RIDING ON THE RAIL IN SIBERIA

Our first introduction to a Siberian railway train was made under unusually pleasant circumstances. Hurrying to the station in ample season to secure what accommodations we could, and expecting to have a severe struggle with our tickets and our baggage in a strange language of which we knew scarcely a single word, what was our surprise to have a decorated official, in a handsome white uniform bound with gold lace, accost us by name and assure us that, at the governor’s orders, a first-class compartment had been reserved for us, and all we had to do was to buy our tickets and take our seats. As the train was very much crowded, and our lack of knowledge of the language made us almost as helpless as infants in looking out for our comfort and advantage, this was a favor which we most thoroughly appreciated. Before the train started we were favored with a call in our little state-room from the enterprising and energetic United States Consul, Richard T. Greener, and also from Mrs. Frederick Pray, a little American lady, who, a few years ago, transferred her home half around the world, from Berwick, Maine, to Vladivostock, Russia. Her husband is connected with a large American firm doing business in Vladivostock, that is introducing many products of American soil and a thousand Yankee conveniences to the Siberian public. Mrs. Pray had kindly prepared for us a list of common Russian phrases, with the English pronunciation, which proved to be exceedingly useful in calling for tea and bread-and-butter, and a carriage, and a room at a hotel, or any one of the necessities of life to the wanderer in Siberia, where French is scarce, and German scarcer, and English almost nil.

LOCOMOTIVE]

The Russian language is formidable enough even when one has time and opportunity to make a study of it; to the passing traveller it is absolutely appalling. It has thirty-six letters instead of twenty-six, and several of them seem absolutely superfluous, for they cannot be and never are pronounced. The Greek scholar at first hails the alphabet with delight, and tackles it with enthusiasm, for he recognizes several old friends. There is delta and lambda and phi and chi and theta and several other letters that he struggled with in his school-days. But, alas! his enthusiasm is soon quenched, for he finds that there are so many other letters that are neither Greek nor Roman that he is more confused than helped by the presence of his old friends in such strange company.

Moreover, several of the letters are exactly like Roman characters, but have a very different sound, which is very confusing. For instance, B is not B at all, but is V, as in vein, while the Russian B is an entirely different character. H is not our familiar aspirate, which Cockneys so sorely abuse, but is our N. P is equivalent to double R in hu_rr_y, while the Russian P is made like the Greek pi. C is always S, and there is no hard C in Russian. Y looks very familiar, certainly, but is really oo, as in m_oo_n, and a letter that looks like R wrong side before, Я, is the vowel ya, as in _ya_rd. Then there are certain italicized letters which still further bewilder the puzzled student, for u = i and n = p and m = t when written in italics, but not otherwise. Thus it will be seen that Russian, “as she is spoke” or as she is wrote, is not by any means a holiday affair, and the usefulness of Mrs. Pray’s extemporized phrase-book can be fully appreciated.

But the time has come for the start, of which we have been made fully aware by numerous bells and gongs and whistles. There is no excuse for any one to get left at a Siberian railway station. Five minutes before the train starts a large station bell is rung. Four minutes more the passengers stroll up and down the platform or visit the buffet. Then the bell is rung once more, the conductor blows his whistle, the engine shrieks a warning blast, and at last we are off, with St. Petersburg 9877 versts (more than 6250 miles) away.

The scenery for a few miles out of Vladivostock is superb. The railway skirts one of the great bays between which the city lies, high up above the water, while off in the distance, beyond the blue ripples, lie the blue mountains, only partially obscured by the morning haze. Chinese junks, loaded with firewood for the locomotives, are dancing on the waves, or unloading their cargo by throwing the pieces into the sea for the waves to wash ashore, since the shallow water prevents the junks from coming close to the bank. Occasionally the railway diverges from the shore and runs through a copse of birch or beech, fresh and bright in their new spring livery, and then returns once more to give us a glimpse of the bright blue sea. The day was charming. Our most delicious spring weather in America is no more delightful than this first day of June in frozen Siberia. Had James Russell Lowell lived in Siberia, he would have written with equal rapture his oft-quoted lines:

“What is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.”

On one of these “perfect days” it was our good fortune to journey from Vladivostock. The spring seemed just about as far advanced as it would be in northern New England on the same date. The meadows were lush and rank in their growth, and the cattle waded knee-deep in their delicious fodder, and were, of course, as sleek and fat as cattle could be. The trees were nearly in full leaf, though some of the later varieties had not as yet donned their full suit of green. Great dandelions, almost as large as peonies, starred the fields with yellow, and bluebells and tiger-lilies made the roadway gay.

Lilies-of-the-valley at the railway station]

At the stations little girls with bare feet offered great bunches of lilies of the valley for sale, and I noticed that they were not unlike the rest of the world in taking advantage of the unsophisticated traveller, for, while I paid fifteen kopeks for a bunch, a Russian by my side, who knew how to dicker and bargain in the vernacular, paid but three kopeks for his lilies. But every traveller in a strange land must pay dear for his experience as well as for his lilies. Let me say, once for all, that one hundred kopeks make a rouble, and that a rouble, at the present rate of exchange, is worth a little more than fifty cents. Russian money is on the gold basis, and is in gold, silver, paper, and copper. National bills up to the value of five hundred roubles are good in any part of the empire, and are in denominations of three, five, ten, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, and five hundred roubles. Gold is in common use in pieces of five, seven and one-half, ten, and fifteen roubles, and silver in roubles, half-roubles, and twenty-five, twenty, fifteen, ten, and five kopek pieces, while copper coins are of one, two, three, and five kopeks in value. In my opinion, there are too many coins of different values, and one and five kopek pieces in copper, and ten, twenty-five, and fifty kopek pieces in silver, and five and ten rouble pieces in gold would answer quite as well the purposes of trade as the larger variety now in use. As it is, the fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five kopeks are so nearly of the same size as to be confusing, especially as different issues of the same value are not always of exactly the same size. The older silver coins seem to be of debased metal, with a large admixture of copper, but the newer coins that bear the image and superscription of the present czar are of much better metal.

After the edge of the novelty of our first ride on a Siberian railway wore off we had time to examine the railway equipment and the carriages in which we were riding. The train was drawn by a sturdy Baldwin locomotive, fitted with a big bulbous smoke-stack for burning wood, and consisted of about a dozen cars of the first, second, and third classes, in which the third-class largely predominated. The third-class were painted green, the second-class yellow, and the first-class a dark shade of blue. Sometimes a single car was divided into two classes, first and second, one-half being painted blue and the other yellow, with very little difference between the two classes except the color of the paint and the price of the tickets. The second-class cars were, perhaps, upholstered a shade less luxuriously than the first, and were somewhat more crowded, though there was little to choose in this respect. The first-class fare was seventeen roubles (about eight dollars and a half), and the second-class about one-half that sum. We were told in advance that the trains were built on the “American plan,” but it is really a combination of the American and English, somewhat in vogue on the continent of Europe. All the first and second class cars are divided into compartments, but down their side runs a narrow corridor wide enough for only one person to squeeze through at a time. The compartments open on this corridor, and through it the conductor passes to collect his fares; passengers walk back and forth, babies escaped from their nurses toddle down, and it is the general thoroughfare for a heavy-laden train. Being exceedingly narrow, it is always “congested,” and a fat man finds it his “misery,” indeed. In order to get through at all he must turn sideways and go crab fashion. There seems to be a great social democracy in this aristocratic country, and passengers from the different classes visit back and forth with the utmost freedom, and occupy compartments of a higher class than their own for half a day at a time.

As a rule, the Russians are exceedingly polite and considerate of other people, and, for the most part, the rude and selfish people whom we have met on this journey have belonged to other nationalities. The third-class cars frequently have an aisle down the middle, with seats on either side. As all the coaches are meant for night travel, all provide what is called “lying-down room”--_i.e._, room is provided for each passenger to stretch out at full length either in the upper or lower berth. The first and second class cars are luxuriously upholstered, and, by a curious contrivance, the upper bed turns over and becomes, not “a chest of drawers,” but the back of the seat by day. The only real lack of a Siberian railway is suitable lavatory accommodations. The little toilet-room is often a wretched, filthy closet, with a single wash-basin and a very limited supply of water, and it answers for all, men and women alike. This fault is shared by all Siberian hotels and steamboats that I have seen. The one cramped and dirty spot is the wash-room (for many hotels have a common lavatory, and no water is brought to the rooms), and the one scarce article is fresh, cold water. Beer, wine, vodka, tea, especially tea, flows freely, but to order a glass of water to drink, or a basin of water, much more a tub of water for a bath, creates a commotion, and the water desired is often unattainable, except after strenuous effort. A Siberian writer remarks, naïvely, that “Englishmen have the bad habit of washing themselves all over every day. _As a consequence of this habit_, their bodies emit an unpleasant odor.” It must be said in all fairness, however, that hotels, cars, and steamers in Siberia are, outside of the wash-rooms, clean and wholesome for the most part. To one who has just come from China or Corea, and who has tasted the rare discomforts of travel in those countries, they seem to be beyond criticism.

Besides the cars already mentioned, a baggage-car and a dining-car completed our train equipment. The latter, at least three times a day, is a place of much interest, and deserves a few words of description.

Pullman would scarcely own the diner as an offspring of his invention. A long table down the middle, at which perhaps twenty people can sit at one time, and a bar at the end, at which all kinds of light and strong drinks are served, and toothsome delicacies dear to the Russian heart, like caviare, sardines, and other little fishes “biled in ile,” are eaten. At the long table _table d’hôte_ meals are served, consisting of three or four courses, and one can also order what he chooses, at a fixed price. The meals are usually one rouble each, and though not luxurious, from the American dining-car point of view, they are quite sufficient for the average traveller, and worth the price asked for them. To be sure, one must get used to the greasy Siberian soup and to the chunks of tough stewed meat, which may be beef, mutton, or pork, one is never certain which. But travellers who choose to go across Siberia should not be squeamish, and to think of eating in a dining-car, however primitive, while whirling across the plains a little south of Kamchatka, is enough to kill the spirit of criticism in the most confirmed growler who ever went around the world.

It only remains to be said that the road-bed of the Eastern Siberian railway is well made, but seems to lack permanent stone ballast, the bridges are substantial iron structures, the piers and culverts are thoroughly built of cut stone, the embankments are smooth and well sodded, but the rails are light, and, it would seem, must be replaced by heavier ones before any high rate of speed can be attained.