and the costumes of the people smack of the latest Parisian taste, and decaying seats of Tartar and Uzbeg power, whose ancient magnificence is crumbling into dust; waving corn-fields stretching for hundreds of square leagues over the "Black Lands" of the Dnieper and Boug, and dreary tracts by the Arctic Sea, where it is impossible to tell where the frozen plain ends and the ice-field begins; white winter landscapes, where the ringing sledge speeds along under the keen stars and the snow-covered branches of the pines, and the soft steady tramp of the wolves is heard in the distance, and Khi-van deserts, where the blazing sun shines down on the fainting camel-drivers, as they toil through the hot sands; squat Laplanders and Samoyedes driving their reindeer to the pasture; Kamschadales putting out to sea in their frail kajaks, in chase of the walrus and the seal; hardy lumbermen descending the northern rivers in their huge rafts of larch and fir trees; Yakut fur trappers following the tracks of silver fox and marten across the snow; sturgeon-fishers landing their mighty prize on the shores of the Volga and the Don; Turco-

20

CONTRAST AND UNIFORMITY.

mans and Kipchaks riding forth on marauding and kidnapping expeditions; Kalmuk and Kirghiz shepherds watching their flocks on the steppe, with their guns conveniently at hand; Caucasian mountaineers leaping from crag to crag in chase of ibex and chamois; uncouth Mantchurian merchants bringing their bales of silk and bricktea to the Russian markets; Cossack colonists on disturbed and distant frontiers, where the settler has to till the ground with arms in his hand; dark and mysterious scenes of suffering endured by exiles in the Siberian mines; peaceful log-built villages in Central Russia, where the vastest social and political revolutions produce scarcely a ripple on the even current of peasant life; court splendours and great military displays; the interior of Christian churches, Mohammedan mosques, and Buddhist temples; mighty rivers, interminable marshes, and great salt and fresh water lakes; deserts of salt and shingle and sand and snow; vast forests, boundless grassy plains, and lonely Alpine peaks;—these and a hundred other pictures equally startling in their contrast rise before the mind when the name of Russia is mentioned.

But, after all, considering the stupendous area it covers, it is not diversity, but rather uniformity, even monotony, that is the distinguishing characteristic of the empire of Russia. Bulky though it is—stretching through one hundred and sixty degrees of longitude, and from far within the Arctic Circle to semi-tropical lands—it is one great whole, not only having continuity of extent, but uniformity of natural features. Compared with Western Europe, and even Southern Asia, it is a solid mass of land, indented to only a small extent by arms of the sea, and less dependent upon or connected with the

PLAINS AND RIVERS.

21

ocean than any other territory of similar extent. M. Rambaud, in his "History of Russia," has on this account described the region west of the Ural Mountains as the "Continental Europe," as distinguished from "Maritime Europe." Another physical peculiarity has suggested the name of "Europe of the Plains," as contrasted with "Europe of the Mountains," applied to the countries to the westward. Unlike its neighbours, Russia has a mountain girdle, but no mountain system. The Caucasus, the Urals, the Carpathians, the plateau of Finland, have been termed its frame—its limits, as laid down by nature; but within these bounds, and that of the seas that wash its shores, there is scarcely an eminence worthy of the name of a hill. The rivers draining to the Black Sea and the Caspian, and those flowing to the Baltic and the Arctic Ocean, take their rise at an elevation of a few hundred feet above sea-level. In a large measure the still more extensive territory of Siberia is a counterpart of European Russia. Except in its eastern parts, its great ranges of mountains are on its frontiers; but there is this important difference, that the drainage of the rivers and the slope of the country are towards the north and the Frozen Ocean.

If Russia, however, has not mountains to break up her unity and form natural barriers between her peoples, she has abundance of mighty streams. Few countries are so well favoured in regard to deep and navigable rivers. The Obi, the Yenisei, the Lena, the Volga, the Don, and the Dnieper are all rivers of the first rank, whose courses from source to mouth are within her borders. Many of their tributaries are great rivers over a thousand miles in length; while a score of inde-

22

THE RUSSIAN NATION.

pendent streams could be mentioned that excel in size
any of the rivers of Western Europe. Besides these,
Russia has frontier rivers of historic note—the Dan-
ube, the Amoor, and the Oxus—scarcely inferior in
volume to those that have been mentioned. But in the
winter the Russian land is “one and indivisible.” An
Arctic climate reigns from Lapland to the Kirghiz Steppe,
and from St. Petersburg to Kamschatka. The tempera-
ture rushes from one extreme to another. The Polar
air-currents and the hot winds from the sandy deserts
east of the Caspian have alike an uninterrupted sweep
across the level plains. Archangel has its broiling sun
and its clouds of mosquitoes during its short summer;
while at Odessa and Astrakhan the mercury ranges many
degrees below zero in the winter months. The rivers
are then all ice-bound, and the inequalities of the land
are smoothed over by the universal covering of snow.

These common conditions of climate and surroundings
have had an incalculable influence on the spread of the
Russian nation, and in welding out of many materials
one massive whole. For as with the land, so with the
people: while there are endless varieties and contrasts,
there is a wonderful agreement in the general type. The
quaint and curious diversities that are presented by
Georgian and Sart, Kalmuk and Eskimo, are only, as it
were, the gay party-coloured fringing that surrounds the
sober-hued web of the Russian nationality. As the rod
of Aaron swallowed up the rods of the magicians of Egypt,
so the Slav stock has absorbed Ugrian aborigines and
Turk and Tartar immigrants, and seems little changed,
except in bulk, by the process. The surroundings of the
race have fostered their colonizing spirit. There has been

THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT.

23

little to fasten them to their homes, and they have gone on and on in search of further conquest and happier fortunes. Their pioneers, so long as they saw no bounds to their horizon, have pushed steadily forward, hewing out for themselves new heritages in the forests of the north, and spreading their name and their creed over the steppe lands of the south. It is computed that sixty million of the inhabitants of the Russian Empire are of the Russian race. If their blood is not unmixed with foreign infusions, there can be no question of the force and purity of their national sympathies. At least, as large a proportion speak the Russian tongue and profess the national religion.

Here is a broad and solid basis for an empire's greatness to rest upon; capable, one would fancy, of sustaining almost any shock from without or from within. But the autocratic power that guides the destinies of Russia has not been content to retain it within its natural frontier. Military ambition and an unwise passion for aggrandizement have carried it into regions where, so far as can be seen, it can reap no permanent benefit, and where its presence arouses the suspicions of its neighbours. At the same time, the nation, stimulated by the great act of Serf Emancipation, is awakening to political life. It appears to be growing weary of parental government, and impatient of the myriad official bonds by which its freedom of action is controlled. It will by-and-by demand, and will obtain, a share in controlling its own destinies. Many fear that the awakening has come too early, before the nation has received its sight, and that if left to itself it will stumble forward, like a blind Samson, to a mysterious fate that will wreck its mighty strength.

24

AN IMPENDING CRISIS.

At all events, Russia is approaching a crisis of its history which must intensify our interest in everything that concerns it. Old problems and new are waiting for solution on terms and on a scale never before witnessed. Despotism and Communism are in the same boat, and around them are the angry and rising waters of popular passion. It will be of interest as we pass from end to end of the vast Russian dominion, noting its present aspects and seeking to understand its present condition, to glance from time to time at the beginnings of this unique and portentous power, undoubtedly the rival, but by no means necessarily the opponent, of Britain, and to mark the process of development which has made it what it is.

CHAPTER II.

GREAT NOVGOROD AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.

HREE hundred versts—some two hundred
miles—south-east of the city of St. Peters-
burg is a short range of hills which the
Russians call the Valdai Mountains. They
would not be mountains in any other country than Russia,
for their summits rise little more than three hundred
feet above the surrounding country. But these insignif-
icant hills form the only elevated ground that breaks
the immense plain that stretches from the Carpathian
to the Ural range. They are important also as con-
taining the sources of the great rivers that drain to
the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Caspian; and not
far off is the low water-shed from which the Northern
Dwina flows towards the White Sea and the Arctic
Ocean.

The Valdai Hills, therefore, though they be little
beside the mountain systems of Western Europe,
play an important rôle. They form the *umbilicus* of
Russia—its geographical centre, and the nucleus round
which the early traditions and history of the Russian
race are grouped. From its south-eastern skirts issues
the Volga, flowing through the region where the Muscovite

26

THE VALDAI HILLS.

Czarate first gathered strength. To the south rises the Dnieper, that runs under the historic old walls of Kiev,— a splendid seat of wealth and power when the site of Moscow was still a forest. Towards the west we come upon the head-waters of the Niemen, and to Lithuanian Russia, whose princes gave the law in Eastern Europe while the ancestors of the present Autocrat were bending humbly under the yoke of the Tartars. Standing on the bold bluffs of granite and quartz that on the north dominate the basin of Lake Ilmen, you look down upon a region perhaps still more full of ancient associations and historic interest. The eye takes in a wide view of forest, lake, and morass; of cultivated land, wooded knolls, and waste patches of sand, where, scattered far apart, the belfries of village churches, with the sun gilding their metal domes, peep out from among the pine trees or dot the banks of slow-flowing streams.

This is the province of Novgorod, the cradle of the Russian nationality. Even now the country seems only in course of being slowly reclaimed from a state of nature. But a thousand years ago the scene must have been rude indeed. This plain was then the most northerly and easterly outpost of the great Slav race. Here they dwelt surrounded on almost all sides by savage Finnish peoples—Tchuds, Vesses, and Merians; by still more ferocious Lithuanic tribes; exposed to incursions from the Scandinavian pirates, and divided among themselves by fierce feuds. They were scarcely less rude and barbarous than their neighbours. Like them they were heathens, worshipping Perun, the god of thunder; offering human sacrifices to the deities of the earth and air, and to the genii of the forests and swamps; and celebrating

THE BEGINNING OF RUSSIA.

27

the obsequies of their chief by burning his wives and
slaves on the funeral pyre. They lived, the old chroni-
clers say, "like wild beasts;" but already they had begun
to show their passion for agriculture, and their talent
for colonizing and encroaching, and for absorbing weaker
peoples. Slowly they were pushing forward, like a
wedge, into the heart of the country, clearing spaces in
the primeval woods in which to plant their scanty crops
of grain and build their rude fortified villages. Already,
favoured by their position on the head-waters of the
navigable streams, they had begun to engage in com-
merce.

Ten centuries ago, perhaps, might have been seen from
the most northern spurs of the Valdai Hills the wooden
buildings of Novgorod—the “New Town”—situated
on both sides of the Volkhov, after it issues from Lake
Ilmen, to find its way to Lake Ladoga, and finally to the
Gulf of Finland by the broad Neva; for already Nov-
gorod was the metropolis of the nascent Russian state.

We begin then our survey of the Russian dominions,
not at the east or the west, the north or the south,
neither at the centre nor the extremities, but at the be-
ginning. Every Russian at least knows that Novgorod
Veliki—“Novgorod the Great”—is the birth-place and
name-place of the nation. It is only some one hundred
miles to the south-east of St. Petersburg; but the super-
cilious modern capital on the Neva has disdained to
open a direct communication with the decayed old Slav
metropolis on the Volkhov.

For, alas! it has sadly fallen from its former opu-
lence and splendour; and the command of its trade
is no longer a prize that is worth straining to catch.

28

ROUTES TO NOVGOROD.

Only the relics remain of the great city of half a million
souls; the head-quarters of Ruric and the "men of Rus;"
the heart of the great republic which was the wonder
of medieval Europe. Railways, among other modern
appliances of trade, have been largely introduced into
Russia of late years; but Novgorod has benefited little
by them. The main route from St. Petersburg to Moscow
does not make the small deviation necessary to embrace
Novgorod in its course. It was the imperial will and
pleasure of the late Czar Nicolas that this main railway,
regarding the route of which engineers, contractors, and
military men were engaged in endless squabbling, should
be drawn as straight as a ruled line; and Novgorod has
had to be content with connecting herself with it
by a small branch line. Such things can be done in
Russia!

A longer but perhaps more interesting journey is that
by which the traveller, leaving the railway fifty miles
from St. Petersburg, proceeds in a small steamboat up
the Volkhov, arriving probably late in the evening at
the ancient town. The scenery through which he passes
produces a feeling of novelty and strangeness, if he is
making a first acquaintance with Russia; but when the
newness wears off, a still stronger sense of monotony
begins to assert itself. It is not a land that charms you
by its soft graces of outline and pleasing diversity of
colour. You perceive somehow that you have left the
familiar scenes of Europe, and yet are not in Asia.

The country is flat and featureless in contour, like a
Tartar physiognomy, and yet preserves a Tartar harsh-
ness of expression. Nature seems to have intended it
for a solitude; but the hard needs of man have compelled

MIGRATION AND SERVITUDE.

29

him to invade her sanctuary, and win his hard black
bread with sweat and care.

Long as this portion of the empire has been occupied,
it preserves the primitive air of an American settlement
in the backwoods. This is partly due, no doubt, to the
wooden materials of which the houses are built. Quar-
ries of stone are few in that flat land, and the peasant
throughout Russia builds his cabin of logs, employing
brick where wood cannot be used. There is no perma-
nence about these dwellings. The popular saying runs
that "Russia is burned once every seven years." The
strong ties of association that bind us in Western Europe
to the home of childhood, fastening our affections, as
it were, to very walls and stones, have not time to grow
up there.

The moujik—the Russian peasant—feels himself more
in the position of one who has set up his tent, than as
having built a permanent shelter for himself and his
children’s children. From the earliest times, and in
a certain sense still, he has held himself ready to aban-
don his patrimony, and shift farther into the wilder-
ness: the passion for wandering has got into his blood.
Whole populations, influenced by the oppression of their
rulers, the dread of Tartar invasion, or golden reports of
fertile and vacant lands ahead, were in the habit of
leaving the older settled localities in a body and moving
elsewhere. The wealth of the great proprietors depended
less on the extent of their lands—of which there was
never any lack—than on the number of hands there
were to till them. Governments also could not afford to
lose the main source of their revenue, the industrious
peasantry, on whom their capitation tax and other

30

A FOREST COUNTRY

heavy state burdens mainly rested. Stern “ukases”
were issued to stop the displacement of population; the
tenants and dependants of the boyards, or great nobles,
became bondsmen “attached to the glebe,” bought and
sold with the land, like the other chattels upon it; and
the village communities had their rights to the grounds
which they tilled in common legally recognized,—these
rights, however, being then, and in some places still, re-
garded by the peasants and their masters as an onerous
duty rather than as a valuable possession. In a word,
serfage and the commune were established; and the
Russian peasant of to-day is largely the product of these
two remarkable institutions, the nature and the influence
of which, however, form too wide and intricate a subject
to be entered into here.

In the Novgorodian landscape, therefore, the tourist
must not look for picturesqueness or fertility—at least
in the northern and eastern parts of the province. In its
best days it never was famous for its agricultural riches.
Only a small part of it has ever been brought, or is likely
to be brought, under the plough. With an area equal
to that of England, the population of the government of
Novgorod is little over a million. Much of it is still
covered with the primeval pine woods, and alternating
with these forest tracts are great undrained marshes and
wide spaces of sandy plain. The desolate aspect of the
scene is increased by the absence of the scattered farm-
steads we associate with country life at home. A sociable
and gregarious people, the blank solitude and oppressive
silence of the great plains and dark forests appal and
depress the Russian peasant farmers; and they love
to draw their houses cozily together into some snug

PEASANT SUPERSTITIONS.

31

hamlet or township for mutual protection and companion-
ship.

The old pagan myths have still a strong hold on the
minds of the simple peasantry, in spite of nearly a thousand
years of Christianity; and in few places is more implicit
faith placed in these venerable superstitions than in
Novgorod. After nightfall a thousand unearthly and
malign creatures are abroad. The were-wolf haunts the
forest, and the foul vampire creeps from the sepulchre
to slake his thirst for sweet young blood. Tales are
whispered over the fire about the clumsy antics of the
domovoi—the “brownie,” or familiar house-spirit—who
takes up his quarters in empty barns and mills; of
weird encounters with the roussalka, or wood-fairy;
with the leechie, or forest-demon, who slinks sidelong
through the undergrowth, dogging the steps of the trav-
eller; and with the still more malignant vodianoi—the
water-wraith, or kelpie—who delights in enticing the un-
wary to his home beneath the surface of the deep pool.
There are well-defined traces of the heathen worship
of the old Slavs in the village customs of to-day.
Perun, the Russian Thor, has still homage paid to him in
various ways; the aid of Mikonla, the ploughman, the
personification, as has been suggested, of the intense love
of the race for agriculture, is implored as often as that
of the Christian saints; and the attributes of Did-Lado,
the female deity who sends the refreshing rains of early
summer, are inextricably mixed up with those of the Vir-
gin Mary. On certain anniversaries the ancient tumuli
—graves of the heroes of the Novgorodian cycle—and
the ruins of the towns that in other days were wealthy
and industrious seats of commerce, are visited by the

32

FORSAKEN GREATNESS.

country people, and observances take place that are half a superstitious rite and half a touching commemoration of a mighty past which no native of "the great" Novgorod ever forgets.

The vestiges of the departed greatness of the old republic become more noticeable as, ascending the Volkhov, we approach the renowned city of Novgorod. Once, as has been said, it contained within its walls a population of 400,000, or, as some chroniclers say, 600,000. Now, it is a dwindling and forsaken little provincial town of some 17,000 inhabitants. The cincture of its old fortifications can still be traced, and bears witness to the immense strength of the walls and the enormous extent of the city, which in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries had its seventy "quarters," in which were congregated merchants from every part of Europe and Asia. Glancing round the sweep of the ancient walls, the Novgorod of to-day looks like a shrunken nut in its shell. Nothing remains of its old magnificence except the kremlin or citadel—a feature found in every Russian town of note—and the Cathedral of St. Sophia, with a few other ecclesiastical edifices. As of yore, the Volkhov divides the town into two parts. The "side of commerce," we have the assurance of Mr. Mackenzie Wallace, who spent a considerable time in Novgorod and its vicinity, is "eminently unpicтуresque and thoroughly uninteresting"—wide, ill-paved, dirty streets running at right angles to each other, and lined with houses that, as is too often the case in Russia, have no pretension to regularity or achitectural effect.

Crossing to the right bank by the bridge which has often played an important part in Novgorodian history,

THE KREMLIN AND CATHEDRAL.

33

you find several things worthy of attention, especially by
one acquainted with the city's past. The kremlin faces
you, surrounded by its high battlemented wall of brick,
above which rise the spiry summits of the citadel itself,
consisting of bulging cupolas, surmounted by slender
pinnacles in the usual Russian taste. The cathedral
church is a quaint-looking building, erected more than
eight hundred years ago, when architecture was in its
infancy in these Northern regions. Its blind walls and
massive structure bear evident token that the thrifty
citizens looked forward in building it to the time when
the sanctuary would be used as a magazine of war materi-
als, and a strong place of defence in the day of civic
broil or foreign attack. In spite of the secular uses to
which it has been put, the ancient church is deservedly
looked upon with unusual reverence; for does it not
contain, in addition to miracle-working images and relics,
the bones of St. Vladimir, the first Russian prince who
favoured Christianity, and of Mstislaf the Brave of
Smolensk, who, with his son Mstislaf the Bold, were the
great defenders of the city against Lithuanian, Tartar,
and Muscovite aggression? On the walls are curious
old frescoes of the twelfth century; and on the canopy
overhead is painted a gigantic figure of Christ, with the
arms outstretched in the act of blessing the city, which
is popularly believed to show signs of rejoicing or of
grief at every great change in the fortunes of Novgorod.

Close by the old cathedral is a wide-open public place,
and in the middle of this stands the monument erected
in 1862 in commemoration of the "millennium" of the
Russian nationality, an event much more grandly cele-
brated by the serf emancipation of the year previous.

(718)

3

34

THE "MEN OF RUS."

The monument is described as a colossal pedestal of stone, surmounted by an enormous globe, round which are grouped figures emblematical of Russian history. On this spot, more than a thousand years ago, the Varangian Ruric and his "men of Rus" set up their standard, and took possession of the town. According to the old chroniclers, whose story is generally accepted as based on historic fact, these "men of Rus" were Scandinavian rovers—from Roslagen, in Sweden, it is thought—of that race of Vikings who then infested all European seas, conquering and founding states in England, Normandy, the Low Countries, and Sicily, and pillaging even the shores of Greece and the islands of the Ægean.

These bold and enterprising Norsemen, who dared the perils of the Greenland seas in search of spoil and adventure, and are believed by some to have actually visited America five hundred years before Columbus, were scarcely likely to overlook the growing Slav power on the Volkhov. At that period the Slavs, the last of the Aryan races to arrive in Europe, were partly settled, as they are to-day, as far to the south-west as the Adriatic; but Novgorod, as we have said, was their farthest limit to the north-east. There, tired of the constant wars with Finns and Livs, and anxious to devote themselves to trade and agriculture, they called in Ruric, with his Norse followers, to be their head and protector. He found the town defended by its earthen wall, surmounted by a wattled palisade, the highest development of Slav fortification at the time; and he built on the site of the present kremlin a feudal stronghold that could bid defiance to the savages. Ruric is the ancestor of most of the princely personages that

THE COMMERCE OF NOVGOROD.

35

figure in subsequent Russian history, and his *droujina*— his retainers or henchmen, men that to the early Slavs appeared “tall as pine trees and fierce as bears”—were the founders of the great families of boyards who for so many centuries have had things nearly all their own way in Russia.

If Ruric proved himself a King Stork to his subjects, they had much to thank him for; and by-and-by, when his descendants moved to fairer and more fertile regions in the south, the citizens were left very much to their own devices. For, as has been hinted, the importance of Novgorod depends not on its agricultural riches,— in that respect it is poor,—but on its commanding geographical position. Holding the key of the Valdai Hills, it had water communication with rivers draining to the Baltic, the White Sea, the Caspian, and the Euxine. By the Volkhov the Novgorodians descended to Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland; and by the same route they could also make their way with little difficulty to the shores of the Arctic Sea. They descended the great river Volga, which in all times has been the commercial highway of Russia, and were the carriers of merchandise between Europe and the distant East. Their neighbourhood to the sources of the Niemen and Dwina and of the Dnieper brought them into communication on the one hand with the Germans, and on the other with the Greeks of the Eastern Empire.

Every year Novgorod grew in wealth and population, till in the fourth and fifth centuries after its occupation by Ruric it had reached the apex of its glory. Christianity had been introduced by Vladimir the Saint, great-grandson of Ruric, and the pagan observances had been

36

A TURBULENT AND PIOUS CITY.

abolished, and the old beliefs expelled or transmuted into
new superstitions.

A turbulent and a pious city was the Novgorod of
those days. Its civil and its religious freedom went
hand in hand. The citizens chose as the head of the
republic some prince of the House of Ruric from a
neighbouring state; but they did not allow him to
govern, and they exacted an oath from him that he
would conserve all the rights and privileges granted
them by their great benefactor Jaroslav, son of Vladi-
mir, the Charlemagne of Russia, who built the church
of St. Sophia. The prince led their armies in the
numerous wars against the Finns, Lithuanians, and
Poles, or with the neighbouring republic of Pskov.
Very often they turned their weapons against himself,
and ejected him with little ceremony when he did
not please them. The Metropolitans of Novgorod would
acknowledge no ecclesiastic dependence on Kiev or on
Moscow. Had not the Church of St. Sophia also its
wonder-working images and its sainted bones? Were
they not Novgorodians, who would not doff their caps to
any Muscovite or Little Russian? Everything was done
by popular vote, and by the convocation of the notables,
under their *possadnik* or burgomaster, gathered either
in the cathedral or in the Court of Jaroslav beyond
the river. When this assembly was sitting, or when public
strife and clamour were raging, the great bell was rung.
Sometimes it pealed forth for seven days without ceas-
ing. It was the sonorous voice of the republic, whom
the citizens proudly termed "My lord Novgorod the
Great." "Who," they said, "can resist God and great
Novgorod?"

NOVGORODIAN COLONIZING.

37

Under these free institutions its commercial im-
portance developed in a wonderful manner. Novgorod
became, in the words of the writers of the time, "a pro-
digiously large city." Its territory was more extensive
than that of the Venetian Republic. Its "Good Com-
panions," as the bands of adventurers called themselves,
sailed down the Volkhov in their light craft, and made
their way by lake, marsh, and stream to the White
Sea and the base of the Ural Mountains. They reduced
to submission the vast territories comprehended in the
modern governments of Archangel, Vologda, and Olonetz;
founded a new republic in Viatka, between the Volga and
the Kama; and penetrated far into Siberia. When they
came near to a town, they did not stop to inquire
whether its inhabitants were Christian or pagan, but
made war upon it as a matter of course. Deeply reli-
gious men they were, too, after their own notions. They
prayed fervently before attacking a sleeping village, and
set up a cross on the blood-stained ashes. Little better
than pirates, perhaps, were these pious swash-bucklers,
though in that respect they differed not from all the
pioneers of their time. But they were bold, fearless,
enterprising men, who laid wide and deep the foundations
of the Russian power, and added enormously to the
wealth and consequence of Novgorod.

The wealth of the great republic was the cause of its
downfall. It excited the cupidity of the Poles and
Lithuanians. But more dangerous than all was the grow-
ing power of the principality of Moscow. Time after
time it repelled the Grand Princes; but possessing as
they did the rich grain-lands of the Volga, they had the
power of starving it into terms. Great plagues and

38 THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE "TERRIBLE."

famines thinned the population; and then, in 1478, Ivan the Great, the "Binder of the Russian Land," marched against it while it was torn by internal factions, ravaged and wasted the region round about with his Tartar cavalry, took the city, massacred or deported its principal inhabitants, and added its great possessions to his own. That was an important day for Muscovy, for it brought its frontier for the first time to the sea—though it was only the White Sea. But it was the day of Novgorod's humiliation. It was stripped of its power and its independence; its defences were destroyed, and its subject towns shared in its fall. Isborsk alone—founded by a brother of Ruric—retained its kremlin.

But if possible a worse enemy to Novgorod than Ivan the Third was his grandson, the "terrible" Czar Ivan the Fourth. Determined to put an end finally to the ceaseless rebellions of its people, he occupied the city, and for six weeks devoted himself to the slaughter of its citizens. Every day, it is said, during that period upwards of a thousand people, without regard to age or sex, were slain or flung over the parapet of the bridge into the Volkhov, while boat-loads of soldiers lay in wait below to prevent any of the victims from reaching the shore. There is a curious ripple under the piers of the bridge, where the water never freezes in winter, which the awe-struck native will point out to you as caused by the troubled spirits of the martyred Novgorodian patriots. Besides the sixty thousand that perished in this manner, tens of thousands of families were transplanted to the interior of Russia. Ivan sought to get rid of others by planting colonies of citizens of Novgorod on Novaya Zemlia—the desolate "new land," in the Arctic Sea,

THE NEIGHBOURS OF NOVGOROD.

39

which had just been discovered—where, of course, they
all perished miserably. The old privileges of the city
were taken away. It fell afterwards into the hands
of the Poles and the Swedes; but it never recovered
from the terrible treatment the two Ivans meted out to
it. The neighbourhood of St. Petersburg has shorn it of
some of the few attractions that a Russian country town
affords, and it is now the dreariest of provincial capitals.

Its crops of rye, buckwheat, and hemp, above all, its
forests, now furnish the chief wealth of the province of
Novgorod. The great lakes Ilmen and Bielo are well
stored with fish; and in the numerous ponds and lake-
lets of the Valdai district, acclimatized salmon, and the
still more aristocratic sterlet, are reared, and the fisher-
men make a comfortable living by conveying these to
the St. Petersburg and Moscow markets. In the recesses
of these hills are many charming glens and wooded
nooks, where we come upon the quaint villages of the
natives of these parts—a race by themselves, famed for
the good looks of their women, their curious custom of
painting the neck and hands blue, red, and black, and
for their manufacture of savoury cracknels and great
bells; and the scenery has a diversity of aspect rarely
seen in Novgorod, or, for that matter, in Russia.

Neighbours of Novgorod, and lying respectively west,
east, and south of the Valdai Hills, are three provinces
—Pskov, Tver, and Smolensk—that illustrate the pro-
gressive stages of the history of Russia, and varying
phases of the national life. In the economic condition
of Pskov and Tver may be traced the fickle ebb and
flow of the currents of trade in the course of centuries.

40

"MY LORD PSKOV."

The city of Pskov is a thousand years old, and boasts
of being the birth-place of the Princess Olga, daughter-in-
law of Ruric, and the first Christian convert in the
ruling family of Russia. It was once the head of a
republic, and the commercial rival of Great Novgorod.
It, too, had its massive kremlin, its cathedral—not to
mention one hundred and fifty smaller churches—its
important wars, and its alliances with Lithuanians and
Poles, and with the Grand Princes of Kiev and Moscow.
Pskov called herself the “younger sister” of Novgorod;
and the two republics quarrelled with each other in
a way that was anything but sisterly. The Pskovians
also spoke of their city as “the Great,” and prefixed to it
the style of *Gospodin*—“my lord.” The period of its
decay, as of its greatness, was contemporary with the
decline and fall of Novgorod; and the causes also were
identical.

Pskov has, however, sunk to an estate lower, if possible,
even than her ancient rival. The modern town has some
twelve thousand odd inhabitants. It is a squalid and
desolate-looking place, with narrow miry streets lined
with rickety wooden houses. The line of railway from
St. Petersburg to Warsaw passes it at some little dis-
tance, having disdained to move a few miles aside
to touch the old emporium. It has a certain conse-
quence as the seat of a provincial government, and it
preserves a few vestiges of its leather and furniture
industries. The annual fair, the “Great Town” and the
“Middle Town” quarters still remain; and its churches,
sixty in number, are more than sufficient for the needs
of the people. The old ramparts, that often repelled the
Teutonic Knights, are crumbling away: “the street boys,”

PSKOVIAN CUSTOMS AND COSTUMES.

41

says M. Rambaud, "amuse themselves by flinging the stones into the Pskova to frighten the laundresses." But on fête days, when the great bell booms from the Cathedral of the Trinity, where rest the bones of the best-beloved princes of Pskov—Vsevolod, Gabriel, and Dovmont the Lithuanian—and is answered in less deep notes from the belfries of its numerous churches, a phantom of its past splendour seems still to linger above the decayed old town. A more abiding lustre, perhaps, attaches to Pskov in that it has given to Russia the greatest of her poets—Alexander Pushkin.

The district of Pskov is even poorer than Novgorod in agricultural resources, and the people are more primitive in their ways. With an area nearly as large as that of the kingdom of the Netherlands, its population only numbers three quarters of a million. The soil is flat and sandy, and much of the surface is covered with swamp and forest. At Pskov the Pskova river joins the Velikaia, and a little farther down the united stream falls into Lake Pskov, which again is a prolongation of the great Lake Peipus, whose flat shores of sedge and sand, two hundred miles in circuit, are, however, chiefly within the neighbouring governments of Livonia and St. Petersburg. A busy current of commerce sweeps round its skirts, but Pskov itself is in a backwater, where few influences from the outer world penetrate. The ancient Slav customs and family organization are found here in pristine simplicity. The costume of the women has changed little since the days of Olga. The maidens still bind a broad ribbon across their heads, that after marriage is replaced by a linen band, and wear round their necks a kerchief broidered with glass beads, which

42

FAMILY LIFE AND FOOD.

is removed at the altar. The wide-sleeved sarafan, or
gown, fastened behind from top to bottom with metal
bangles, the mitten of sheepskin edged with sable, and
the strong shoes lined with wool, are articles of dress
that have altered little in fashion for many centuries.

The housewife, respected and consulted as the man-
ager and director of in-door affairs throughout Russia,
is regarded in Pskov, perhaps more than elsewhere, as
the absolute power at the family hearth, to whose behests
daughters-in-law and children, and even sons and hus-
band, must pay implicit attention within her own espe-
cial domain. The food of this primitive folk, as may be
imagined, includes few foreign delicacies. Black rye
bread—the “staff of life” throughout Russia—cabbage
soup, curdled milk and potatoes, occasionally oat-cakes,
cheese, butter, and eggs, these meet all their simple
wants, if we add draughts of *kavass* (beer made from the
aforesaid black bread), or stronger potions, if procurable,
of *vodka* (rye spirit). Ordinarily, however, the Russian
peasant is a frugal and contented fellow, with whom a
little luxury—a spoonful of gravy to enrich his daily
mess, or a glass of home-brewed beer to wash it down—
goes a long way. Even when in liquor he is seldom or
never quarrelsome, but rather, perhaps, inclined to be
demonstratively affectionate. The peasantry of Novgorod
and Pskov, in spite of their simple fare, have long been
noted for their well-grown, sturdily-knit figures, and
many of the female population have regular features
and pleasing expressions. They have a staidness and
dignity of deportment, amounting almost to austerity,
that contrasts strongly with the light, volatile, and im-
pulsive demeanour of the Polish and Little Russian

TVER.

43

people to the south, and which may, in part at least, be
attributed to their still unextinguished pride in their
ancient republican independence and power.

Unlike Novgorod and Pskov, Tver is on one of the
main arteries of Russian trade. The chief town of the
old principality is a considerable and a rising place.
Czar Nicolas's "straight line" of rail happened to hit it,
and helped to build its fortunes. It has still only some
thirty thousand inhabitants, but it is an entrepôt for the
grain from the fertile corn-lands of the south on its way
to the capital. It has its theatre, its public parks and
drives, its busy working population, its lively provincial
society, and even its small literary coterie. Of course it
has its kremlin and its cathedral, in which are the bones
of the sainted Prince Michael, basely murdered in 1319
at the court of the Tartar Khan of Kazan, by George
Danielovitch of Moscow, with whose family the princes
of Tver disputed for a century subsequently the possession
of the grand principality and the precedency among
Russian states. Like other Russian towns, Tver has often
suffered by fire, and has profited by the disaster. To a
terrible conflagration in 1763, that burned the city to the
ground, it owes its present regularity of design and its
broad and straight thoroughfares.

Few parts of the empire present such a scene of ani-
mation and active industry as the government of Tver.
The nobles have the reputation of being among the most
advanced and liberal of the Russian aristocracy in their
ideas and in their treatment of their tenantry and
dependants. The result of this is seen in the superior
industry, robustness, and contentment of the Tverian

44

SMOLENSK.

peasantry. The winter time is the period when busi-
ness and labour are at their briskest. Tver owes its im-
portance to its position on the sources of the Volga, and
the products of the immense region of which that river
is the commercial artery are here drawn to a focus.
Vast stores of grain—wheat, rye, oats, barley, and pease
—and of wool, hemp, flax, and other raw material,
are constantly arriving for storage or for transport to the
manufacturing countries to the west. Tver itself is not
noted for its agricultural riches. It has the same rigor-
ous climate and poor soil as Novgorod and Pskov; like
them, it is within the "zone of forest." Its timber is,
indeed, one of its great sources of riches. Thousands
of its population are engaged in the work of wood-
cutting, rafting, and saw-milling. The felled trunks of
oak and larch are dragged over the snow to the banks
of the rivers, whence, as soon as the ice melts, they are
floated down-stream to spots where thousands of saws
are busy cutting up the rough logs into beams, battens,
and deals for shipment to Western Europe. Altogether,
a more active and yet more peaceful scene, one more
indicative of vigorous life in the present and of promise
for the future, can hardly be witnessed within the Czar's
possessions than that to be seen within his faithful prov-
ince of Tver.

Travelling southwards, and leaving the Valdai Hills
behind us, we enter a district famous for the great events
that have happened within it in modern as well as in
medieval times—Smolensk. The Varangians followed
this route on their way from the Volkhov to the Lower
Dnieper; but they saw little in these cold, swampy,

THE BATTLE-FIELD OF RUSSIA.

45

forest-clad flats to tempt them to linger when the sunny,
smiling plains of the Ukraine lay before them. As
soon, however, as the early Russian State began to break
up into principalities, Smolensk began to assert its im-
portance. It contains the upper waters of the Dnieper
and the heads of the valleys of the Dwina and the
Moskva—streams draining into three seas.

The commercial advantages of this position have in
all times been overshadowed by its military import-
ance. It was the debatable land between Novgorod
and Kiev, and later between Moscow and Lithuania.
On this field have been fought out the great contests
between Poland and Russia—between Catholicism and
Greek Orthodoxy—in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries; and it was a scene of the prolonged struggle
between Czar Peter and the Alexander of the North—
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Through it lies the
direct road to Moscow and the heart of Russia. On its
soil were fought, in that "memorable year," 1812, some
of the most murderous battles that marked Napoleon's
advance on the capital; and its snow-covered ways and
obscure hamlets witnessed the hideous scenes of suffer-
ing and vengeance enacted during the retreat of that
terrible winter. The sites of a thousand desperate fights,
still famous or sunk in oblivion, are thickly sprinkled
over the surface of Smolensk; and the mouldering bones
of combatants of a score of different races—Turk, Tartar,
and Finn, Lithuanian, Pole, and Russ, German, Swede,
and Frenchman—fatten its lean soil. It is, in fact, the
battle-field of Russia, the scene above all others where
she has won her unity and independence from foreign
control; and the Russians are not oblivious to the fact,

46

THE "IMPREGNABLE" CITY.

as the memorial on the scene of the sanguinary struggle
at Borodino—which, however, is just outside of the
boundary of Smolensk—serves, among many other
proofs, to show. They complain that “space is their
great enemy;” but here they must admit that it proved
their saviour, when their courage, their numbers, their
military skill, and the lavish expenditure of their blood,
availed them not.

The old city of Smolensk, the capital of the govern-
ment, has associations that are in fit keeping with the
warlike history of the province. It is built on the
banks of the Dnieper, and is admirably situated for
trade; but its prosperity has been too often staked on the
chances of a battle for it to have had an unbroken career
of good fortune. Its kremlin, washed by the waters of
the river, often destroyed and rebuilt, is still the most
prominent building in the town. The remains of the
massive walls, thirty feet high, fifteen feet thick, and
two miles in circuit, which were long believed to render
Smolensk impregnable, still exist. In the days of the
Mstislafs—the “Brave” and the “Bold”—the princi-
pality on the Upper Dnieper protected Novgorod, and
spread its conquests as far as Halitch (modern Galicia),
of which the younger Mstislaf died the ruler. But the
growing power of Moscow in the east absorbed Smolensk
as it absorbed Novgorod. It was an appanage of the
Grand Dukes of Lithuania when, in 1514, Vassili, son of
Ivan the Great and father of Ivan the Terrible, besieged
it, battered down the “impregnable” ramparts of the
kremlin with his great guns, and entered the city amid the
rejoicing of the people, who were tired of Polish supremacy.
Ever since, Smolensk has been one of the most patriotic

SMOLENSK IN 1812.

47

of Russian cities. A hundred years later, in the "time of the troubles," when the old male line of Ruric had been exhausted, and before the present family of the Romanoffs were seated in their place, Smolensk was again taken by the Poles after a long and bloody resistance; but it was won back by the Czar Alexis, son of Michael Romanoff, in 1654.

Its last and most terrible experience was in 1812, when the "grand army" of nearly half a million of men, led by the greatest military genius of modern times, burst over the frontiers of Russia and pursued its conquering way towards Moscow. It was in attempting to cover Smolensk that the Russian army under Barclay de Tolly and Bragation was beaten and driven back in the sanguinary battles of the 14th, 17th, and 19th of August. Other three days sufficed to carry the town, though garrison and inhabitants fought with the fury of patriotic and religious zeal, and the battered walls of the kremlin and the blazing streets were drenched with the blood of twenty thousand dead. Great were the rejoicings of the conquerors, while the city was abandoned to pillage, and marauding parties wasted the country around, more especially after the patriot host, making its final stand near the Moskva, at Borodino, was again repulsed with fearful carnage, thirty thousand Frenchmen and forty thousand Russians being piled in heaps on the field of battle.

It was a ruinous triumph, as was seen three months later. When the remnants of the victorious army, fleeing from the smouldering ruins of Moscow, pursued not only by the avenging Russians, but by still more remorseless enemies—cold and hunger—re-entered the deserted streets

48

THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.

of Smolensk, they found there no comfort, no supplies,
no resting-place from persecution, scarcely even shelter
for the thousands of sick and wounded. Footsore and
famishing they had to continue their weary way through
a country which their own hands had utterly wasted,
turning at bay at intervals to repel the attacks of the
relentless foe; massacred by the infuriated peasantry
when any of them straggled behind; numbed to the
bones by the Arctic cold, and seeing no speck in the
white expanse of the snow-covered plain except the
ravens that flapped slowly in their rear, and no hope of
escape but in the grave. It was here, in a word, where
was enacted one of the greatest tragedies of modern
times—where a mass of living valour and military
strength such as has seldom been brought together was
utterly wrecked and dissipated in space, and a mighty
reputation received a fatal wound. Is it strange that
stories of this eventful time cling to every by-way and
thicket in the environs of Smolensk, and along the
broad track followed by the retreating French army;
that they are told over, with marvellous additions, by
the village firesides; and that the deeds of the patriot
troops, of the Cossack horsemen, and of the peasant
volunteers, should be mixed up with the exploits of the
earlier heroes of the race?

Smolensk is not only the most celebrated, but—with
the exception of Viazma, one hundred miles to the east-
ward, where also a battle was fought between the
Russians and the French—the only important town of a
government which contains over a million of souls spread
over twenty-one thousand square miles of territory.
The new city, partly built of stone, which has risen on

MODERN SMOLENSK.

49

the ashes of the old wooden one, contains some handsome public buildings, including the large allowance of churches which we find in every Russian town.

Besides a cathedral, with the archbishop's palace, there are Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches for the unorthodox Christians; and monasteries, colleges, a military school for the nobles, assembly rooms, and other institutions required by an advanced civilization. It retains the control of a large transport business in grain on its way to the Baltic ports; and also a considerable manufacturing trade in carpets, linen goods, soap, and leather. Altogether, Smolensk, with its twenty-five thousand inhabitants, is a place of some little activity and enterprise; and if it has not the stir and bustle of Tver, it has still less resemblance to the forsaken and decaying streets of Novgorod and Pskov. But for generations to come the chief interest which the city and the government must present to the tourist will be the traces they contain of the ruinous tempests of war that have so often swept over them in the past.

(718)

4

CHAPTER III.

LITTLE RUSSIA AND KIEV.

HEN the extreme southern frontier of Smolensk is crossed, we are in Little Russia. The "zone of forests" is left behind; the fat granlands of Tchernigov and the Dnieper valley are around us, and the green rolling prairies of the Ukraine in front. The transformation from the lowering gloom of Smolensk to the "favoured land" of Little Russia is like the change from the dark and dolorous scene that closes the dramatic part of a pantomime to the gay frolic and brilliancy of the harlequinade. There is a change in latitude, in elevation, and in soil. We seem transported from the climate of Sweden to that of Southern France.

From a region where the frost binds up the marshes and the snow keeps its chill hand on the ground until far into April, a day or two's march has brought the traveller to a land where the cottages are buried under the blossom of peach and apricot trees, where the grape ripens in the open air, and where tobacco is grown for export. The heavy drapery of the forest has disappeared—not suddenly, but by degrees. Oak, ash, and lime trees mingle with the dark evergreen of

LANDSCAPES IN THE UKRAINE.

51

the fir and spruce; the woods become thinner and more scattered, and the last sentinels of the great "Northern Host" of pines are left behind. There are heavily timbered patches in Tchernigov, and in the northern parts of Kiev there are still fine tracts of woodland, but farther south are the boundless, treeless steppe-lands.

In great level spaces, or in gentle undulations, like a sea rocking itself to rest after a tempest, the country stretches away until sky and horizon meet in a hardly discernible line. In spring and summer it is an ocean of verdure, the vivid green starred by flowers of every hue, and scattered over with large herds of sheep and cattle; in autumn, a bare brown waste of burned-up pastures; and in winter, a white, unsullied expanse of snow. Human habitations do not make a great figure in the landscapes of the Ukraine. The Cossack plants his *hata* under the lee of some swell in the surface, or by the margin of a stream where his flocks can be watered during the parching droughts of the summer. A group of oak or walnut trees, guarded with extreme care, helps to shelter his snug little home, with the garden, cattle enclosures, and other outhouses grouped around it; and the biting blasts of the north and the hot breath of the desert pass over his humble roof without disturbing his tranquillity of mind. The wide rim of his horizon is the boundary of his world, and in spite of many drawbacks he finds it not an unpleasant place to dwell in.

For Little Russia is inhabited by a people who are the true children of its sunny skies, rich soil, and open, breezy plains. They speak a dialect that differs considerably from that of the Great Russia to the north and north-east of them. They dwell in a land that yields its

52

THE LITTLE RUSSIAN.

fruits not grudgingly and sparingly, but with lavish hand, and almost spontaneously. They are not less fond of agricultural work than their neighbours, but they have more opportunity for play. They are Slavs of the Slavs. The buoyancy of temperament—the *insouciance*—which carries the Russian through so many of the trials that fall to his hard lot, is possessed in a special degree by the peasant cultivators of Kiev and Poltava; but while elsewhere it may be set down to stolidity, here it can only be attributed to light-hearted gaiety of spirits.

Neither in intermittent devotion to labour, nor in luxurious appreciation of the delights of idleness when the working hours are over, is he a whit behind his brother peasant of the forests; but while the latter loves to revel in the close warmth of his smoky hut, the Little Russian can take his ease in the open air. His history, his descent, his religious feelings and political sympathies, like his mother tongue, are not identical with those of his Muscovite compatriot; and he is keenly alive to the fact. He draws, indeed, a broader distinction than is perhaps warranted by the facts, and "cocks his beaver" with disdain at races that can lay less claim to purity of blood and superiority of physique. He knows that the Great Russia of the northern forests and eastern wastes is but a colony of his own beautiful land; that it was from this nest on the Dnieper that the vast swarm hived off that has covered the half of Europe and the half of Asia, just as our little Britain of the seas is the original home of the race that has colonized the "Greater Britain" of America and Australia.

If Novgorod was the beginning of the political power of Russia, Kiev is the birth-place of her religion and

THE "PANSLAVIC IDEA."

53

her literature. And the Kievian, like the Novgorodian, does not forget the days that are past. The old capital is still the capital of his country to him—much the same as the Scotsman regards Edinburgh as the capital of his native land. The ancient glory of Kiev touches his imagination more quickly perhaps than the later power of Moscow; the honour and advancement of the Slav race and tongue are often nearer to his heart than the aggrandizement of Russia. So the "Panslavic" idea—the notion of uniting all the Slavonian peoples, in Turkey and Austria as well as in Russia, in one great and irresistible confederation—has a special allurement for the Little Russian. The wild Nihilist theories also—the recoil from the hard and fast bonds of absolutism—have found a most fertile field for propagation in the old home of the Slavs. The revolutionary seed has not only been thickly sown among the students at the universities of Kiev and Kharkov, but is discoverable, it is said, even in the professorial staff.

But whatever dangerous combustibles are hidden in the Little Russian's bosom, his daily life bears little sign of their presence. The brightness of the Slav temperament has not been dimmed, as in the north, by melancholic infusions from aboriginal Finnish stocks. His affinities, so far as they are not purely Slavonic, are rather with the Greek and the Tartar. His quick, artistic impulses, his inflammable enthusiasm, have been stimulated by Hellenic impulses from the Black Sea and Byzantium, and the Tartar admixtures of centuries have helped to inspire him with an almost savage love of outside nature, of personal freedom, and of war. In the very looks and costume, and much more in the manner

54

THE POETRY OF PEASANT LIFE.

of life, of the peasant of the Ukraine, are reminiscences of
his long and troublous relations with Turk and Mongol
nomads. There are Tartar traits in the type of his
features and in his dark hair and eyes. He is one of
those who "love to lie i' the sun;" and the sun has
left its kiss on the brown cheek, and kindled some of
its fiery fervour in his nature. From choice, he would
sleep rather under the stars than within doors; and there
are traces of the magic and mystery of the summer night
in his wayward fancies. For the rest, we see a tall and
sturdy figure, firmly knit by a life of toil and outdoor
exercise from childhood up.

If to be merry is to be wise, then the shepherds of the
"frontier" and the peasantry of the Black Lands of the
Dnieper are among the sages of the earth. Jest, raillery,
quick repartee, are as the breath of their nostrils; song,
dance, and music have for them irresistible attractions.
A vein of poetry, not deep perhaps, but widely spread,
runs through this race. Their land is the oldest and
chosen home of Russian folk-lore, where snatches of lyrical
ballad and strains of improvised melody still spring spon-
taneously from the hearts of the peasantry. Their tastes
are shown in their love for flowers, their success in bee-
keeping, and their skill in the training of orchard and
forest trees. The humblest little garden, where the cottar
grows his pot-herbs, bears witness of an artistic eye to
colour and effect. The very arrangement of the houses
in the rustic hamlet tells of the exercise of individual
taste, instead of the mere copying of old models or next-
door neighbours. Picturesque grouping takes the place
of dull and ugly uniformity of straight lines.

The interiors of the houses do not belie the outsides.

HOUSEHOLD GODS AND FAMILY FESTIVALS.

55

In the Ukraine, the *hata* in which a young couple are to take up their abode is "run up" almost with as much ease as the Kirghiz nomad pitches his black felt tent, and the walls are not much more substantial. All the neighbours assist, the women plastering on the clay when the men are driving the stakes and plaiting the tough withes that form the skeleton framework of the future home. Within there are manifest signs of that imitative talent in carving, painting, and decoration which is the heirloom of the Russian, and which with the dwellers by the Dnieper becomes almost an original gift. On the floor, on the sides and front of the indispensable oven —which, as elsewhere in Russia, is also the family hot bath, and often the family sleeping-place—are often artistic scrolls and tracery of flowers, foliage, and figures. High on the wall to the left of the entrance, opposite the great stove, are ranged the "household gods" —figures of Virgin and saint curiously wrought and gilded—to which the inmates pay devout attention, garning the family shrine with flowers in their seasons, and other little marks of reverential awe. The Little Russian, as becomes his history, is a stout champion of Orthodoxy, carrying his zeal often to the extent of dissent from the established religion, as relaxing from the strict letter of ancient dogma and form. Saint-days and other Church festivals, of which there are an enormous number in the year, do not fail to receive due observance; and the "name-day" of each member of the household is an anniversary on which piety and inclination alike call upon them to make merry with their friends. Nor are more secular feasts forgotten. Among a people so social and joyous, a very slight occasion, or no occasion what-

56

THE MALO-RUSS AND HIS HISTORY.

ever, is enough to call a company of young and old
together for mutual amusement.

The Malo-Russ, as his neighbour of Moscow terms him,
has been called the "spoiled child" of Russia. If that
is the case, it is nature and not man who has spoiled
him. Since the earliest historic times Little Russia has
had harsh taskmasters and experiences of war and dis-
aster that would have broken the spirit of a race of less
elastic temper. They have worked hard and fought
hard, and come through it all, a people ten million strong
—or thirteen million, if we count Podolia and Volhynia,
along with Tchernigov, Kiev, Poltava, and Kharkov, as
forming their heritage.

Who are they, and whence came they, these south-
eastern Slavs, who have ended in being south-western
Russians? They were settled on these fertile lands of the
Dnieper as early as, if not earlier than, their northern
relatives were on the banks of the Volkhov. The towers
and walls of Kiev emerge from the mists of the barbaric
Middle Ages even before those of Novgorod. A Slav
people were here a thousand years ago, industriously
turning up the rich loam, sowing, reaping, and sending
their surplus grain past the cataracts of the Dnieper,
and down that river to the Black Sea, to be exchanged
for articles of luxury from the Eastern Empire, as the
Little Russians of to-day exchange their corn at Odessa
for the manufactures of Western Europe.

As early as the days of Herodotus—four hundred
years before the Christian era—the Ploughmen Scy-
thians fed the Greek colonies from this same inexhaust-
ible granary. Where are the Scythians now—that
terrible and widely-spread people, delighting in war

SCYTHIANS AND SLAVS.

57

and in agriculture, who worshipped a sword stuck into
the earth, and quaffed their wine from the skulls of their
enemies killed in battle? Did some annihilating catas-
trophe overtake them that the ghost of their name no
longer stalks on the earth? Were they a Hunnish
race, the ancestors of those whom Attila led westward?
were they allied to the Goths, who are also first seen
emerging from this region to assist in the wild work of
upturning the Roman world? or were they the original
Slavs, over whom these human hurricanes swept with-
out destroying? Let ethnologists say. What we know
is that a millennium ago, when Ruric and his brethren
were consolidating their power over the Slavs of the
Volkhov — building fortresses at Novgorod, on Lake
Ladoga, and on the "White Lake" far to the north-east-
ward, and "exploiting" the country of Pskov and
Smolensk—other tribes of the same race (the Polians
and Severians), as happily situated for trade, and more
fortunate in soil and climate, were settled in the pleasant
and fertile lands of the Dnieper, and that their metro-
polis, Kiev, placed on a high site on the right bank of
the river, a little way below its junction with the Desna,
was already coming into notice.

Within its earthen ramparts a strange medley of men
of different nations were gathered together about the
time when the Saxon king Alfred reigned in England.
Bulgarians from the Volga, where a powerful kingdom
had been founded; Khazars, whose extensive empire,
stretching along the northern shores of the Black Sea
and as far as the Caspian, was renowned in those days
for its opulence and civilization; Tartars from the
steppes; Jews from the Crimea; and Rumanyos from

58

TWO MEMORABLE GIFTS.

the Danube, the descendants of the legionaries of ancient Dacia, who still spoke the tongue of imperial Rome,— met on common ground at Kiev, drawn thither by the fame of its growing commerce. Fiercely-whiskered Poles and big, unkempt, skin-clad Lithuanians descended the Pripet or the Dnieper, to barter the raw produce of their marshes and plains for luxuries from the Greek colonies on the Euxine or from Byzance. Religion had not yet set a great gulf between these western members of the Sarmatian stock and their Slav hosts at Kiev; nor had it established a bond of union between the latter and the smooth-mannered, supple-tongued strangers who came all the way from the Bosphorus and the Ægean, to display in the markets of Kiev their raiment of purple and fine linen, their wondrous stuffs of silk and gold brocade, their gay horse-trappings and keen-tempered weapons. Polian and Severian, Lett and Finn, Pole and Goth were alike pagan—bowing down to idols of stock and stone, and dabbling their altars with the blood of human sacrifices. But to the gates of Kiev one day came two humble monks of Byzantium—Cyril and Methodius— bearing in their hands two memorable gifts—the Greek Orthodox religion and the Greek alphabet. That was one of the great turning-points in Russian history; an event that has perhaps influenced the national destiny and character, and especially the destiny and character of Kiev, more than any other. Thenceforth the Russia beyond the Dnieper was bound to alien Constantinople by a triple strand of religion, literature, and policy, and drifted ever into more violent antagonism to the cognate race of Poland.

But before the ninth century was out Kiev received

"THE MOTHER OF RUSSIAN CITIES."

59

other guests whose visit was scarcely less fateful. A Varangian band—a freebooting party of adventurers on a raid from Novgorod—descended the Dnieper, and set up here a new Norse principality. Its leader, Askold, whose tomb is still shown at Kiev, was not of the "blood of the princes," however; and not long after came Oleg, brother and successor of Ruric, taking Smolensk on his way. It was when this rude northern barbarian saw the beauty and the fertility of these southern lands, and especially when he looked upon the commanding site and imposing towers of its chief town, that he uttered the words which the Kievians are not likely to forget—"Let Kiev be the mother of Russian cities."

The Kiev of to-day is not, like its old northern rivals Novgorod and Pskov, a melancholy wreck of a great past, though in its time it has suffered even more than they have from war and fire. It is still a stately and handsome city of sixty thousand or seventy thousand souls; and in Russia, where the tendency of the population seems to be rather to spread abroad than to gather towards centres, that is considered an immense number of inhabitants. The cradle of Orthodoxy, it is still in a sense the religious centre of the nation—the "most holy place" in Holy Russia. Beautiful for situation, and commandingly placed for trade, it has not neglected to improve its charms by means of modern art, nor to avail itself of modern science in developing its commercial prosperity.

From whatever side we approach it, the first view of Kiev, like that of many other Russian towns that are less able to bear inspection from within, is strik-

60

KIEV FROM WITHOUT.

ingly picturesque and imposing. Colour, form, and magnitude, the traces of ancient splendour and of modern energy, are all present to impress the traveller that he is gazing on a spot that is not unworthy to be the bourn of the pilgrimages of a vast and widely-spread nation. The broad channel of the inconstant Dnieper flows under the walls, and from its left bank some of the finest views of the city are obtained. The turbid current, the wide beds of shingle which the stream leaves as it alters its course with each flood, the precipitous rocky wall where the Petschersk quarter and Old Kiev abut on the river, are in fine contrast with the gleaming white towers, the dark red of the brick buildings, the vivid green of the trees sprinkled along the banks or grouped in lines and masses in the streets and public places, and the dazzling sheen of the silvern and golden cupolas that everywhere rear their heads.

Let this be seen in bright summer weather, when fifty thousand pilgrims from every part of the empire are gathered in the Holy City, when a brilliant blue shine overhead, and when the conical hills that rise here and there above the mass of buildings and foliage, with their green slopes, and summits crowned with churches and monuments, seem in the dry clear atmosphere preternaturally close at hand, and it will be acknowledged that the glory of Kiev has not wholly departed.

The chief interest of the city, however, lies in its associations with the past. As we walk through the streets of the old town, situated on the high ground to the north, it is almost possible to read its former fortunes in its stones; its historic sites are as so many tide-marks that show the rise and progress of early Russia. On the

THE PASSING OF PERUN.

61

summit of the Kopirev-Konets—one of the gigantic masses of rock that tower above the river—was the Pantheon of the heathen Slavs. The altar of Perun, the great war-god, was reared on the spot now occupied by the Church of St. Basil. Under its shadow the first descendants of Ruric—Oleg, Igor, and Sviatoslav—equipped the expeditions with which they harried the shores of the Euxine and the cities of Greece, conquered the countries of the Danube, and hung their shields at the “Golden Gate” of Constantinople. Here, too, on their return, they threw down the choice of their spoils and trophies before their gods.

A small Christian community had lived here in fear and trembling since the days of the monk Cyril; and the Princess Olga, when she became a convert to the faith, hardly dared avow it to the rough boyards. But one fine day, about the year 1000, the Grand-Prince Vladimir, after a stormy life of war and debauchery, bethought him of selecting a new religion; and the choice fell on that of his grandmother Olga, whose grave is shown in the Church of the Nativity. Perun the Thunderer was thrown down from his seat of honour, flogged, dragged ignominiously at a horse's tail, and trundled down the steep bank into the Dnieper. A little way down, say the chroniclers, Perun drifted ashore, and the people were ready to worship the miracle; but Vladimir's men pushed the image out again into mid-current. At the foot of the high ground at the river-side is pointed out the Fountain of Baptism, where the imperious grand-prince hustled his family and his people into the bosom of Holy Church, and renamed them, in batches of hundreds, after the saints of the Greek calendar. The Em-

62

JAROSLAV AND HIS WORKS.

peror Nicolas erected on the spot an obelisk of stone,
one hundred and fifty feet in height, in memory of the
event.

Many relapses followed this wholesale conversion. It
was long ere the inhabitants quite gave up their faith
in the old gods, if indeed it is yet wholly departed;
but as Perun floated slowly away from Kiev, so paganism
drifted out of the hearts of the Russian people.

Another monument of the piety of St. Vladimir was
the ancient Church of the Tithe, to the endowment
of which he devoted one-tenth of his revenues. Still
more splendid, however, were the memorials left by his
successor, Jaroslav the Great, under whom Kiev reached
the summit of its grandeur; and chief of all is the
Cathedral of St. Sophia, modelled after that famous
church of the same name in the city of Constantine,
which for so many centuries has been used as a Moslem
mosque. Its great tower rises in four stages high above
the other buildings of the city; its golden cupolas blaze
like suns over the massive pile. "Within," says M.
Rambaud, "the mosaics of the time of Jaroslav still
exist. The traveller may admire on the 'indestructible
wall' the colossal image of the Mother of God, the Last
Supper, the images of saints and doctors, the angel of
the Annunciation of the Virgin. The frescoes which
have been preserved or carefully restored are numerous,
and everywhere cover the pillars, the walls, and the
vaults floored with gold." These works were executed
by Greek artists, whom Jaroslav had attracted in large
numbers to his capital. It was he, too, that founded
schools in his dominions, that instituted the first code
of laws, that encouraged literature and music, and first

CIVIL WARS AND INVASIONS.

63

struck coins in Russia. It is not strange that his grave,
covered by its sarcophagus of marble, should be one of
the most sacred spots within the walls of Kiev.

Venerable as the old city and its relics have always
been in Russian eyes, they have not escaped desecration
and mutilation, even from people of the Slav race.
When the grand-princes began to break up their pos-
sessions, and divide them among their younger sons, and
powerful new princedoms started up all around, especi-
ally in the north-east among the forests of the Volga,
Kiev became the prize for the most ambitious and enter-
prising. Its ruler was acknowledged to possess the
seniority among the sons of Ruric, and alone took the
title of "Grand." Civil wars tore the Russian common-
wealth. Confusion and anarchy reigned supreme. The
princes were constantly engaged in triangular and quad-
rangular duels with each other; sometimes uniting to
crush one who threatened to become too strong, and
then again mixed up in a general mêlée, in which towns
were sacked and whole provinces wasted with fire and
sword. Kiev was the centre round which they fought.
Russian historians record that in the one hundred and
seventy years that intervened between Jaroslav's death
and the period when the whole land succumbed to the
Tartars, "sixty-four principalities had an existence more
or less prolonged, two hundred and ninety-three princes
disputed the throne of Kiev and other domains, and
there were eighty-three civil wars."

The fame of opulent Kiev was spread far over the
East, and attracted the cupidity of the restless nomads.
Year after year hordes of new enemies bore down on
it from the steppes. Petchenegs, Polovtsi, Khvallisses,

64

THE DECADENCE OF KIEV.

Uzes, Kipchaks, and Nogais followed each other in
apparently endless succession, appearing without warning
on the eastern horizon like clouds of arrows shot by
unseen archers. Kiev was the butt at which these wild
flights of Turk and Tartar horsemen were directed.
The open grassy plains that led up to it were a continu-
ation of their own deserts, and it lay directly across
their path into Europe. Eighteen campaigns against the
Polovtsi alone, and forty-seven invasions by that people
successfully repelled, are reckoned up. These incessant
attacks, if they formed the Little Russians into a war-
like people, also weakened their power, and caused a
continuous movement of the population into the forests
of the north-east, where, if there were a sterner soil and
climate, comparative tranquillity might be enjoyed.

Kiev began to decline, and Suzdal, between the Volga
and the Kliasma, to rise into power. At length George
Dolguruky of Suzdal entered Kiev in triumph, and it
ceased from that hour to be the capital of Russia.
George's son, Andrew of Suzdal, has cause to be even
more bitterly remembered by Kiev. He led a host of
forest-men against it, and captured it by assault, and for
three days it was given up to sacrilegious plunder. The
numerous monasteries and other ecclesiastical buildings,
even the sacred temples founded by Vladimir and Jaro-
slav, were not spared, and vestments, images, relics,
books, pictures, and bells were carried off to the country
of the Volga.

But a more awful calamity was about to burst over
Kiev and over Russia. The Tartars were at last to reap
the reward of their perseverance, by means of the weak-
ness and division of the Slavs. Unknown to all, in the

GHENGHIZ KHAN AND BATY KHAN.

65

remote obscurity of Central Asia—in Mongolia, and
along the chain of the Altai—Ghenghiz Khan had for
forty years been labouring to weld together the Mongol
tribes, until he had enrolled half a million horsemen
under his banner. When the full time was come, he
burst from his solitudes upon an astonished world, over-
whelming kingdom after kingdom, as much by the
suddenness and mystery of his appearance as by the
irresistible might of his army. While in other directions
he overran China, and carried his arms across Persia
towards the Mediterranean, a branch of his mighty host
swept round the northern end of the Caspian and came
full upon Kiev. The first token of its approach was the
fleeing bands of the Polovtsi, coming now, not as enemies,
but as suppliants. The chivalry of Southern Russia
assembled in Kiev—their northern brethren offering them
no help—and went forth to meet the heathen, who were
encountered on the steppes north of the Sea of Azov.

The Russian army was not merely defeated, but al-
most annihilated. Kiev alone had ten thousand of its
citizens slain on the battle-field. But the Mongols with-
drew as mysteriously as they had come. For thirteen
years they were no more heard of. But at the end of
that time Baty Khan was sent by his uncle, Oktai, son
of the great Ghenghiz, to reduce the nations of Europe,
and complete the "conquest of the world." The whole
of Russia—the north as well as the south—was this
time attacked, and all fell under the Tartar, who
rode over its smoking ruins to Olmutz in Moravia and
Liegnitz in Silesia. For three hundred years Russia
was under the domination of the Tartars—an ap-
panage of the Golden Horde of Kipchaks, whose capi-

(718)

5

66

A MONGOL TRIUMPH.

tal was first at Sarai, near Astrakhan, in the delta of
the Volga.

Kiev did not escape the general desolation, as her walls
and towers to this day attest. Baty appeared before its
gates in the year 1240 with a vast host of invincible
barbarians. "The grinding of the wooden chariots, the
bellowing of the buffaloes, the harsh cries of the camels,
the neighing of the horses, and the howlings of the
Tartars, made it impossible," the old historians say, "to
hear your own voice in the town." The walls were
battered down, and the city delivered over to sack and
massacre. The last defenders of Kiev retreated to the
Church of the Tithe, and fell fighting round the tomb
of Jaroslav. The venerable building where Christianity
was first established in Russia was burned. All that
remains of it are a few fragments of its mosaic pavement,
preserved in the Museum of Kiev. The other churches
—four hundred they are said to have numbered in those
days—were rifled and desecrated; the streets ran with
blood. The very tombs were broken open. The bones
of saints, martyrs, and anchorites were torn by heathen
hands from their crypts in the famous catacombs, and
strewn abroad.

These catacombs are in the Petschersk quarter of the
city—the high ground to the south of Old Kiev, and
separated from it by a deep ravine, where the principal
fortifications and military and government establishments are situated. The catacombs form the most
singular of all the sights of Kiev, and one of the
strangest memorials of ascetic devotion to be found in
any country. It is they that attract specially the thousands of pilgrims that still annually crowd to the Holy

THE CATACOMBS.

67

City from the remotest corner of the empire. The Mon-
astery of the Catacombs is said to have been founded
in the ninth century. The massive gateway is orna-
mented with figures of its first abbots, St. Anthony
and St. Theodosius. In the centre is the Church of
the Assumption of the Virgin, one of the most ancient
and imposing of the edifices of Kiev. The belfry rises
to a height of three hundred feet, and grouped round
it are glittering domes and pinnacles and huge crosses.
Access is got by narrow stairs to the two ranges of
catacombs cut in the soft rock forming the bank of the
river, a labyrinth of subterranean passages, whose heavy
atmosphere, lighted only by the dim lamps placed over
the sarcophagi of the dead cenobites, seems redolent of
the spirit of dark asceticism of the "pious men of old"
who chose this spot as their place of living sepulture.

In this gloomy underground world, where day was not
distinguishable from night, and no glad sound from the
upper air ever penetrated, generations of devout monks
spent their days, extended sometimes to the utmost
span of human life, their thoughts busied only with their
prayers and penances, and in devising new methods for
mortifying the frail flesh and rendering more assured
their claims to future bliss. The tomb is pointed out of
the hermit John, who is said to have spent the last thirty
years of his life immured in the earth up to the arm-
pits, and who ate of food only once a week. Others
went to still more sad and eccentric lengths in the dis-
mal competition of self-torture; and some allowed them-
selves to be bricked up alive in the little cells where
they passed their doleful days. A spot more worthy of
honour is the tomb of the monk Nestor, the Father of

68

PILGRIMS AND BEGGARS.

Russian History, whose annals, written in the twelfth century, contain almost all we know authentically regarding the early fortunes of Kiev and of the Slav race. In the centre of the catacombs are two small chapels, where the anchorites met for prayer who were not self-condemned to perpetual seclusion in their cells. These little niches are placed at intervals along the passages. Within each, in an open coffin, reposes the mummified body of its former occupant, and above is a plate bearing his name.

If homage paid to their dust could make amends for a life of pain and gloom, that certainly is not wanting; for here, especially at the Festival of the Assumption, is to be witnessed the chief outpouring of that superstitious devotion which is so marked a feature of the religious life of Russia. The pilgrims, as they pass each sacred tomb, kiss reverently the shrivelled hand laid out for the purpose, and believe that they purchase thereby a blessing for themselves and their families. Another token of the holy zeal of these votaries is the battered and defaced figure of Satan, painted on the wall of the vestibule of the catacombs, on which the rage of Orthodoxy against the author of evil is expressed in characters that may be read by all. But if the annual concourse of pilgrims adds to the importance and religious prestige of Kiev, it cannot be said to conduce to the comforts of its visitors. The streets, especially the neighbourhood of the historic sites, are thronged with beggars, sturdy or whining. Rags, wretchedness, revolting sores and deformities, are exposed to view wherever the eye is turned. The pilgrims may be pious, but they are not as a rule cleanly; they may

KIEV REDIVIVUS.

69

be fit objects for charity, but they are intolerably impor-
tunate.

A new humiliation was reserved for Kiev when, as
the Tartar domination waned to the east, the Lithuanian
power grew in the west, and it fell under a new alien and
pagan rule. For centuries it bent the neck to Lithuan-
ian and Polish masters; and not until the days of the
Romanoffs, in 1667, did the "Mother of Russian Cities"
again become a city of Russia. That long twilight
period of foreign oppression has left no memorial worthy
of the name. But in more modern times, as has been
said, Kiev has been renewing its youth. It is not alone
a city of historic remains, but a busy mart of trade and
an enlightened seat of learning and art, full of thriving
modern institutions, and containing, at least, one high
triumph of science over nature—the great suspension
bridge, the work of the English engineer Viniol, which
spans the wide Dnieper from bank to bank.

The modern public buildings are for the most part to
be found in "Podole"—the "low town"—whose handsome,
well-laid-out streets, gardens, and parks occupy
the space between the high ground of Petschersk and
Old Kiev and the margin of the river. The University
of Kiev is one of the most important in the empire,
fifteen hundred students being enrolled in its classes.
The library, too, is famous, though a great fire last
century destroyed many of the most precious books and
documents.

A popular tradition has it that one of the walled-up
passages in the catacombs leads by an underground way
to the ancient city of Tchernigov, the capital of the gov-

70

TCHERNIGOV.

ernment of that name, situated on the Desna, eighty miles
to the north-east. A more certain route, however, is
available, though there is still no railway communication
with Tchernigov; and in any case a subterranean passage
is not needed in order to establish a connection between
it and Kiev. The two have often shared each other's
good or ill fortune. Tchernigov, too, is an old town;
for Prince Oleg signed here the earliest treaty with the
Greek emperors. It also had its time of dynastic
trouble, when its rulers, the Olgovitches, fought the
princes all round them; and it was pillaged by Tartars
and captured by Poles. But except some old ecclesiastical
remains, dating as far back as the early part of the
eleventh century, and fragments of the old walls, there
is little in it now to detain the traveller.

Quite another interest attaches to Poltava, the chief
town of the government that lies along the opposite side
of the Dnieper from Kiev. Near it, in 1709, was fought
that memorable battle in which Charles the Twelfth of
Sweden and Czar Peter the Great brought their long duel
to a climax. It was here, after nine years spent in marching
from victory to victory over the face of North-Eastern
Europe, and winning and losing kingdoms, and after
enduring unheard-of hardships with his troops during a
winter of exceptional rigour, that Charles staked his
whole fortunes and reputation, the lives of his soldiers,
and the safety of his native country on the issue of one
desperate and decisive fight. He was far from his own
Sweden, in the heart of the enemy's country; but he had
on his side the prestige of his great name, and the devotion
and hitherto invincible valour of his soldiers. The

"DARK POLTAVA'S DAY."

71

patriotic persistency of her people, with the peculiar
natural features of the country that stood her in such
good stead in the later struggle with Napoleon, availed
Russia on this occasion to rid herself of a terrible foe.
With their king, who had been wounded a day or two
previous, carried in front of them in a litter, the Swedes
swept on the Russian lines in the early morning in an
irresistible charge. The Russian cavalry were scattered;
but under the voice of their Czar they re-formed, and
checked the Swedish advance. The infantry coming up,
pressed the enemy in turn; while Prince Menchikof,
piercing in between the Swedish army and Poltava,
and annihilating their reserves on his way, cut Charles's
force in two. The battle became a rout. Charles him-
self fled for his life, leaving his artillery, baggage, and
military chest, with six thousand wounded, in the hands
of the Russians, and nine thousand of the finest troops
that ever followed a commander dead on the field of
battle. The wreck of the army—Poles, Cossacks, and
Swedes—collected beyond the Dnieper, again to dissolve,
and the hero of Narva disappeared into inglorious exile
with the Grand Seigneur of Turkey. Sweden, the
dangerous rival of Russia for centuries, was never again
a formidable enemy; and Poltava, as Peter wrote, laid
firmly the foundation-stone of the new capital on the
Neva.

Poltava itself, situated on a ridge overlooking the
wide steppe to the eastward, is on the site of one of the
border strengths built in old times by the Cossacks of
the Ukraine against their Tartar foemen. Farther on
we will meet with the Cossacks under conditions where
the peculiarities of their military organization and duties

72

COSSACK FORAYS AND FEASTS.

can be more suitably described. But it was here, on the skirts of the frontier, in innumerable brushes with Po-lovtsis, Nogais, and Turks, that the association of "free-riders"—which soon came to mean something equivalent to "freebooters"—first took shape, and their manner of life marked them out so much from others that they began to be looked upon as a separate race. Many are the tales handed down from mouth to mouth, or sung with guitar accompaniment by itinerant minstrels or village bards, of the deeds of the hetmans Bolgan and Mazeppa, of the sad destiny of Paleiy, or the mournful tragedies of Kossuisky and Nalivaigko. And these ballads are not all of war; love and wine mingle with the theme. At the close of a successful foray, the Zaporogian Cossacks—the free commonwealth, who guarded the country beyond the "porogs" or cataracts of the Dnieper against all comers, and carried on a continual crusade against the Mussulmans—held festivals of Brobdingnagian proportions at the island stronghold of their hetman; for days, even weeks, the carouse was kept up, and often it ended in the brethren of the lance shedding each other's blood.

Still farther eastward we pass though the ruined fragments of the old Tartar Wall, and at some distance beyond, in the basin of the Donetz, a tributary of the Don, come to Kharkov, the capital of the steppe government of that name. Kharkov points to the future rather than to the past. Its political, ecclesiastical, and academical life are all strongly philo-Slav. Specimens of each branch of that widely-spread family of nations attend the university, founded in the beginning of

KHARKOV—THE WESTERN UKRAINE.

73

the present century. Every wild theory of social and
national reconstruction takes rapid root in the im-
pulsive Slav temperament, and blossoms into wonderful
new forms. Kharkov has about it a certain "go-
ahead" air. It has handsome streets and buildings, and
its institutions are designed on ambitious plans. It may
become a great place in the new Russia that is to be,
but, like the ideas of its *doctrinaires*, it is still too
chaotic and unformed, too dusty and sultry in summer
and grimly cold in winter, to invite a long visit at
present.

To the west of Kiev are the great provinces of
Volhynia and Podolia—the Western Ukraine—fertile
and flourishing border countries, where the plains begin
to roll in higher and higher undulations as we approach
the bases of the Carpathians. Geographically, they are
part of Little Russia. The principal race inhabiting
them, and the soil and climate and the manner of life,
are much the same; in fact, it is thought that here the
Slav blood is found freest of foreign admixture. Politi-
cally, however, they form part of Western Russia. In
history, since they ceased to have a separate existence,
their fortunes have generally been united with those of
Lithuania and Poland. Their western parts, along with
their next neighbour Galicia, formed the country of the
“Red Russians;” but Galicia fell to the share of Austria
in the division of the spoils of Poland, and whether it
also will gravitate to the great Russian Empire, or
reunite in a new Sarmatia, the future will tell. Abor-
tive Polish insurrections have taken place in these prov-
inces, and there were risings and massacres here in the

74

VOLHYNIA AND PODOLIA.

troublous years of 1848 and 1863. The Polish land-
owners and educated classes, however, are not in full
sympathy in race or religion with the Ruthenian peas-
antry, and the Russian and Austrian governments have
taken good care not to heal the breach.

As for Volhynia and Podolia, between them they
have an area nearly equal to that of England, and a
population approaching four million. They are rich
and pleasant countries, Podolia especially being famed
for its diversified prospects and its mild climate, which
have led an enthusiastic English traveller to style
it the "Devonshire of Russia." These provinces raise
much grain and cattle; are noted for their horses "of the
Ukraine breed," herds of which were till lately, and
perhaps are still, roaming the steppes in a wild state;
and they do a large legitimate internal and transport
trade—it may be also a little smuggling.

In the streets of Volhynian and Podolian towns like
Jitomir, Vladimir, and Berditchev—the last-named of
which has been dubbed the New Jerusalem, from its
population of forty thousand Hebrews—the Jewish cos-
tume and features are far from unfamiliar. Banished
from Great Russia, these children of Israel are exten-
sively settled in all the southern and western govern-
ments. We will find the Lithuanian provinces farther
north even more abundantly blessed with their presence
than Little Russia. Wherever men do congregate to do
business—and more particularly to barter—there will
a certain large proportion be found with well-developed
noses, long-skirted and probably greasy and loopholed
raiment, and faces that look more cadaverous and woe-
begone from their surrounding of dark ringleted locks

THE JEWS AND THEIR DEALINGS.

75

and peaked beards. Here, as in other parts of the
world, the Hebrew people have had a history full of
vicissitudes, with experiences of times both of toleration
and of expulsion, of favour and of persecution. There
are Jews here of many sects and degrees of sanctity—
Karaites and Talmudists, Pietists and Zoharists—hating
each other with an intense and concentrated fury that
exceeds even their abhorrence for their Christian neigh-
bours; and Jews gathered out of many peoples and
nations—a sprinkling of the descendants of the Khazars,
who are believed to have been converted to Judaism by
immigrants from Palestine and Cordova, Galician Jews,
Moldavian Jews, Polish Jews, and, lowest type of all, the
Hebrew of Northern Hungary, who has been described
as combining, in the highest possible concentration, the
attributes of filth and greed. A strange, interesting, but,
on the whole, not very attractive people are these chil-
dren of the stock of Abraham, as we shall see when we
are compelled to examine them more minutely in this
northern house of bondage; and the stranger from
Western Europe is certain to bear away, as one of his
liveliest recollections of these countries, a picture of their
cringing manners and not over clean gabardines, of the
way in which talon-like hands clutched his skirts in the
market-place, and hungry eyes scanned his face for
prospects of barter or sale.

Many other spots of interest might be pointed out in
the region of which Kiev is the centre—Kamienetz in
Podolia, for instance, in other times the bulwark of
Poland, and often fiercely fought for by the Turks, placed
on a high peninsulated rock, round which winds the

76

THE COURSE OF EMPIRE.

river Smotritza on its way to the Dniester; Kremenetz in Volhynia, the highest point of Russian soil between the Black Sea and the Baltic; Pereiaslav, in Poltava, an old residence and place of strength of the early grand-princes of Kiev; and Novgorod-Sieversk, in Tchernigov, the last of the princely appanages to be devoured by the all-absorbing greed of Moscow or of Poland. For new scenery, manners, and race, however, we must follow the "course of empire," and ascend the Dnieper and Pripet to their sources in Lithuanian Russia.

CHAPTER IV.

POLAND AND LITHUANIA.

HE Dnieper—the Borysthenes of the Greeks—deserves all the fame that it has possessed in ancient and modern times. It is a magnificent stream, with a length of over a thousand miles, a breadth in its middle course varying from a quarter of a mile to a mile and a half, and in the season of the spring floods three and four miles, and a swift and deep current. It is the great geographical feature of South-Western Russia. It has made the fortune of Kiev, and has moulded in a large measure the fate of Lithuania and Poland. Apart from its celebrated “cataracts,” which are within the boundaries of South Russia, its middle course is full of difficulties and perils for the navigator. The restless, turbulent current flings itself waywardly from one side to the other of its channel, and increases with each flood the breadth of the valley it has worn through the centre of the plains. The whitish waters hold in solution large quantities of the chalk, sand, and lime which it has ground away in chafing against its banks, or in rushing over the ledges of rock that cross its bed.

The boatmen and the raftsmen of the Dnieper need

78

THE DNIEPER.

an experienced eye and a steady hand in descend-
ing its rapids to avoid being dashed against the pro-
jecting reefs, caught in the powerful eddies, or stranded
on the shifting shoals. Enormous quantities of timber
are brought down the stream every season for use in
the treeless steppe districts to the south, or for ship-
ment from Kherson and Odessa. Other raw produce
—hides and tallow, wax and honey, hemp and grain—
with the manufactures of Western Russia, such as
leather and linen goods, spirits and turpentine, are
transported by water, which, as in every other part of
the Russian Empire, affords the chief means of con-
veyance. These materials do not come from the upper
regions of the Dnieper alone. Through the Desna it has
canal communication with the country of the Oka and
the Volga, and in other directions it is united with the
Baltic rivers, the Dwina, the Niemen, and the Vistula.
The difficulty in its lower course is the impetuous
current that has to be contended against; but from its
upper waters you can penetrate to the innermost recesses
of the empire, or to any of the seas that border Russia.

A little way above Kiev the nature of the river
changes. There it is no longer one great main stream,
reinforced only by shallow rivulets from the thirsty
steppes, but large tributaries extend like the fingers of
a hand, or like the branches of a tree from the trunk.
The name of the Dnieper is given to the central chan-
nel, which leads us on to Moghilev and Smolensk; but
the Pripet and the Desna, its western and its eastern
branches, have almost equal claim to the title, from
the length of their courses and their volume. Other
changes are manifest. The banks become lower and

THE KINGDOM OF POLAND.

79

less diversified by cliff and shelf. The woods become
more frequent and dense. The gloomy drapery of the
coniferous trees is again a feature in the landscape.
Morasses spread for miles and miles back from the
banks of the streams, and in periods of inundation are
converted into vast shallow lakes. The climate has
grown more rigorous and more moist. The frost bites
deeper and the snow lies thicker in winter, and there
are no such blossoming expanses of orchard lands to be
seen in the summer as in the kindly Ukraine. We
have unquestionably returned to the swamps and the
forests of the north. This time, in changing the climate
and the soil, we come also among a new race, with a
history and traditions separate in many respects from
those of the people whom we have hitherto been visiting.

The part of the Czar's dominions on which we are
now entering is that which generally comes first under
the notice of the traveller in Russia. His approach is
made, as a rule, not through Novgorod, or by way of
the Black Sea and the Dnieper, but by one of the great
lines of railway in connection with the main routes across
the continent of Europe which enter Russia from the
west, and are prolonged to St. Petersburg or Moscow.
Before reaching the Russian people, he must pass
through a country which, while it is within the political
boundaries of the empire, is intensely anti-Russian in its
sympathies,—through the Kingdom of Poland. In the
eyes of patriotic Poles, however, Poland begins before
the frontier of the "Kingdom" is touched, and it extends
far beyond the limits that have been laid down as mark-
ing the border of the Russian provinces.

The Kingdom of Poland, since the last insurrection, has

80

POLAND OF THE POLES.

itself become little more than a "geographical expression;" it is under direct control of the Government at St. Petersburg, and retains few of the privileges that were accorded to it when it was formed into a separate sovereignty and handed over by the Great Powers to the Czar by the Treaty of Vienna. Poland, in the official sense, consists of ten small provinces, with an area about equal to that of England, and a population of rather more than six millions. But the Poland that the Poles recognize is the extensive country which existed previous to the partitions—a region much more extensive than France, and now estimated to contain nearly thirty million people. Before that series of acts of international bri-gandage, by which it was broken up and appropriated piecemeal by its neighbours, Poland included, in addition to the "Kingdom," the province of Posen and part of West Prussia, now in possession of the Emperor of Germany; Cracow and Galicia, which have fallen to the lot of Austria; and a broad and long stretch of territory, embracing the ancient Lithuanian provinces Volhynia, Podolia, and part of Kiev, which have long ago come to be regarded by foreigners as an integral part of the dominions of the Czar. Danzig in 1772, the date of the first partition, was a sea-port of Poland on the Baltic; Kamienetz was its border stronghold towards Turkey; and its frontier extended to the north and east almost to the walls of Riga, Smolensk, and Kiev.

At a still earlier period, the Polish possessions were yet more extensive. At different times they embraced Bessarabia, Moldavia, Moravia, Silesia, and Livonia. The Ukraine, as has been mentioned, was for centuries part of Poland, whose rule was established over the

THE RIVALRY OF POLAND AND MUSCOVY.

81

whole of the region where the early Norman-Russ
princes had borne sway, and approached within one hun-
dred miles of Moscow itself. In the great square of
Warsaw, where the citizens were "massacred" by the
Russian garrison during the excited times of the last
insurrection, there is a monument erected to the memory
of King Sigismund III. by his son and successor Ladis-
las, which records how Moscow was conquered in 1611
by the said Sigismund; a fact which reminds us, as Mr.
Sutherland Edwards remarks in his "Polish Captivity,"
that the metropolitan Philarete, father of the first of
the Romanoff line of Czars, was carried off a prisoner
to Poland, and confined there for nine years, for refusing
to crown this same Ladislas as sovereign of Muscovy.
The monument also tells that the conquering Sigismund
had "recaptured" Smolensk from the Russians; but it
had not been standing ten years when the "key of
Moscow" had been "recaptured" again by the Russians,
and this time kept.

Before the time of Sigismund and Ladislas, who
were Swedish princes, the power of Poland had be-
gun to disintegrate. The old dynasty of Jagellon, in
which the crown was hereditary, had ended, and the
turbulent and greedy landowning class were rapidly ab-
sorbing to themselves all real authority in the state.
The capital had been removed from Cracow, the
"cradle and last resting-place of Polish independ-
ence," to Warsaw, where the court and the great nobles
spent their time in dissipation and intrigue, and
occasionally in bloody quarrels. The wars against Russia
and her other neighbours brought Poland no good, in
spite of the unfailing dash and bravery of her mounted

(718)

6

82

ANARCHY AND CORRUPTION.

soldiery and the skill of her military commanders. Yet, less than one hundred years before the first partition of Poland, by the Empresses Catherine and Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great of Prussia, a Polish army, under John Sobieski, saved Europe when the Turks laid siege to Vienna.

Sobieski, however, great warrior and statesman though he was, made a terrible breach in the defences of his country when he bartered Kiev to the Russians. On his death, anarchy crept more rapidly into the constitution of Poland. The "noble" class, to which belonged all holding land, grasped after new powers and privileges on the elevation of every new monarch, and the ruler became a mere puppet in the hands of a factious oligarchy. The great bulk of the people, meanwhile, had no share in Polish rights or liberties, but were in a miserably poor, degraded, and enslaved condition. The choice of a King of Poland became the great public scandal and danger of Europe. The supporters of rival candidates assembled in Warsaw resembled more in attitude and number hostile armies, than electors met to perform a patriotic duty. Each powerful magnate of the land—the heads of the houses of Czartoryski, Zamoyski, Radziwiłł, Potocki, Sapeha, Wielopolski, and the rest—could bring thousands of votes and of spears in support of the side he favoured. At the same time, the absurd law of the *Liberum Veto*, by which each member of the Diet had the right to annul the whole proceedings by his individual vote, opened a wide door for corruption and cabal, and made it almost impossible to come to a decision. Poland, in fact, was "vetoed" to death. Her own children busied

THE DISMEMBERMENT OF POLAND.

83

themselves in hastening her disintegration. Every
neighbour had a finger or a hand in the series of broils
and plots which the Poles called their national affairs.
Repeatedly the squabbles of the Diet ended in a civil
war, which spread into a general European war.

The last King of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Ponia-
towski, was a mere nominee of Russia. Russian troops
garrisoned the country, and Russian hands guided the
administration. It must be confessed that little sorrow
was expressed, even in freedom-loving England, when the
three Partitioning Powers proceeded to "concentrate"
Poland, by each cutting away a large slice of territory,
Russia, of course, appropriating the lion's share. The
Poles were at length roused to a sense of the absolute
necessity of a united national feeling, if their country was
to be saved from utter ruin. The Diet, in 1791, decreed
a new and liberal constitution, by which, among other
things, the emancipation of the serfs was provided for.
This gave the signal for the second partition, a private
burglarious arrangement between Russia and Prussia;
and then followed the heroic struggle led by Kosciusko
to cast out the invaders, ending in the entry of Suvaroff
into Warsaw, over the blood-stained ashes of Prague,
and the complete dismemberment of 1795.

Hope rose high again in Polish bosoms when Buona-
parte began to humble their enemies, the Partitioning
Powers. No soldiers fought more bravely, or clung
more devotedly to the cause of the great Emperor, than
his Polish legions. They shared in his ruin; and since
the "grand-duchy of Warsaw" was handed over to the
personal rule of the Czars, under the name of the King-
dom of Poland, as a separate monarchy, limited by con-

84

BURIED, BUT NOT DEAD.

stitutional rights, only evil fortune has befallen the cause of the Poles. The desperate rising of 1830-31 was punished by the slaughter that attended Paskie-witch's capture of Warsaw; by executions, confiscations, wholesale conscription, and the transportation of thousands of families to Siberia; by the cancelling of constitutional liberties and privileges, and the proscribing of peculiar Polish costumes and customs, and by the suppression of the Warsaw University and the removal of its library to St. Petersburg. The savage guerilla struggle of 1848 resulted in the taking away of almost the last vestiges of Poland's rights.

Rash should he be, however, who would assume that we have heard the last of the Polish question. The nation lies bound and crushed under the weight of its powerful enemies, but the national spirit is not dead. On the contrary, the Polish people under adversity have developed qualities that were not visible in their days of prosperity. A common hate and a common grief have had power, for a time at least, to weld all classes and factions into patriots, though it has generally happened that with the first smile of good fortune on the national cause old dissensions have broken out. Never were the bravery of Polish soldiers and the devotion of Polish women more splendidly shown than in those ruinous struggles to regain independence. The period of Poland's degradation has likewise been her most brilliant literary era. Well may the conspirators who have compassed her fall wonder whether it is a ghost or a living nation that rises persistently from the grave in which they thought their victim securely laid. It would be hard to pro-

THE LAST OF SCHAMYL.

387

the Andi spur of Caucasus, was made the centre of
insurrection.

The fortress of Dargo became his headquarters, and
from thence he reorganized the tribes on a democratic basis,
imposed military service on all adult males, and stimu-
lated the enthusiasm of his followers and kept together
the jealous clans by miraculous messages from heaven,
and the odour of extreme sanctity with which he sur-
rounded himself. Through all this he had to fight des-
perately against the Russians, and often against the
Tcherkess and other Caucasian tribes. In 1845 Dargo
was captured; but Schamyl simply removed to the
neighbouring fortress of Veden. While the Crimean
War was raging, the Lesghian chief was left in peace;
but on its conclusion, and the appointment of Prince
Bariatinsky as Governor of the Caucasus, the Russians
resumed, with greater determination than ever, the task
of subjugating the independent tribes.

Narrower and narrower became the territory within
which the brave Schamyl was able to hold his enemies
at bay. Some of the tribes fell away from him, but
others of his followers clung devotedly to their leader,
and fought with splendid courage. He made his last
desperate stand at Gounib, where he surrendered to Bari-
atinsky in August 1859, and the Caucasus at last was in
the undisputed power of the Czar. Schamyl outlived
for many years the conquest of his mountains and the
humiliation of his religion. He was sent to St. Peters-
burg, where the late Emperor treated him with his
usual kindness, and with the respect which his heroic
deeds deserved, and appointed him and his family a
residence at Kaluga. He died only recently at Mecca.

388

PASSES OF THE CAUCASUS.

The Tchetchens, whom we have just seen in confederation with the Lesghians, are also zealous bandits and Sunni Mohammedans, but of different race from their Daghestani neighbours, belonging to a group to which infatuated ethnologists have given the impossible name of Mzhdzhedzhi—a word which most readers will probably regard as a sufficient specimen of their language, and perceive at the same time a measure of poetic justice in their subjugation by the Russian Prince Tzytzyanoff.

Some of the tribes occupying the Terek valleys—such as the Ingush—are almost pure heathens; while others, like the Kabardians and the Ossets, possess a faith in which paganism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity are jumbled together. The Tartar tribes—Kumuks, Turkmen, and the like, simple wandering people, half-highwaymen, half-shepherds, and carriers—and, to the south of the mountains, Armenians, Persians, Kurds, and Jews, with what Professor Bryce calls a "top-dressing" of Russians (military people and colonies of schismatics generally), and pushing traders and merchants from other European countries, complete the strange hotch-potch of nations inhabiting the Caucasus and Transcaucasia.

These are best studied, perhaps, in the streets of Tiflis; but to reach Tiflis we must thread our way for one hundred and twenty miles through the devious pass of Dariel, the Porta Caucasia of the ancients. A fine military road has been constructed, at a cost of four million sterling, through this defile, which is the only regular passage of the Caucasus throughout the whole length of the chain, the Mannisson Pass to the westward not being available for wheeled vehicles.

THE GORGE OF THE TEREK.

389

The entrance to the pass is at the railway terminus Vladikavkas—the “key of the Caucasus,” built by Potemkin to control this whole region; and after a glimpse of the mountains, with their line of far-receding snowy peaks, the traveller plunges into the black jaws of the ravine of the Terek, and pursues his way, mile after mile, at the foot or along the flanks of tremendous precipices. Professor Bryce, in his brilliant account of his travels in this region, says: “Clothed, wherever there is room for a root to hold, with the richest deciduous woods, the limestone mountains rise in wonderful precipices five or six thousand feet above the valley, ledge over ledge, and crag over crag; while at the bottom they press the river so close that at some points the road has been cut out in the overhanging cliff face, and the streamlets from above break in spray over it.”

This is only the beginning of the defile; grander and more savage scenes lie beyond. At Lars and other points Russian forts, occupying the sites of Georgian or Persian castles, command the pass; and now and then a miserable Osset hut or two are seen, but there is no other sign of life. “Sixteen miles from Vladikavkas,” says Mr. Bryce, “the valley seems suddenly to come to an end, and the track to vanish among the tremendous crags out of which the river descends in a succession of cataclysms. The road crosses to its eastern bank, and mounts rapidly along a shelf cut out of the mountain. At the bottom of the gorge there is a furious torrent; on each side, walls of granite, rising vertically, one would think, four thousand feet above it. Behind are still loftier pinacles, broken, jagged, and terrible, their topmost summits flecked with snow, not a bush, flower, or blade of

390

MTZKHET.

green to relieve their bare sternness.” A turn of the defile brings us in view of the black precipice and glorious snowy crest of Kazbek, rising to a height of about sixteen thousand feet above sea-level, and forming, with another stupendous mountain over against it, the “pil-lars” of the “Caucasian gates.”

It seems probable enough that in early times an iron gateway was built here to keep out the northern barbarian from the Persian, Macedonian, or Roman Empire. It marked the farthest flight of the Roman eagles in this direction, for Pompey's conquests in Georgia stopped short at the wall of the Caucasus. The only dangers now to be feared are from landslips or from avalanches of snow falling on the track in the winter time, such as in 1855 overwhelmed part of the troop of General Bar-tolomei, who, in charge of a convoy of prisoners, was traversing the “Valley of the Devil”—an appropriately named gorge reached when, leaving the Dariel proper behind, and passing the watershed at a height of eight thousand feet, the road begins to descend the Aragwa River, under the shadow of the Cross Mountain, towards the lowlands of Georgia. These gorges of the Aragwa have been described as resembling Killiecrankie, “only on a far vaster scale.”

By-and-by, where the Aragwa joins the Kur, we come upon another atrocious example of Caucasian nomenclature—the village of Mtzkhet, which, if we are to accept the tradition that it was founded by the great-grandson of Japheth, gives one an alarming idea of the primal lan-guage spoken before the Tower of Babel was built. A miserable place enough now, it was famous in its day as the capital of Georgia, and a number of the Georgian

GEORGIAN HISTORY.

391

kings and queens are buried in its fortified church. Here much of the early troubled history of Georgia "transacted itself." Three centuries before Christ, Pharnavaz, governor of the town, founded the Georgian kingdom, compiled the Georgian alphabet—with the aid, doubtless, of hints from his Armenian neighbours—and laid the beginning of the Georgian literature; and about the year 325 A.D. Christianity was introduced hither by the female saint Nina.

Even the circumstance that Japheth's great-grandson had chosen its site could not preserve the supremacy of this town with the unpronounceable name, and fourteen centuries ago the capital was removed to Tiflis. Georgia continued to stagger forward on its appointed career, occasionally raised to a high pitch of fame, but generally in very bad case. Thus Bagrat III. was a great conqueror and encourager of learning in the tenth century; David II., a century later, restored the glory of the kingdom, which had paled through the devastations of the Seljukian Turks; and the splendid era of Queen Tamara (1184-1212) is the Golden Age of Georgia, alike in literature and in feats of arms. The ancient churches whose remains are scattered over Transcaucasia are mostly attributed by legend to the pious zeal of this royal lady, as the ruined castles, resembling Scottish Border keeps, which are found in all directions crowning the rocks of this mountainous land, are supposed to have been built by the national hero, "Black Oghlu."

But what with the ravages of Mongols, Turks, and Persians, and internal divisions, Georgia gradually sank to a deplorable state; Georgian literature and Christianity, especially, were placed, as it were, "between the devil and the deep end."

392

WARS AND ANNEXATIONS.

and the deep sea,” by having the wild mountain banditti
on one side, and invading Moslem hosts on the other.

The Empress Catherine extended the protection of
Russia over the rickety state, which had been divided
and subdivided until it had nearly thirty princes exer-
cising independent rule. The venerable King Heraclius
fled before a new Persian invasion, led by Aga Mo-
hammed, the first of the reigning dynasty of the Shahs;
and the country falling into complete anarchy, Russia
stepped across the Caucasus, made pensioners of the pre-
tenders to the throne of the Bagratides (who, being able
to trace their descent back to King Solomon, and, of
course, to Adam, were the oldest royal family in the
world), and found herself, in the first year of the present
century, face to face in Asia with Persia and Turkey.

Since then, repeated wars with Sultan and Shah have
had one constant result—the extension southward of the
Czar's dominions. By 1810, Imeritia, Mingrelia, and
Gouria had been annexed; and the campaigns of Ermolof
and Paskievitch in 1826-28 ended in the Treaty of
Turkmanchai, by which the Persian provinces of Erivan
and Nakhchevan were ceded to the Emperor Nicolas,
who thus became master of Etchmiadzin, the ecclesias-
tical capital of Armenia, and carried forward his frontier
to the Araxes and Mount Ararat. Lastly, by the late
war another slice of Armenia, with the strong town of
Kars, twice captured and twice surrendered by Russia,
and the seaport of Batoum, were added to the ever-
growing empire of the Czars.

Tiflis has had its share in the misfortunes of Georgia,
as well as the older capital, and has been at least
eight times destroyed by invaders. Instead of being

THE CAPITAL OF TRANSCAUCASIA.

393

a miserable village, however, it is a city of about ninety thousand souls; probably it is more rich and more populous to-day than at any time since King Vakh-tang founded it, in the fifth century. It lies in a hollow among bare and dusty hills; and the rapid, muddy current of the Kur, now crossed by three handsome bridges, flows under its walls, separating it from a suburb on the south bank which is chiefly inhabited by an industrious German colony of market-gardeners and artisans, the descendants of emigrants who fled hither from Swabia many years ago, rather than accept a new hymn-book.

Tiflis proper—the suggestion of orthographical purists to spell the name Tbylysys (“the hot”) will be rejected with contumely—contains at least two distinct “towns.” There is the Russian quarter, with broad, regular, and dusty streets, and many handsome houses, and with public gardens and theatres and other appurtenances of the civilization of the West. On a high site is the citadel, with the prison, the ancient Georgian cathedral, and near by the barracks of the Russian garrison. Facing the principal street is the palace of the Lieutenant of the Caucasus—perhaps the most onerous military command in the empire. Here, of course, are wont to assemble the rank and beauty of Transcaucasia. Georgia is notably well supplied both with beauty and with rank. The country literally swarms with “nobles,” some of them ragged and needy enough, and ready—and no shame to them—to do the humblest labour for a small fee; others handsome and dashing-looking fellows, and highly ornamental figures in the public promenades or the

394

GEORGIAN BEAUTIES.

dancing assemblies, where the national dance—the *lesghynski*—is still indulged in with ardour. It is whispered, however, that the exterior of the Georgian is the best of him; that there are very few solid qualities—often little else than a consuming thirst for his native wines—to be found under his gold brocaded frock-coat and jewelled belt; and the national history seems to bear out the reproach. Something almost as ungallant has been said of the Georgian dames, whose charms have been so loudly extolled. “A Turk may think them perfection,” says Mr. Bryce; “but it may be doubted whether any one who has seen the ladies of Cork and Baltimore would take pleasure in their society.” Many of them are admirable pieces of Nature’s handiwork, so far as mere colour and form are concerned; but features, however regular, that are entirely wanting in expression, soon become insipid.

The native town is a complete contrast to the European quarter. The narrow, dirty, and crooked streets of one-story houses are blocked by strings of camels and donkeys, loaded with fruit, and bullock-carts full of huge skins of Khaketian wine. In the crowds that throng these lanes are seen the most puzzling varieties of feature and dress, and the ear is confounded with a jargon of unknown tongues. Each leading trade has its allotted street and its covered bazaar. There are thoroughfares set apart for the cooking-shops and the wine-seller, for the dealers in leather, in jewellery, in carpets, and in furs; for the blacksmiths, and silver-smiths, and armourers, and musical instrument makers; for the tea-dealers, and sandal-makers, and fabricators of turbans, of *papacks*, of Bokharan lambskin, of the

THE BAZAARS OF TIFLIS.

395

tall sugar-loaf hats affected by the Persians, and of all the other varieties of head-dress worn near the Caucasus. "The ground-floor of the house," again to quote Professor Bryce, "is open to the street, from which it is generally raised a step or two: here the dealer squats on a piece of matting, surrounded by his assistants, with his wares hung or stowed round the walls behind, and in the room which is visible at the back. If he practises a handicraft, he works at it here in the sight of all men." Many beautiful native fabrics are exposed in the Tiflis bazaars—most noteworthy, perhaps, being the rugs and carpets of quaint and wonderful patterns from Persia, Kurdistan, and Shirvan; but what chiefly makes them worthy of a visit are their frequenters, the representatives of a score of different races and religions—Russian and German, Armenian and Persian and Georgian, Kurd, Tartar, Circassian, and Kabardan—that mingle here, as throughout this party-coloured region, with scarcely a sign of blending.

On a high ridge overlooking Tiflis are the picturesque ruins of the old Persian fortress, behind which are the wooded lower spurs of the Caucasus, while in clear weather the snows of Kazbek are temptingly visible to the dwellers in the hot valley of the Kur. In summer the denizens of the fashionable world of Tiflis escape from the stifling atmosphere of the city, and take refuge at Kajori and other charming health-resorts in the neighbouring mountains. There are, apart from the old capital and its tombs, numerous spots within reach of the town where the members of the Archæological Congress that met last autumn at Tiflis were able to glean a rich harvest of antiquarian lore. Thus

396 TRANSCAUCASIAN PORTS AND FORTRESSES.

Gori and its old castle, perched like an eagle's eyrie on a crag, and the wonderful rock-hewn chambers and columned halls of Uphlos Tzikhé, the “Petra of the Caucasus,” might invite a visit. Or excursions might be made eastward over the bare, brown, solemn steppes, by way of Elizavetpol to the Caspian port of Lenkoran, where, in the latitude of Lisbon, the winter temperature, chilled by the parching icy winds from Siberia, is no higher than that of Reykjavik in Iceland, and the sea is often blocked with ice. Much more attractive will be found the leafy and richly-watered country westward of Tiflis, beyond the pass of Souram, where the only railway in Transcaucasia ascends the ridge that separates the basins of the Kur and the Rion by one of the steepest gradients in the world. The latter river, from its head-streams in the district of the Suans, under the double peak of Elburz, to its mouth at Poti, runs un-interruptedly through scenes of natural beauty and historic note; and farther south, in Gouria and in the mountains of Lazistan, are innumerable objects of in-terest. Again, we might follow the fine military roads that conduct to what were formerly the frontier for-tresses of Akhalzik and Alexandropol, and that con-verge on a “place of arms” famous in military annals—Kars—which, after much bloody fighting, has at length been wrested from the Turk. But, as Mr. Bryce's trav-elling companions urged, when, on his way to Tiflis, he proposed to halt and examine the antiquities of Mtzkhet, “Let us get to our journey's end; the world is a big world, and you cannot see everything in it.”

One short trip, however, we must make before leaving this part of the Czar's domains. It leads us

ERIVAN AND ETCHMIADZIN.

397

from Tiflis through the orchards and fields of German,
Molikani, and Mordvin colonists; across a steppe where
groups of low, round earthen hovels suggest the dwelling-
places of moles rather than of mankind—even Tartar
mankind; then up a river valley between ridges of stern,
red-hued mountains, where in actual travel the tourist
still runs an unpleasant risk of being stopped by brigands,
till we reach the Goktcha lake, a lonely basin of fresh
water, fifty miles in length, lying at a height of nearly
six thousand feet above sea-level, and surrounded by
lofty and barren hills patched with snow. On the only
island of the lake is an old and famed Armenian monas-
tery; and dominating the scene is the enormous bulk
and triple peaks of Ala-gos, thirteen thousand four hun-
dred and thirty-six feet above the sea. But sites more
ancient than Sevan and summits surpassing Ala-gos lie
ahead; for following down the stream that flows from
Goktcha to the Aras, we come in sight of the minarets
and gardens of Erivan, and over against us the majestic
forms of Great and Little Ararat. Here, indeed, we
are in a locality with associations which carry us back
to the beginnings of history, and with magnificent natural
attractions that show no signs of decay. Farther down
the fertile valley of the Aras is Nakhchevan, which
boasts itself the oldest city in the world; for there
Noah, as the name of the town signifies, made his “first
descent” on dry land. Erivan, a delightfully char-
acteristic Eastern town, as yet little spoiled by Russian
varnish, and possessing, in its mosques and ancient
sirdar’s palace, beautiful specimens of Persian art in
mosaics of glazed and coloured tiles, claims to have
been the residence of Noah before the Deluge. Etch-

398

ARARAT.

miadzin, near at hand, is the cradle of the Gregorian
Church, and its renowned monastery, the seat of the
Patriarch, is a spot of surpassing interest to the keen-
witted and enterprising Armenian race, who, though
still divided between Turkish and Russian masters,
cherish warmly the hope of restoring their old national
independence.

But our last look must be reserved for the twin
mountains that, rising from a common base, overlook
this region of marvel, and are themselves the greatest
marvel of all; for the elegant cone of Little Ararat,
whose clear-cut pyramid rises ten thousand feet above
the plain, and nearly thirteen thousand feet above the
sea; and the bulkier and loftier brother-peak of Great
Ararat, whose black precipices, crowned with perpetual
snows, rise to a height of over seventeen thousand feet.
They mark the utmost confine of the Czar's possessions
in this direction, and the point of junction of Russian,
Turkish, and Persian territory—a magnificent corner-
stone for three empires!

CHAPTER XVIII.

RUSSIA IN ASIA.

N loosely following, in this survey of the dominions of the Czar, the process by which, from small beginnings, the Russian Empire has steadily grown all around its vast circumference like an enormous snowball, we have already been carried at different points across the " stony girdle " of mountains that divide Europe from Asia. It is now necessary to step boldly across the barrier of the Urals, look around, and examine what may be the extent, the aspect, and the value, present and prospective, of those possessions of Russia in Northern and Central Asia regarding which there prevail such strange, confused, and alarming impressions.

There are few names of such magic virtue as Siberia. The mere mention of it seems to chill the air on the warmest summer day. It has compressed within it all the associations of immensity of space and intensity of cold—the utmost poverty of nature and the deepest misery of man. The picture that it calls up in most minds is a waste, white plain, brooded over by fogs, or with Arctic gales ruffling its snows; bounded by black masses of pine forests, with snow lying heavy on their

400

A WINTER-RIDDEN LAND.

frigid branches; here and there great mile-broad rivers rolling slowly from under the shadow of the woods northwards into regions ever drearier and more empty, where at length the dwarf willow and birch cease to grow, and the soil is frozen all the year round to a depth of two hundred or three hundred feet below the surface, until the solitary waters find a fit resting-place among the icebergs of the Polar Sea.

Between post-station and post-station, even on what may be called the frequented routes of travel, hundreds of versts, it is thought, may be passed over without a human habitation being seen; at the most, the rough log-huts of trappers and fishermen on the edge of the forest or the stream, the "yurtas" or tents of birch-bark or reindeer-skin belonging to some wandering tribe of savages, cowering in some hollow, or the mournful train of convicts and political refugees, with their Cossack guard, making their long last journey to the mines or fortresses of Eastern Siberia, are the only signs of the presence of man.

These sights are actually to be seen in Siberia, they are even characteristic and peculiar to it, and they have naturally influenced most powerfully the imaginations of those who have written and read about the country. Siberia truly is a terribly "winter-ridden" land. The frost comes early, bites fiercely, and lingers long. There is scarcely a locality where the thermometer does not fall many degrees below zero in winter, and there are some where snow covers the ground at midsummer. It is true also that the general features of the scenery—its boundless plains and forests and its mighty streams—though impressive in their magnitude, are sad and

THE SIBERIAN PLAINS.

401

sombre in colouring, and are repeated with wearisome
monotony; also, that the country is most sparsely popu-
lated, even compared with Russia proper, seeing that
there is barely a human inhabitant for each square mile
of territory.

But, let it be remembered, Siberia is more a continent
than a single country, in point of the extent of the
earth's surface that it covers; that, excluding from view
the Central Asian possessions of Russia, it far exceeds
in area Australia, the United States, or Europe; and
that, including Turkestan and the Steppes, Asiatic
Russia contains six million square miles of territory
—larger than the whole of South America. There is
plenty of room within its frontiers for its desert spaces,
and also for fertile and fruitful countries admirably
suited for colonization. Cutting away the rough selvage
of tundra lands, stony mountains, and sandy steppe
that form its borders north, east, south, and west, there
remain vast plains and river valleys, covered with fine,
deep, rich loam, stretching across nearly the whole breadth
of the Asian continent, and capable of supporting a dense
and thriving agricultural population. One of the latest
and most keen-eyed of the travellers who have visited
Siberia—Professor Nordenskiöld—says that a belt of
this rich agricultural land, six hundred miles in breadth,
extends from the Ural chain to the neighbourhood of the
Sea of Okotsk.

These magnificent, stone-free plains are still unde-
veloped. On the upper waters of the Obi and Irtish
and their tributaries, much of the land has been taken
up, and heavy crops of grain are raised. In the still
richer Yenisei valley there is a thin sprinkling of

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26

402

RUSSIAN COLONIZATION.

settlers, who have recently found a new outlet for their
produce by that great river; but to the eastward from
Krasnojarsk stretch nearly uninhabited plains, covered
with the deep tcherno-sem, the famous "black earth"
of Middle Russia—"equal," says Nordenskiöld, "with-
out doubt, in fertility, to the best parts of Scania, and
in extent surpassing the whole Scandinavian peninsula."

Another authority, M. de Lesseps, who has cast a
prospector's eye over Siberia, has declared that it is
the richest country in the whole world, in respect alike
of the produce of the animal, vegetable, and mineral
kingdoms. As yet, however, it is only a Land of
Promise—the "great North-East" of Russia, capable
of exercising the surplus energies and absorbing the
surplus population of the Slav race, as the United States
and the Canadian Dominion have done for the Anglo-
Saxon peoples.

The comparative slowness and want of success of
Siberian colonization are to be attributed partly to the
ignorance, and perhaps also to the inferior intelligence
and enterprise, of the Russian peasant; but they are due
also to social and political causes, that, though still
potent, must in time have an end, and leave the country
to the free development of its splendid resources.

Chief among the obstacles referred to is the notorious
fact that for a couple of centuries Siberia has been the
penal settlement of Russia. It has been populated much
as Australia was in the earlier days—first by needy
and unscrupulous adventurers, seeking freedom from the
control of the law; then by eager fur-hunters and gold-
seekers, desperately searching for short cuts to wealth,
which was generally spent as rapidly as it was won;

A MIXED POPULATION.

403

and by refractory serfs, deported thither by the govern-
ment, or by the nobles, who had, under the old law, the
power of transporting as well as of whipping their unlucky
vassals.

With these began to flow a constantly growing
stream of convicts—criminals guilty of the blackest
crimes, and political prisoners, often men and women of
the highest rank and culture, and suspected merely of
disaffection towards a despotic government. Prisoners
of war, and rebels found in arms against the Czar, were
added to the throng—from the Swedish soldiers taken
in the wars with Charles the Twelfth, who established
the first Siberian school at Tobolsk, and built several of
the churches at Irkutsk, down to the patriots captured
during the last Polish insurrection. Schismatics and
religious visionaries of the most extreme type, and
Nihilists and Socialists of equally violent political views,
have been stowed away in this vast receptacle for the
vagabondage, the crime, and the bold and lofty aspira-
tions of Russia. All degrees of guilt have been con-
founded together, with the innocent and the unfortunate.
It is not strange that there should be a confusion of the
moral perceptions in the popular mind, and that the
malefactor and the patriot should alike be objects of
pity and sympathy. It is also natural that in the eyes
of the expatriated the place of their enforced exile
should have no charms, that they would exaggerate its
discomforts and hardships and underrate its amenities;
and that to their friends and relatives in Europe, from
whom they were hopelessly parted, Siberia should be
the most stern and forbidding of wildernesses, and the
“mines” the scenes of more than inquisitorial torture.

404

PENAL SETTLEMENTS.

The Russian Government, in short, have done all in their power to give to what is perhaps their most precious possession the worst possible name.

Whatever may have been the case in former times, however, there is now good reason to believe that the condition of the "exile in Siberia" is not so forlorn and pitiable as we are apt to suppose. He is no longer dead to the outer world from which he is separated by a thousand leagues of forest and marsh; on the contrary, if he chooses he may be an active and useful member of the community. The brutal whippings and tortures that formed part of the punishment in the days of Catherine and Paul have gradually been abolished in later reigns, though a murderous weapon—the *pléte*—is used in exceptional cases at the penal colony on Saghalien and other prisons of Eastern Siberia, where the most desperate class of prisoners are confined.

The Rev. Mr. Lansdell, who visited all the more important Siberian penal settlements, has shown that the regimen and discipline are far from severe; that the prisons are clean, airy, and well managed, and the general method of treatment at least as humane as in Western countries. Only the worst class of criminals are confined within walls. Even murderer, who, owing to the abolition of capital punishment, form a large proportion of the prisoners, have a license given to them which seems hardly consistent with public tranquillity. Approaching after nightfall the penal settlement of Kara, near Nertchinsk, Mr. Lansdell passed through droves of labouring men returning from work, and was disagreeably impressed on being told by the commandant that these were convicts who were permitted to live in

SIBERIAN SOCIETY.

405

their own houses, and that there were eight hundred
murderers about the place.

In the milder class of offences the convicts, after
a short probation, are allowed a pretty full exercise of
their liberty—to acquire property, and to settle down if
they choose as prosperous traders or husbandmen; a
watch, which is not always effective, being kept over
their movements to prevent their slipping back into
Europe.

The regulations are still more lenient, as a rule, in
the case of political prisoners. Siberian society is not
censorious; it does not inquire too curiously into the
antecedents of the new members that come to join it,
nor draw fine distinctions between mere political faults
and moral wrong-doing. The free settlers, of course,
largely predominate; but the convict element, either
in the shape of those actually transported or of their
descendants, permeates the population too generally for
strict ideas of caste to prevail. Consequently the soci-
ety of a Siberian town of any consequence is apt to be
strangely mixed. The most refined taste and culture
and the grossest depravity are found side by side;
scions of the oldest families in Russia are thrown into
association with *parvenus* of yesterday; mysterious con-
spirators and exalted enthusiasts are mingled with vulgar
swindlers and scamps.

All this gives a romantic and peculiar tone to town
life in cities like Omsk, Krasnojarsk, or Irkutsk; and
the opportunity of beginning afresh in a new field has
turned many a worthless or dangerous member of
Russian society into a useful citizen of Siberia.' But
the country has need of a less doubtful class of settlers

406

RUSSIA'S COLONIAL EMPIRE.

than those which the government have bestowed on it;
and the whole penal system, like many things else in
Siberia, stands thoroughly in need of reform, if not of
abolition. Untold misery and flagrant injustice are still
inflicted, even under the milder regulations of modern
times, especially on the class of exiles who are banished
to the desolate wildernesses of Eastern Siberia. And it
will be a great day for Russia when she begins in
earnest to turn to account that magnificent colonial
empire which has too long been used as the prison-
house of her refractory children.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF SIBERIA.

By whose hands, by what process, and at what time did this vast and splendid possession fall into the hands of the Czars? The story has never been told in accurate detail—perhaps never will. The names of the great discoverers, conquerors, and colonizers of the continents of America, Africa, and Australia are in every one's memory. Their good and their evil fame are alike imperishable: their audacious marchings and fightings, their temptations and failures and triumphs, their far-reaching plans and their mighty achievements, are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the discovery and conquest? But who can run over in his mind the list of outstanding names in the adventurous band that, in the course of less than a century, overran Siberia from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and set the stamp of Russian domination indelibly on Asia? The tale of the discovery and exploration of the Amazon, the Nile, and the Mississippi has often been told; but who can mention offhand the man who first lighted upon the rivals of these famous streams in Northern Asia—the Obi, the Yenisei, the Lena, and the Amoor? We know all about the

408

UNWRITTEN HISTORY.

exploits of Columbus and Magellan, Cortez and Pizarro; but who is familiar with the career, or has even heard of the existence of Irmilof and Deshnef, Staduchin and Kupilof?

The records of their deeds, where any record is still extant, are for the most part mouldering in obscure recesses of the government bureaux at St. Petersburg and Moscow, or in the "chanceries" of Irkutsk and Tobolsk, tied up tightly in red tape, and covered with dust and cobwebs, which it would be sacrilege for the unofficial fingers to disturb. Some of these archives have been rummaged, and from the "unimaginable dust-heap" interesting facts have been fished up and classified; but much more remains to be done, and at the best, the narrative of Siberian discovery, like the "story of Cambuscan bold," will probably remain to the end of time half told.

The Russian conquistadors were inspired by the same spirit of bold and restless adventure that animated their brethren in the New World. But they were rude and unlettered peasants; their leaders were not skilled diplomats, warriors, and writers constantly in communication with the most enlightened courts of their time, and with professional historians and learned ecclesiastics in their train. They had not time or taste, even if they had had the skill, for the making of books; and literary talent would have been quite unappreciated in the Russian court of the time. Their government took no interest in the manner in which the new conquests were achieved, being content to accept the fruits of them without troublesome inquiry; and all the world outside Russia was ignorant or careless of what was going on.

COSSACK PIONEERS.

409

The eyes of the nations were turned in another direction, where more brilliant and attractive prospects were being opened up. By contrast with the richness, warmth, and variety of the productions of the East and West Indies and America, the snows and pine-forests of Siberia must have seemed singularly forbidding. Here were no pagan empires, crumbling with age and burdened with wealth, waiting to be seized by the first bold intruder; or treasure-chambers filled with silver and gold, ready to open at the touch of the Christian spear. Out of the wreck of the Kipchak empire only one principality retained any cohesiveness—the Khanate of Turan, on the Tobol and Irtish; all to the eastward seems at the time to have been almost uninhabited. The sole attraction was the furs of the wild animals, and the *yassak* or tribute that could be wrung from the wretched wandering nomads. The discovery of a new river, lake, or mountain system seemed to these rough Cossack pioneers hardly an occasion for reporting to the remote central authority, who paid so little regard to their doings.

It was only, therefore, when some dispute arose among them about the right to trapping or fishing ground, or when some specially strong opposition was offered to the little band by a combination of native tribes, that it was thought worth while to let their “Father” at Moscow know what was happening. So, for example, it came about—that is, from petitions and memorials sent home by rival claimants to a *korga* or sand-bank at the mouth of the Anadir River, “the resting-place of multitudes of sea-horses”—that we learn of the discovery of that great stream in 1649, by Michael Staduchin, who led a party across the mountains from the river Kolima; and

410

EARLY JOURNEYS.

of the still more remarkable voyage of Simon Deshnef,
who set sail upon the Icy Sea from the Kolima, in three
tiny vessels, and, as his memorial tells, "after having been
forced back by the ice, and driven about by furious
tempests in this strange ocean, and after great danger,
misfortunes, and with the loss of part of his shipping,
arrived at last at the mouth of the Anadir," thus doubling
for the first time the eastern extremity of Asia, and
proving the complete severance of that continent from
America.

It has already been told how, when the Grand Dukes
of Muscovy were under the yoke of the Great Khan,
more than one of them, sorely against their will, made
the dreadful journey across the Siberian Steppes to the
Chinese frontier, to do fealty to their Mongol lord.
Similar journeys were made, by a more southerly route,
by monks and merchants from the West, the most not-
able being the Polos of Venice, during the Middle Ages;
and something was thus known of the magnificence
of the court of Cathay under the descendants of Gen-
ghiz, of the deserts and lofty mountains by which it
was separated from Europe, and of the communities of
Nestorian Christians that were to be met with on the
way.

But when the Mongol Empire broke up, a thick dark-
ness again fell on these regions. The Ural Mountains
were like an impenetrable curtain drawn between them
and the European countries, down till almost exactly
a hundred years ago. Before that time there had been
some little intercourse between the Novgorodian con-
querors of Perm and their wild neighbours; and in
1499 a Russian expedition was led across the moun-

THE FIRST CONQUESTS.

411

tains against the Voghuls and the Ostiaks living on
the lower Obi, and returned with a rich spoil of furs
and tribute, thus leading the Grand Dukes soon after to
adopt, as one of their designations, "Lord of Obdoria,"
a title still held by their successors the Czars. Then
the enterprising merchant who founded the family of
the Stroganofs began to exchange the Russian wares,
and the salt from the mines he had opened near the
sources of the Kama, for the furs brought in by the
"savages" on the other side of the mountains. By-
and-by it was noted and bruited abroad, according to
Vsevolojsky, that these peltries were infinitely superior
in quality to those ordinarily brought to market; and
the "Leather-stockings" of the Volga began to make
longer and longer excursions into the forests in search
of this hidden source of wealth, and military bands
followed them as far as the Irtish to collect tribute.

The conquest of Siberia, however, really dates from
the year 1580. Like other great events in history,
accident rather than design brought it about. About
this time the depredations of the Cossacks of the Don
were carried on upon a scale of unexampled magnitude.
Not only did the robber horsemen scour the land in
search of plunder; they seized the command of the
rivers and fitted out piratical expeditions on the Volga
and Caspian, and held the command of South-Eastern
Russia. The Czar Ivan the Terrible sent a strong body
of troops, who descended the Volga, beat and dispersed
the river-pirates, and killed or captured their chiefs.

One leader, however, Yermak Timotheivitch,—a fugi-
tive from justice, like many of his rough companions,—
finding his retreat to the Don cut off, continued to as-

412

YERMAK'S CAMPAIGNS.

cend the Volga with six thousand followers; then striking up through the valley of the Kama, he found shelter, near its head-waters, with the family of the Stroganofs. Here Yermak's brain was set on fire by the strange tales he heard of the marvellous richness of the unknown land on whose frontier he had now arrived. He formed a sudden resolution, and gathering together the remains of his way-worn band, he marched boldly across the border. In those days the lands on the courses of the great rivers Irtish, Tobol, and Tura, and as far as the main stream of the Obi itself, formed the Tartar Khan-ate of Turan, the ruler of which was Kutchum Khan, a descendant of the conqueror Genghiz. His capital was Isker, a fortified town on the right bank of the Irtish, not far from the site of the modern Tobolsk; and the neighbouring people were known as the "Sibir," a name that has been extended to include the whole of Northern Asia. Terrible were the toils and the sufferings of the Cossack adventurers in passing the mountains, fording the streams, threading the forest labyrinths, and fighting the enemy. They were invariably successful; but when at last the banks of the Irtish were reached, Yermak's band had dwindled from six thousand to five hundred. Nevertheless, he boldly gave battle to the Khan, and in the month of October 1581 completely defeated him and entered his capital in triumph.

Yermak was prudent as well as valiant. He knew that he could not hold this new possession with his own hand, and he determined to make his peace with the Czar. He sent a deputation to Moscow, bearing a present of priceless furs and a selection of captives of the different races that had been subdued, and with an offer of the

FIRST SIBERIAN TOWNS.

413

conquered territory to the ruler of Russia. Ivan was
not a prince to look narrowly for flaws in the title,
when a new country and a fresh instalment of retribu-
tion on the Tartar were proffered him. He accepted
the charge with joy; and Yermak the refugee became
by letters patent Yermak, Prince of Siberia. His
government was not a bed of roses. His men mutinied,
and the Tartars rose in insurrection. Within three
years he was drowned in attempting to swim the Irtish,
being dragged to the bottom by the weight of a suit
of armour which the Czar had graciously bestowed on
him in acknowledgment of the gift of Siberia to Russia.

At first the progress of the Russians in their Asian
dominions was slow, and marked with frequent disasters.
But gradually they made good their hold in the Obi
region, and then the process of the agglutination of new
territory went on with amazing rapidity. Tiumen, on
the Tura, half-way between Ekaterinburg and Tobolsk,
was the first town built by the Russians in Siberia.
Its site had been occupied as a Tartar hold dating
back to the time of Genghiz: it is now noted for its
tanneries and soap-boiling establishments. In the fol-
lowing year, 1587, the foundations of an ostrog were
laid at the junction of the Tobol and the Irtish, a
spot now occupied by Tobolsk, the capital of the exten-
sive government of Western Siberia. Within the next
fifteen years a foothold was obtained on the upper
course of the Obi, and Tomsk was established in 1604,
and became in turn the chief town of an immense prov-
ince, embracing the rich mining regions of Barnaul and
the Altai, the greater part of the fertile corn-growing
Baraba Steppe, and districts where the climate is so

414

DISCOVERY OF THE YENISEI.

warm and mild that great crops of excellent grapes are grown.

The next step brought the invaders to the magnificent river Yenisei. What particular Cossack captain first led his band to its waters is not exactly known. The first we hear of is Feodor Dyakof, who was sent from Tobolsk to collect yassak from the tribes in 1598. In 1618 a party of Cossacks began driving piles for a new fort at Yeniseisk, on the banks of the stream; and in 1628, Krasnojarsk, the capital of the Yeniseisk province, and one of the handsomest and most attractively situated towns in Siberia, was built as a defence against the Kirghiz incursions. By-and-by the Kirghiz became tired of the incessant fighting, and moved southward into the wide steppes about the head-waters of the Irtish and the Ishim, thus removing a great obstacle to Russian advance to the east.

Meanwhile, equally rapid progress was being made in the north. Berezov, on the lower Obi—afterwards the place of exile of the famous Menchikof, and of other ambitious and unfortunate courtiers—became at an early date an *entrepôt* where the Ostiaks and Samoyedes assembled to pay their tribute, and exchange their furs for Russian manufactures. On the Tas river, which, as a map will show, falls into a deep bay in the Gulf of Obi, there was fixed in 1600, for a like purpose, a wintering station called Mangaseia, a Russian corruption of “magazine;” and a few years later this was removed eastward to a new Mangaseia, or Turukhansk, at the union of the Lower Tunguska with the Yenisei. Here, by-and-by, rose a cathedral-church and a monastery, which became renowned and rich, and a great centre

THE COSSACKS ON THE PACIFIC.

415

for the spread of Christianity among the native races. At the time of Nordenskiöld's visit it was tenanted by a single monk, and contained as its choicest possession a picture of the Emperor Paul in powdered hair and military uniform, which the superstitious *Skoptsi*, who have been driven by Orthodox persecution into these cold wastes on the Arctic Circle, worship as a likeness of their holy prophet, the murdered Czar Peter III.

The mouth of the Yenisei was first reached in 1610, and without delay a party of fur-hunters from Mangasiea fitted out an expedition for discovery and trade, which embarked in their *kotschi*, or flat-bottomed, decked boats on the "Cold Sea," and explored the Siberian shores as far as the Piasina River. From the same centre, also, the Tunguska was ascended and the important discovery made of the Lena, the third in rank of the Siberian streams, and the first permanent settlement was founded on its banks in 1631. Five years afterwards the Cossack Busa, setting out from Yeniseisk in search, as usual, of peltry and *yassak*, made his way to the Lena, and after adding forty fur-hunters to his band at Olekminsk, descended the river to its mouth in the Polar Ocean; and in 1638 he lighted upon the Iana, simultaneously with the discovery of a still larger stream, the Indigirka, by Ivanof, surnamed the "Observer of Fasts." Next year Kupilof crossed the Aldan Mountains and sighted the Pacific waters in the Sea of Okotsk, and heard at the same time of a great river called the Amoor; and within the next decade Yakutsk had been founded; the Russians, led by Michael Staduchin, had planted themselves firmly on the Kolima, the last of the great rivers flowing into the

416

THE PROMYSCHLENI.

Polar Sea; and, as we have seen, had in their frail
craft actually sailed round the extreme eastern cape of
Asia and landed on the shores of Kamschatka.

Thus within seventy years from the time when they
crossed the threshold of Asia, the Russians had carried
their discoveries and conquests to within sight of the
shores of America. Nowhere in history has the pro-
cess of subjugation been more rapid and continuous.
The invaders "came, saw, and conquered." The natives
of the country tried to resist them; but they were
scattered and weak, and for the most part soon recon-
ciled themselves to their Russian masters. The serious
difficulties that the little Cossack bands had to encounter
arose from the enormous distances that had to be tra-
versed, and the danger of being lost in the icy deserts
and trackless forests, where often no food could be
procured for many days' march; or of suffering shipwreck
in their frail little vessels. Government in Moscow
left them pretty much to their own devices, and seldom
accurately knew how far the Russian dominions ex-
tended. Private adventurers—*Promyschleni*, as they
were called—started on enterprises for plunder or for
trade; and, if they happened to be fortunate, proved
often the *avant couriers* of the Cossack militia. These
*Promyschleni*, according to Burney, were "hunters and
adventurers who made excursions for profit by the
chase, by traffic, or by whatever accident might throw
in their way, whether they went with or without
authority from, or the knowledge of, their government,
and who, when they came among a strange people and
found their strength adequate to making the demand,
failed not to require of them to acknowledge them-

PLUNDER AND PIETY.

417

selves subjects of the Russian Empire, and to pay
tribute."

Generally the two classes acted amicably together, and
formed a kind of "thieves' league," for the spoiling of
the heathen in the cause of the Czar and the holy
religion. They made no boast of their exploits. A
trip to the Arctic Circle in a comfortable yacht is now
thought sufficient occasion for the production of a thick
volume. Busa, Kupilof, or Staduchin never thought of
writing a thrilling narrative of their marvellous ex-
periences and splendid discoveries. There was no pub-
lic to write for—no Geographical Societies to award
them honours; it is very doubtful if these sturdy
pioneers had even the gift of penmanship. Their
stories would hardly bear the light of day. Like the
contemporary Spanish adventurers, they were deeply
religious men after their lights. Seldom did they
escape from a danger, or touch on a new shore, that
they did not erect a cross as a memorial. The "Ob-
server of Fasts" was not the only one among them
noted for his pious adherence to the forms of the faith;
and not to mention the interior, the coasts of the Polar
Sea are dotted with "sacred promontories,"—Sviatoi
Nos,—and with bays and headlands named after favour-
ite saints. Towards their fellow-men, however, the rule
of might was their only law. They slew and plundered
and burned their way from one side of Asia to the other
without pity or remorse. Their most intrepid marches
and voyages were sullied by some act of cruelty or
rapacity committed on the unfortunate.

Thus Deshnef had no sooner completed his daring
voyage to the Anadir than he proceeded to levy yassak

(718)

27

418

SIBERIAN COAST EXPLORATIONS.

from a people called the Anauli, whom he found living on its banks. " As the tribe, though not numerous, was nevertheless stubborn,"—that is, in the matter of paying tribute,—" they were in a short time exterminated," is the simple statement of the narrator of the transaction, who has evidently a high sense of the merits of the method pursued. When Captain Billings was despatched by the Empress Catherine in 1785, to discover or take possession of such unappropriated " coasts and islands " as he might discover in the neighbourhood of the North Pacific, he found the same ruthless process of Russification still going on, though the scene had been shifted as far east as the Aleutian Islands. " The unfortunate islanders," he reported, " are living in a state of abject slavery under the Promyschleni. There is no name so dreadful to the natives as that of a *perevodshik*, or leader of a band of hunters. Immediately on their arrival they send the natives out on the chase, and then take by force the youngest and most handsome of the women. The barbarity of these subduers to the Crown of Russia is not to be described."

More honourable to Russia and her hardy sons is the record of explorations by land and sea by which were traced the long outline of the Siberian coast, the great estuaries, the low shelving shores, and shallow bays full of grounded drift-ice, the off-lying islands, and the headlands jutting far out into the heavy "Polar pack." Here there was seldom any living thing to dispute their progress save an occasional bear or walrus; the cold and darkness, the hunger and exposure, the snow-storms and "ice-nips," the scurvy and the snow blindness, the lonely isolation and hopelessness of succour,

THE NORTH-EAST PASSAGE.

419

supplied quite enough of the elements of peril and hardship to suit the keenest appetite for adventure without the prospect of meeting a human foe.

The Russians were not first in the field in prosecuting this important section of Arctic exploration, nor had they the honour of placing the finishing touch to the work of discovery. The most famous of the early voyages of the English and Dutch navigators are those of Stephen Burrough, who in 1556 reached Vaygatz Strait; of Pet and Jackman, who in 1580 passed through another entrance to the Kara Sea, between Vaygatz Island and the mainland; and of Willem Barents, who in 1594 pushed a little distance into the Kara Sea, until, as he conjectured, "he was not far from Cape Tabin, which is the exterior angle of Tartary, whence the coast declines towards the kingdom of Cathay," and two years later perished with part of his ship's company in a little hut, which only the other day was found standing almost intact at the northern extremity of Novaya Zemlia, and has been removed bodily to a museum at Amsterdam; also, Henry Hudson, in 1607-9, made unsuccessful attempts to pass round the northern end of Novaya Zemlia.

In all these enterprises the prime object was to discover a "North-East Passage" to India, by which the Hollanders and English dreamed they might out-distance the Portuguese and Spaniards in grasping the riches of the East, which had been laid open to their southern rivals by the discovery of the sea-passage round the Cape of Good Hope. They succeeded only in peering, as it were, through the grating into the weltering chaos of ice that filled the seas to the north of Siberia, and

420

EARLY RUSSIAN VOYAGES.

in convincing the old navigators that no practicable
channel of trade could be found to the northward of
the dominions of the "Duke of Muscovy." Half a
century after Hudson's time the attempt was renewed
by the Danes. In 1676 Captain John Wood, an Eng-
lishman, encouraged by a story told him by a Dutch
skipper, who had been in captivity in Corea, that
whales were taken in the Sea of Tartary, in which were
found European harping-irons, and by the fact that "he
had heard a Dutchman relate that he had been under
the Pole itself, and that it was as warm there as it was
at Amsterdam in summer time," followed in the same
track; and then for exactly two centuries the problem
of finding a North-East Passage was abandoned as
visionary.

Even in Burrough's days Russian loddies or fishing-vessels were found frequenting the entrance to the Kara Sea. The first authenticated instance of the Cossacks having launched upon the Siberian seas took place, as has been mentioned, from the Yenisei. Then the Kolima—where, in 1644, Michael Staduchin built a simovie or winter station on the site now occupied by the town of Nishni-Kolimski—became the centre from which numerous adventurous voyages were made along the coasts to the east and west, the first expedition being under the leadership of a fur-hunter named Ignatief, who brought back exciting news—"the existence of a nation rich in sea-horses' teeth"—that made the teeth of the restless conquerors of Siberia themselves water with envy. Though walrus ivory—not the hope of fame or zeal for discovery—was the vulgar allurement that tempted the fur-hunters on from

THE "GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION."

421

cape to cape, between the threatening pack-ice and the
barren rocks, their achievements may compare in patient
endurance and determination with the most heroic deeds
in maritime history. The *shittiki* employed in Deshnef's
days were clumsy boats hollowed from the trunk of a
tree, or formed of planks sewn together by twisted osiers,
fastened to the timbers by leathern straps, and calked
with moss, the cordage composed of thongs of elk leather,
the sails of reindeer-skin, and the anchor of the knotty
root of a tree weighted with a large stone.

In these primitive craft, however, before 1734, the
mouths of all the rivers flowing into the Polar Ocean
had been visited, and expeditions made in *narti* or light
dog-sledges over the ice in search of a "great land" con-
taining trees and human inhabitants and herds of rein-\deer, supposed to exist to the northward. In that year
began the series of scientific investigations, at the instance
of the Russian Government, to clear up the obscure geog-
raphy of the north coast of Asia. The Empress Anne
sent forth, under the directions of the Dane Behring, four
expeditions, most of which were incessantly employed
for ten years in surveying the Siberian coasts. In every
instance the leaders first appointed succumbed to fatigue
or gave up the enterprise in despair, and success was
only attained after repeated and disastrous failures.
Mouravief sailed from Archangel for the Obi in 1734;
but it was not till 1739 that the vessels returned to the
Dwina, under their third set of commanders, after visit-
ing the Obi. Simultaneously Ovzyn started from the
Obi to reach the Yenisei and double Cape Taimyr; and
his mate Minin, in the close of 1740, brought back the
expedition, which had turned while only a degree short

422

ARCTIC DISASTERS.

of the goal, the crew fearing, from the dazzling blaze of
the sun on the snow, that they would become blind.

The division of the survey that sailed westward from
the Lena was attended with fortunes more tragic and
more brilliant. The commander, Prontchistchef, and
his young wife who accompanied him, died of fatigue
and exposure. But a new chief, Lieutenant Chariton
Laptef, pushed on till his vessel was wrecked in 1741
near the northern extremity of the continent; whence,
crossing the Taimyr Peninsula, he marched his party
safely to Mangaseia, on the Yenisei, whence next year
he despatched to the north his assistant Tchelyuskin,
who ascertained that the Siberian coast is bounded
throughout by the ocean, and had the honour of giving
his name to the "uttermost part of the earth" in the
Old World. The duty of the fourth expedition was, by
proceeding eastwards from the Lena, to reach Behring
Strait. The original party, with their leader Lassinius,
perished almost to a man of scurvy. Another Laptef—
Demetrius—carried on the enterprise, and persisted with
it until 1743. Deshnef's exploit, of a hundred years
earlier, still remained unapproached.

Not more successful, so far as regards the discovery of
a navigable water-way to the north of Siberia, were the
Russian naval expeditions that prosecuted the work of
exploration from the side of the Pacific. It was about
the year 1696 that the Cossacks of Anadirsk began a
series of expeditions, under their chiefs Morosko, Atlassof,
Staritzin, and Kobelef, by which, within ten years, the
peninsula of Kamschatka was subdued and annexed; and
a Russian merchant named Kolessof, fitting out in 1713
an expedition in little vessels of skin, braved the dangers

PACIFIC VOYAGES.

423

of these cold and foggy eastern seas, and was rewarded
with the discovery of the Kurile Isles, and brought back
accounts of a people habited in silk and bearing swords.

Word of this reached St. Petersburg, where already
the active brain of Peter the Great was exercised with
schemes for turning to account the literally boundless
possessions of Russia in Asia. With his own hand he
drew up a few days before his death instructions "for
examining the coasts to the north and east, to see whether
they were not contiguous to America, since their end was
not known;" and in accordance with the directions of
the dead Czar, Behring in 1728 built a vessel at Okotsk,
and conveyed his party to the Kamschatka River, there
transporting himself to another vessel, in which he sailed
through the strait that has since borne his name, with-
out, however, suspecting, owing to the thickness of the
weather, that the American coast was so near. Curiosity
was aroused anew at the Russian court by a Japanese
junk laden with silks being cast away on the Kamschatkan
coast, the crew of which were massacred by the Cossacks.
Vessels were sent out in 1739 to visit, and open trade
with, these new neighbours; and the Japanese heaped
"coals of fire" on the heads of their first visitors from
Russia by showing them every token of good will, enter-
taining them at banquets where they were served with
fruit, confections, and wine, in vessels of porcelain, and
paying for all they received in their brass money.

Then, a year later, Behring made his second voyage,
steering first for "Teixara," a great land in the North-
ern Pacific which a Portuguese, Dom Joao da Gama, had
declared he had seen; and failing to find Teixara, as
has been the lot of every navigator since, he pushed on

424

BEHRING AND COOK.

eastward until he arrived under the lee of a stupendous
mountain range, including one snow-covered peak, than
which, says Behring, "I have not seen in all Siberia a
more lofty mountain." In point of fact he had reached
the North American coast at Mount St. Elias; and from
this point northward the land was claimed for the Czar
by right of discovery, and formed till the other day
the great "fur preserve" of the Imperial Fur Company,
the Russian equivalent of the Hudson Bay Company.
On this voyage, which, as we shall see, ended most dis-
astrously, the high land of one of the Aleutian Islands
was first sighted, looming through fogs. Forty years
later our own Captain Cook followed in the track of
Behring, and entering the strait, reported his vessel
the *Discovery* "on the 11th of August 1778, at noon,
midway between the two continents of Asia and America,
each being seven leagues distant." Cook pushed west-
ward in short boards between the ice and the Siberian
shore, having in sight "prodigious numbers of sea-horses,"
that "lay in herds of many thousands on the ice, huddling
one over another like swine, and roared or brayed very
loud, so that at night or in foggy weather they gave the
first notice of the ice." But in spite of the guidance of the
walruses, he found the ice closing in on him so fast that
he gave up the attempt to reach Europe by this route.

Subsequent exploring ships—Russian, British, and
American—that entered the seas north of Behring
Strait have fared no better; indeed, such had been the
constant impediments encountered by navigators beyond
"Cook's farthest," that Burney, so late as 1819, was
positively convinced that somewhere between this point
and Cape Chelagskoi there must exist an isthmus, form-

THE FROZEN SEA.

425

ing a continuous land communication between Asia and
America.

Meanwhile the Cossack adventurers on the Lena and
the Kolima had found something new to stimulate their
spirit of daring. A rich store of mammoth bones had
been discovered in 1750 by the merchant Liakhov in the
tundra. Twenty years later this same enterprising trader,
happening to be on business on the shores of the Polar Sea
between the Iana and Indigirka rivers, saw a large herd
of reindeer approaching over the ice from the north. The
traditions of a "great land" to the north occurred to him,
and an expedition was fitted out that led to the discovery
of the Liakhov Islands, better known as New Siberia.

This remote group, with its "wooden mountains"
and mounds of driftwood and mammoth bones strewing
its shores, was thoroughly and scientifically examined
by Hedenström in 1809, and by Lieutenant Anjou in
1821-3; while, simultaneously with Anjou, Lütke com-
pleted the examination of Novaya Zemlia, and Von
Wrangell established the continuity of the sea from the
Atlantic to Behring Strait, and made the first organized
attempts to reach a high latitude in dog-sledges.

These, and other explorers who have tried to advance
northward over the ice from Siberia, have invariably
found, at a certain distance from the coast, one impassable
obstacle to their progress. The horizon to the north
would be covered with dense vapour, and the winds
from the same quarter come laden with moisture. Flights
of geese and other water-fowl would also be seen wend-
ing their way south, as from some favourite resort under
the Pole, while the ice under foot would become thin and
moist and broken up by lanes of water. At length, when

426

NORDENSKIOLD'S VOYAGE.

some coigne of vantage on an ice-hummock would open a prospect ahead, there would be seen, in Von Wrangell's words, "a wide, immeasurable ocean spread before the gaze—a fearful and magnificent but to us a melancholy spectacle—an agitated ocean, where fragments of ice of enormous size floated, or were thrown with awful violence against the edge of the ice-field."

From this time the "great Polynia" or "open water" began to cut a considerable figure in the discussions of geographical societies and schemes of Polar discovery. If an entrance to it could be found from the Atlantic, it was said, a fair sail might be made to the Pacific, and the North-East Passage become an accomplished fact. The daring voyages recently made by skippers of the Norwegian whaling-craft, such as Carlsen and Johannisen, who sailed round the north of Novaya Zemlia, and found an apparently limitless open sea stretching to the eastward, seemed to hint that the problem that had baffled Burrough and Barents was about to be solved.

Solved at length it was, though the "Polynia" only contributed indirectly to the result. Professor Norden-skiöld, one of the princes of Arctic discovery, an experienced seaman and profound scientific inquirer, concentrated his attention on the difficulty which the ice had so long presented to the navigation of the Siberian seas. Two preliminary voyages, in which he forced a passage through the Kara Sea, which Von Baer had in 1837 pronounced an "ice-cellar," convinced him that if he started late in the year, when the autumn floods in the rivers had moved the ice out to sea—room for it being found in the "open water" to the north—the whole distance to the Pacific might be run in a single season.

THE "NORTH-EAST PASSAGE" AT LAST.

427

On the 4th of July 1878 the little steamer *Vega* sailed from Gothenburg. Before the end of the month she had passed the gates of the Kara Sea. On the 19th of August flags were hoisted and a salute fired as Cape Tchelyuskin or Severo—the northernmost point of the Old World—was rounded, the sun coming out from the fog, and glinting on land and sea alike free from ice; on the 6th of September, Cape Chelagskoi the “impassable,” which no keel had visited since Deshnef had passed in 1648, was cleared; the North Cape of Cook was left behind on the 12th; and on the 27th of September the *Vega* was frozen in, within a few miles of the open water in Behring Strait.

In two months the professor had cleared at a rush the space which previous explorers had been laboriously occupied in mapping out for three hundred years. He had bided his time, and caught fortune literally “at the flood.” The sliding doors of the ice moved back to let him pass, and were again jammed hard against the shore just before he had time to escape. Next year, however, he extricated himself, and sailed prosperously home to Europe by the Suez Canal, thus circumnavigating the continent of Asia, and establishing by his splendid skill and courage the soundness of his contention that the navigation of the seas from Norway to Japan is practicable, if not safe. It is a galling reflection to Russia that she has by her own act lost the credit of placing this magnificent copestone on her work of discovery. Nordenskiöld is a Finlander, a born subject of the Czar; but while still a youth at Helsingfors University, he was expatriated and compelled to carry his fortunes and his talents elsewhere, for daring to hold “liberal” opinions.

CHAPTER XX.

THE CHINESE FRONTIERS.

N the southern frontier of Siberia, marching for thousands of miles with the dominions of the Emperor of China, Russia is still engaged in the task of defining the limits of her territory, by means of scientific expeditions and diplomatic missions, and occasionally, though only in cases of emergency, by the despatch of a military force.

The relations between these two Asiatic Powers have always been of a peculiar kind. Russia has played her game with admirable patience. While cautiously avoiding a collision with China, she has constantly enlarged her frontiers at the expense of her neighbour, and has peacefully secured commercial and diplomatic privileges which other Western nations have only obtained at the price of costly wars. China began by arrogating the rights of suzerainty over the Czar, and has ended by falling gradually under the ascendency of the Northern Power. Russia has bit by bit established herself along the whole northern slope of the Altai chain. Few of the streams draining to the Arctic Ocean have now their rise within the territory of the Celestials. The wild and rugged scenes in which the tributaries of the

RUSSIA ON THE ALTAI RANGE.

429

Irtish and the Obi take their rise among the precipices, glaciers, and frozen tarns of Cholsoun and the Little Altai, with the untold mineral wealth of these mountains, and the rich and beautiful valleys into which their dark gorges open up, are now in the undisputed possession of the Czar. So likewise are all but the most remote feeders of the Yenisei, and the whole of the fertile region surrounding Lake Baikal.

Beyond the snow-clad summits of the Altai, Russia has not cared to go, at least as yet. There is little to tempt her in the sterile steppes of the great table-land beyond, dotted over with isolated salt lakes, round which the fragments of Mongol tribes, Kalmuks, Eleuts, and Kalkas nomadize and find scanty pasture for their flocks and herds, and merging into the desolation of the great Desert of Gobi, the "Dry Sea" of the Chinese, which is more perilous to traverse than the Frozen Ocean itself. But Russia has already planted a foot within the fruitful valley of the Ili, thus, as it were, turning the western flank of the Altai, and opening a road to Yarkand and Kashgar. She has drawn her frontier along the northern bank of the Amoor, and, crossing that stream near its mouth, has pushed forth a long inquiring finger towards Corea.

It was about the year 1640 that Russia began to come into contact with the Chinese in these regions. For twenty years previous the Cossack adventurers had been engaged in desultory conflict with the tribes on the Upper Yenisei and in the neighbourhood of Lake Baikal, more especially with the Buriats, who had rendered themselves independent of China. Already the Buriats had imported the Buddhist religion and the civilization

430

COSSACK AND CHINAMAN.

of the Middle Empire, and possessed a written language and literature. To this day this people, who form a numerous and influential section of the population of the Transbaikal region, dress themselves in resplendent robes of flowered silk, and are more Chinese than Russian in type and customs, and perhaps in sympathies. In 1643 a band of adventurers, under Michael Poyarkof, crossed the Yablonnoi range and descended on the Amoor; and a few years later they were followed by the Cossack hetman Khabarof, who traced the river to its outlet, and expelling the original Tungus possessors, fortified himself at a place called Albassin, on the north bank of the stream, about a hundred miles below the junction of its two great branches, the Shilka and the Argun.

Albassin became the theatre of a struggle that lasted many generations between the Cossack and the Chinese for the possession of the Amoor. Needy and greedy adventurers thronged hither, attracted by a milder climate and a richer and more varied vegetation than anything they had found farther north, but chiefly by the great abundance of game and fur animals, and the prosperous forays that could be made across the river into Mantchuria. The Chinese, who had never surrendered their claims, determined to root out this den of freebooters. An army from the Flowery Land captured Albassin in 1658, after a two years' siege, and carried part of the garrison prisoners to Pekin. Even this loss became Russia's gain; for the little band of exiled Albassins became the foundation of the notorious "Ecclesiastical Mission," on whose account the Russians have claimed and obtained the right to erect churches

DISCOVERY OF PRECIOUS ORES.

431

and schools for the Orthodox in the Middle Kingdom. Twice Albassin was rebuilt by the Cossacks, and twice it was recaptured and destroyed by military forces sent out by the Pekin Government; and at length it was secured to China, along with the whole territory on the north bank of the Amoor, by the first international treaty entered into between the two Powers, signed in 1689 at Nertchinsk.

Other objects than mere plunder were beginning to attract the notice of the Russians on this southern frontier. The existence of rich ores of gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals, had been discovered in the Altai Mountains and in Daouria, as the region to the south-east of Lake Baikal was then generally called. The sands of the Nertcha, near the junction of which with the Shilka Nertchinsk is situated, were by-and-by washed for gold, and the occupation of spoiling the mandarins lost its attractions. Gems of great brilliancy and size, amethysts and topazes, garnets and emeralds might be picked up by the industrious treasure-seeker. Mines of malachite, porphyry, and lapis-lazuli were discovered and worked; beautiful blocks of green, cream-coloured, and purple jasper were met with among the chasms and precipices of the Altai, waiting only transportation to Europe to make the fortunes of the finders.

The great works at Barnaul, where later all the ores extracted from the mines of the Altai and Eastern Siberia were brought to be smelted, were established. When our countryman Atkinson visited the place twenty-five years ago, he found that six caravans annually left Barnaul for St. Petersburg laden with the precious metals,

432

AMENITIES OF SIBERIAN TOWNS.

and that to his eyes the mining population of the Altai
appeared "more wealthy, more cleanly, and surrounded by
more comforts than any other people in the empire." Con-
vict labour had not then been introduced into the Altai
mines; and the change that has since taken place, if it
has helped to develop the mineral wealth of the region,
has scarcely improved its society. Mr. Lansdell, on his
visit in 1881, found that from twelve hundred to fifteen
hundred men (not convicts) were engaged in the Crown
mines, that supply five smelting-works—four for silver,
and one for copper. The smelting of gold is carried on
in a small room, about twenty feet square, at fires not
larger than those in a laundry copper; and in the strong
room are sometimes stored as much as four or five tons
of gold, worth, say, half a million sterling.

Barnaul possesses, among other amenities, an interest-
ing museum of minerals. In its shops may be bought
Edinburgh ale, Dublin porter, and French champagne, of
course at exorbitant prices. On the other hand, beef
may be had at a halfpenny per pound, and grouse at
twopence a brace, and cleared black land hired at three-
pence-halfpenny per English acre.

In Siberia whole towns disappear in a twinkling in
some great fire that runs its course among the wooden
dwellings, and rise again from their ashes with magic
rapidity. The "inflammable materials" contained in
them have been largely increased since the Government
have begun to export Nihilists thither; and the great
fires which have recently caused such damage at Kras-
nojarsk, Irbit, Irkutsk, and other places, have been con-
fidently attributed to the presence of these irrepressible
incendiaries. By the great conflagration at Irkutsk last

IRKUTSK.

433.

year, it was estimated that three million worth of property was destroyed and twenty thousand persons rendered homeless.

Irkutsk was not founded till the close of the seventeenth century, and the earlier and finer of its public buildings were the work of the Polish and Swedish captives sent hither by Peter the Great after Poltava. As befits the official capital of Siberia, it occupies a commanding position on the banks of the broad and deep Angara, some distance below the point where it flows out of Lake Baikal to join the Yenisei. It is in the centre of a fertile, richly-wooded, and well-watered country, full of the most charming scenery; it contains a fair share of the manufacturing industries in which the Siberian towns are energetically engaged; in the suburbs are the mansions of wealthy Russian merchants, who have surrounded themselves in this distant spot with all the luxuries of Europe, and whose gardens in summer are ablaze with blossom; and on the whole it deserves the praises that have been so profusely bestowed on it by travellers.

The commercial importance of Irkutsk is due to its neighbourhood to the Eastern Siberian mines, and to the traffic with China. The Russians were not long in convincing themselves that a much more profitable mode of dealing with the Chinese than their first coarse method of plundering them would be to open up a peaceful trade. To attain this end, Peter the Great had employed all his diplomacy; there were long and pretty fencing between the negotiators on either side, and wordy and interminable discussions on questions of etiquette, "ko-towing," and the exchange of refugees and

(718)

28

434

LAKE BAIKAL.

deserters. It was two years after Peter's death that the important Treaty of Kiachta was settled between the Count Vladislavitch Ragousinsky and the plenipotentiaries of the "Bogdo Khan;" and it remained for about a hundred and thirty years the basis of the commercial and diplomatic relations of China and Russia. Under it, marts for the exchange of Russian and Chinese goods were established at the adjoining towns of Kiachta, in the territory of the Czar, and Maimatchin, within the frontier of the Descendant of the Sun. Through this channel the great bulk of the overland trade with China has continued to flow. Furs and manufactured goods from Europe are collected at Irkutsk, and are forwarded to the frontier by way of Lake Baikal.

This magnificent lake—the "Holy Sea" of the surrounding peoples—is girded in by high mountains, and the basaltic cliffs along its shore rise in some places from deep water to a height of seven or eight hundred feet. It is subject to terrific storms; and it was with feelings of astonishment that the Siberians and Mongolians saw the first steamer, built by an enterprising merchant named Menchnikof, making her way across the lake with a cargo of goods destined for Pekin, in the teeth of a heavy gale. The wares are conveyed to the frontier on horseback in summer or in sledges during winter, and stored in the government magazines at Kiachta or in the neighbouring custom-house at Troitskosavsk; while tea in chests and bricks, rhubarb, silks, and other goods brought for barter by the Chinese merchants, are carried through the Great Wall at Kalgan, and across the sandy desert by way of the holy Buddhist city of Ourga in cars of camels, guided by shaggy Khalka drivers, to Mai-

A CHINESE FRONTIER MART.

435

matchin. Free intercourse is permitted from sunrise to sunset between the two border emporiums: after that hour the Chinese shut the gate of Maimatchin, and the Cossacks close the egress from Kiachta. The merchants from Moscow and other distant places in Russia usually reach Kiachta in the beginning of February; and before the middle of March their transactions are completed, and long caravans are on their march towards Irbit and Nishni-Novgorod.

There is every outward and visible sign that this in-
ternational trade is profitable to both parties. The stores
of Maimatchin—a genuine Chinese town of houses of
unburned brick, faced with wooden screens painted over
with grotesque monsters—are bursting with valuable
wares; and the owners are portly, pig-tailed personages,
who think nothing of laying a pair of chopsticks for
their guest and setting before him a banquet of sixty-
four dishes. That the Russian merchants of Kiachta
are likewise liberal and well-to-do may be judged from
the fact that they have built a cathedral—the finest in
Eastern Siberia—at a cost of £150,000, and adorned it
with an altar-screen of gold, with doors weighing two
thousand pounds in solid silver.

The Russians did not permanently remain satisfied
with the advantages they had gained by the Treaty of
Kiachta. By 1848, it is known, the Government had
made up their mind to recover their hold on the Amoor,
and preparations towards that end were made. While
these were being completed, they operated actively by
means of scientific expeditions. Russian officers ascended
the highest summits of the Altai chain, explored its most
accessible gorges, made excursions into the steppes within

436

DISINTERESTED AGGRESSION.

the Chinese frontier, and brought back interesting information regarding the routes available for trade or military operations.

One of the latest and most distinguished of these explorers is Prejevalsky, who has traversed Mongolia and the Kokonor district, visited the half-fabulous Lake Lob, which receives the drainage of Eastern Turkestan, and to whose banks he found a wandering party of "Old Believers" had preceded him in search of the "New Jerusalem," and who has just returned from a journey into a part of Thibet never before reached by a European traveller.

The accounts that were brought back of the extreme beauty and fertility of Amoorland stimulated the zeal of the Siberian officials for the enlargement of their frontier in this quarter. In 1854 General Mouravief, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, himself undertook an exploration of the river on a scale so imposing that the Chinese dared not oppose it, and exploration merged gently into acquisition. In 1857 the first regular colony was settled on the river, and the Tientsin Treaty of the year following formally secured the command of this great waterway, two thousand two hundred miles in length—the only outlet which Siberia possesses into an unfrozen sea. "Such," in the words of Professor Martens of St. Petersburg, "has been the recompense found for the patience, the indulgence, and the disinterestedness, of which Russia has given proof in regard to China." A later step in this "disinterested" process was the acquisition of a strip of the Mantchurian sea-coast south of the Amoor by the Treaty of Pekin in 1860, negotiated by General Ignatief, afterwards Russian ambassador at Constanti-

THE AMOOR REGION.

437

nople, and now, since the removal from office of Loris Melikoff, the most powerful man in Russia after the Czar.

The expectations formed of the Amoor region have scarcely been fulfilled. Atkinson, Lansdell, and others have described with enthusiasm the extraordinary beauty and grandeur of its scenery, and its exhaustless animal, vegetable, and mineral wealth. In regard to the precious metals, it is represented as a second California; for cotton growing, more suited than the choicest parts of Africa, if not of America. The dense forests of the maple, lime, pine, and oak constitute a source of incalculable future wealth; the pastures of deep grass, never cropped except by wild animals, are capable of supporting numberless flocks of cattle; and the river teems with fish. In spite of all this luxuriance, the banks have a desolate aspect. Nowhere in 1862 was to be seen token of man or his work, save here and there on the lower course the hut of a Tungus or Giliak fisher or hunter, or, near the Soungari river, a few Chinese junks, temples, and villages. It was prophesied that, within ten years of the annexation, "the aspect of the region would be materially changed: flourishing towns would be seen on the banks; the vessels moored by the shore would show that the people were actively engaged in commerce and other industrial pursuits; while the white churches with their numerous turrets and green domes would prove that religion and civilization had taken the place of idolatry and superstition."

Twenty years have passed, and the fortunes of the province of the Amoor do not yet seem absolutely assured. Colonists have come in considerable numbers,

438

DIPLOMACY IN HIGH ASIA.

but some of them have gone again. Towns have been built, and lines of steamers established; but it is complained that the amount of trade is not always sufficient to keep them profitably employed. The great disadvantage is the remoteness from markets where the produce of the region could be disposed of. What is the use, it is said, of raising magnificent crops, when no merchant would pay the enormous cost of bringing the grain to his doors, even if he got the article for nothing? Then it has to be remembered that while the climate of the middle Amoor is temperate, its sources and its mouth are practically in the Arctic regions. All this will not prevent the district from having a great future; it only proves that some of the expectations regarding it were formed prematurely.

The latest diplomatic passages between Russia and China threatened at one time to end in war. In a corner of High Asia, where the Altai and Tianshan ranges overlap each other, is the valley of the Ili River, flowing down to the sandy waste in which lies the great salt lake Balkash, through the province of Kuldja, the most highly prized of all the possessions of China west of the Great Wall. This district of Soungaria, as it is also called, is supposed to have been the cradle of the Teuton races. From it the Kalmuks migrated to the Lower Volga; and thither the remnant of them returned again on the occasion of their famous exodus in 1771—a circumstance that nearly led to a rupture between the Empress Catherine and China. The frontiers of the Flowery Land had not long before been extended by the conquests of the great emperor Kien Lun, until they embraced not only Soungaria, but the whole of Eastern

REBELLION IN KULDJA.

439

Turkestan, up to the borders of Bokhara; and the wanderers from Europe, finding their old home in the valley already settled by military colonists from Mantchuria and the banks of the Amoor, deported criminals from the Middle Kingdom, and Tarantchis, "millet-growers" or agriculturists from Kashgar, retired to the high rich pastures above, where they still live under the name of Torgots.

The centre of authority was at Ili, or New Kuldja, where the Mantchu Governor-General of Chinese Tartary lived in great state, though the turbulent character and many quarrels of the score of nationalities under his charge made his office anything but a bed of roses. Among the other races were the Dungans, a people of rather mysterious origin—Mohammedan in religion, Chinese in nearly every other respect—who are widely scattered over the empire from Pekin to Yarkand.

About twenty years ago, China was seized with tremors and convulsions throughout its whole bulk, and seemed on the eve of dissolution. Insurrection spread like a wave of fire from one end of the Emperor's territory to the other; and the central government seemed powerless to arrest it. Kashgar and the neighbouring cities fell into the hands of the bold Khokandidan adventurer Yakoob Beg, who set up an independent principality, which he maintained intact for twelve years. The Dungans had led the insurrection in Kuldja, and, assisted by the Tarantchis, massacred the whole Mantchu garrison. The Dungan leader told Mr. Schuyler, with a chuckle, how they had captured the city of Ili after a two years' siege. "That morning there were in it seventy-five thousand people, with the

440

A CORNER OF CHINA.

army; that evening not a soul was left alive.” The Chinese governor, after the manner of Chinese governors, had composedly applied a lighted match to a mine in his palace, and had blown himself up with his family.

At the time of the American traveller's visit nothing was left of the fine city except heaps of ruins of temples, covered with fragments of pottery and charred human bones that encumbered the broad streets. The remains of Chinese industry and art have not wholly disappeared, however; and one coming to a town on the Ili from Russian Turkestan is struck by the change, even in the present reduced circumstances of Kuldja. "Instead of narrow, crooked streets, there were broad, straight avenues shaded by trees; instead of windowless houses built of mud, the blank walls of which stared one in the face at every turn, there were fine buildings of brick, beautifully carved and moulded, roofed with tiles, and with latticed windows and porticos. Instead of female forms swathed in long shapeless dressing-gowns, and with faces hidden by black horse-hair veils, there were stout, healthy, and smiling women chatting over their marketing, the bright orange-coloured marigolds in their wonderful coiffures, or their coquettish little caps, contrasting well with the indigo blue of their gowns. Instead of Sarts and Uzbegs in gowns and turbans, there were Chinese and Dungans in wadded petticoats, short jackets, long moustaches, and pig-tails."

The valley, irrigated and planted with grain crops, fruit trees, and artificial forests, was a paradise; but for several years it became a Pandemonium. The Dungans and Tarantchis took to massacring one another, the latter getting the better of the struggle; Yakoob Beg seemed

CHINESE CONQUESTS.

441

on the point of invading it; and the population had been
reduced by constant butcheries to about a fourth of
what it was a few years before, when General Kolpa-
kowsky stepped in, and almost without resistance occu-
pied the province, declaring that Russia intended to hold
it only temporarily until China could re-establish her
authority.

China showed more vitality and tenacity of purpose
than some of her neighbours had expected, or perhaps
even hoped for. One by one her rebellious provinces were
brought again into subjection, amid terrible slaughter-
ings and devastation. An army under the victorious
General Tso set out on the march across the deserts to
reduce the revolted districts of the west, planting corn
and waiting to reap the crop when supplies failed, and
doing his work leisurely and thoroughly. Yakoob Beg
died while preparing to resist the shock of the Im-
perialists' advance, and Kashgar fell an easy prey to
the Chinese, who were now again complete masters in
Eastern Turkestan.

In the high humour naturally aroused by such feats,
they demanded from Russia restitution of the province
that had been seized. Negotiations were entered into,
and under a treaty signed by the Chinese ambassador
Chung How at Livadia, Russia retained possession of a
substantial part of Kuldja, and China agreed to pay a
heavy indemnity to meet the costs of Russia's occupa-
tion. Great was the wrath at Pekin when the terms of
this bargain were made known: the government refused
to ratify the treaty; the too complying Chung How was
thrown into prison and condemned to death; and there
were preparations for war all along the Chinese frontier.

442 RETROCESSION AND RECONCILIATION.

Fortunately, however, for China more moderate counsels prevailed, due greatly, it is believed, to the remonstrances of Colonel Gordon—"Chinese Gordon"—who rushed out to the East to use his influence in the cause of peace; to the St. Petersburg Court, also, is due the credit of being willing to reopen negotiations. Under a new treaty, negotiated by the Marquis Tseng, China obtains restitution of all but a small fragment of her Kuldja territory; Russia receives concessions of important commercial privileges in Mongolia, and an indemnity; and the curtain falls, meanwhile, on the two Powers again reconciled.

CHAPTER XXI.

LIFE IN THE TUNDRA AND THE FOREST.

T is an open secret that it is not in every part
of Siberia that one can persuade the vine to
grow; that the gardens of the Ili valley, and
the sheltered pastures and glades of rich loam
on the banks of the Amoor, are not to be found through
the whole vast expanse of Russia's Asiatic dominions;
and that even these favoured localities are visited by
extremes of temperature which would be trying to a
European constitution. But even the Siberian climate
admits of something being said in its favour. Every-
where, it is true, the winters are long and cold. Snow
lies for many months in the year over the whole region
in an unbroken sheet from the Frozen Ocean to the
Altai Mountains, and from the Ural range to Behring
Strait. The thermometer ranges excessively low, even in
the extreme southern districts. But throughout most of
the region fitted for colonization the cold is of a "dry"
kind, like that of the North-West Territory of Canada,
and therefore neither so prejudicial to health nor so
painful to endure as it would be in a moisture-laden
atmosphere like ours.

Winter is the season when long journeys may be

444

WINTER ON THE TUNDRA.

made most expeditiously, and often most comfortably.
The rivers from the Obi to the Amoor are covered
with a thick crust of ice, and become the highways for
sledge-traffic. The inequalities of the land, also, are
smoothed over by the snow, and the sledge glides easily
along tracks where at other seasons the traveller's bones
are threatened with dislocation from the jolting of the
telega. Winter is also a favourite time for the
trapper and hunter. The furs of the sable and gray
squirrel are in their finest condition, and the herds
of wild reindeer, elk, and moufflon may be tracked with
ease as they roam in search of the scanty herbage which
they scrape from under the snow with their feet. The
cattle, which form the chief source of the wealth of the
Yakut and other tribes on the Lena and Yenisei,
are generally housed for the winter; but their troops of
hardy horses are left to pick up their living like the
beasts of chase, and like them regularly cast their
shaggy coats and get a new winter suit when the cold
weather returns.

Spring—if the brief period that intervenes while
the snow melts, and the Arctic cold suddenly gives
place to the semi-tropical warmth of summer, can
be called by that name—is a much more disagreeable
season. The streams are all now running in heavy flood,
and their overflow converts large tracts of the lowlands
on their banks into temporary lakes. Masses of ice,
great forest trees, and driftwood of every description
are hurried along with the current; and the quantity
of water brought down is sufficient to loosen the grip
of the Polar ice on the northern coast, to float away
the floes and bergs to some distance from the shore,

MIGRATORY BIRDS.

445

and to freshen the waters of the Polar Ocean for hundreds of miles.

The swamps of the tundra lands thaw, on the surface at least, and become impassable for man or beast; even the splay-footed reindeer and elk sometimes sink through the miry moss and flounder into more hopeless depths with each effort to escape. Only the birds of the air can pass over them in safety. This is the season when they come in countless flocks from the warmer southern countries, even from the Indian lowlands, to breed and rear their young under the shadow of the birch and pine forests, or along the margin of the rivers and the sea. Colonel Prejevalsky watched them at Lake Lob—the central hollow of the great basin of Eastern Turkestan—as the myriads of birds of different species, chiefly swimmers and waders, arrived in regular succession, and rested a few days by the lake to recruit their strength after the exhausting passage of the Himalayas, and before resuming their flight across the arid steppes of Mongolia and the snowy heights of the Altai. Messrs. Seebohm and Harvie-Brown, who have lately studied the movements of the migratory hosts on the Petchora, found that their arrival on the breedinggrounds and their departure thence are also accurately timed by each species of bird.

For a while the northern forests and tundra lands are no more empty and silent; they actually swarm with bird life. “Although,” remark the latter authors, “the number of species breeding within the Arctic Circle is comparatively small, the number of individuals is vast beyond conception. Birds go to the Arctic regions to breed, not by thousands, but by

446

AN ARCTIC "LOOMERY."

millions." Captain Markham gives a still more surpris-
ing account of the marvellous abundance of guillemots
and other birds on the cliffs of Novaya Zemlia early in
June, when the snow was only clearing away from the
slopes of the hills. On the ledges of the limestone cliffs
overlooking a bay in the "Matyushin Shar"—the strait
separating the north and south islands—he says, could be
seen "myriads of looms, so thickly clustered that the com-
bination of their dark and white plumage made the face
of the cliffs assume a 'pepper-and-salt' hue; whilst the
water was dotted with numbers of these birds feeding, and
the air was so thick with them, as they flew backwards
and forwards, that it reminded me more of the swarming
of hundreds of hives of bees than anything else. On the
first discharge of our guns, a perfect cloud rose in front
of us, completely obscuring the face of the cliff. The
sound caused by this sudden flight can only be likened
to the fall of water from some gigantic cascade. As
they flew outward they actually struck us in the boats,
whilst our victims tumbled about us like hail."

The cause of this great incursion of birds into the
Arctic area is the extraordinary prodigality with which
nature has provided for them their favourite food. No
sooner has the ice broken on the river than salmon and
other fish begin to make their way from the deep sea
to their spawning-grounds up-stream in extraordinary
shoals. The fish-eagles and lesser birds of prey, and the
whole tribe of waders and swimmers, are busy from
morning till night gorging themselves with food. When
the winter snow clears away from the mossy heaths and
low, scrubby forest, great stores of wild fruits, whortle-
berries, cloudberryes, crowberries, bilberries, rasps, and

ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE.

447

currants are uncovered, and a rich feast is spread for the titmice, wheat-ears, thrushes, and other familiar birds that venture into these solitudes. Clouds of mosquitoes hover over the fens, and the insect-eating birds have only to open their bills to be satisfied.

The other denizens of the tundra are also awake and active, and eager in their outlook for food after their long winter abstinence. The white bear is abroad, hungry and lean after his sleep of three or four months, during which he has "lived on his own fat." He ventures out on the rotting ice-fields, cautiously stalking the keen-scented seals; or roams along the sea-beach or the river margin, seeking what he may devour. The herds of reindeer are out feeding on the young grass and herbs, and rapidly taking on fat.

Abundant and succulent pastures are to be found even in the dreariest parts of Siberia. Nordenskiöld found the banks of the Yenisei, in about seventy degrees north latitude, covered with grass "of a luxury to which he had seldom seen anything comparable;" and even at Cape Taimyr, the most northerly extremity of Asia, the mountains, two or three thousand feet in height, were free of snow to their summits, and animal and vegetable life was abundant. A brief touch of colour and beauty even visits the lugubrious tundra in the early summer, when the turf is often thickly strewn with bright blue, yellow, and pink flowers. Many flowering and other species of plants, indeed, have a more northerly range in Siberia than in the Scandinavian peninsula; and an improvement in the climate and vegetation may be looked for as cultivation spreads northward.

448

HARVEST TIME IN THE TUNDRA.

At this season it is not to be supposed that man, who makes his prey impartially of fish, flesh, and fowl, remains inactive. He, too, bestirs himself after the enforced inaction of the winter's cold and darkness, and sets to work to gather in his store of food against the returning time of scarcity. In these latitudes the summer is too brief for crops coming to maturity. The limit of grain-growing land stops short long within the limit of forests; though in some favourably situated spots corn may be raised close to the Arctic Circle, and the citizens of Yakutsk are able to boast of a few meagre vegetables in their "gardens." The sea, the river, and the heath are the harvest-fields of the Siberian, whether he is an indigenous inhabitant of the tundra or a Russian colonist. When the great flights of birds arrive, every inhabitant turns out in some districts with flintlock, bow and arrows, and other old-fashioned fowling implements, and immense numbers of wild geese, ducks, and swans are killed and "cured" for future use.

A Siberian village at these times resembles a hamlet in St. Kilda: there are feathers everywhere—in the air, in the water, on the ground, in the houses, and in the very food. The skins of the birds are stitched into warm winter garments by some of the tribes; where the eider-duck abounds, the down is a valuable article of commerce. The creatures of the land and water also yield trading wares, as well as food and raiment.

For the fish, indeed, that visit the Siberian streams in incredible numbers there is scarcely any market as yet. Even the salmon, the sturgeon, and other more valuable sorts, cannot be transported at a profit from the Obi and Yenisei until regular sea or railway communication has

SIBERIAN FISHERIES.

449

been opened with these rivers. But for the inhabitants
on their banks, and on the lower courses of the Lena and
other streams draining into the Glacial Ocean, the "runs"
yield a harvest without which it would be impossible to
support life all the year round. Wooden stagings are
erected along the river margins, and here the crews of
fishermen collect, and, with extraordinary assiduity, ply
their calling with net and boat, basket, line, and spear,
for the short time that the fishing lasts, capturing in the
early part of the season thousands of salmon and sea-
trout, and in the autumn the herrings that come in vast
quantities into the mouths of the streams.

Fish is the "staff of life" within the Arctic Circle;
the very dogs live on it. Salt is precious in these coun-
tries, and the fish is generally preserved in a dried or
frozen state, and is rarely cooked before being eaten.
The visitor to a hospitable native yurta on the Lena or
Kolima is regaled on frozen sturgeon's roe, dried rein-
deer tongue, and other tid-bits reserved for festive occa-
sions; and though he may make a wry face or two at
first, he soon learns to relish this hyperborean fare. He
can never hope, however, to approach the natives in the
quantity which they devour at a meal when food is
abundant. A Russian traveller has asserted that he has
seen a Yakut eat sixty fish at a sitting, when, as he naively
remarks, he had himself much ado to dispose of ten.
The inner bark of the larch is stripped off in the spring,
and is kneaded up with the fish into a kind of cake, or
made into a broth which, in spite of its turpentine flavour,
is highly appreciated by those who have never partaken
of anything more delicate. Other vegetable food the
inhabitant of the tundra has seldom a chance of tasting.

(718)

29

450

WALRUS-HUNTING.

The hardiest kinds of kitchen vegetables refuse to come
to maturity so near to the Polar Ocean, and he has
nothing better than a few aromatic herbs and edible
roots to flavour his stew.

There are enterprising spirits who regularly venture
out among the ice-floes in quest of the walrus and seal.
Great boldness, as well as wariness and skill, is needed
in these encounters; for the sea-horse, with all his clumsiness of build, is an ugly antagonist in his own element.
A blow from his down-hooked tusks might shatter a
strong boat, much more the frail *baidars*—made of seal-skin or reindeer hide, and sewn with reindeer sinew—in which the Tchuktchis and other tribes of Eastern
Siberia hunt the walrus. On the other hand, a fat
walrus, harpooned and safely brought to shore, is a
grand prize for the needy fisherman's family. Every
part of the carcass, even the bones and offal, is turned
to account. The inmates of the lucky hunter's hut
gorge themselves with the raw blubber and fat; the oil
serves to keep the lamp alive during the winter darkness, and the rough skin is cut up into thongs for the
reins and harness of the sledge, or fashioned into boots
and leggings; out of the intestines light upper water-proof garments for summer wear are made, and a strong
durable thread is prepared from the sinews. The fine
ivory of the tusks can be turned to many uses—forming
tips to spears and harpoons, ornamental bowls to pipes,
and neck adornments for the women; but it is chiefly
prized as an article of barter, by means of which the
poor Samoyede, Yukahir, or Tchuktchi can provide himself with a few of the luxuries of warmer climes, too often
only in the shape of the fieriest brandy and most pun-

THE MAMMOTH AND HIS AGE.

451

gent Caucasian tobacco. The stranding or capture of a
whale is an event which gives joy, not to a single yurta,
but to a whole village; and practised hunters become
men of weight and wealth in their own sphere by their
success in the pursuit of the white bear, which they
courageously follow over the hummocks, bring to bay,
and skilfully despatch with their spears.

There are modes of gaining richness in "ivory," horn,
and hide without braving the dangers of deceitful ice-
fields and the teeth and claws of infuriated walrus and
bear. Spread over a wide area of Siberia are spots
where, heaped confusedly together, are found in vast
deposits the remains of the strange creatures that
roamed the forests at a time when, it is believed, the
region enjoyed a much milder climate than at present.
Many of the animal forms thus preserved are now ex-
tinct, or are represented by species found only in warm
inter-tropical countries. Chief among these is the
mammoth, a creature closely allied to and probably the
progenitor of the Indian elephant, but larger even than
that huge beast, bearing longer tusks with a marked
upward curve, and covered with a thick fell of reddish
hair, which seems to show that at its best the Siberian
climate was much more severe than that of Southern
Asia now is.

Remains of the rhinoceros, buffalo, and other large-
boned animals of southern latitudes are also found, to-
gether with the bones of beasts like the bear, elk, and
musk ox, which are still mainly confined to the cold
north. It is after the rains and floods of spring that
the mammoth "finds" are made. Sections of the clay
banks forming the subsoil of the tundra are uncovered,

452

ISLANDS OF FOSSIL IVORY.

and portions of the shingly and sandy strata along the course of the rivers are washed away, and the great bones and tusks of the mammoth are left projecting through the freshly-washed earth, in the spot where some prehistoric flood had stranded them. It is supposed that the tundra was not actually the haunt of these hairy antediluvian monsters; that in fact in the days when they trampled the forests with their heavy steps, the tundra formed part of the ocean bed, and that it has been gradually formed by the receding of the sea and the washing down of soil by the Siberian rivers—a process which may still be seen in operation along the whole coast from the Kara Sea to Behring Strait.

However that may be, these remains are of extreme antiquity, and the wonderful thing is that not only are the bones of these extinct animals found embedded in the soil, but also portions of the hide and hair, and even the flesh in such a state of preservation that dogs have partaken of it. The explanation of this is that, as has already been stated, the soil in the northern parts of Siberia is hard frozen, even in the heat of summer, from a little way below the surface to an unknown depth; and specimens of earlier animal life of the region have thus been preserved for ages by the action of frost, to the edification of men of science, and the profit of the Cos-sack and Yakut ivory-seekers. The largest accumulations of mammoth bones have been found in the New Siberia or Liakhov Islands, lying to the north of the continent, between Cape Taimyr and the mouth of the Kolima.

One of these islands is said to be actually composed of skulls, ribs, and tusks, including, in addition to the remains of the animals already mentioned, bones

SIBERIAN FUR-TRAPPERS.

453

of horses, oxen, and sheep. For nearly a century and a
half the fur-hunters have been in the habit of resorting
to these islands from the mainland and bringing away
sledge-loads of the "fossil ivory;" and the store seems
as far as ever from being exhausted. It is said that the
sea, after long-continued storms from the east, washes up
a fresh supply of the bones from some hidden store in
its bed to replace what has been carried away. It is
even doubtful whether these most remote of Asiatic
territories should be regarded as solid land, or as a
crystallization of Siberian history. Sections of cliffs
have been exposed, consisting of alternate layers of sand,
and ice, and mammoth bones, and fossilized wood, and
trunks of trees and other brushwood,—forming some-
thing between an island, a lumber raft, a museum of
natural history, and a stranded iceberg.

Excursions after mammoth tusk and rhinoceros horn
are, of course, only incidental events in the fur-hunter's
life. The real business of the Cossack and native trappers
is the setting of snares and traps for the many valuable
fur animals that frequent the forests, the plains, and the
rivers of Northern Siberia—chief among these being the
sable, the stone marten, the ermine, the gray squirrel,
the black, silver, and blue fox, the wolverine, the beaver,
and the otter. Thousands of traps are annually baited
along the streams and in the localities most frequented
by the furry game, and long journeys are made to visit
these and bring home the spoils. Yassak is still paid to
government in the shape of sable and other skins by
outlying tribes, and the surplus furs are eagerly bought
up by the Russian merchants and agents from Yakutsk,
Yeniseisk, and other Siberian towns.

454

A REINDEER BATTUE.

When the summer is sufficiently far advanced for the ground to become consolidated, elk and reindeer hunting is in vogue on the tundra. After drought, a thin crust of hard earth is formed by the heat on the surface of the morasses, and over this the reindeer can make their way lightly and safely when changing pastures or fleeing from the hunters, who, if not accustomed to cross these quaking bogs, would be in imminent danger of slipping through into the miry gulf beneath.

A favourite time for attacking a herd is when it is crossing a stream. This has been described as a most exciting and even dangerous sport; and it is generally followed in autumn, when the deer have acquired their warm winter coats of fur, and begin to migrate in herds of many thousands from the plains to the shelter of the forests. When the herd is fairly in the water, the hunters break cover, and the most experienced dash into the stream in light canoes and attack the deer with short spears, while the rest of the party keep guard on the shore to despatch any wounded animals that may struggle to the bank. It is no easy task, according to Baron von Wrangell, who has been a witness of these scenes, to keep the frail craft afloat among the dense crowd of swimming deer, more especially as the males attack the boat with horns, teeth, and hind legs, while the females try to capsize it with their fore feet. Yet accidents rarely occur; and when, as often happens, the herd is rendered helpless by the antlers becoming entangled together, a good hunter may kill a hundred or more in less than half an hour. The spectacle on these occasions is indescribably wild and strange. "The throng of thousands of swimming reindeer, the sound

REINDEER AND DOG TEAMS.

455

produced by the striking together of their antlers, the
swift canoes dashing in among them, the terror of the
frightened animals, the danger of the huntsmen, the
shouts of warning advice or applause of their friends, the
blood-stained water, and the surroundings of the scene,
form a whole which none can picture to himself without
having witnessed it."

With the nomad of the tundra the tame reindeer
is, if possible, a more priceless possession than with
the Lapp and Samoyede of the province of Archangel.
Without its aid he could not support his wandering life
over these lonely prairies and desert hills. While the
snow lies on the ground, it bears him from place to place
in his light sledge. In summer his whole care is to
drive his herd where they will find fresh and abundant
pasture. The milk of the reindeer is an important part
of the food of his family; and its skin hangs at the
entrance of his tent or is spread on his couch. The
owner of the largest flock of reindeer would never
dream of killing one for his subsistence, unless driven
to the direst straits by famine. But often a Tungus
or Tchuktchi loses his herd from disease, or a whole
tribe are stripped of their wealth by their enemies,
and then they have to settle down in some suitable
locality for fishing and hunting, and give up their roving
unfettered mode of life along with their dearly-prized
"reins." They descend from the rank of "reindeer" to
that of "dog" Tunguses or Tchuktchis; the shaggy wolf-
like hound of these latitudes becoming the beast of
burden on journeys and the domestic pet.

The custom of sledging with dogs is believed to be of
comparatively recent growth in Northern Siberia, and is

456

NATIVE RACES.

supposed to have been borrowed from the Kamschadales.
It is one of the marks of propinquity to the Eskimo
tribes of North America, to whom the natives of the
eastern extremity of Asiatic Russia approach more closely
in physical type, habits, and dress the nearer we draw to
Behring Strait and the Aleutian Archipelago, just as in
the opposite direction the Samoyedes and Lapps gradually
blend into the Finns and Norwegians, whom they adjoin
to the westward. As we move eastward, therefore,
through these dreary Arctic lands, not only do we pass
into regions colder and more remote, but we proceed from
semi-civilization to barbarism and to complete savagery,
and from corrupted Christianity to absolute heathenism.

The native races dwelling on the shores of the Arctic
Ocean are of different stocks, speak a variety of languages,
and present many sharp points of contrast. But the
stamp of the long Polar winter is upon them all. Ostiak,
Voghul, Samoyede, Yakut, Yukahir, Tungus, Tchuktchi,
Koriak, Lamut, and Kamschadale, all seem to have had
their features blunted and cramped, and their very
stature, like that of the dwarf willows and poplars of the
tundra, contracted by the extreme cold. Exposure to a
hot unsettling sun during the summer, alternating with
confinement in their dark smoky wigwams during the
months of winter, has probably given them their sallow
complexion. The face, as a rule, is broad, with high
cheek-bones and small black eyes. Their hair is black,
coarse, straight, and scanty, and whiskers and beard are
thin and often entirely wanting. Judging by their
expressionless faces, one would say that the frost had
benumbed their mental faculties; and no doubt the
hard necessities of their life have made it almost im-

OUTDOOR SPORTS AND WIGWAM INTERIORS. 457

possible for them to rise above their present wretched condition.

But in their hunting and fishing expeditions they give token of extraordinary astuteness and readiness of resort, which is partly instinctive and partly acquired by long training. Though not so robust as the Russian, the Samoyede or Tchuktchi often displays a vigour and an activity which none would dream of, looking at his clumsy shape and diminutive stature. A favourite game among the latter tribe is the foot race; and visitors who have been present at their festivals tell of the competitors in these trials of speed, swaddled in clothes until they looked like round balls of fur, covering the ground with incredible ease and swiftness, and running a distance of seven or eight miles without showing signs of fatigue.

Within doors, only the lightest garments are worn; often the occupants of the hut go entirely naked, even when the temperature outside is such that they do not venture into the open air unless protected by the thickest furs. The smoke and filth and foul odours of these miserable dwellings are indescribable. Dirt among these people is supposed to be a protection against the cold; and it would be hard to say which of the Siberian tribes are most repulsively filthy in their habits. Yet the occupants of these fetid dens do not appear to suffer inconvenience or loss of health by breathing an atmosphere that would sicken and almost suffocate an inhabitant of Europe in half an hour; and children of the tenderest years are to be seen running out from the steaming hut and rolling in the snow in a temperature of forty or fifty degrees below zero, and showing no signs of having "caught cold." Doubtless, however,

458

MEN OF IRON.

many die from the sudden changes of climate and other
hardships in their lot; and their contempt of sanitary
laws is punished by the fearful epidemics that now
and again sweep away thousands of these fast-dwindling
races.

Only the strong and active are able to continue the
struggle for existence; and the law of the "survival of
the fittest" is carried out with extraordinary rigour.
The stories told of the privations which an inhabitant of
the tundra can support without showing signs of exhaus-
tion sound almost fabulous. The Yakuts are known,
even among the tribes of Northern Siberia, as "iron
men." So thoroughly have they become inured to cold
and exposure that their skins seem almost impervious to
the icy blasts that would in a few minutes chill the in-
habitant of a more temperate clime to the bone. When
travelling from place to place, says Von Wrangell, "a
Yakut wears only his usual indoor clothing, and at night
spreads a horse-cloth on the snow, which, with a saddle
for a pillow, forms the whole of his bedding; his only
covering is the fur jacket which he has worn during the
day, and which he pulls off and puts over his back and
shoulders, while the front of his body has hardly any
covering and is turned to the blazing fire. When he has
lain for some time in this way, and feels so warm that
he is nearly perspiring, he stops up his nose and ears
with little bits of fur, and covers his face so as to leave
an exceedingly small aperture for breathing; and this is
all that he requires in the most intense cold not to be
frozen during sleep. I have seen Yakuts in the severe
cold of this country, and when the fire had long been
extinguished, and the light jacket had slipped off their

KEENNESS OF VISION.

459

shoulders, sleeping quietly, completely exposed to the
heavens, with scarcely any clothing on, and their bodies
covered with a thick coat of rime."

As an instance of the extraordinary keenness of vision
possessed by this people, M. von Anjou relates that during
his explorations in the neighbourhood of the Lena and
Indigirka rivers in 1822, a middle-aged Yakut assured
him, pointing to the planet Jupiter, that he had several
times seen that blue star swallow up another very small
star and afterwards send it forth again. Doubtful as it
may appear that a Siberian can perceive with the naked
eye the movements of Jupiter's satellites, which are only
made visible to others through a powerful telescope, it is
certain that their acuteness of sight and their retentive-
ness of memory enable them to ascertain their where-
abouts and accurately guide a way through the most
featureless wastes; and this power of vision also makes
credible the statement that the islands lying to the
north of Siberia were known by sight to the inhabitants
of the mainland long before they were visited by civil-
ized discoverers.

The Siberian tribes are either remnants of races the
main bodies of which have moved southward and west-
ward to more favoured climes, or the fragments of
people who have been driven northward and eastward—
forced "out into the cold" by the pressure of more
powerful and warlike nations. It would be hard to say
which of these experiences has been the fate of the
Yakuts, their history consisting only of a few misty
traditions; and Latham's profound conjecture that "there
was, some time or other, some one on the parts about the
Lena who called some one Yakut," does not help us much,

460

YAKUT DOMESTIC ECONOMY.

however far it may be regarded as confirming his other impression, that the Tungus derive their name from "donki," meaning "a man."

The Yakut language proves them to be a people of Turkish race; and they are the most northerly branch of that widely-spread stem, being scattered over a vast extent of territory, from the eastern tributaries of the Yenisei to the neighbourhood of the Kolima, and from the Polar Sea to the upper streams of the Lena. It is chiefly on the latter river, however, that they are settled. They are a pastoral people, but are seldom, properly speaking, nomads. Some of them indeed are remarkably well-to-do, possessing large flocks of cattle and horses, and the most highly-developed society could not show themselves more fond of money or more litigious. Cattle-rearing and horse-breeding are varied by fur-trapping, fishing, and indulgence in the excitement of the chase. Their habitations are of two kinds—one for the summer weather, and the other suited for winter use. The former is called the *uross*, and is a light circular tent formed of poles covered with strips of birch bark, softened by boiling, and sewn together, with the bright silvery skin outside. These can be taken down and moved from place to place as the tribe shifts in search of better pasturage, fishing, and hunting; but on the approach of winter each family returns to the shelter of its *yurta*, or permanent dwelling—a log-built, pyramid-shaped cabin, thickly covered outside with branches, grass, and mud, with a small aperture for the admission of light. Formerly these windows were closed by plates of ice, but these have gradually been giving way to sheets of oiled paper or fish membrane; and such has been the

SIBERIAN SAMOYEDES.

461

march of progress among the Yakuts that yurtas may
now be found which possess the luxury of glass.

In other respects the Yakuts are beginning to imitate
the example of their more civilized Russian masters.
Fish, horseflesh, larchbark broth, sour cow's milk, mare's
milk, and "Yakut butter"—a kind of cheese or curd
with a sourish taste—are still the main articles of diet;
fat, in the solid or liquid form, and fresh or rancid, is
their great delicacy; and kumyss, or fermented mare's
milk, still forms their chief beverage, and is drunk lit-
erally by the pailful. But a taste for less coarse viands,
and especially for bread, is beginning to spread; and
there is a likelihood that a part of the Yakut nation
will settle down as cultivators of the soil.

To the west and north-west of the Yakut country, on
the lower parts of the Obi and Yenisei, and along the
coasts of the Kara Sea and the Polar Ocean as far as
the Khatanga River, is the wide area over which are
thinly sprinkled Samoyede tribes, and kindred Ostiaks,
Voghuls, Youraks, and other races of Finnish origin.
Some description of the appearance and ways of life of
the Samoyedes in the government of Archangel has been
given in a previous chapter. The Siberian branches of
the race differ only from those of Europe in being per-
haps a few degrees more barbarous, ignorant, and
wretched. Like their kinsmen west of the Urals, the
Samoyedes of the Obi and Yenisei are keepers of rein-
deer. Carrying with them their light tents of skin, they
range during the season over an enormous extent of
ground; and Captain Markham in 1879 found a number
of families who had wintered in Novaya Zemlia.

The Ostiaks are for the most part a fisher folk, taller in

462

OSTIAKS AND VOGHULS.

stature and a step higher in civilization than the dwarf-
ish Samoyedes. Like the Yakuts, they have summer
and winter cabins—the former of birch-bark and the
latter of timber. Their district lies partly within the
region of forest; and when the frost has bound up the
rivers, and the first snows have fallen, the Ostiak trappers
make long excursions on snow-shoes in search of fox,
sable, and squirrel, the pelts of which they know well
how to barter at a good figure in the markets of Berezov
and other fur emporiums. The Voghuls dwell wholly
within the limits of the deep woods, and they are almost
to a man foresters, fur-trappers, and hunters. Their
little villages consist of six or seven cabins, huddled
close together on the bank of some stream that flows for
scores of miles under the shadow of the sombre pine-
branches before the next scanty signs of human occupa-
tion are met with. In the hunting season, the owners
of these huts are seldom to be found at home. They
are far away on solitary journeys scouring the wooded
and boggy wildernesses around them, with gun or bow
on shoulder, looking for the tracks of elk, reindeer, and
bear, or visiting the traps they have baited for the marten
and silver fox.

The time will no doubt come when these magnificent
forests, which stretch in a broad belt across the whole
length of Siberia, and follow the valleys of the rivers
and the southern slopes of the mountain ranges almost
to the borders of the Icy Sea, will no longer stand cum-
bering the ground, useful only as hunting-grounds for a
few thousands of half-savage fur-trappers. The fine
timber of these woods is a rich and undeveloped source
of wealth, which will be turned to account as soon as

FORESTS OF THE YENISEI.

463

sea communication has been fairly established between
Western Europe and the Gulf of Obi.

In the meantime these almost impenetrable masses of
forest are neither cheerful to the view nor favourable to
the progress of the traveller longing to reach the end of
one of the long Siberian stages. Nordenskiöld, in his voy-
age up the Yenisei, saw rich prairies and hillsides covered
with bright green turf and interspersed with clumps and
thickets, giving the country the aspect of a beautiful
park, carefully kept and watered; and then suddenly the
prospect would be darkened by the ancient forest leaning
over the river-bank, and stretching away without break
or limit that the eye could discover. "The forest," he
says, "consisted mainly of pines already, from a point
north of the Polar Circle, often of the most colossal
dimensions, but in such cases many times gray and half
withered with age. Between these the ground was so
covered with fallen branching stems, some of them fresh,
others half rotten or wholly changed into mould, held
together only by the bark, that one could only force a
way with difficulty, and with the danger of breaking his
legs in the thicket of logs. Besides, the fallen stems
were everywhere covered, many times even concealed, by
an uncommonly luxuriant moss vegetation, while lichens
occurred only very sparingly, in consequence of which
the pines wanted the shaggy covering common in Sweden,
and the bark of the birches, which were visible here and
there among the pines, had an uncommon blinding white-
ness. When one goes into this unvaried forest a little
way from the river, he ought to see that he has a correct
knowledge of the points of the compass; a mistake
here might carry him in a direction where for a hundred,

464

ORTHODOXY IN THE TUNDRA.

perhaps two hundred leagues, there is no chance of meeting with an inhabited place."

The tribes from the Urals to the Lena, whether Yakut shepherds or Ostiak fishers, Samoyedes of the tundra or Voghuls of the forest, are officially supposed to be converted to Christianity; and churches have been built and priests appointed to retain these wandering and scattered flocks in the fold. It would be rash to say that they are less superstitious now than in the days of undiluted paganism. A furtive worship is paid to the old deities, even where the saint days and church fasts are most rigidly observed; and stories are even told of priests getting themselves "doctored" by a native magician before daring to set out on a journey. Still the new faith is no doubt slowly exerting a beneficial influence on the morals and manners of the races brought in contact with it.

In the parts beyond the Lena, however, and throughout that enormous territory bordering on the Pacific, and known as the Maritime Province, the Greek Orthodox Church has scarcely even a nominal hold on the beliefs of the native races. At the *simovies* or winter residences of the Cossack and Russian traders dotted along the courses of the rivers and the sea-coast, in the *ostrogs*, or military posts for the collection of tribute and preservation of order, or around the penal settlements that are sprinkled over the savage wastes of Eastern Siberia, a devout profession of Christianity is made. The harbours on the Pacific shore—the line of naval stations, trading-ports, and places of call for whaling-ships, which extends from Petropaulovsk in Kamschatka to Vladivostock on the frontier of Corea—boast not only of hand-

SHAMANISM.

465

some churches, but of club-houses, promenades, and other
appurtenances of civilization, and look hopefully forward
to the time when they will rival in wealth and energy
the commercial cities of California, Oregon, and British
Columbia. But the indigenous peoples cling to their
ancient Shamanist faith, and prefer the unfettered life
of their ancestors, the privilege of roving at will over
their wilderness of bog, rock, and forest, to being "im-
proved out of existence."

Shamanism is one of the most primitive forms of
religious belief, and its rites are probably not greatly
changed from those practised by the wild forefathers
of the Western nations before they left their original
homes, before the influence of Buddhism, Mohammedan-
ism, and other more highly organized creeds, had begun
to penetrate into Central and Northern Asia. It pos-
sesses almost no abstract ideas or dogmas, and boasts of
few outward symbols of worship in the shape of idols,
altars, or temples. It might be resolved into a belief
in magic—in the malign influence of demons that must
be propitiated or baffled by wild dancings, grimacings,
drumming, and conjuring; an art only known to the
initiated priests or shamans, to whom resort is made
before any important action is taken, or when misfortune
has befallen an individual or a tribe.

Nothing can exceed the frenzied gestures of these pro-
fessors of the black art as they wrestle with the powers
of darkness. The shamans are only admitted into the
order after long vigils and painful ordeals; and by the
common herd they are looked upon with profound awe, as
something more than men, and partaking of the powers
and attributes of the mysterious spirits with whom they

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30

466

SHAMAN INCANTATIONS.

are in communication. Many of them, no doubt, are
self-conscious impostors, who maintain the ascendency
over their dupes by the practice of tricks of jugglery and
impudent lying. This, however, does not explain the
full influence or behaviour of the shamans. They are
deceived as well as deceivers. The harsh and gloomy
aspects of nature with which they are familiar, and the
melancholy music of the great lonely rivers rushing
between their "palisades of pine-trees," have darkened
their imaginations. The cruel needs and sufferings of
their daily life have impressed on them the idea that the
malevolent powers have the ruling of the world; and
their fasts, their midnight incantations, and the use of
narcotics and stimulants, keep their nerves strung to a
pitch of excitement akin to madness, in which they are
subject to the wildest delusions and most extravagant
actions. "Whenever I have seen them operate," says M.
de Matiuschkin, "they have left me with a long-continued
and gloomy impression. The wild look, the blood-shot
eyes, the labouring breath, the convulsive utterance, the
seemingly involuntary distortion of the face and the
whole body, the streaming hair, even the hollow
sound of the magic drum, all contributed to the effect;
and I can well understand that the whole would ap-
pear to the uncivilized spectator as the work of evil
spirits."

The Shamanist tribes that wander over the wastes of
Eastern Siberia belong mostly to the Tungus race—a
family of peoples closely allied to the Mongols. They
occupy an enormous range of country—from the Great
Wall of China to Behring Strait, and westward to the
neighbourhood of the Yenisei; but except the Mantchus

"REINDEER" AND "DOG" TUNGUS.

467

are to be accounted as part of this stem, they are no-
where formidable in numbers or power. In Siberia they
can hardly be said to have a settled home. Their occu-
pation varies with the locality in which they are placed.
The Lamuts of the Sea of Okotsk are fishers, and the
Tchuktchis near the East Cape carry on an active transit
trade in furs and European articles with the inhabitants
of the North American continent. The Tungus proper
are divided, according to the districts they occupy, and
their favourite draught animals, into the "horse," the
"reindeer," and the "dog" sections. But everywhere
they are a roving race, wandering sometimes in large
companies, and sometimes in single families, and ex-
tracting more pleasure from their existence than in the
circumstances seems possible. Indeed, travellers have
spoken of the nomadizing Tungus, and of the Yukahir,
an allied tribe lying farther to the northward, now
sadly reduced by disease and wars with the Tchuktchis,
as among the most contented, careless, and happy set
of people they ever met.

The great mass of territory east of the Lena which
these races scour on their hunting excursions or in their
search for forage differs greatly from the tundra lands
in the possession of the Yakuts and Samoyedes. A
long mountain chain—the Stanovoi range—thrown off
from the Altai traverses the country to the neighbour-
hood of Behring Strait. The region has been very im-
perfectly explored, and a scientific expedition recently
discovered that part, at least, of a range of mountains
known as the Yablonoi had no existence, its place being
occupied by a tableland of moderate elevation.

The general features of Eastern Siberia are known to

468

THE "NORTH POLE OF COLD."

be in strong contrast to those of the western plains. Almost everywhere it is broken and intersected by hilly ridges. There are, of course, extensive morasses and level wastes of stones and sand, but at intervals, on the water-sheds between the main streams flowing to the Polar Ocean or the Pacific, the steep slopes of the subsidiary ranges of the Stanovoi Kherbet have to be ascended—the summits in some places covered with snow all the year round. The most notable of these perhaps is the Verkhoiansk Mountains, which separate the valley of the Lena from that of the Iana, and mark the farthest limit of the fir-tree, and where, according to meteorologists, is found the "North Pole of cold" in the Old World. The southern sides of these ranges are generally thickly covered with forest and brushwood, while the other slopes, swept by the icy blasts from the north, are bare, and the courses of the streams flowing between the rocky ridges are bordered by deep marshes.

In these rough places sledging is often impracticable, and the journey is made on horseback. The actual suffering endured on these stages, says a traveller (Baron von Wrangell) well qualified to bear testimony, is such as cannot be imagined by those who have not experienced it. Covered from head to foot in stiff and cumbrous furs weighing thirty or forty pounds, one cannot move; and under the thick fur hood, fastened to the bear-skin collar, and covering the whole face, a little of the external air can only be drawn in, as it were, by stealth, and so keenly cold is the atmosphere that it causes a peculiar and painful sensation to the throat and lungs. The distances from one halting-place to the next occupy about ten hours, and all this time the traveller must continue

BELOW ZERO IN THE TUNDRA.

469

on horseback, as it is impossible, in his heavy, cumbrous
dress, to wade through the snow. The horses suffer as
much as the riders, for, in addition to the general effects
of the cold, they are tormented by ice forming in their
nostrils and stopping their breathing. When they indi-
cate this by a distressed snort and a convulsive shaking
of their head, the drivers relieve them by taking out
the pieces of ice to save them from being suffocated.
When the icy ground is not covered with snow, their
hoofs often burst from the effect of the cold. The
caravan is always surrounded by a thick cloud of vapour.
It is not only living bodies that produce this effect; even
the snow smokes! These evaporation are instantly
changed into millions of needles of ice, which fill the air,
and cause a constant slight noise resembling the sound
of tearing satin or thick silk. Even the reindeer seeks
the forest to protect himself from the intensity of the
cold. In the tundra, where there is no shelter to be
found, the whole herd crowd together as closely as
possible to gain a little warmth from each other, and
may be seen standing thus quite motionless. Only the
dark bird of winter—the raven—still cleaves the icy air
with slow and heavy wing, leaving behind him a long
line of thin vapour marking the track of his solitary
flight. The influence of the cold extends even to in-
animate nature. The thickest trunks of trees are rent
asunder with a loud sound, which in these deserts falls
on the ear like a signal-gun at sea; large masses of rock
are torn from their ancient sites; the ground in the
tundras and in the rocky valleys cracks and forms wide
yawning fissures, from which the waters that were
beneath the surface rise, giving off a cloud of vapour,

470

THE POLAR NIGHT.

and become immediately changed into ice. The effect
of this degree of cold extends even beyond the earth:
the beauty of the deep-blue Polar sky, so often and so
justly praised, disappears in the dense atmosphere which
the intensity of cold produces; the stars still glisten in
the firmament, but their brilliancy is dimmed.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE PACIFIC SHORES.

BAY
EYOND the Kolima and Anadir rivers is a
region more desolate and savage than any
we have yet visited. The peninsula which
stretches in a series of hilly ridges towards
Behring Strait, where it is separated by only fifty miles
of sea from the American continent, is the most remote
corner of the Russian Empire, and it is the nook where
the Czar's authority is the weakest. In Siberia, at least,
the rule does not hold good that " distance lends enchant-
ment to the view."

Russian and Cossack settlers are
sparsely scattered in the Tungus country, but in the land
of the Tchuktchis they scarcely venture to come at all.

The Tchuktchis have been able to maintain them-
selves in practical independence; the Autocrat of Russia
claims that the land is his, but he cannot, except at the
cost of a military expedition, collect the tribute of the
natives. This redoubtable people are, for the most part,
left unmolested by their nominal masters, and neither
party, perhaps, has cause to regret the arrangement that
keeps them separate. In the Tchuktchi Peninsula the
conditions of the Siberian climate reach the maximum of
severity. Partly from the more northerly position of

472

A TRIBE WITH AN ILL NAME.

the territory and the high elevation of the surface, and partly from its position between two ice-encumbered seas, the winters are longer and colder, and the summers shorter and more interrupted by violent snow and sand storms and thick cold fogs, than elsewhere. Hardly a month of decently mild weather can be counted upon in the year. "Before the 20th of July," says Billings, "there is no symptom of summer; and on the 20th of August winter sets in again." In 1879 the snow covered the ground till the beginning of July; and on the 16th of that month a heavily-laden sledge passed over the ice from the frozen-in *Vega* to the shore. What roots and berries the niggard soil yields are used as food, and the natives, as Nordenskiöld mentions, are fain to use "the green spinach-like contents found in the paunch of the newly-killed reindeer" in lieu of vegetable food.

The Tchuktchis, notwithstanding, are a vigorous people, both in bodily frame and in intellect. Very different estimates have been formed of them by the travellers and voyagers who have visited their encampments. Burney, who accompanied Captain Cook when he anchored off the Tchuktchi country in 1778, considered them "as fine a natural sample of mankind as any on the globe." Cook himself found them civil and obliging, and noticed that their weapons and articles of dress displayed a degree of ingenuity and beauty "surpassing what one might expect in so northern a people." The Russians, and their immediate neighbours the Koriaks and Yukahirs, with whom they were often engaged in desultory warfare, naturally viewed them in quite a different light, regarding them as a folk incorrigible, ferocious, and obstinately rebellious. "They are bad

ANARCHY AND BROTHERLY LOVE.

473

and dangerous,” says a writer of a century ago; “savage,
coarse, proud, refractory, thievish, false, and revengeful.”
But this people seem to have lost their evil qualities
along with their martial spirit. The crew of the *Vega*,
from whose experiences we have the latest impressions of
the Tchuktchis, found them anything but unfriendly.
They were the first natives that had been met with in
coasting the whole northern shore of Siberia, and during
the long winter which the Swedes spent when frozen
in so near to their goal in Behring Strait, the tribe
were very helpful and attentive in supplying the voy-
agers with game and fish. The Tchuktchi country
seems to be the true home of “liberty, equality, and fra-
ternity.” None among them was of more authority
than his neighbours; yet among this “literally anarchic
and godless crew” there was shown “the greatest pos-
sible hospitality and kindness,” both towards the stran-
gers and each other.

Traces of the neighbourhood of America, and of the
visits of the United States whalers who hunt the fur-
seal in these seas, were observable in the furnishings of
their tents and their ornaments and weapons. In one
tent a large cast-iron was observed hanging over the fire;
and the needles, knives, axes, bright-coloured linen and
woollen shirts, and other articles of foreign manufacture
found among them, had all come from American sources.
So also had the brandy and tobacco, of which the tribe
are inordinately fond. While not a Russian word was
spoken, a boy was found who could count correctly up
to ten in English. The Tchuktchi country, as has been
hinted, has from time immemorial been a place of barter
for the products of the lands lying to the east of Behring

474 BARTER BETWEEN TWO CONTINENTS.

Strait. Many of the finest beaver and otter skins that reach the markets of Irbit or Kiachta, and are thence forwarded to Europe or China, have been trapped in the neighbourhood of the Yukon or other Alaskan rivers, and passed on to the Tchuktchis, and thence from hand to hand across the measureless deserts of Eastern Siberia. The island of Ilir, in Behring Strait, is the spot where the Tchuktchis and the Eskimos of North-west America exchange their wares; but even this is only an intermediate station, for, according to the Russian traveller Dittmar, a beaver skin is sometimes exchanged for a single leaf of tobacco—brought, perhaps, from the Caucasus—at the most remote markets in Polar America. But this traffic will probably be diverted into other channels by the purchase of Russian America—a territory of nearly six hundred thousand square miles—by the United States.

These sea trips are made in *baidars*—boats of whale or seal skin stretched on a frame, strongly resembling the skiffs used by the Greenland and other tribes of Eskimos. In another direction visits have, it is believed, been made by this people to Polar lands lying to the northward of the Tchuktchi Peninsula, and the existence of which was first known through the researches of Kellett and Long. On charts of the world, on Mercator's Projection, this hyperborean country has, as Wrangell Land or Kellett Land, made an imposing appearance, stretching, a great undefined blotch, from the neighbourhood of the Siberian coast almost to the Pole. In point of fact nothing was known of it beyond the report that its highlands had been sighted on the horizon by the enterprising voyagers who had penetrated into

THE "JEANNETTE" EXPEDITION.

475

these icy seas. It was believed that it would be found
to have inhabitants; that the lost tribes of Tchuwanzes
and Omoki, that had been driven from the mainland by
the warlike Tchuktchis, had found an asylum on this
remote shore; and that here was the original home of
the musk-ox.

Recent Arctic expeditions have dissipated these fanci-
ful notions. The exploring ship *Jeannette*, sent out to
explore this part of the Arctic regions by the *New
York Herald* in the autumn of 1879, was caught in
the ice of the Polar Sea, and after drifting with the
pack for two seasons, and passing several desolate Arctic
islands, was nipped in the summer of 1881 to the north-
east of New Siberia. Her crew, abandoning her in three
boats, made for the mouths of the Lena, which, after
many weeks of terrible sufferings, two of the boats' com-
panies reached in safety; only, however, to lose them-
selves—in the case of some hopelessly and finally—in
the waste tundra.

Meanwhile relief expeditions had been sent from the
Pacific, who landed on Wrangell Land, and even pro-
claimed it United States territory. It is no great Arctic
continent and pathway to the Pole, only a barren island
of moderate size. It has no inhabitants of greater con-
sequence than the white bears.

On the Anadir river and in the peninsula of Kam-
schatka we come among races—the Koriaks and the
Kamschadales—who are thought to approach even closer
than the Tchuktchis to the Greenlanders in habits and
appearance, and even in language. The long string of
islands that stretch in a semicircle between the penin-
sulas of Alaska and Kamschatka has probably served as

476

A FOGGY ARCHIPELAGO.

a "train" by which Eskimo blood and customs have
been conveyed from America to Asia. With Alaska
itself this Aleutian archipelago has now passed over to
the great American Republic, which may possibly dis-
cover some means of turning them to better purpose
than Russia has done. Dreary and ghostly islands these
appear in the records of the voyagers who have dropped
anchor off their rocky shores, or passed them on the
way northward to Behring Strait, shrouded generally
in thick mists that hid or distorted their outlines, and
looking like

"The haunt of seals and orcs, and sea-mews' ling,

but not spots that human beings would choose for their
residence.

A scanty population, however, does occupy the larger
islands of this chill, foggy archipelago; and the group
is well stocked with fur animals and visited by myriads
of clamorous sea-fowl, and herds of seal and
walrus, whose skins and flesh supply the natives with
clothing and food. Many of the islands are unin-
habited, and this is also the case with an island named
after the discoverer of the group lying detached from
the Aleutian chain, near the coast of Kamschatka. It
was at Behring Island that the bold Danish navigator,
sent out by Peter the Great to emulate the Spanish,
Dutch, Portuguese, and English seamen in their renown
as discoverers of new lands, was wrecked on his second
voyage, after he had visited the strait that separates
Asia from America, and with the greater part of his crew
perished miserably of cold and hunger. A sandy hollow
in the barren rock was all the shelter that the explorer

THE FATE OF BEHRING.

477

had in his last moments from the cold damp mists and
piercing northern gales. He may be said to have been
buried alive, for when the sides of the pit fell in and
covered the lower part of the body, he prayed his men
not to remove the sand, as it helped to preserve warmth;
and so, as if he had been some gallant ship hopelessly
stranded on a quicksand, the loose soil "silted" around
and engulfed him almost before his dying eyes closed
on the wild sky and stormy sea which he had been
among the first to brave.

A monument to Behring has been erected at Petro-
paulovsk, the chief Russian settlement in the peninsula
of Kamschatka, and near it is a memorial of another
great navigator, the French La Pérouse, who traced the
shores of the Gulf of Tartary and the adjacent islands,
and afterwards, with his men, met a lonely and mys-
terious death on an island in the wide Pacific.

At Petropaulovsk, too, is buried Captain Clarke, the
companion of Cook in his last voyage of discovery.
Petropaulovsk has lost much of its importance since the
chief naval station of Russia in the Pacific was removed
to the mouth of the Amoor. It has still, however, some
three thousand inhabitants, which, in Eastern Siberia,
raises it to the rank of a great centre of population. It
was founded by the Cossacks in 1740, and first bore
the name of Avatcha, from the stream that here falls
into the bay. The chief event in its annals is the ill-
advised attempt of the French and British squadrons
to demolish the fortress during the Crimean War. The
inhabitants are naturally proud of having foiled the
attack of the two great sea Powers, and it is their
custom, on the anniversary of the engagement, to march

478

PETROPAULOVSK.

in procession "round the town and over the hill from
which the storming party were thrown, chanting hymns
of joy and praise for the victory." The Bay of Avatcha
is a magnificent sheet of water, capable, it is said, of
accommodating the united fleets of all the nations of the
world. It is surrounded by grand and lofty mountain
outlines, while a rich belt of luxuriant vegetation skirts
the bay, struggles up the branching valleys, and sur-
rounds the red-roofed log cabins of the village.

Petropaulovsk is in latitude only a little distance north
of London, and the peninsula of Kamschatka lies within
much the same degrees of latitude as the British Islands,
while its area is pretty nearly the same as that of En-
gland and Scotland. On the other hand, its population
—native and Russian—has been put down, on the most
liberal estimate, at some twenty thousand souls, or one
for each four square miles of territory. Early last
century, it is believed, the number of Koriaks and
Kamschadales inhabiting the peninsula was not short
of one hundred thousand. Long and bloody quarrels
with the Russians and with each other, and the diseases
and vices introduced along with Cossack civilization,
have thinned away these people till barely a twentieth
of their number remain; and these are not in a much
higher condition, morally or physically, than when, in
1650, the vessel of the Cossack Alexeief, Deshnef's
companion in the celebrated voyage from the mouth of
the Kolima round the East Cape to the mouth of the
Anadir, was cast ashore on this inhospitable coast, and
the unfortunate crew were massacred by the dwellers
on the Kamschatka river.

Of late years the miserable remnant of these races

KAMSCHATKAN AMENITIES.

479

have mainly supported themselves by fishing, though some of them possess reindeer, and engage in fur-hunting, disposing the skins to the Russian agents at Petropaulovsk, Nishni Kamschatka, and Penjinsk. As in habits and manner of life they differ only for the worse from other Siberian tribes already described, we may be excused from penetrating into the interior of their half subterranean wigwams, and pursuing too curious inquiries into their domestic arrangements, in an atmosphere so highly impregnated with smoke and the odour of train-oil.

Kamschatka, in the opinion of many of the travellers who have paid it a flying visit, is fitted to support a much larger population than it now possesses. There are many sheltered places along its coasts where there are a fine growth of forest trees, and meadows rank with nourishing grasses. The valley of Kamschatka river, in its upper portion especially, contains a large extent of fertile land, and crops of barley, rye, and oats, with the potato and several hardy species of vegetables, have been raised.

These visitors have for the most part, however, only seen the peninsula during the warm period of the year, when for a brief space it dons a summer dress. Were they compelled to pass a few consecutive winters in Kamschatka, and personally make the experiment of growing corn on a soil where, in addition to the shortness of the summer, blights, frosts, and vermin combine to make the chance of reaping a harvest very problematical, they would probably see cause to change their minds as to the resources of the country.

There is no room, however, for difference of opinion as to the scenery, which vies in grandeur with that

480

VOLCANOES AND GLACIERS.

of the Caucasus, and has some elements of stern sublimity which can hardly be paralleled in any other part of the world. The peninsula is traversed throughout its whole length by a range of lofty volcanic mountains, which gradually diminish in height towards the north, until they merge into the bare and dreary steppes between the Anadir and Penjinsk rivers, and join the long Stanovoi chain and the main mountain system of Eastern Siberia. In the south, the summits of the range vie in height with the most elevated peaks of the Swiss Alps, and embrace no fewer than twenty-one volcanic cones, mostly active. A short distance north of Petropaulovsk the main range throws off a branch towards the north-east, which encloses the southern side of the basin of the Kamschatka river; and it is in this short subsidiary chain that the grandest and loftiest summits of the Kamschatkan Alps occur, including several volcanoes, and culminating in the smoke-capped cone of Kliuchevsk, 15,762 feet high, over against which, guarding the northern side of the valley of the Kamschatka river, is the rival volcanic peak of Shivelutch. No member of the Alpine Club has yet bethought himself of scaling the shining sides of these giants; and it will be long before a "Cook's tourist" can gaze, from the blackened fields of scoriæ scattered round the mouths of the craters where frost and fire maintain their drawn battle, on the vast and lonely prospect spread beneath. The interior of the peninsula, indeed, is an almost unexplored wonderland of snow-fields, glaciers, and lava-beds, sloping down to the deeply-trenched gorges where cataclysms gleam in the shade of the pine forests, or to deep fiords overhung by precipices.

THE KURILE GROUP.

481

It is on the eastern side that the coast has this bold,
deeply indented character. On the west, towards the
shallow Sea of Okotsk, the mountains are farther from
the shore, which is much more tame and level. From
the southern extremity—Cape Lopatka—the Kurile
Islands stretch in a bold sweep towards Japan, like a
barrier separating these inland waters from the Pacific.

The Kuriles, like the Aleutian group, have lately passed
from the possession of the Czar to another power, having
been ceded to Japan in exchange for the Mikado's claims
to the island of Sagalien. No great sacrifice was im-
plied in this relinquishment, for the islands, notwithstanding that they are in the latitude of France, are
dismally cold, damp, and dreary. The Kuro Siwo—the
"Black Stream," or equatorial current that washes the
shores of Japan, bestowing on that country its mild summer and autumn climate—is deflected eastward by the
coast of Yesso, and the more northern lands derive little
benefit from the warmth which it carries from the
tropics.

On the other hand, meeting with the cold Polar
stream flowing southward, those raw sea-fogs are raised
which wrap about the Kurile Islands like a wet blanket
for a great part of the year, and the coasts are beset
by drift-ice so late in the season as June. The group
is subject to earthquake shocks and other plutonic
disturbances, and marks the line of that volcanic belt
which, starting from the Philippine Islands, passes
through Japan, Kamschatka, and the Aleutian Islands
to the shores of America. A little to the eastward of
the Kuriles, and in the track of the "Kuro Siwo," the
bed of the Pacific sinks to a profound depth, and the

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31

482

A HAIRY PEOPLE.

deepest ocean sounding—five and a quarter English miles
—has been registered not far from Iturup, one of the
most southerly of the archipelago.

Barren as those islands are, or covered with a dense
scrub of dwarf oak and birch, giving shelter only to
foxes, wolves, bears, and some species of marten, the
seas around them are extraordinarily rich in life, and
the shoals of herring and other fish attract innumerable
flocks of birds of different species, including the great
white-tailed sea-eagle, whose nests Captain St. John found
in the stunted fir-trees of Kunashir, the island nearest
to Yesso.

The region, however, boasts a more rare and curious
specimen of natural history in the aboriginal human
inhabitants—the Ainos. Regarding this strange race
we have recently had the testimony of two clever and
charming writers on Japan—Miss Bird and Captain St.
John—who paint on the whole a favourable picture of
these poor “hairy people.” Originally, there is reason
to suppose, possessors of the whole Japanese archipelago,
since the invasion of the present Mongolian inhabitants
of Japan they have been pushed northward, until now
they count only a few scattered thousands, sheltering
themselves in the virgin forests of Yesso and Sagalien,
or in the swampy islands of the Kurile group, whence
no one has hitherto thought it worth while to eject them.

The Aino is not very strong either in physique or
intellect, but he is generally a gentle, inoffensive kind of
 creature, extremely anxious to keep out of sight of the
world if the world will but let him alone. The average
height of the men is not much over five feet, and they are
of spare, light make, with copper-coloured skins, rather

AINOS AND JAPANESE.

483

regular and expressive features having nothing of the
high-cheek-boned Mongol type, and large dark eyes, in
which Miss Bird was able to read a world of melancholy
meaning. Their great peculiarity, however, is their hair,
which is black, long, and in great profusion, the men
having beards and moustaches flowing to their breasts,
and the women great masses of hair flung back on their
necks and shoulders like manes. "The entire body,"
says Captain St. John, "is entirely covered with hair,
very frequently to an extraordinary degree. The chil-
dren are also hairy little things." Great as is this
people's "capacity for sorrow"—stimulated, perhaps, by
their history and their neighbourhood to a peculiarly
melancholy ocean—they are easily pleased, and kindly
disposed and obliging towards strangers, though their
hospitality might be more appreciated if they were more
cleanly in their habits, and if it were not the custom
—at least in Sagalien—to preserve at home the body of
any notable man for a whole year after death, the widow
having the privilege of daily washing the remains, and
lying under the penalty of being herself killed if she
fails to cure her lord properly by the end of the twelve
months.

In a few generations, probably, this "mild - eyed,
melancholy" race will be extinct. Owing to the hard,
exposed life they lead, few survive to the age of fifty;
and the Japanese speak of them as an order of in-
ferior beings, and work them as slaves. The Ainos,
for their part, accept the situation with perfect good
faith; and as their proud masters will not own brother-
hood with the hairy race, they fraternize with the
shaggy brown bears of their forests, numbers of which,

484

SAGALIEN AND ITS USES.

while cubs, are kept as pets in their houses, and are even
suckled by the women. Captain St. John was much
struck by the polite manner in which one of those
aborigines did the honours of his hut, and the English-
man's dog was still more astonished on being also greeted
with a profound obeisance, and formally asked, as a dis-
tinguished guest, to partake of some dried flesh.

In Sagalien the arrival of Russian convict settlers of
the worst class and their military guard is a further
warning that the time of the Ainos is short on the earth.
Hopes are entertained that the soil and climate of this
attenuated island will be found suited to the growth of
barley and other cereals, and it is also known to con-
tain coal and other mineral riches. Possibly something
may be made of Sagalien, which has hitherto been
slightly regarded as a piece of useless lumber; but its
harbourless coasts, enveloped by the cold Polar current
from Behring Sea, its central mountains covered nearly
all the year round with snow, and its dense swamp
forests, do not hold out very enticing prospects to the
intending agriculturist or trader.

The preciousness of Sagalien in the eyes of the Rus-
sians, however, does not lie so much in its coal-beds, its
promise of future harvests, its uses as a penal colony, or
its six hundred miles of length, but in its situation com-
manding the northern entrances to the Sea of Japan, and
guarding, like a huge breakwater, the mouth of the great
river Amoor. The position of Russia on the Pacific has
been industriously strengthened of late years; and the
politicians who believe they can see farther into a mill-
stone than others, think they have detected designs on
the part of the great Northern Power of crushing Japan,

RUSSIA ON THE PACIFIC.

485

appropriating Corea, dominating China, and striking a deadly blow at British commerce in these Eastern seas, if not of snatching at our colonies in Australia and the South Seas and our Indian Empire.

It has been mentioned how Russia, by the year 1861, had completed the "consolidation" of her conquests on the Amoor, and acquired a long strip of coast territory south of the river, projecting southward in the direction where, according to the wisdom of the Russophobists, she means her armies to march. This has been incorporated in Primorsk—the Coast Province—a territory which, from Behring Strait to the Corean frontier, has the inconvenient length of two thousand three hundred miles, while in places it is only thirty miles in breadth.

The seat of the governor of Primorsk was removed from Petropaulovsk to Nikolaevsk, on the northern bank of the Amoor, near its mouth, where a little town of four thousand or five thousand inhabitants has rapidly sprung up. Nikolaevsk makes a rather imposing show from the river—here a mile in width—with its wharves, its churches, and military barracks, its wide streets, sparsely lined with bright-painted timber houses, and public "garden," where a band occasionally discourses music to the fashionable world of the little capital, all set against a dark background of forest.

Along the coast of Lower Primorsk, south of the Amoor, are a number of magnificent harbours, and Vladivostock, near the extreme southern point, is one of the chief stations of the Russian Pacific fleet. This thin-drawn slip of territory, in fact, is regarded as the extreme outside filament of the great complicated web of the "Eastern Question," and needing therefore to be

486

VLADIVOSTOCK.

watched with peculiar care. The utility to Russia, however, of the fine bays which she has acquired in the Gulf of Tartary and the Japan Sea is materially injured by the circumstance that they are all closed by ice during the winter and spring. Vladivostock itself, in nearly the same latitude as Rome, is blocked by ice up till the beginning of April; and it is the singular fate of Russia that in all her enormous coast-line in Europe and Asia she has no port that is open all the year round. Hence the anxiety, with which she is credited by her watchful censors, to move a single step farther southward and seize upon Corea with its fine ice-free harbours and command of the Yellow Sea.

Apart from these vague possibilities, the district has resources and attractions which can be immediately turned to account. It is a hilly country, finely wooded, for the most part, with groves of oak, elm, walnut, and maple, disposed in such a way as to give the scenery near Vladivostock quite an English aspect. A few tribes of Mantchus were formerly its only occupants, but Russian and German colonists are beginning to settle in the country. In the hills and woods fine sport can be had after deer and bear, and for those who fly at still nobler game there is the Mongolian tiger. The streams are abundantly stocked; indeed the quantity of salmon and other fish that ascend the rivers flowing into this part of the Pacific is almost fabulous. In a single river in Yesso, for example, six thousand tons of salmon are caught and salted every year during the few weeks of the fishing season; and the fishers declare that when the first rush over the bar at high tide takes place, the backs of the salmon are visible, and the water