CHAPTER III.

ARRIVAL AT OMSK.

From Kurgan to Omsk the railroad track passes over a wilderness of snow--a dead level, absolutely devoid of interest. It was a relief even to see at long intervals a group of wooden huts, huddling close together, as if for warmth, in that biting cold; the thin blue smoke curling from their several apologies for chimneys, and the glint of the sunlight on the double windows. Melancholy these villages looked, cut off from the entire world as they must have been before the locomotive came snorting its way along. One pleasing feature, or picturesque feature, I might say, was the inevitable round domed church which reared its height above the ramshackle shingle roofs. Green and white these churches were, with a golden cross perched on the highest dome, and which shines and glitters for miles after the huddle beneath has merged with the snow and disappeared from vision. No matter how small and miserable the village, no matter how poverty-stricken its inhabitants, the church was ever there, ever resplendent, and apparently opulent.

One fact always strikes the traveller in Russia, and that is the overpowering influence of the Church. Densely ignorant as he is, the average moujik’s religious devotion is little better than slavish. One wonders whence comes the money to build and to keep up such magnificent ecclesiastical edifices which predominate everywhere throughout the Russian Empire, and only close inquiry and persistent observation can reveal the truth. From high class to low the first duty of the Russian is to his religion. In every house, from the finest mansion to the humblest hut, the gilded ikon hangs in the corner, before which the devout Catholic prostrates himself twenty, and perhaps thirty, times a day. Before every piece of bread he eats, before every glass of vodki he drinks, he will cross himself and murmur his prayers. I do not fear contradiction when I say that every believer in the Russo-Græco faith wears underneath his shirt, attached to a string or chain, around his neck, a metal cross, put on when he was a child and worn till death, and even until his body has crumbled to the earth in which it lies. On the large stations of the Russian railways there is always a chapel with its glittering altar, its ikons and its burning candles, where services are held daily.

The Church seems to stand even before the Czar, though it must be said the Czar comes in a very good second. Great as is the State aid, the help of the people is undoubtedly the mainspring of the Church’s revenue. Time after time I have had it brought to my notice that however improvident the moujik may be in his domestic life, his death will furnish the pretext for lifting the slab of the stove to see how much money he has been able to accumulate in his lifetime for his beloved faith. His blind devotion to the Church is nearly equalled by his discipline as a soldier, and without wishing to detract from his character as a man, I must say that, so far as my observation goes, these very qualities, if qualities they can be called, shows how little removed from a mere animal he is. As a Russian, body and soul he belongs to the Church. As soon as he dons the brown jacket of the soldier, body and soul he belongs to the Czar. It is inconceivable to the Westerner that men could withstand the hardships and yet retain such cheerfulness and such patriotism as do the Russians. Iron discipline, which would make the educated and better civilized soldier mutiny or desert in a week, he submits to with equanimity. Kind words he knows not; ill fed, ill clothed, wretchedly housed, and with seldom or never a kopeck in his pouch, yet he maintains even gaiety in his desolate life. This utter abasement of the man is very difficult to realize, it is so essentially Russian that none but one who has seen it can fully comprehend its significance.

An officer of cavalry once told me a little story concerning the discipline and devotion to duty of the Russian peasant. The scene was at Cronstadt, the island fortress off St. Petersburg, where three officers, respectively English, German, and Russian, were discussing the merits of their men. Each maintained his was the better disciplined, and on the argument growing hot the Russian proposed a test. They repaired to one of the batteries, and there the English and German officers each ordered up one of their men, as the Russian did one of his common soldiers. These men drew up in line before their captains.

The English officer pointed to the port, below which the rocks lay some hundreds of feet.

“Attention! Walk out of that port!” he cried in a voice of command.

The man stepped forward, white as a sheet, but hesitated.

“What good am I doing my country by this?” he asked huskily.

“Stand back,” said the officer.

The German officer motioned to his man.

“Walk out of that port!” he commanded.

The German stepped forward, he too hesitated, and glanced appealingly at his commander.

“Will you keep my mother and father, sir, if I do it?”

“Stand back,” said the officer.

The Russian officer motioned to his man.

“Walk out of that port!”

The man was livid, but he stepped forward briskly; as he did so he raised his eyes and made the sign of the cross, the next second he would have precipitated himself on the rocks below, had not the officer’s iron grip restrained him.

This tale was told me with great unction, as illustrative of the superior discipline of the Russian soldier; but I did not care to offend my friend by giving voice to my opinion that the demeanour of the English and the German soldiers illustrated that fact which has so often been emphasized in warfare, that an intelligent preservation of one’s life is far better for the cause than blindly throwing that life away.

Bump, bump, bump; rattle, rattle, rattle; on hurtled the train, morning merged into afternoon, and the grey shadows which heralded night came stealing over the steppe. Darkness black and heavy enveloped us. Once more we made up our crude beds, and settled for the night. Peterpavlovsk we reached in the middle of the night, and where we sleepily alighted for something to eat, and participated for the hundredth time in the rude scramble which ever accompanied that procedure. Back to bed again, and sometimes sleep, helped thereto by a concert of gurgling snores, tobacco smoke, and odours of vodki. Morning broke, and for all the difference in our surroundings we might as well have been where we were the day before. Grubby, weary, and profoundly sick of each other’s company, since we had told every story we knew, and had long since comfortably settled the affairs of the world in long-continued argument, waiting patiently, till afternoon, when we should reach our first Siberian city, Omsk.

Our literature was long since exhausted. It was useless to play cards, as one man had constituted himself treasurer, possessed all the money, and it seemed a hollow mockery to borrow under such circumstances; everybody voted chess a bore, dominoes childish, while our only musical instrument--a Jew’s harp--had long since lost its soothing influence. We could only glare at each other and grumble, find fault with everything, and say what ought to be done and what we would do if only----

“Omsk!” The silver-embroidered conductor punched another little hole in our much-perforated ticket, pocketed his tip, and left us to scramble our baggage together. And even this was a delight. We were to stay over two days in Omsk, and those two days were to be a welcome relief from the seemingly never-ending train journey. Soon we came in sight of the Irtish, one of those magnificent rivers which Siberia abounds in, but now silent and still under its thick coating of ice. The train rattled over the high iron bridge which spanned this noble waterway, and ten minutes later drew up at Omsk station.

I mention the word “station” advisedly, because, as in duty bound, the Russian engineers had put it as far away from the town as they conveniently could--this time they had managed it by exactly three versts, and no doubt considered they had achieved a triumph. What the idea is in calling a station Omsk, when Omsk is two miles away, yet remains to be explained. Nobody that I have asked has been able to give me a satisfactory answer. Whether they expect the town to grow out towards the station, or whether it is out of sheer and simple cussedness, I do not know; I fancy it is the latter.

On the station steps we held a levee with half a hundred isvostchiks, who wanted to drive us to town. Honour there may be amongst thieves, but there is certainly very little amongst Siberian isvostchiks. The manner in which they fought and scrambled with each other in order to get hold of our baggage was highly diverting. They implored us singly and wholly to follow them. Each man held out such inducements that the brain fairly reeled.

“Come with my little horse, dear barins; it is the fastest trotter in Siberia, it is a beautiful dove, and goes like the wind.”

[Illustration: OMSK.]

“Bah! Do not believe him, barins; he is a liar. His horse is covered with ulcers, and may drop down dead before you go a verst. Come with me, barins. Here you are, a lovely sledge, just painted, but quite dry, and splendid cushions. Think how much money I have spent on that sledge.”

“No, barins, none of these children know the way to Omsk. I am the only one who knows the nearest and the best road. Take any of them you will, and they will go the longest way and over a miserable road, which will bump you to pieces, perhaps throw you out and break your neck, and then what will you do?”

And amid all this flood of eloquence, smothered in furs and loaded down with baggage, we were jostled and pinched and pulled until a white-aproned porter rescued us and took us to the sledge he had selected. Then all the voices died away in a long-drawn sigh; envious looks were bestowed upon the favoured one, who gathered up his reins, gave vent to a sort of war-whoop, fell rather than got upon the sledge, and away we went at a mad gallop down the narrow roadway, scattering the snow right and left, and swinging from side to side in the most perilous manner imaginable.

It took us all our time to hang on, the while that the fierce rush through the bitterly cold air made breathing difficult; tears forced from the eyes by the cold instantly congealed; nostrils, too, became closed with ice; moustaches and beards hard lumps of hoar frost. With a cold which it is impossible to register on a Fahrenheit glass we didn’t, I am sorry to say, appreciate the novelty of this breakneck ride as we ought to have done. In less than a quarter of an hour we passed through the gates of the city and stampeded like fury down several wide streets, bordered on either side by one-story frame houses, and ultimately pulled up with a jerk, which flung us in a heap at the bottom of the sledge, before a low, mean-looking wooden house which a dilapidated signboard announced to be the “Grand Hotel Moscow.”