Part 8

It is not the express that one takes at the Irkutsk station to reach the ancient fort, but the daily post-train, the servant of local traffic. Luggage-cumbered passengers crowd into the cars wherever there is a place. A few, and these mostly officials, establish themselves in the blue-painted first class. Many press into the yellow second class--merchants, lesser chinovniks, tradesmen, popes, and children on their way to the city schools. Swarms pour into the green wooden-benched third, where the thronging tousle-headed emigrants patiently huddle closer to give room to newcomers. Next to the engine, with its big smokestack, is the mail-wagon, on whose sides are painted crossed post-horns and the picture of a sealed letter. Behind this, with a sentry on guard, is the baggage-car. The sinister compartment of drawn shutters and barred windows is for the prisoners. In this princes or artel-workers, their identity unsuspected, can be run across a continent to their unknown places of exile.

The post-train starts from Irkutsk occasionally on time. In general, along the local line the time-table is about as reliable a guide as the calendars sold to the mujiks, with weather prophecies for each day of the year. Fifteen miles an hour is mean speed. Stops may be for minutes or for hours. One settles down therefore in the attitude sacred to a yachting cruise,--foie gras and bridge, if it is calm; double reefs and pilot-bread if it blows up. The high heavens alone know when we are to get in, and nobody cares. It is not unpleasant withal to sprawl over a great broad couch, and as the train crawls forward watch the white highlands slowly unroll, the towering cliffs and peaks with spear-like pines driving up through the snow, and the icy lake below.

For meals, one dashes out during the station-stops, and before the third bell gives warning of the start, devours meat-filled _piroushkies_ and swallows lemon-tinctured tea at the long buffet-tables decked with hollow squares of wine-bottles, and beer from the seven breweries of Irkutsk. If one has a teapot he can get boiling water from the government-furnished samovar, and milk from the peasant-women who stand in booths hard-by. He can add salt fish and hot fowl, together with rye-bread and butter, and then consume his rations at leisure in the compartment. At night the seats are let down, and one sleeps in fitful naps among the hills of baggage. When morning comes, an hour-long procession forms to take turns at the wash-bowl with its trickle valve, in a towelless, soapless, and cindered lavatory.

We leave Irkutsk at ten in the morning, and reach Verhneudinsk at seven next day, covering in twenty-one hours the 446 versts. Here is the last of the railroad. With troika, sledge, and tarantass, by highway and byway, over frozen rivers and camel-tracked trails, we must now follow the old road into the heart of Asia.

The post-station that serves as point of departure for the sledge journey lies some distance away, at the edge of the town. An _isvoschik_, after due bargaining, proceeds to transfer thither us and our dunnage-bags.

As we ride through the town, just waking for the day, the streets, the lamps, the telegraph-wires, the comfortable houses,--each and every symbol of civilization takes on a new significance now that it is to be left behind. On the parade-grounds the recruits are at the morning drill, shouting lustily in unison, “_Ras, dva, tre!_” to keep the step. We pass the barracks, the shops with their brightly illustrated signs, and ride under the wooden yellow-painted Alexander Arch.

[Illustration: BAIKAL STATION]

[Illustration: THE HIGHLANDS OF TRANSBAIKALIA]

Soon we reach a street of low log houses, and a lofty boarded enclosure is ahead. At its gateway is swinging a black signboard, painted with post-horn and the Czar’s double-headed eagle. “_Postava Stancie_,” is inscribed over the lintel. Between the black and white-striped gate-posts we swing into the courtyard. To the left stretches a low log house. To the right, along the wall, are ranked sledges. In front are the stalls. Grooms, whip in hand, stand around in the courtyard, muffled against the cold.

“Is the _gaspadine_ going on?” one of them asks.

On the reply, “Yes, at once,” he scurries off to start harnessing, and you shoulder open the low felted door of the post-house and enter the big waiting-room.

“Three horses?” asks the young black-mustached agent within.

“Yes, a troika sledge.”

He turns to the book of registry attached to the rough table by a long cord fastened with a big red seal, and begins to write.

“The name?” he asks. It goes down.

“The destination?”

“The Chinese frontier at Kiahta.”

“Your first relay-station is Nijniouboukounskaia, twenty-seven versts.”

The fare is set out in a printed placard posted up on the wall; as is the price of a samovar, fifteen kopecks, and all the other items that the traveler may require.

The agent hands you the slip: “One rouble, eighty-two kopecks, for two persons, the _gaspadine_ and his courier”; something under three cents a passenger-mile.

As you wait for the harnessing of the post-sledge, the courier overlooks anew the bags and counts out again the parcels. As light as possible must be the impedimenta. Now is the last chance for change.

The big station-clock ticks on. The agent moves about in the warm dusky silence of the house. The courier straps tighter the dunnage-bag.

“Look that your furs are snugly fastened,” he says.

There is trample of footsteps by the door. A fur-clad, ruddy-faced driver stumbles in, makes the sign of the cross before the ikon on the further wall, and beckons to you.

“Ready!” he says.

Three shaggy ponies stand hitched to a wooden sledge, not high like those of city _isvoschiks_, but low and shaped like a wide bath-tub. The bottom is cushioned with hay and you are to sit some six inches above the runners. The bells hanging from the big arched _duga_ over the centre horse jingle as he frets. The side horses, that will run loose between rope-traces, look around at the _yamshik_ who stands by. He holds in his mittened hands four reins of leather, twisted into ropes--two for the centre trotter, one each, on the outside, for the gallopers.

You climb into the nest of rugs and furs superimposed upon your baggage! The _yamshik_ leaps to the precarious perch that serves as his seat. The whip falls, and with a bound the horses are off. Always one starts at top speed, however bad the way. Always one finishes at a gallop, however jaded the horses. It is the rule of the Russian road.

With bells jingling, the driver shouting to clear the way, and a white cloud rising behind, the sledge skims out between the log houses which flank the straggling street. Dogs bark and the idle passers-by stare. Fur-covered pigs scramble up with a squeal, and scurry from their resting-places in the road. Girls, with shako-capped heads, peer through the windows. Little chubby boys, in big brown felt boots, cheer.

Soon the uttermost houses of the town are left, and emerging we plunge into the country road through open fields, dazzlingly, blindingly white. The trotter’s legs seem to move too fast, as if seen in a cinematograph. The gallopers, free of all weight and held only by the two traces which fasten them, outrigger fashion, swing on like wild ponies of the steppe. Crude and massive as the sleigh may look, its burden is almost nothing on the hard compacted snow. The horses in the rush through the bracing air seem to be the incarnation of the wind. A rut in the glistening road does not produce a disjointing shock, for, as a huntsman’s bullet glances from the skull of a wild boar, so the sleigh glides into the air and swiftly down again at a long low angle. It is a fact of “flying.”

The cold is intense. After an hour of riding you have learned a certain lesson which adds to your experience. Whether the traveler shall make this winter journey equipped with full camp-kit, portable stove, folding-forks, thermos bottles, and shell-reloading tools, or Tatar fashion, with a rifle and a haunch of mutton, is important but not vital. Let him make sure, however, that the huge all-enveloping sheepskin overcoat is at hand to supplement the coats beneath, and that a shaggy sleeping-rug is provided in addition to the blankets. One obstinate newcomer started with the insistence that a mink-lined Amerikanski overcoat, with two heavy rugs as lap-robes, would be ample. After an hour on the road, he turned into a peasant’s hut to thaw out upon boiling tea, while the driver went back to the town to buy the hairiest robe and coat obtainable. These were thenceforth worn on top of the initial outfit. Siberia for a midwinter sledging journey exacts this tribute of respect.

For versts the winter road follows down along the river between towering pinnacled rocks, where in summer eagles nest. The cliffs are vividly spotted with orange and green lichens; below they are fretted with the scourings of ice brought down in the spring freshets. All along beside the road are the familiar pine-saplings planted in mounds by the villagers to guide the way. In the vast monotony and drifting snows travelers would be lost but for these landmarks. Along the fertile river valleys hamlets are thick. A cluster of houses is met every six to ten versts. Presently the road leaves the river and bends to the left, cutting across fields. When it quits the bank, it climbs sharply a five-foot ascent. The driver does not even slacken speed. At the turn he swings the sure-footed ponies suddenly, and takes the slope, letting the outrigger bring up against a stiff clump of bushes. There is a crash, the sleigh has caromed off at right angles, nothing has befallen, and we are on again.

Verst after verst of plateau goes by, with rounded rolling hills of dimpled snow, treeless, houseless, a barren waste. Then comes a crest so steep that the horses can only toil up it at a walk, and the passengers must climb beside them. The forest closes in as the height is mounted,--white leafless birches and dark green pines. The light snow is seamed with rabbit-runs, and here and there are the far-spaced tracks of deer or wild goats.

A mound of stones and a small pole with a Buddhist prayer-flag--for here is the ancient home of the Buriats--mark the top of the ascent. There is a moment’s halt while you climb in and the driver tightens the saddle of the centre horse; then down the giddy descent we sweep, in full gallop once more. The pines flash past, and you hold your breath in fear of the smash that must come should a horse fall, should a trace break, should a side rut swing the sledge over. One is, however, so close to the ground that an overturn is usually harmless, save to the clothes and the nervous system, both of which are at a discount in Siberian sledging. Then too the outrigger arrangement is such that the craft turns a quarter of the way over and slides on the supplementary runner until it rights.

The cold is intense. One wipes away the snow from his fur collar, and the dampness on the handkerchief has caused it to become frozen stiff. It is a crackling parchment that goes back into the pocket. Eyeglasses are unwearable, for the rising vapor from one’s breath is caught and frozen on them in an opaque film. Fingers exposed but a moment become numb and useless, and uncovering the hand is an agony. Gradually as you ride, through the great felt boots, the triple flannels, the camel’s-hair stockings, the fur-lined gloves, the coats and rugs, the cold begins to bite. You have become fatigued and depressed of a sudden. The driver points to your cheek, where the marble whiteness is eating into the flesh, and bids you rub it with snow. An involuntary shudder grips and shakes you relentlessly from head to foot.

It is time to stop. If you try to go on beyond the next station you will, if the gods are lenient and you do not freeze, get out nerveless and trembling, not for hours to rally strength and energy. The chill will cling, however hot the post-house oven. Even now you are weak, beaten down, querulous, in a sudden feeble old age. The shudder means that the human animal is near his endurance limit.

On an urgent call, with special preparations, you may travel for a hundred hours, night and day, without halt save for change of relays. Physically, it is possible to fight cold for a time. You can run along in all your furs beside the horses, you can beat your arms together, and rub nose and cheeks to keep the blood in motion. You can drink copious glasses of scalding tea in the post-houses, and live by stimulants on the road. Through ceaseless vigilance and resolution you can keep from freezing, even while intense fatigue creeps on and vitality is going. But the persistent awful shudder is Nature’s red lantern. Run past it if you must,--it is at your peril.

Dark against the snows, now a low-lying village comes into sight,--Nijniouboukounskaia,--and among its first log houses is one bearing the post-horn signboard. A cry rouses the jaded horses to a gallop, and covered with snow, the sledge sweeps into the yard. Steaming and frosted white, the animals stand with lowered heads. Stablemen run to unharness them. Stiff with cold and muffled like a mummy, you clamber out, and on unsteady legs mount the steps to the felted door of the posting-inn. In the big bare room, beside the warm oven, robes and overcoats can be thrown off. A red-capped girl loads the samovar with glowing brands from the fire, and sets it humming for tea. Brown bread is produced and eggs, and a great bowl of warm milk. With these, and the contents of your bag of provisions, can be eked out a welcome _obeid_.

For the night’s rest one need not seek a bed. There is never a spring to ease the bones from Verhneudinsk to Kiahta. There was discovered just once on the journey--at Arbouzarskie--an iron skeleton, bearing to a spring bed about the relation that the three-toed Pleistocene prairie trotter holds to a modern horse. The post-keeper had carefully hewn with his axe five pine planks to cover the gaunt limbs of it. The voyageur slept on the soft side of these timbers. Bed and board are synonyms in Siberia.

For a couch there is to-night the narrow wooden law-provided bench, or--a less precarious perch, and equally resilient--the sanded floor. For bedding, one has one’s own blankets and coats. What if the shoulder slept on numbs with one’s weight, or the corner of the soap-box in the traveling-bag, serving as a pillow, dents the tired head! One draws off felt boots and some of the outer layers of clothes, rolls the sheepskin about one, covers the head with a blanket, and sleeps like the forest bears in their winter dens.

Just before daybreak is the best time to start, so that one can cover the most road possible while the sun is up. At ten or eleven, an hour’s stop for lunch is advisable, and then on again until sundown. It is better not to travel after nightfall, as the cold is so much more intense. We dedicate the evening to hot tea, and then turn to the blankets and the bench.

The stretch between Verhneudinsk and Troitzkosavsk, officially rated at two hundred and eighteen versts, is really somewhat longer. A run of average record took from 4:20 P.M. Tuesday to 11:30 A.M. Thursday--forty-three hours and ten minutes. This included all relaying, seven hours a night for sleeping, dinner and breakfast halts, two accidents (an overturning and a broken runner), and one calamity--a Siberian who snored. The actual driving-time, over a road for the most part hilly, was twenty-two hours, five minutes, or just about ten versts per hour.

Horses stand always ready, with special men at hand to harness. Drivers swing on their shaggy greatcoats, and with almost no loss of time one is out of the shadowed courtyard and on the road again in the dazzling whiteness of the winter day.

In traveling “post,” however, with relayed sleighs and big empty guest-rooms, one does not become acquainted with the life along the way. One has only hurried glimpses of slant-eyed Buriat tribesmen, of galloping Cossacks, trudging peasants, post-agents, girls who carry in samovars and silently steal out, rosy-cheeked boys on the streets, and women at the house-windows. To know the people and see their daily life one must get away from the beaten highroad, strike out from the government-regulated inns, and blaze one’s own path into the interior.

First, you get a low passenger-sledge, long enough to admit of stretching out, and without too many projecting nails on the inside; then, three good ponies of the hardy Cossack breed, that are never curried or taken into a stable through the bitterest winter. The best animals procurable are none too good for climbing the passes away from the river-courses. The whole outfit can be bought for three hundred roubles in any of the interior towns.

For drivers, there is a class of _yamshik_ teamsters, who spend their lives guiding the sledge-caravans which carry the local traffic. One of these men, Ivan Kurbski, can guide you through a whole province, and lodge you every evening with some hospitable friend or recommended host. Whether he has himself been over all the changing by-paths in the wilderness of the Zabaikalskaia Oblast, or whether he mentally photographs the directions of his friends regarding each village, is an unsolved mystery.

[Illustration: SLEDGING SOUTHWARDS]

When the day’s journey is done, Ivan will drive slowly down the crooked street of the village he has settled upon for the night’s repose, looking keenly for landmarks visible only to him in this country, where every village and every house is mate to all the rest. Sometimes he will ask a question of one of the innumerable urchins. But generally he seems of himself to hit upon the desired domicile. Day after day he will take you the sixty versts, lead you to the village stores to replenish the supply of candles or sugar, bring you surely to food and shelter at night, and take off all the burden of care for the outcome of each day’s journey.

If for the third member of your personal suite you can get an old-time servant to keep the guns clean, build the camp-fires when midday tea is to be taken out of doors, bring in the baggage and rally the best resources of each halting-place, you are doubly lucky. You will be sedulously tended, and be treated partly as a prince, partly as a helpless baby.

Of this order is Jacov Titoff. Not the smallest personal service that he can render will you be permitted to do for yourself. The telling of unpleasant truths will be carefully avoided, however certain the ultimate revelation. Though honest beyond question, he pays you the naïve compliment of relying upon your generosity in all the little matters that concern provisions and petty luxuries. He will open the package which he is carrying back from the _torgovlia_ to extract matches and cigarettes for his own delectation, and will rifle unstintingly the reserve of canned _sardinki_. He cheerfully freezes himself waiting for deer, and stumbles up miles of snowy mountain in the beats. He is always in good humor, and without complaint for whatever comes. He is ready anywhere, at any time, to sleep or drink vodka.

Thus outfitted and manned, take your place, muffled in furs, and seated on the felt sleeping-blankets. Guns are at your side, the bag of provisions is in front, your own little ponies paw the snow. They start off now, trotting and galloping beneath the _duga_. The air is frosty, clear, and thrilling as wine; the snow is feathery and uncrusted, as when it fell months back; bells are jingling, and the driver is crying his alternate endearments and curses upon the shaggy ponies. Down the long rock-flanked river valleys, amid birch and pine forests, you will skim, by unwonted paths, through out-of-the-world villages, to see in their own homes the red-bloused peasants, the women spinning at the wheel, the peddlers and priests, the traveling Mohammedan doctors, the rough Buriats, miners and merchants, along the white way.

The smooth main road is left now for newly broken sledge-trails across fields and over snow-covered marshland. Every available river is utilized as a highway, for along its winding length the path, smooth and level, is marked like a boulevard by the evergreen saplings planted by villagers to guide the winter traveler. One can pierce the districts flanking the Chickoya’s gorges, reachable at other seasons only by breakneck climbs. And one can see the real Siberia.

On this first night of his incumbency, Ivan Kurbski lodges us with friends. He leaves us for a moment while he enters the yard by the wicket-gate to make due announcement, and the ponies hang their tired frost-covered heads. Your own bows under an equal fatigue. But the wait is very brief. Soon the big double gates of the log-stockaded courtyard open. The horses of their own accord turn in, and swing up to the steps of the house. You are handed out like an invalid grand duke, and are welcomed at the threshold, with a hard hand-shake, by a red-bloused peasant who ushers you up the steps, across the low-eaved portico, and through the square felt-padded door into the big living-room.

As we all enter, Ivan and Jacov, caps in hand, bow and make the sign of the cross toward the grouped ikons high up in the corner opposite the door. The saints have guarded you on the way--are not thanks the devoir? Then you, as head of the party, must salute, with a “_Zdravstvouitie_,” your host, the old _Hazan_ father of the peasant who, wearing a gray blouse sprayed with vivid flowers at breast and wrists, sits on a bench beside the window. Now you may sit down beside the massive table on the other bench, which is built along the whole length of the log walls, and survey the curious world into which you have fallen.

A woman of middle age, clad in bright red, is busy with a long hoe-like instrument pushing pots into a great square oven six feet high, ten feet to a side, and spotlessly whitewashed. To her right, in the room beside the oven, is a girl of fifteen or sixteen, rolling brown rye-dough on a little table, in perilous proximity to a trap-door leading into some dark nether region. An old bent woman gravitates between the two. Glancing up, one meets the wondering eyes of three sleepy blinking urchins, who peer down in solemn interest from a big cushion-covered shelf, two feet beneath the ceiling. Looking about to locate the muffled sound of crows and clucks, one discovers, beneath the oven, a corral of chickens, pecking with perky bills at the whitewash for lime. On the floor is sitting a little girl crooning some endless refrain to a baby in a sapling-swung cradle.