Part 15

Bozhe-Narimsky was a pleasant green corner, with tumbling river, many willow trees, mosquitoes, marshes. Thence the road went higher and higher to Maly Narimsky and Tulovka, through districts where once were forests of great pines and now are only forests of stumps, through wildernesses of pink mallow and purple larkspur, and over vast, swelling uplands covered with verdure, finally to within sight of gleaming streaks of snow and ice, the glaciers of the central range. Bozhe-Narimsky, Maly Narimsky, Tulovka, Medvedka, Altaiskaya, Katun-Karagai were the names of the Russian villages and Cossack stations on the way up. Most of them were well-established settlements, for this territory is Siberia, and not what is called Russian Central Asia. It has been in Russian hands a long while, and only the fact that Russia is so vast, and there is so much room for the overflow of population, explains the backwardness of the colonisation of the Altai. Russia has never had any enemies worth the name here, and has very little to fear unless the Chinese ever turn bellicose. The only people who stood in her way were the mild nomads, the Kalmeeks and the Kirghiz. These had unrecognised rights to certain valleys, springs, winter pastures, summer pastures, and they walled off their discoveries with stones and boulders, never dreaming anyone would think of annexing them. But when the Russian generals came riding down the valleys with their engineers, saying, “Fix me a village here and a village there, and give us twenty villages along the length of that valley,” no Kirghiz or Kalmeek had the spirit to say nay, and with a melancholy smile they crept away, leaving the fields to those who must take them.

Near Tulovka I saw the first marals, six speedy deer running ahead of as many horsemen, just outrunning their horses, but not disposed to race out of sight and get lost. The horsemen, who were Cossacks, carried lassos in their hands, and I rather wondered why they did not shoot the deer and have done with their hunting. A villager put me right, however.

“These are not wild deer, but escaped ones,” said he. “There are no wild deer left; they have all been caught now. No one has seen a wild maral for fifteen years. They have all been caught and put in gardens, and now we breed them. If they shoot these marals they lose six good breeders. A buck maral is worth two hundred roubles. It’s a sad day for the man who has lost these. It is very difficult to catch them, they are very crafty; and then one doesn’t want to injure their horns in taking them. They generally have to ride them down until they are dead beat; no use frightening them; just keep them on the move and give them no rest.”

At Medvedka I stayed with an old man who kept a maral farm. My host was a comical fellow, somewhat over six feet high, with long hair, bushy beard, kind and gentle eyes--a giant’s shoulders, an ogre’s stomach, but the walk and manners of a child. His great pine log house had a threshold so large that you might almost call it a veranda but that peasants do not have verandas. There were steps up to it, and then a long covered way, one side of which was the log wall of the house, in which peeped wee glass windows; the other side was a solid little railing, where you could lean and watch the pigs, the turkeys, the geese, the horses and dogs in the big farm-bounded farmyard. Beyond the yard and the pasture stretched upward the voluminous and irregular mountain-side, deep in a tangle of shadowy undergrowth and made majestical by mighty firs. The gloom and splendour of the mountains brooded over the big log house.

On the veranda were a whole series of green, many-branching antlers just sawn away from heads of marals--an unusual sight in any cottage. They were velvety and hairy; if you touched them you found them soft. Not the antlers hunters bring home and hang on their walls, nothing hard or sharp or fearsome, but gentle, rounded and smooth-knobbed, unripened antlers, sawn off from a stag’s head with a saw.

Mikhail Nikanorovitch, mine host, took me up to his maral farm, a tract of mountain-side many acres in extent, fenced in by a gigantic paling, the posts of which were eight or nine feet high and very solid. The maral is a magnificent jumper, and has been known to clear eight feet upon occasion and get away. As the farmer has to buy the posts from the Government, the construction of a _maralnik_, as they call it, is not without considerable expense for the peasants. Quite a small place would cost two hundred roubles.

Mikhail and I stumped up the mountain-side quite a height till we came to his wild enclosure. Mine host called the deer as his peasant wife might have called chickens to their food, and they came fluttering towards him to be fed, but, spying me, stopped short, sniffed the air, then turned and fled to the wildernesses of their prison.

“In the summer they are in this big place,” said Mikhail, “but in late autumn, before the snows, we drive them into a smaller place, and we feed them there all the winter. It is in this smaller place that we saw off the horns in the early summer.”

He took me along to the shed where the horns were sawn off.

“We make the first cutting only when the calf has reached its third year. We cut off the horns in June and the beginning of July--when the antlers are most developed and so worth most. If we leave them later they harden and are no use. They would then have to be allowed to bear their horns till next spring, when in any case they shed them.”

“What happens to those who have had their antlers sawn off; do they shed the stumps?” I asked.

“Yes, they shed their stumps. That is in April or May; and then they change their coats and are generally in a bad state of health.”

He described how they managed the animal during the sawing business: put its fore-legs in a noose, its hind-legs in a noose, threw it on the ground, bandaged the eyes, someone carefully holding the head and saving the horns from damage all the time. They sawed off the horn with an ordinary hand-saw--such a one was lying on a sort of bench in the shed to which the old fellow had led me--and when the sawing was done they stopped the bleeding with coaldust and salt, and then tied up the stump tightly with linen. The blood soon stops flowing, and the maral, being put at liberty, forgets and scarce knows what he has lost. In their tamed state the deer have found a sort of alternative destiny, and the peasants say that often marals which escape in the summer come back voluntarily to the enclosures for food and shelter in winter-time. Still, some do finally disappear, and although the villager I met earlier was of opinion that all the marals had been caught, there must still be many thousands at large upon the vast and unexplored Altai. In their wild state they are extremely shy of human beings, and seemingly with good reason.

Old Mikhail, who was a kind of three-storied man, pottered about, stooping the whole length of his huge body to pick wild strawberries and raspberries, and he constantly called out to me to help myself to fruit. When we got back to the farmhouse I found his wife boiling a chicken for me in a pail over a bonfire in the garden.

Mikhail showed me where they boiled the horns, and explained the process of preservation. There were enormous coppers for the boiling. The horns were put into boiling brine, just dipped in and taken out several times. The difficulty was to immerse them and yet not touch the metal sides of the pots. If the sides were touched the delicate skin might easily be frayed. After the immersion the horns were exposed in the open air. They dried fairly rapidly, and lost weight; by the time they would be ready for sale they would have lost half their original weight. In the late summer and autumn Chinese and Tartar merchants appeared and made great deals in maral horns throughout the whole district. In China the substance of the horn is known as _ludzon_.

Mikhail was an extraordinarily hospitable type of peasant, and heaped plenty on the table that evening--a great crust of honeycomb, for he kept his own bees and possessed a hill-side dotted with white hives; wooden basins full of berries; butter--and butter is rare enough in peasants’ houses; and soup and chicken and white bannocks. We had an amusing talk about England. He had never seen a train, the sea, an Englishman, or a German or a Frenchman, or, indeed, any race but Russian, Kirghiz, Chinamen, Tartars, Kalmeeks. We compared the prices of things, and he was greatly alarmed at the cost of meat in England. I made him wonder more and more.

“Now, for instance, a hare,” said I. “I do not suppose they cost much here, but in our country we pay six or seven shillings for one at Christmas.”

Mikhail was astonished.

“What, for the skin?” asked he.

“Oh, no; we don’t value the skin--throw it away or sell it to the rag-and-bone man for twopence.”

“You don’t mean to say you pay that for a hare. Now, here we keep the skin to sell and throw away the flesh. It’s good enough for hogs. I never thought of a hare having a price as food. I don’t know that I could say what was the price of hare’s flesh here. We throw it away.”

He played with the idea, and then eventually inquired of me whether it were possible to get an iced freight-truck from Omsk to London, and what would it cost.

I could not say.

“Well,” said Mikhail, “supposing we put a nominal price of two copecks (a halfpenny) a hare exported from here, we could make a big profit, and it seems to me they could be got to London, and there would be a big profit for every one concerned.”

I promised to give the matter my consideration, and he was so much in earnest that, despite the fact he had never seen a train and could neither read nor write, he made me note his address carefully and take it to England, where I could give it to a _commersant_, and he would contrive matters.

“Tell him,” said he, “that we can let him have ten hares for a rouble. Good night.”

I was getting ready to lie down. Some overcoats had been spread on the floor for me.

“Tell him there’s no end to the number of hares to be had here. Good night,” said he again.

And after I had lain down he came to me again and said:

“Are you comfortable? There was a man here once who made his fortune exporting _sarka_ skins. Good night.”

Next morning he gave me a large metal pot of honey and black currants mixed, as a present, and he drove me to Altaiskaya Stanista, the top of the Altai, himself.

XVI

THE DECLARATION OF WAR

It is a fine mountain road from Medvedka to Altaiskaya, over mighty open upland where the great firs grasp the earth with talon-like roots. Here and there along the road are Kirghiz tombs enclosed by rude hurdles, reminding one of the palings of the maral gardens. An occasional Russian hut, a mountain stream pouring across a road, forests of stumps, and again forests of those giant firs standing as against the wind--storm trees, broad at base, needle-pointed at the apex, every branch a strong son.

At Altaisky I proposed to stay a few weeks, and then cross the mountains to the Kosh Agatch road, northward toward Biisk; but the tidings of war came across my plan here, and farther than the Altai I did not go. But I had a quiet fortnight in a wonderful spot--Altaiskaya, opposite Mount Belukha, one of the great snow peaks that stand on sentry here between China and Siberia, and I walked and climbed. It would be a splendid place in which to spend a whole summer. There are places that are so placid and beautiful that you exclaim: “Good heavens, this is a very paradise!” When you have been there a day you want to stay there for ever, or to go away and to return and return again. So it was at little Bobrovo on the Dwina, so again at Altaisky. I thought to myself I shall come here again and spend six months, and write a long and interesting story. And I will ask “Pan” to come, and he also will come and write a wonderful story. “Pan” is an English friend, a great, tall, gentle, quick-scented human, a dear mortal who snuffs the air with his nose and can tell you thereby what has happened in a place any time this three weeks past.

Altaiskaya was full of the freshness of youth, and the air gave you wings and its valleys were full of wonderful flowers. I have a long-acquired habit of associating a certain phrase in the Lord’s Prayer with the most beautiful thing I have seen during the day, and if I have seen nothing beautiful, and have been leading a dull life in a town, my mind goes roving back to certain wondrous sights in the past. Most frequently of all it goes to the wastes, covered with crimson poppies, in Russian Central Asia, and occasionally to the verdure and splendour of the Altai and the delphiniums there, the blue, purple and yellow monkshood, the China-blue larkspurs, blue and purple larkspurs. A wonderful place for flowers. Here are sweeps of blue sage, mauve cranesbills poking everywhere, saffron poppies, grass of Parnassus, campanula, pink moss flowers and giant thistle-heads, gentian, Siberian iris.

Just outside the Cossack settlement it was late summer, and the glossy peony fruits were turning crimson from green, opening to show rows of black teeth--seeds. But as you climbed upward toward the snow the season changed, and it was possible to recover the lost spring.

The southern side of the mountains seemed to be very bare, but our side, the northern one, was green. It was comparatively easy to reach districts where it might be thought no foot of man had ever trod--primeval moss-grown forest, where were no tracks, no flowers, nothing but firs and moss. Numberless trees had fallen, and the moss had grown over them, and, in climbing through, one helped oneself from tree to tree, balancing and finding a footing. Above this jungle was a stretch of steep mountain-side sparsely grown with young firs, and then grey, barren, slippery rock. Wonderful shelves and chasms, fissures, precipices, and ways up without ways down, boulder-strewn tracks and founts of bubbling water, milk-white streams, crystal streams.

I was housed very well with a prosperous Cossack family, and, except for the fact that there was a terrible monotony in their dinners, had no reason to complain. Every evening when I returned there was beef “cutlets,” white scones and butter, a jug of milk, and the samovar. The whole family was in the fields hay-making all day, and were indisposed to give time to cooking.

Most days I spent by the side of a little mountain river, where I built a sort of causeway out of rocks, diverted the channel, made a deep bathing-pool--enthralling occupations. Here also I had a bonfire, made coffee, baked potatoes, cooked red currant jam. Strips of red currants hung like bunting on some of the bushes, and were so thick that you could pick a potful in a quarter of an hour. Here also I sorted out and re-read thirty or forty copies of _The Times_, saved up for me, with letters, at the post office of Semipalatinsk--all the details of the political quarrel over Ulster, the resignation of Sir John French (as he was then called), of Colonel Seely, the vigorous speeches of Mr. John Ward, the brilliant defences of Mr. Asquith. We seemed to be running forward silently and smoothly to an exciting rebellion or civil war in Ireland, and nobody seemed to deplore the prospect of strife. The Government, nominally in favour of peace at all costs, were incapable of preventing their opponents obtaining arms, and were, therefore, allowing their friends to arm. On the whole we seemed to be tired of the dull blessings of peace, out of patience with peace. Yet we were not ready for the strife that was coming, though certainly in a mood to take arms. It is astonishing that with our many international characters--those diplomatical journalists of ours--we did not know what was coming, or no one was at pains to undeceive us. Journalists abroad, even if they are out of touch with Courts and are uninfluential, have yet much greater opportunities for understanding international situations than Foreign Offices. Why is it that they nearly always mislead? In our country a certain glamour overspreads the personality of the polyglot who writes of foreign Courts and foreign policies, but as an observer of the Press for many years I can give it as my opinion that, as a nation, we do not gain much from the pens of those journalists who run in and out of chancelleries and are well known at foreign Courts. In any case, as regards those who dealt specially with Germany, Austria and the Balkans at the time of the outbreak of war, they were either blind or ignorant, which is unthinkable, or mixed up somehow in the great German intrigue.

Silence reigned in Europe, and under cover of that silence what tremendous preparations were being made, what hurrying to and fro there was. It is astonishing to look back now to those serene and happy weeks in the Altai and to feel the contrast of the innocence of Nature and the devilish conspiracy in the minds of men. If there are devils in the world, black spirits as opposed to white spirits, what triumph was theirs, what hidden ecstasy as at the coming triumph of negation. Behind the screen of this silence horns were blowing announcing the great feasts of death, the blasting of the temples wherein the spirit of man dwells, the orgy of ugliness and madness. But being, happily, untuned to this occult world, we did not hear them.

It was holiday time, the end of July, the Englishman’s great liberation moment when, even if he goes on working in office or factory, he ceases to work hard and lazes at his work. His wife and family have gone to the seaside. He will join them in a week or so. Meanwhile he is “camping out at home.” The young man is buying stout boots and greasing them for tramping, is scanning maps and guidebooks, and making absurd tables of mileage, prospective hotel bills and expenses. The teachers, with the children, are liberated from the schools, and the former are gone on Polytechnic tours and what not, whilst the latter chalk mysterious diagrams on the pavement and play hop-scotch, or play “Wallflowers, wallflowers, growing up so high,” or “This is the way she went.” The unfashionable but numerous marriages take place of those who must make the honeymoon coincide with annual leave, and the happy couples take Cook’s tickets to Strasburg, to the Tyrol, to Munich.

And those Russians who _must_ escape their fellow-Russians, and don’t like the bad drains of their own watering-places, are off to German baths and Bohemian and Austrian spas. Students are tripping across to Switzerland. And on all in German territory the guillotine of war is going to fall. At all the money-changers’ offices at Charing Cross and in the City you can buy German marks, though there is not much gold to be had. French gold, English, Russian can be had in almost any quantities, and Cook’s will sell you German hotel tickets for all August.

One lazy July afternoon I sat on the wooden steps leading up to my veranda and talked with a Cossack on wars in general, what prospects of war there actually were at that moment; and we concluded that there might possibly be war with Austria. It was the idlest talk, but the Cossack lives for a new war, and I did not like to discourage him. He for his part rather hoped for a nearer war; one with China would suit him, but he’d thankfully consider a war with Austria if nothing else were available.

I went along the exterior street of the village to the little post office facing the wall of the White Ones, as they call the Altai, and talked with the postmaster about marals, and he closed the office to go out and show me where his garden was. Here also were several _maralniki_, and I found them when clambering up the ridges, and the deer, seeing me, would scamper away. The village had a butter factory, and I used to go there and wait during the last stages of production for a pound of butter, and, sitting on a bucket upside down, chatted with other villagers. Opposite the cottage where I stayed lived the priest, and he often came across and talked. The church was the next building after the priest’s house, and was a beautiful little wooden temple built by the peasants themselves. I was quickly in the midst of the life of the settlement, and when the news came I was at once thought to be the obvious person to apply to for information. On the 30th of July, after a long day on the mountains, I slept serenely on the overcoats on the floor of my Cossack habitation. Next morning came the young horseman with the red flag flying from his shoulder, and the tremendous excitement and clamour of the reception of the _ukase_ to mobilise for war. As I wrote when I described this in “Russia and the World,” the Cossacks were not told with whom the war was or would be, and one of the first surmises that they made was that the war must be with England--crafty old England, who always stood in Russia’s way and was siding with the Turks again. Or she was afraid Russia was going to attack India.

The real news came at last, and with it the necessity to return to Europe as soon as possible. The war came across my summer as it came across the summer of thousands of others, cutting life into two very distinct parts. At the village of Altaisky I must draw my war line dividing past and present, one part of life from this other new astonishing part. The story of my journey has drawn to its close. Before, however, leaving the subject of Russian Central Asia I would give the thoughts and reflections that the journey has suggested, and especially those referring to Anglo-Russian rivalry in empire, the questions of India and Constantinople, the future of our friendship and of the two empires.

APPENDIX I

RUSSIA AND INDIA AND THE PROSPECTS OF ANGLO-RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP

The prospects of Anglo-Russian friendship are very fair at the moment of writing, the after-the-war prospects. Generally speaking, international amity or hostility has heretofore depended on the absence or presence of clashing interests. Russia does not stand on our road of Empire, and has never fought us and could never fight us commercially as Germany has done. Our only doubt about Russia has been as to her possible designs on India. Fifty years ago there were few Englishmen who did not entertain expectations of eventual war with Russia, and after the annexation of Merv, and the running of the Central Asian Railway thither, Beaconsfield was obliged to assure us that the keys of India were to be found in London, and consisted in the spirit and determination of the British people. We felt we were secure because we could fight Russia and did not fear her. As Lord Curzon wrote in his book on Russian Central Asia:

“The day that a Russian army starts forth from Balkh for the passes of the Hindu Kush, or marches out of the southern gate of Herat _en route_ for Kandahar, we may say, as Cromwell did at Dunbar: ‘Now hath the Lord delivered them into my hand.’”