Part 9
We have to change horses, however. We get a samovar in the waiting time, and Zinaida--such is her name--becomes an excited chatterbox. It is only fifty miles to her goal and her sweetheart. She tells me how she met him, what sort of life they will lead when they are married, the name of their first boy, should they have one.
Two scalding glasses of tea, and then into the _arba_ once more, with fresh horses, and a new Kirghiz driver wakened up to take us. Zinaida’s boxes are corded on securely, her bandboxes are better bestowed away, she makes a more comfortable arrangement of quilts and pillows, and we lie back and both fall asleep.
When next we change horses sun pales the stars. It is the last change. Twenty miles more and our winged chariot flies up the courtyard of the town post-house. I am stiff. Zinaida, however, is as fresh and nimble as a young deer. A young man with a pallid face is waiting for her on the post-house steps, and she jumps down to him in a trice, and he folds her in his arms and kisses her.
We passed through Bielovodsk and Novy Troitsky, the latter being an extensive Cossack station, where all the village men have red stripes on their trousers, and where even the little boys riding the horses in from the steppe have red-striped breeches cut down from father’s. The Cossacks are soldiers first and peasants only second or third. Whilst farming they are understood to be “on leave,” and when war breaks out they are at once at the direct service of the Tsar on the field of battle. Novy Troitsky was a Cossack camp in the days of the conquest of Central Asia, and when pacification was consummated the Cossacks were invited to send for their sweethearts, wives, mothers, families, and settle on the pick of the land chosen out for them by the Government. There are many such settlements; they are called _stantsi_, or stations, whereas the other settlements are called _derevnyi_, villages.
On the whole, Seven Rivers Land seemed to be more fruitful than Northern Sirdaria. The settlements were very large ones; there were many enormous villages with schools, churches, big general stores and several thousand inhabitants. Pishpek, however, was not quite so large as Aulie Ata. The populations of the colonial towns on my route may give an idea of these growing agricultural communities:
_Inhabitants_ Chimkent 64 versts from railway station 15,756 Aulie Ata 242 ” ” ” 19,052 Pishpek 505 ” ” ” 16,419 Verney 743 ” ” ” 81,317 Kopal 1,102 ” ” ” 3,966 Sergiopol 1,352 ” ” ” 2,261
These figures are taken some years ago, and probably twenty per cent. should be added to the numbers now. These are the biggest.
* * * * *
The towns of this colony are not connected with Western Europe either by rail or waterway, and there is an unexampled provincialism in the country. The people are far away by themselves, and they have consequently developed a distinctive local patriotism. The Central Asian pioneers are great talkers about their own country, and they are proud of everything that marks it out as different from Russia and the rest of the world. They are proud of its vast empty spaces, its mountains, its wild beasts and birds, its tigers, wild boars, aurochs, wild goats, its falcons, flamingos, partridges; proud of the Kirghiz, of the tortoises, of the camels--in fact, of anything and everything that seems to mark the country as original. Its people are all hunters. The engineer, the “topograph,” the “hydro-technic,” the land surveyor, the Cossack, the peasant colonist, all carry the gun. The towel-hooks and hat-pegs in their houses are goat horns and antlers. The words of the colonists’ mouths run out in hunting-stories. All journeys are made on horseback or by post-horses, and the people are always moving to and fro. Even the colonists shift about from one settlement to another--by arrangement with the colonisation authorities.
I met many people on my journey: two _khodoki_, foot messengers from a village in Kursk government, sent by the villagers to spy out the land and choose a plot for colonisation, but now hastening back in order to be home by St. Peter’s Day and the cutting of the barley. Land was scarce with them; all in the hands of the landowners. The population increases--so many children always are born--but the free land does not increase. The two _khodoki_ had not, however, found what they wanted in Semi-retchie, and were returning to Kursk with a tale of disillusionment. “They told us it was heaven out here, and you reaped harvests just after throwing out the seed. But it appears there is as much work here as there,” said they.
I met a commercial traveller, a “_voyageur_, the representative of a certain firm,” as he called himself. He was travelling post-horses, and had a large chest of travelling samples, which was roped on to the back of his _britchka_. He was carrying Moscow cottons in bright assortments of colours and patterns, and when he came to a town where there were ten cotton shops he went into each rapidly and deposited a complete set of his samples, and left them with the shopkeepers for an hour or so while he had his dinner and had a shave and a bath. In that way he met me, resting while the shopowners and their friends discussed his goods. Commercial travellers in tea, sugar, cotton, china, ironware and other dry goods were very frequent on the road, but were mostly Tartars or Armenians.
I also met a boy going home from the University of Kief, going home to Verney, and in a tremendous hurry to get back to his mother and the girl he left behind him a year ago. He was “agin the Government,” and imagined that England was ahead of Russia in every way, and wondered what the English would not have done with Central Asia had it been theirs. “Just think of the wealth in these mountains,” said he. “Just imagine it; we have not one mine in this vast territory twice the size of Germany. We have only one factory--a lemonade factory.”
“Its destiny seems to be agricultural,” said I.
“What is student life like at Kief?” I asked. “Do you meet together much? Are there debates, literary discussions? What’s in the air?”
He could not tell me if there was anything in the air. Life was duller there than formerly. The students kept more to themselves; but they had a _Semi-retchinsky_ club. All students from Seven Rivers lived together, and they had musical evenings and dances. It was pleasant; the _Semi-retchenski_ were great patriots in their way.
At Pishpek I had a delightful meeting with a Government topographer--Nazimof, a man of thirty, of gentle birth, elegant, graceful, old-fashioned. I met him at an inn. I had been put into his room by a grasping landlady who would not confess she was full up and could take no more visitors. After somewhat of a “scandal,” raised by the topographer, it was agreed that I should share his room. Every corner was occupied with his professional equipment--long iron map cases with padlocks, chests of instruments, tent poles, carpet chairs, rolls of canvas, boxes of books, papers and clothes.
“Excuse all this,” said he. “I am taking it up into the mountains as soon as I get news that the snow has melted a little.”
He explained that he was on Government service, charting maps. He was going to live the whole summer up among the mountain passes and literally bathe in snow. He would rig up his tents by the aid of the Kirghiz, hunt, shoot, survey, chart, discover, without any other fellow-European with whom to share fellowship.
We spent two days together in Pishpek, and talked of many things. His brother had been sent to Jerusalem this year by the Orthodox Palestine Society to inquire into the conditions under which the peasants journeyed and the exploitation of the aged pilgrims by the steamship company and the Greek monks. He had brought back just such a tale of woe and of happiness as I had myself to tell after my pilgrimage. A good deal is going to be done to better the conditions of the pilgrims’ journey, and there is even a proposal that the Government take the pilgrims on their own boats. I wondered whether it was worth while interfering, and I told my own experiences on that journey and gave my impression; the telling introduced me.
My new friend told me how much he wanted to get away from Seven Rivers Land and see the world. Once, as a boy on a Russian training-ship, he had landed at Newcastle, and had seen something of England--had even slept in a sailors’ rest. He would like to _see_ England, to come and live there, and understand the country and the nation, to see America, also Australia. He liked being up in the mountains, working by himself in the fresh mountain air, talking to chance-met Kirghiz, shooting wild goats and partridges. But by the end of the summer he would be terribly bored. He would come down from the mountains, rush into Verney, complete his maps, and then bolt for Petersburg. He thirsted for human society all the summer through.
He was always dressed in white, and wore a fez on his shaved head. He sat with me hours in a bamboo _palatka_ in the one garden restaurant of Pishpek, and we talked over koumis, over roast chicken, over tea, over wine. At night, too, when he lay on a broken-down bedstead and I on a dusty divan, he prattled of his wife and children that he was sick to leave behind, and of the boy in himself which made him always seek loneliness and adventures, however much his heart bade him remain at home.
“I wouldn’t change my lot, but still it is wrong to marry at twenty, as I did. There are so many partings and it is a great pain. A young man has things to do in the world, and he is bound to put his wife and family in the background; his ties are his pains. Most happy marriages are made of men of middle years, when they have made a little fortune and can take things more easily. When a stout, old man marries a young girl, moreover, there is generally a happy, healthy family.”
“But surely you don’t mean to say that old men are better fathers than young men?” I urged.
“Yes; they have fewer stakes in the world. They are not called on to go and chart the valleys and peaks of the Thian Shan Mountains. They know they will not be called on to fight for their country. They know they’ve got enough money to educate their children and keep up a good home. They are not so fretful, not so irritable as young men, but good natured, easy going, and a pretty girl can make one do what she desires.”
I surmised he must have quarrelled with his wife a little just before leaving, and be sick at heart to get back home and make it up.
* * * * *
Pishpek, though four hundred miles from a railway station, is a promising town. The climate seemed to be a hot and dry one, though, of course, it is easy to be misled by the chances of the weather. There are long, white streets, with ranks of poplars on each side, a big market-place, a high road of shops and colonial stores, many places where _Kvass_ and aerated waters are sold, garden restaurants. There is not the atmosphere of mystery that Aulie Ata has. It is more colonial and less Eastern, though, of course, there are the inevitable Oriental hawkers and the native bazaar. Pishpek has a camel ambulance, a roughly shaped wood-sleigh with enormously long shafts, to which a Bactrian camel is yoked. Pishpek also has its lepers, and, as in all these Eastern towns, there is a great deal of skin disease, though chiefly among the natives.
The colonists seemed fairly well-to-do, though there was little evidence of culture, few books, no pianos; the cinema, it is true, but that is rather a sign of poverty. But the Russians seemed thriving and everyone seemed to have plenty of horses and cattle. In this country, where wishes are horses, even the hawker of bootlaces in the bazaar has his nag tied to a poplar tree near by.
The Kirghiz going from the parched plains up into the mountains let me understand the changing of the season. The road out from Pishpek led into desolate country, and I was troubled by the heat and the difficulty of obtaining food and drink. I carried four pounds of bread with me out of Pishpek, but that very quickly vanished, some eaten by myself, some by ants. Ants got into my bread at night and riddled it so that I could not break off a fragment without an ant appearing in it. I carried two water-bottles with me, and filled them with milk or water when I could. Neither milk nor water seemed to be very good to drink. The best thing out here is the aerated water, apricot or pineapple; it is very thirst-quenching and a good corrective to the stomach. When my European bread gave out I had to eat _lepeshka_, which I cannot recommend. It seems a possible diet when one is hungry, and if you have wine to wash it down you feel you are making a beautiful meal. One afternoon, however, I had a _très mauvais quart d’heure_ after _lepeshka_. A lump of it stuck in my gullet and would not go down and could not come up. I thought I was choked.
A melancholy native stands with a tray of _lepeshki_ in the road, and you buy three for five copecks--three rolls for five farthings. No matter how hard they are, they can be soaked and softened in tea. But I often wondered what gave the cement-like quality to them. On the road I have often felt that my diet was unsuitable, but never have I had such indigestion as on a diet of mare’s milk and _lepeshka_. It is claimed that mare’s milk is the best thing in the world for the stomach. Koumis cleanses and fortifies and freshens everything; it is the mother of the inside. But it does not dissolve _lepeshka_. I was told that it was difficult to tell the difference between champagne and mare’s milk.
“But, to start with, one is white,” said I.
“Oh, it’s not the colour; it’s the quality.”
“It is best when it is thick.”
“It’s not a matter of being thick or thin, but in the tingling taste and the exuberance and happiness you feel after it.”
“Well, I’ve nothing to say against koumis.”
I kept a diary of on what and how I spent my money on the road, and the entries run like this:
_Monday._ _Copecks._ Boiling water 5 Koumis 10 -- 15
_Tuesday._ Boiling water 3 Lepeshka 5 Milk 5 -- 13
_Wednesday._ Koumis 10 Pilgrim 5 Beggar 2 Milk 10 Kvass 3 -- 30
_Thursday._ Lepeshka 5 Sheep’s milk 5 Koumis 10 -- 20
And so on; a poor budget. The greatest disappointments of this journey were the absence of fuel and the great difficulty of making a fire. It took something like two hours to collect enough straw and withered grass and splinters of wood to make a fire. And the dried camel-dung blocks would not burn. As I tramped I made it a golden rule to pick up and put in my knapsack every bit of combustible material that my eye lighted upon on the road, but even so it often happened that I had to buy hot water at some dusty, broken-down caravanserai or in a Russian inn or from some Tartar draper.
Night in an inn or post-house or under the resplendent Asian stars! Hot day toiling over empty moors and across half-empty deserts, staying in shady Russian villages, going up the yards of the farmhouses with my pot in hand asking for milk, drinking about a pint of milk, and filling my two bottles so that I might have something better than water with which to quench my thirst when I was out on the road again; talking to the farmers; riding behind the reckless Kirghiz and his three horses; and then night again and its problems and charms!
Seventeen versts beyond Pishpek is Constantinovka, and seventy-one versts, Kurdai. Russian settlement is rather sparse until Kazanskaya Bogoroditsa and Linbovinskaya are reached, and these are in the urban district of Verney, the capital of the colony. There is an enormous amount of room for human beings here and, when the railway comes along and puts stations every twenty miles or so from European Russia, all the way, to Kuldja in China.
After the Cossack village of Linbovinskaya, with its shops and bazaar, comes the approach to Verney, and the high road is worn into many tracks and is broad and deep in dust. Along these come many equipages and picnic carts with pleasure parties of Russians, and for the first time since leaving Tashkent there was a suggestion of the life of a large provincial town. But, after all, Verney was only a larger Pishpek.
IX
THE PIONEERS
All the way to Verney the carts are travelling eastward, but on the road to Kopal two processions meet one another; the colonists coming from Tashkent meet the colonists coming from Omsk and Semipalatinsk. It struck me that those coming from the North were a poorer, harder, more jaded people than those who had accompanied me from the West. Perhaps that was because the journey from Siberia was more trying and there was less to eat on the way, or because the people who came by way of the northern road were from provinces of Russia where the standard of living and the average of health were lower.
The pioneers were a rugged sort of folk. They walked with their oxen and horses, they wandered all over the sandy wastes looking for roots and straws, and fifty people would spend hours getting enough fuel to make a fire to boil their pots. They got covered in white dust; their boots were through; their feet blistered; their carts broke down or cattle died; but still the band went on patiently, cheerily. They went very slowly, and I overtook many bands as I walked. I would fall in with the caravan at evening, and listen with an involuntary thrill to the great choruses these people sang as they went. They chaffed one another, gossiped, shouted to the cattle, sang with as much easy-going cheerfulness as if they were in their native province and driving the cattle in from their own pasture lands, and not threading the road across the silent deserts of Central Asia. I would see another party afar off at ten in the morning, a grey-brown mass on the horizon, and catch it up by twelve noon. And there would be a strange sight: not a single peasant walking or in sight. Only the creaking, slowly moving, patient carts and the clumsy, straining oxen or little ponies, going on by themselves without the flick of a whip or the whisper of a master’s voice. And, coming close up to the wagons, I would hear snoring. The whole caravan would be sleeping and snoring in the shelter of the tarpaulin tilts, and yet going ever slowly on, slowly on, through the blaze of the Asian noon-day, over the desert, toward the happy valleys of the East.
I suppose that, but for the instinctive movements of the Russian people and the seeking spirit, it would be difficult for the Government to settle these remote tracts of the Russian Empire. People would not go simply because of the grants they obtain. It is the wandering spirit that is the foundation of the Empire. In Central Asia the officials complain that the people who come are not like those who remain behind in Russia; they are the most restless of all Russians. They have wandered thus far, but they have no wish to settle down even now. They take up land, build villages, till the soil, but sure enough after a few years they are itching to move on farther. The majority of colonists are people who have come not direct from Russia, but from some less remote farm or homestead in Turkestan, Seven Rivers Land, or Siberia. And these people do not recognise the arbitrary limits of the Russian Empire, but stray over in considerable numbers into Persia, Mongolia, and Chinese Tartary. It is true that the Government exercises considerable control upon the movements of the pioneers. It indicates each year what tracts of territory are open to colonisation, what developments have been made in the irrigation system, and shows spots where villages may be built. The colonial village is not a haphazard growth such as is the ordinary European village. It does not simply grow; it is planned by the Government engineers and indicated in a schedule before ever a single inhabitant has set eyes on it.
When the harvest has been taken in in Russia many peasants go on pilgrimage to shrines and many go out in quest of new land. The _khodoki_, or walkers, set out. A village or a family sends out a messenger to seek new land; this messenger is called a _khodok_. The _khodoki_ are specially encouraged by the Government. The police will not allow a whole village to take to the road and go off all together in quest of land; they insist on the _khodok_ going first and booking something in advance. Very great reductions are made in railway fares and great facilities are given to the _khodoki_, who go forth and look at all the valleys and irrigated levels at the disposal of the colonists during the year in question. They travel in twos and threes, one _khodok_ being required for each three families.
When the _khodoki_ come back, after three weeks, or it may be three months, or three years, there is necessarily tremendous excitement in the village. They cannot then disclaim the _khodok’s_ authority to have taken land in their name, or in any case they very seldom do disclaim it. It often happens, of course, that the _khodoki_ return saying that they have found nothing better than their own land and their own village, and that, consequently, they do not recommend a move. Many of the _khodoki_ I met on the road were well-to-do peasants who had a stake in the old country and would not readily advise their constituent villagers to sell out and come to Central Asia. Still, more than half of the messengers sent out come back with a positive message. They have found and taken land.
Whether the _khodok_ has done well or ill, the families set out. It happens occasionally that the messengers choose death-traps and places of eternal desolation, and they are terribly blamed. But it ought to be remembered that Government engineers and agricultural specialists have indicated the sites as possible before ever the _khodoki_ set eyes on them; or a Russian general, visiting a district, has said: “Plant fifteen villages on the eastern slopes of this range of hills,” or “twenty villages along this valley,” and it has been done simply because he wanted Russian villages for strategical considerations.
The manner of settling the Empire is so interesting to us that I append a summary of the information given to all Russians desirous to emigrate to the Russian colonies. This is for the year 1914:
The provinces open to colonisation this year are those of Uralsk, Turgaisk, Akmolinsk, Semipalatinsk, Seven Rivers, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yenisei, Irkutsk, Transbaikal, Amur, and Primorsk. Also Yakutsk, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka.
_The following people are allowed to settle beyond the Ural._--All peasants and _meshtchane_, those engaged exclusively in agriculture, and also artisans, workmen, factory hands, merchants and shopkeepers. People of other classes must, before emigrating, apply to the governor of the province in which they live.