Part 5

When, on this seventh day, the train is winding up the Angara Valley toward Irkutsk, one may mentally look back over the country that has been traversed and estimate somewhat the meaning of the railway. The Urals formed the first landmark. As in the dominion of the blind the one-eyed man is king, so after the monotony of the plains, the Ural Mountains seem great and worthy of the name given by the old Muscovite geographer, the “Girdle of the World.” By actual measurements, however, in their seventeen hundred miles of length, no peak rises over six thousand feet. Coming eastward from the Urals the line has cut through the southwestern corner of the old Tobolsk Government, has skirted the northern border of the steppe, has bisected the Tomsk Province, and after crossing the Yenesei River in Yeneseik has entered Irkutsk Province, and traversed the central highland region nearly to Lake Baikal.

Many who journey this way will have as their first impression, when the long winter ride draws to its close, a feeling of depression, almost of discouragement, so few are the settlements, so desolate seems all Nature. They see the single line of rails, without a branch or feeder in the mighty expanse from Chelliabinsk to Irkutsk, save for the stub put in for the ungenerous outlanders of unlucky Tomsk. They calculate that for a territory forty times the size of the British Isles, and one and a half times as large as all Europe, the inadequacy of a railroad less in total mileage than the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, is manifest. Statistically-informed bankers sometimes shrug their shoulders at the mention of the Trans-Siberian. “Every year a deficit,” they say. “Gross earnings but twenty-four million roubles,--one sixth of the Canadian Pacific Railway; one tenth of the Southern Railway. _Hudoo_ (bad)!” One hears expressed not infrequently in Russia the opinion that the railway is a sacrifice justified politically by Russia’s need for a link to the Pacific, but ineffectual to secure prosperity and advancement to the isolated land of mid-Siberia. It is deemed, like the Pyramids, a monument to colossal effort and achievement but of little service to mankind.

Their statistics are correct. But it is to the greater honor of the road that much which it has accomplished will never appear in credits on the account-sheets. Where the white stations of the Siberian Railway stand now were once the wooden prison-pens with their guarded stockades. Murderers and priests, forgers, profligates, and university professors, highway robbers and privy councilors, all together have tramped this way. It is its past from which the railroad has raised Siberia, the past of neglect and exile that this steam civilizer has banished to the far Yakutsk.

Closer study gives, too, a better appreciation of the railroad’s economic significance. The line holds a strategic position as truly as does the Panama Canal. Though in Siberia proper there is the enormous area of nearly five million square miles, so much of this is in Arctic tundra, impassable swamp, forest, or barren steppe, that the really habitable and arable land narrows down to a tenth of this, which lies in general between the parallels of 55° and 58° 30’ north, and is contained within a belt some thirty-five hundred miles long and two hundred to two hundred and fifty miles broad.

When it is noted that the tillable area of one hundred and ninety-two thousand square miles in Tobolsk and Tomsk, mostly along the Obi System, the stretch of twenty thousand miles in the steppe, and that of one hundred thousand in the Yeneseik and Irkutsk governments of eastern Siberia, are all in immediate proximity to the railroad, whose course is generally along the 55th parallel, the economic value of Russia’s great enterprise takes a different perspective.

Its vantage is still more emphasized when the element of the north and south watercourses is considered. One after another the great Siberian rivers are crossed,--in the Tobolsk Gobernia, the Tobol, the Ishim, the Irtish; in the Tomsk Gobernia, the Obi and the Tom; in Yeneseik, the Yenesei; in Irkutsk, the Angara. Each of these reaches far up into the agricultural zone that lies north of the railroad, bringing the harvests to its cars by the cheap unfettered water-avenues. Thus, to the part of Siberia that is capable of extensive development, the railroad is even now in a position to give great aid.

It is from such natural factors as these, not from financiers’ figures, that one must weigh the potentiality of this great line. Its direct value is enormous, its indirect commercial services greater yet. It may best be compared to a mighty river system such as that of the Mississippi. The latter’s traffic has never directly returned a dollar of the millions that have gone to maintaining its levees and training-walls and channels. Yet indirectly the return and the value, as an asset to the American people, are so great as to be incalculable. From its controlling position in relation to the cultivatable land and the interior watercourses of Central Siberia, as well as in relation to the far eastern artery, the Russian railway is an empire-builder as important as has been the Nile.

The results already achieved are noteworthy. The city of Omsk, where the railroad and the Irtish River lines meet, has risen from a population of thirty-seven thousand in 1897 to seventy thousand in 1908. Further east, Stretensk has sprung from a town of two thousand people ten years ago to over twelve thousand to-day. Irkutsk has climbed from sixty to over eighty thousand since the railroad opened.

[Illustration: ISLAND OF KALTIGEI VILLAGE OF LISTVIANITCHNOE LAKE BAIKAL]

The rural population has increased even as that of the cities. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, all Siberia contained but two hundred and thirty thousand souls; at the end of the eighteenth, one million five hundred thousand; at the end of the nineteenth, five million. Now, with the railroad-induced immigration, it approaches the seven million mark. The Steppe Government alone has risen in fifty years from five hundred thousand to one million five hundred thousand, and the Tomsk from seven hundred thousand to two million five hundred thousand.

More in importance than its present utility is the fact that the railway holds the key to Siberia’s future. The arable territory of the belt is equal to that of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas combined. This land is generally well-watered, in a climate suitable to grain-raising, and it is, as has been shown, in its whole extent, adjacent to river and rail transportation.

While such farming districts of the United States have some fifty inhabitants to the square mile, the most densely populated gobernia, Tomsk, has but six, and the Yeneseik but six tenths of one.

An immense further area will yield to clearing and to irrigation, as has been demonstrated in the great results secured from five hundred versts of canals in the Barbara Steppe. Coal and iron are available in many places, and timber in the greatest abundance grows in the northern district.

From a summary of these elements one may glean an idea of the Colossus sleeping beneath these snows. At a normal rate of increase, fifty million souls should populate Siberia at the close of the twentieth century. The agency of their coming and existing will be primarily the line of rails across the continent. Despite the eight hundred million roubles expended, with only far-off hopes of profit, the faulty road-bed, the light rails, the steep grades, and crawling trains, the glory of Russia is still “The Great Siberian Railway.”

III

IN IRKUTSK

The train pulls slowly up to the white station-house at Irkutsk. A swarm of porters, _nasilchiks_, white-aproned, with peaked hats, and big, numbered arm-tags, invade the carriage. They seize each piece of luggage and run with it somewhere into the crowd outside. You, encumbered with your heavy coat, laboriously follow. Irkutsk station, more than any previous one, is crowded with passengers and Cossack guards. Train officials are shouting instructions, and every few paces a sentry is standing his silent watch. This is the transfer entrepôt for all through traffic, as well as the depôt for the largest and most important city of Siberia.

Threading the press on the platform, you struggle with the outgoing human current, and in time reach the big waiting-room of the first class. It likewise is crowded with a mass of people, and its floor is cumbered with heaping mounds of baggage. One of these hillocks is constructed from your impedimenta, which are being guarded now by a porter, apparently the residuary legatee of the half-dozen original competitors within the car. The man takes the long document that witnesses your claim to two trunks, and departs. Upon you in turn devolves sentry duty for the interminable time during which those trunks are being culled out from the baggage-car.

It is an exasperating wait, but the fundamental rule for Russian traveling is, “never separate from the baggage.” The parcel-room here at Irkutsk held for six months a suit-case left by a friend to be sent to this traveler. The officials would not give it up to its owner or to any person save the forwarder, though he, oblivious to sequels, had gone on to San Francisco.

Like the rest, now, you camp, with the baggage in front of you, on the waiting-room floor. It is a very country fair, this station. At the far end is a big stand crowded with dishes, on which are cold meats, potato salad, heaps of fruit and cakes, sections of fish from which one may cut his own slices, boxes of chocolates, and cigarettes. All are piled up in heaping profusion. One can get a glass of vodka and eat of the _zakuska_ dishes free, or while waiting he may buy a meal of surprisingly ample quantity and good quality at the long tables that run down the centre of the room. Most of the Russians order a glass of tea, and with it in hand sit down till such indefinite future time as the luggage situation shall unroll itself.

We move our baggage and join the tea caravan. Across the table is a slight, brown-faced man, with an enormous black astrakan cape falling to his ankles, and wearing a jauntily perched astrakan cap on his head. “One of the Cossack settlers,” a friend from the train remarks. Beyond are half a dozen tired-looking women, with dark-gray shawls over their heads. Near them are men with close-fitting _shubas_, or snugly-belted sheepskin coats, fur inside, and rough-tanned black leather outside. Beside the lunch-stand are a couple of young men with huge bearskin caps, short coats, and high leather boots tucked into fleece-lined overshoes.

A general at one of the little side tables is talking volubly to a plump dame with furs, which are attracting envy from many sides. The lady merely nods between puffs of her cigarette, and sips her tea. A large fat merchant waddles past, wrapped in a paletot made of the glistening silvery skin of the Baikal seal. The room is stifling, full of smoke, and crowded with people. Yet no one seems to feel the discomfort, even to the extent of taking off the heavy outer coats, which, with the thermometer at twenty degrees below zero, they have worn on the sleigh-ride in, from across the river.

Your friends of the train, save those whose possessions were comprised in their multitudinous valises, are all here, fur-coated likewise and sipping tea, waiting, without a thought of impatience, for the baggage to be brought out.

At last appears your _nasilchik_. “They are got,” he cries, and balances about himself, one by one, your half-dozen pieces of luggage. Through the noisy, gesticulating, thronging passengers and heaped belongings, he shoulders and squirms a way to the door and into the anteroom.

A couple of soldiers are good-naturedly hustling out, from the third-class waiting-room opposite, a little leather-jacketed and very dirty mujik.

“I did not owe seven kopecks. I cross myself. I am not a Jew,” he loudly proclaims.

“_Nietchevo_,” says the soldier. “Out with him just the same!” The peasants and crowd loafing alongside grin appreciatingly, as the mujik is escorted, collar-held, through the great doors.

The porter and yourself follow. A plunging line of sleighs, backed up against the outer platform of the station, extends far up and down the road. Their _isvoschiks_, leaning back, are shouting for fares. In sight are your two trunks. “How much to the Métropole?” you call. The legal fare across the river to the hotel is a rouble, but the Governor-General of eastern Siberia couldn’t tell how much it would be if you didn’t bargain beforehand. “_Piat rubla!_” “_tree rubla!_” come hurtling from all sides.

It is for you to walk down the line calling in the vernacular, “fifty, seventy kopecks!” One of the drivers will eventually shout a fare which you feel able to allow, and the porter, who has been watching the bargaining process with keen interest, gives him the two trunks. The _isvoschik_ retires then behind the stormy hiring-line, and you renew the process for a second vehicle. The sleighs are just big enough for one person to occupy comfortably. Two can squeeze in if they be thin enough or economically minded. But a second sleigh is needed now for the hand-baggage, and a third for one’s self. At length the arrangement is completed. The porter bows low at the donation of fifty kopecks, “for vodka”; then, “Go ahead! all ready!” you call, and with a flourish the procession of sleighs dashes out of the station purlieus.

The road to the town mounts first a low hill parallel to the river. As the horses climb toward its crest the panorama of the city and stream, hidden previously by the railroad structures, unrolls. Like a great band of white, the frozen Angara sweeps to the left and right. Beyond it stand out boldly the clustered domes of the cathedral, their surmounting crucifixes glittering in the sunlight. At your feet are the sections of the pontoon bridge, which in summer spans the river but in autumn is disconnected, the parts being moored to the shore, lest the drifting ice from partly frozen Baikal cut and destroy their woodwork.

A dark streak crosses the frozen river, with dots moving, as small apparently as running ants. The deceptive snow has made the distance seem much less than it is in reality. The streak is a road, and the seeming insects are the sleighs that pass and repass on the frozen river-trail. Between scattered wooden houses our cavalcade rides down to the bank, and at length onto the smooth white sheet. It is like skating. The big horses on our sleigh are imported from Russia, and trot splendidly, overtaking one after another of the citizens with their little shaggy Siberian ponies. The heaped snow is on either side. The cold air is bracing, almost welcome, until it begins to eat its way in.

It is a fair drive, this, across the river--a full verst to the northern bank. We mount the incline that leads up the slope, and come to the first log houses of the poorer quarter of Irkutsk town. Gaunt dogs bark feebly, and slink away on either side. The street is almost deserted; the houses give no sign of life.

Suddenly we come into a square crowded with people, gay with life and motion, and motley in colors. It fairly buzzes with talk and cries and chaffering. Low-built booths face every side of the open _piazza_. We catch a glimpse of one stocked with hardware. Opposite it stands a little shrine within which are dimly visible pictured saints and the Madonna, before which are scores of burning tapers. Our _isvoschik_ takes off his hat as he drives past, and reverently makes the sign of the cross. He crosses himself also as he passes the white church of St. Nicholas with its green roofs and gilded crosses, and he removes his cap to the long-haired and dark-robed pope that he meets, for the Siberian pays much reverence to his Church.

[Illustration: THE ANGARA RIVER THE CATHEDRAL IRKUTSK]

The residences improve from the log cabins of the outskirts, and grow into the two-storied whitewashed structures of the main thoroughfares. The streets also have an interesting procession of people. The big troika of some high official glides past, with coal-black horses and a coachman padded out into a liveried Santa Claus, after the style of St. Petersburg. Officers of the garrison sweep by in their light-gray overcoats. Shoals of sleighs and sledges are going to and fro. At almost every corner, armed with a sabre and revolver, stands a police officer.

As one drives along he reads the Russian letters on the placards and the names on the stores. Many here are Hebrew, for the Siberians of the cities are more tolerant than their European cousins. Irkutsk has a very large and prosperous Jewish merchant community, and sent her Dr. Mendelberg to the Duma. Irkutsk has had its representation cut down, they say, _post hoc_,--perhaps _propter hoc_.

The driver, who has kept his horses at a moderate trot from the station through the town, suddenly cries out to them, and swings and snaps his lash till they break into a gallop. “We always come in handsomely,” says the city native who is with you, as the sleigh pulls up triumphantly at the door of the Hôtel Métropole.

A swarm of attendants greet you at the portal, a tall uniformed concierge, half a dozen aproned porters, a waiter or two, a page, and behind them the Hebraic Hazan, our host. Each porter seizes a parcel and the concierge leaves his post by the front door to lead the procession up the broad red-carpeted stairway. With a rattle of keys he swings open the door to a salon big enough to give a ball in, and whose ceiling is six good feet above one’s head. The average New York flat would rattle around in it. The concierge advances to its centre and bows. Then he goes on through to another room, almost its duplicate in size, with a forlorn-looking washstand and a screen across one corner.

“But the bedroom, where do we sleep?” you ask.

“_Sdiece, gaspadine_,” he says, “right here”; and he conducts you to the screen.

Raised about eighteen inches above the floor is a little wooden platform-like structure, about the size of a cigar-shop showcase. A dingy mattress is rolled up at one end of it. As you ruefully feel its straw texture and survey the planks which it is to cover, the hotel-keeper pushes in to tell you that sheets will be put on at once if the _gaspadine_ has not his own. “_Chass! Chass!_ If only the rooms suit the _gaspadine_, everything will be arranged.”

The porters silently deposit their loads and depart with their twenty kopecks each. The manager goes out, doubtless to gather his sheets. Only the concierge stays expectant after he has received his tribute. You throw your heavy overcoat over one of the armchairs and begin to open some of the bags. The concierge still stays and looks on. You begin to segregate laundry, and locate brushes and tooth-powder. The concierge still stays and looks on. You get out some slippers which are an improvement upon the heavy snow-boots. The concierge still lingers.

“The room is accepted,” you say finally.

“Yes, yes,” he answers. “_Haracho_, but for the police, I want, please, your passport.”

To show your passport, true enough, is no more of an incident than to take out your handkerchief. But to be obliged before you have been ten minutes in a place to produce a paper for the police telling of your age and infirmities, the color of your eyes, the number of your arms and legs and children, seems tiresome.

“Must all give in their passports?” you inquire.

“All, all,” he answers. “I am punished if one person stays here overnight without showing it.”

He takes the document, visibly impressed with its flying eagle and the big red seal, and bows his way out.

Now one can stroll around one’s suite and take in some of the details. There are electric lights with clusters of globes in the big pendant electrolier of the parlor, and drop-lamps for the massive writing-desk in the corner! The armchair by the high-silled window is a good place to read in. Too bad one cannot look out on the shuttling sleighs of the street below, but the cold has thickly frosted the double windows. Here is a big sofa, plush-covered, and half a dozen armchairs surround the polished table, whose top is scarred with a multitude of rings--from the hot tea-glasses, one deduces.

Mentioning tea, why not have some? There ought to be a bell somewhere. Unfortunately there is not a bell. In looking for it one finds that Siberian housekeeping does not include any dusting of the heavy red hangings which flank the doors and windows. An imperious cry resounds in the corridor. “_Chelaviek!_” It is followed by a patter of footsteps. So this then is the custom of the country. You open the door, and in the tone described in books upon elocution as “hortatory,” cry out into the dim distances of the corridor, “_Samovar, chai!_” Somewhere down the line a voice answers, “_Chass, chass!_” and you retire to wait and hope.

Curiously battered the furniture looks when you inspect it closely. Here and there a flake is chipped away from the varnish, and cuts or dents show in the paint. Have sabre fights, perhaps, taken place here, or raids on assembling revolutionists? Certainly in the generations of occupants, life has been, in some fashion, tumultuous.

There is a fumbling at the door-knob, and, without any preliminary knocking, a waiter comes in with a nickel samovar, an empty teapot, and a glass. He puts them down on the battered table and walks out. The big kettle hums away pleasantly as the red charcoal in its hollow interior glows from the upward draft. The preparations seem all made, save for the tea. Perhaps the _chelaviek_ has gone to get it. You let your eye rove around to the little ikon far up in the corner, and the sleighing and wolf-shooting etchings on the walls. But after a time this becomes tiresome. Has the secret gendarmerie descended on the waiter among his teapots and trays? Has he forgotten the matter entirely, or what? The corridor-call seems to be the only recourse. Once again you go out. “_Chelaviek!_” and from some region he comes trotting up.

“Where is that tea?”

“Oh, _chai_,” he says, illumined. “Has the _gaspadine_ not his own?”

“Most decidedly the _gaspadine_ has not his own,” you retort. “The _gaspadine_ does not carry pillow-shams or bales with him. He is not a draper’s establishment or a grocer’s store.”

“_Nietchevo_,” says the waiter, amiably; and runs off, to return with a saucer of tea-leaves, and another containing half a dozen lumps of sugar.

“Your pardon, generally the _gaspadines_ have their own”; and he leaves you to the brew and your meditations.