The Russian road to China

An ancient way leads across northern Asia to the Chinese borderland. The steel of the great Siberian Railroad harnesses now the stretch which mounts the Urals, pierces the stepp...

The tea carried by this highway became Russia’s national drink. Great warehouses arose, built caravansary-wise around courts. Endless files of two-wheeled carts rolled northward...

You walk together to the big thermometer that hangs by the station-door. It is marked with the Réaumur Scale, and your brain is too torpid for multiplications. But the slightly...

“But the Japanese are wily insects,” observes his companion, the young service-medaled major. “I was in Vladivostok when our prisoners came back. They tried to get money for the...

“We have great traditions. One Governor, Neryschkin, of the ‘cabinetski’ mines at Nerchinsk, marched to fight the Czar. In 1775 he was appointed chief of the mineral belt in the...

Well, it is pleasant, after a long train-ride, to stretch out in a big, if battered, armchair, and sip glasses of anything hot. The little teapot, full of a very strong decoctio...

In the antechamber a gray-bloused attendant helps you off with wraps and goloshes, then silently disappears through a rear door, leaving you standing there unannounced. The vest...

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 w...

Every time a guest enters, a bottle of vodka is brought out, costing 49¼ kopecks, half the average day-laborer’s pay in this district. On feast-days the visitors go from house t...

The influence of the criminal, as distinct from the political convict, is felt primarily in the cities, such as Irkutsk and Vladivostok, to which the time-expired men drift. The...

At all times of the day the samovar is left simmering, ready for any one of the multitudinous household to brew tea, and constantly replenished _zakuska_ dishes deck the sideboa...

There is a wide plain from Maimachen. It climbs into the first barrier-range and the forest belt of Mongolia, whose plateau is the third terrace in the rise of land from the low...

The open smile of his welcome shows white teeth hardened by the tough biscuit of his daily diet. You note next, with the pleasure born of seeing anything good of its kind, the l...

It is as if one were back in Siberia. The Buriat’s Siberian wife, in shawl and kerchief, is busy at the whitewashed oven. Brilliantly-colored comic prints detail the misadventur...

The Mongols are going up to the vessels, with buckets suspended to the end of a milkmaid’s yoke. They dip up a load. The soup looks like gray tapioca pudding. What it is made of...

There is, however, another section of Urga’s Russian colony, grouped around the consulate, a large compound situated a verst east of the Mongol town, which was built in 1863, an...

Of a total trade in Urga estimated at twenty-five million roubles per year, nine tenths is in the hands of Celestials. The remainder is Russian, for the Mongols are entirely wit...

Plans for provincial assemblies as a further extension of local home rule had been under consideration since 1859. On January 1, 1864, an Imperial Ukase was promulgated institut...

In such a fever-time the men to whom official service meant the slow toilsome improvement of conditions by self-sacrificing devotion to the routine of administration, who could...

The preservation of the country from the nether chaos is, however, a mightier problem. Before the ship of state rides safe in the harbor of true representative government there...

A profound politician, he alternately cajoled and threatened the peoples whose conquest he undertook; a true barbarian, no food save flesh and milk passed his lips. He and his m...

Marco Polo found the same indulgent tolerance of his religion. In Calaci, the principal city of Tangus, the inhabitants were “idolaters,” but there were three churches of Nestor...

To most people Chinese matters seemed settled. The preservation of a nation had been combined with the guaranteeing of a great free market; the orgy of grabbing had ceased. Russ...

Looking at the actual mechanism for revenue collection, one is met by difficulties which have rooted themselves deeply into the system. One cannot squeeze any larger proportion...