FROM NEW YORK TO VLADIVOSTOCK

The completion of a new way around this old world is a matter of no little interest and moment. Such a new way has just been opened, and it was my fortune to be one of the first five passengers who took this journey.

On the 28th of December, 1899, the last rail was laid on the trans-Baikal section of the Siberian Railway, which for the present will stop at Stretinsk, and there connect with the steamers on the Shilka, a branch of the Amour River, for Khabaroffsk, where again railway communication is resumed for a further journey of five hundred miles to Vladivostock, on the Sea of Japan. Thus across all of Russia’s vast domain in Europe and Asia it is possible to go by steam, a distance of considerably more than six thousand miles, as the route is now traversed by river and by rail. My own route was in the other direction, from east to west--from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg.

Though, as I have said, the last rail of the trans-Baikal section of the road was laid on December 28, 1899, the Amour and its tributaries were then frozen, and no steam communication could be had until spring unloosed the icy fetters. The rivers did not open this year until the middle of May, and on the 31st day of May I reached Vladivostock, and on the 1st day of June took passage at Khabaroffsk, on the Amour River steamer _Baron Korff_, for the long journey across the Russias.

I mention this fact because the newness of the route will account for some of the crude and primitive accommodations that will be alluded to further on in this story.

To be sure, many other travellers had crossed Siberia from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg, but the journey could not, before May of 1900, be done by uninterrupted steam travel, and thus one more way of going around the world by the aid of the all-compelling steam-engine has been added to the two that already existed.

For many years it has been possible to steam around the Cape of Good Hope and stormy Cape Horn from New York back to New York again. For a generation it has been possible to take the shorter cut by rail across the American continent and by steamer through the Suez Canal. Now a third steam route has been opened which reduces the ocean journey to a minimum, and, for the first time in history, makes the portion of the journey by land considerably longer than the portion by sea.

This is surely good news for bad sailors.

Roughly speaking, this way around the world involves about thirteen thousand miles of railroad or river travel, and nine thousand miles of sea travel. Approximately, these distances may be divided as follows:

MILES. By rail from New York to San Francisco 3000 By ocean from San Francisco to Yokohama 5000 By rail from Yokohama to Nagasaki 800 By ocean from Nagasaki to Vladivostock 1000 By rail (and river) from Vladivostock to Liverpool 9000 By ocean from Liverpool to New York 3000

I need dwell but briefly on our journey from New York to Vladivostock, for, so far as Nagasaki at least, it is getting to be as commonplace as a trip across the Atlantic steam ferry. As a matter of fact, it occupied us more than four months, owing to various detours in Japan and China for the sake of attending Christian Endeavor conventions which had called me to the far East. This part of the journey, however, might have been easily accomplished in twenty-five days--five days across the American continent, eighteen days from San Francisco to Yokohama, and two days from Yokohama to Nagasaki.

Here the novel part of the journey begins. We at once get out of the beaten path of the globe-trotter. He halts on the southern edge of Japan, or, perhaps, more often keeps on eastward across the choppy Yellow Sea to Shanghai, and thence, if he is really a _globe_-trotter, on to Hong Kong, the Straits, Colombo, and Suez.

In the future, however, the stream of world-encirclers is likely to divide at Nagasaki, one part of the stream flowing east and south over the old channel, the other flowing east and north over the new route which, less than three weeks ago as I write these words, was opened up around “this goodly frame the earth.”

By this latter route, which I am about to describe, the traveller sails from one glorious harbor to another--from Nagasaki to Fusan, Corea; to Wonsan, Corea; to Vladivostock, Russia. In all of them “the navies of the world might ride,” according to the old platitude, and on this coast, without much doubt, will be the naval battle-field of the future, when the Titans get ready to measure their sea-power one against another in the struggle for Corea or China.

We took passage on a little Japanese steamer, the _Ise Maru_, which runs between Kobe and Vladivostock, and which belongs to the Nippon Yushen Kaisha, the largest steamship company in the world, with steamers plying to America and Europe and Shanghai and Hong Kong, besides to the innumerable ports up and down the coast of Japan.

Many of the steamers are large and fine, but the _Ise Maru_ is not one of these. She is, however, clean and fairly comfortable, and we will not complain, as the journey is a short one of less than a thousand miles.

A prejudice against Japanese captains and chief officers exists among many foreigners, who will not sail, if they can help it, except on ships manned by European officers. I must say that I do not share this prejudice. I have sailed with more than one Japanese captain and crew, and I have invariably found them polite and exceedingly attentive to the comfort of their passengers, and, so far as I could judge, excellent seamen, leaning always to the side of caution in navigating the treacherous rock-bound coasts. As a matter of fact, the steamers that have been lost in these eastern seas have usually been officered by Europeans, and not by Japanese.

Half of the steamers of the Nippon Yushen Kaisha are officered by Japanese, and half by Europeans, and the latter have been by far the most unfortunate.

So, casting prejudice and fear to the winds, and trusting in Providence for a safe voyage, we set sail, and, twenty-four hours out of Nagasaki, approached the bold shores of Corea, no longer the hermit nation, but open now at a dozen doors to the commerce of the world.

Fusan, at the southwestern corner of the peninsula, is one of these open doors, a door, in fact, which has long been open, for the Japanese for three hundred years have here kept at least a foot in the doorway for their own ingress and egress.

Fusan is in every sense a Japanese port. The Japanese have been here so long that they have even trained the great pine-trees along the streets and on the temple hill to grow in picturesque Japanese fashion, and their shops, their banners, their Shinto shrines, their good roads, all proclaim their long occupation. The only Americans in Fusan are found in a small colony of faithful missionaries, whose homes, on a picturesque hill between the Japanese and Corean cities of Fusan, are conspicuous for miles around. The next day after her arrival the _Ise Maru_ weighed anchor again and, shaping her course due north, made for the port of Wonsan, on the Corean coast, midway between Fusan and Vladivostock, and about three hundred miles from either port.

Wonsan, like Fusan, possesses a magnificent harbor, entirely landlocked and surrounded by imposing hills. No wonder that Russia, as well as Japan, has cast covetous eyes upon this splendid port, but to all appearances Japan has the inside track, for here, as in Fusan, she has securely seated herself, has built her houses and shops and wharves and temples, and owns more of the shipping that visits the harbor than all other nations combined.

A few hours only were given to Wonsan, and again the whistle of the _Ise_ shrieked, the anchor was hoisted to the bows, and the little ship ploughed her way once more up the bold Corean coast, to make the last loop in her frequently interrupted voyage. One of these days Corea, I believe, will be a favorite haunt of pleasure-seekers and tourists. The coastline is magnificently indented with bays and gulfs, the interior is one series of grand mountains and lovely valleys, the west coast is lined with charming islands that form almost a continuous break to the winds and waves, while the east coast, though without many islands, furnishes equally fine scenery and unrivalled delights for the mountaineer on the shore and the yachtsman on the sea. The people are poor, primitive, and, it must be confessed, dirty, but are kind, courteous, and even courtly, and, in their white linen clothes and queer horse-hair hats, are most picturesque and interesting--far more so than their neighbors in China, _me judice_.

But we are bound for Siberia, and must not in this chapter linger in Corea. Early on the morning of May 29th, five days out from Nagasaki, the passengers of the _Ise Maru_ awoke to find themselves in still another magnificent landlocked harbor. One glance at the shore where stands Vladivostock, the “Magic City,” showed them that they had left Mongolia and Mongolians behind them, and, though still in Asia, and on the extreme eastern verge of Asia, were in an Asia owned and dominated by Europeans. Large blocks of brick and stone crown the hills on which the town is situated. A great white house flying the admiral’s flag occupies the most commanding site. A beautiful Greek church, with trim minarets, stands near by. The Russian tricolor is flying everywhere. We had left behind, as completely as though we had sailed to another planet, the mud huts of Corea, the slight one-story wooden houses of Japan, and the stone hovels and filthy streets of China, and suddenly found ourselves in a city of substantial brick and stone, wide paved streets, electric lights and telegraph wires, and railway trains snorting and puffing down to the very wharves. We could almost imagine that either Tacoma or Seattle had bodily taken passage across the Pacific and had planted itself on the eastern shore of Asia instead of the western shore of America. Only the droskies and tarantasses flying through the streets, with one horse under the huge Russian collar while another ran free to keep up with his trotting-mate, recalled us to the fact that we were about to step ashore in monarchical Russia instead of republican America.

A score of sampans, each manned by a long-cued Chinaman, were clamoring to take us ashore, and we were scarcely less anxious to accept their invitation, that we might plant our feet on _terra firma_, and realize that our long ocean voyage was over and our longer land journey over an unbeaten track was about to begin.