FROM VLADIVOSTOCK TO KHABAROFFSK

The distance from Vladivostock to Khabaroffsk is a little less than five hundred miles, and it requires fully twenty-nine hours to cover it, so it will be seen that the trains are not run on the “Empire express” plan. However, before we had been many days in Siberia such a rate of progress had come to seem speed itself. The stations on the eastern end of the Siberian railway are not many, for the villages are few and far between, but we make up for the fewness of the stops by spending a long time at each station. Still we can occupy the waiting time very pleasantly by getting many, though fleeting, glimpses of Siberian life. The stations themselves are usually wooden buildings, neat and attractive and prettily painted. A picturesque water-tower is always a feature of the grounds, and usually an underground store-house, sodded over, that looks like an Oklahoma cyclone cellar. In this, doubtless, provisions are kept from freezing during the long Siberian winter. All the principal stations have buffets, where thirsty Russians refresh themselves with vodka, kvass, and other national drinks.

The villages usually consist of a few log-houses, with an occasional more pretentious frame house, but they are neat and attractive, and compare very favorably with the villages on our own Western frontier. The most interesting object at all these stations was the line of country men, women, and children who had brought the products of their farms to sell to the hungry travellers. Every station had its hucksters, not noisy or obtrusive, but waiting patiently in an orderly line for customers. Bottles of milk for ten kopeks, hard-boiled eggs for ten kopeks a dozen, huge loaves of black, sour bread in which the Siberian rejoices, chunks of fried meat and fried fish, huge pickled cucumbers, bottles of home-brewed kvass, a kind of innocent pop beer, were among the comestibles offered for sale. The hucksters were all hearty, healthy specimens of humanity, not refined or elegant in feature or dress--this could scarcely be expected in this new land--but wholesome, honest-faced settlers, capable, evidently, of laying deep and strong the foundations of an empire. I am told that many of them are dissenters from the Greek Church, and that they live godly and simple lives, and are much respected by their neighbors, and in this part of the country at least are unmolested by the government, unless they try to proselyte among adherents of the national faith. Most of them, too, are vegetarians. Every village has its church, often embowered in a little park of green, and the towers of blue and green, colors which the Siberians greatly affect for their churches, and bright copper domes, shining in the brilliant sun, always gave a touch of pleasing color to the scene, and showed that the people were not wholly given to buying and selling and getting gain in these little raw railway settlements.

The costumes of the people who flocked to the railway stations were most picturesque and interesting. Red was decidedly the favorite color with the women, and red of every shade and hue. Dull red and bright red, Turkey red and blood red, crimson, magenta, scarlet, and crushed strawberry. Often several, if not all, of these colors were combined in the same costume in a way which, I suppose, would have set the teeth of our fashion-plate ladies on edge, but which, after all, was undeniably picturesque.

The men were usually clad in a loose blouse, belted around the waist, and loose trousers tucked invariably into huge top-boots that reached nearly to the knee. Many times these boots looked to be by far the most expensive feature of the costume. As a Mexican peasant will often wear a sombrero, it is said, worth as much as his coat and trousers and boots, mule and saddle--in fact, the whole outfit combined--so the Siberian peasant clothes the other end of his anatomy with equal care, and even if he must go in rags, will bankrupt himself on his boots.

At all these stations the military were strongly in evidence, as is not unnatural, since this is a military road and the large places are all military headquarters. Everywhere, in the cars and out, officers and soldiers were to be seen. At least every other man you met seemed to be in uniform. But they, too, were invariably polite and showed nothing of the haughty arrogance and devil-may-care air often exhibited by the soldiery of Germany and other army-ridden countries. In fact, I was struck on this railway ride, and on all my other journeys in Siberia, by a certain quiet, dignified, self-contained air that the people displayed. The hucksters are not insistent on your buying their wares. The cabmen are not vociferous. The few beggars are not obtrusive. It is as though the vast, lonely stretches of their homeland had somehow impressed themselves upon the character of the people. The broad reach of upland and prairie, the noble hills, the wide stretch of blue heavens above them, the long, serious winter, the strenuous conditions of their life in this virgin land, have developed a national character, which seems never to have acquired the noise and bustle and artificial “hustle” of city-dwellers. On the whole, it is a pleasing, restful, and, I should think, likable type of character to which these surface indications point. I felt that I was back in the early days of New England, among the Pilgrim fathers and mothers of a new empire, as I looked into these earnest, frank, and serious faces, and as I looked I had large hope for the empire they are founding.

The parish priest is also a picturesque and interesting factor of village life. He often came to the station to take part in the one excitement of the day, the arrival of the daily passenger train. He was usually clad in flowing robes of black, with a close-fitting purple cap, while a huge gold or silver crucifix dangled from his neck. His hair is always long and curly. Whether the Greek priests were chosen for their curly hair or indulged in the use of curling-irons when preparing their morning toilet was a question which interested the ladies in our party. They seemed to mingle with their people on terms of benevolent equality, and their kindly and gracious presence shed a benediction even upon the railway platform. They were not averse to having their pictures taken, and the camera enthusiasts “snapped” the holy fathers with the greatest freedom.

The kodak is not unknown in Siberia, but it is evidently much more of a novelty than in the west, and always attracted crowds of staid peasants who wanted to look into the “finder” and see the resultant picture. Some were quite disappointed that the completed picture could not immediately be taken out of the camera and shown to them. One gorgeous railway official, much be-braided and be-spangled with gilt, insisted on having his black-bearded face transferred to the sensitive film. He posed with his most radiant expression, without any exhortation to “look pleasant.” He followed our party about, and apparently expressed every good wish for our successful journey, though our knowledge of Russian was not equal to his voluble good wishes, and, finally, just as the train pulled out of his station, he handed us a paper on which he had written a request that we telegraph him of our safe arrival at Blagavestchensk, a city on the Amour River, a thousand miles further west. A kindly fellow-feeling that, to be provoked while the train stopped “ten minutes for refreshments.”

Fifty miles after leaving Vladivostock the railway climbs to a considerable plateau, and the trees disappear, while open prairie land takes the place of the forests that crown and gird the hill-sides. For a couple of hundred miles, at a rough guess, the open prairie land continues. The soil mostly seemed to be a rich black loam, and one would think it was capable of supporting millions of people where it now supports hundreds.

On the second morning of our journey, twenty hours after leaving Vladivostock, we woke up in a heavily wooded, hilly region, and I had to rub my eyes to make sure that I was not dreaming and had really awaked in Siberia and not in northern Maine. Here was the Moosehead Lake region duplicated, apparently, in every stump and white birch-tree and corduroy road. Here were the same tree-clad hills and rocky ravines, with glimpses of other and higher hills peering above the tree-tops. Here were the same clear running brooks, babbling over their rocky beds, the same patches of charred timber burned to clear the land, the same flora down to the dandelions, blue-bells, butter-cups, and cowslips. To be sure, there was not such a predominance of spruce-trees as in northern Maine, but their places were taken by the larch and cedar and other evergreens, and white and yellow birch, beech, and poplar, which predominated, made me feel very much at home.

For hours these familiar forests lined the railway, and then the train emerged into the fertile plains that border the Amour. Here the snow fences, piled up in their summer quarters, reminded one of the prairies of our own Northwest, and showed that in the Siberian winter the railway has the same great enemy to fight. The telegraph poles, often braced by two supports until they look like so many tripods, also testify to the strength of Siberian winds. At length, at noon of the second day, twenty-nine hours after leaving Vladivostock, the spires and chimneys of Khabaroffsk appear across the prairie, and we realize that the first stage, and a very pleasant one, of our trans-Siberian journey was nearly finished.

Scarcely had the train pulled into the station of Khabaroffsk, and before I could get to the door of the car, when a police official in gorgeous raiment crowded in and inquired anxiously for “Pastor Clark from America.” When I confessed to being, in all probability, the individual that he sought, the official seemed much relieved, and at once took charge of me and mine, bag and baggage, and summoned a small squad of soldiers, or sub-police, to assist him. Evidently the kindly telegram of Governor Tchitchagoff was doing its beneficent work, and, like expectant American politicians, we were “in the hands of our friends.”