did. The hide upon which each of them slept was neatly rolled up, and
all was arranged in order.
The commander took me to visit the boys’ pro-gymnasium or high-class school for 45 scholars, established four years previously. It was modelled on precisely the same plan as all the schools of its class throughout Russia. Hence two boys in the same grade of school, though one may be at Moscow and the other at Vladivostock, go through the same studies, and keep the same hours to each subject. The scholars dress in a blue and white uniform, and a boy, after passing through the preparatory class, goes on through the various grades up to the sixth, or, for a higher education, to the seventh and eighth classes. He may then go to the university, or to the Lyceum, to study philology and jurisprudence; or, again, to one of the academies, with a view to special studies, such as medicine, mineralogy, divinity, etc.
The cost of education in Russia, as compared with England, is low.[6] The Russian curriculum looks very formidable on paper, and I have heard from an English tutor in Russia that the boys are obliged to work exceedingly hard to pass their examinations. He thought they were worked harder than English boys, and acquired more theoretical knowledge, though the education is of a less practical character than in England.[7] Corporal punishment is forbidden, and is replaced by impositions; and when these are inflicted the scholar receives a note stating his fault, which he must take home and bring back signed by his parents. Should a boy fail to pass his examination in each of his classes, he is usually turned out of the gymnasium, which is a serious loss to him, because a boy gains military exemptions according to the class he is in on leaving school.[8]
Besides the boys’ school at Vladivostock I visited the girls’ institute for the daughters of naval officers, and witnessed the opening religious ceremony of blessing the house after the long vacation. Each child as she came up to kiss the Gospels was sprinkled with holy water, as were also the visitors; after which the priest and his assistant went over the building, sprinkling in all directions. The inspector subsequently declared what children were to be advanced to higher classes. The subjects taught were in keeping with those of the boys’ gymnasium, from which the institute differed in that the children were lodged, clothed, and boarded; 12 free, the rest on payment of £20 per annum. The Government gives a grant of £1,000 per annum towards this school, and the remainder is made up by the children’s fees and voluntary contributions. The cleanliness and good arrangement of this building were striking, not to say luxurious. A great deal, no doubt, was due to the fact that the Governor’s wife visited one of the schools every day. The senior class had two girls of 15 and 16 years of age. To my questions in geography they gave good answers, and in the Gospels fair. They had not read the Epistles, but were expecting so to do that year. One girl was from a peasant home, the other the daughter of a foreign merchant, but they appeared throughout to stand on a level with the officers’ daughters. They had a custom of posting up on a red board for a year the name of the best girl in the school. At the time of my visit the same maiden had held this “blue ribbon” for five years consecutively. Whether it was for excellence of intellect or conduct I know not, but I amused them by offering a prize, such as I had seen given in the schools of the Irish Church Missions, called the “best beloved” prize. The girls were ranged in a line, and each came and whispered in the ear of the teacher the name of the schoolfellow she loved best, and the girl who gained the highest number of votes received the prize. The idea was new to them, and they said the whispering was like going to confession.
There was yet another school the Governor’s wife took me to see--the little free school--built by the society she had founded, and of which it is not too much to say that it was the neatest and best-built house in the town. It was furnished in a manner that would be thought too good for a ragged school in England, and it struck me, as did the institute, that it was somewhat over-provided with teachers.[9]
There were 30 children on the books, of whom one class came in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. The religious instruction consisted in learning the 10 principal prayers of the Russian Church from a small primer, the contents of which would be as much or, I was told, rather more religious knowledge than the average Russian peasant would know. The children received at Christmas presents of clothing, and a marked increase of attendants takes place as the time for the gifts draws near--a phenomenon not confined to Siberian schools!
Madame Erdmann told me of an industrial school in the town for boys, where they are paid 6_d._ a day for their work. It must not, however, be inferred from these remarks about the educational condition of Vladivostock that things so prevail throughout the province. On the contrary, there are only 15 elementary schools throughout the Primorsk, attended by 215 boys and 66 girls; and the low condition of education was alleged to the Emperor as one of the principal causes of crime in the district.[10]
The foreign communications of Vladivostock are in summer tolerably numerous. Ships from various nations come northwards to avoid the heat of the tropics, or to get coal at Dui, and put in at Vladivostock for provisions, the prices of which, in the meat and vegetable markets, immediately rise on the arrival of a large ship. Again, the inhabitants of this town in the far east have the advantage of two telegraph stations, by one of which they can send a message to London through Siberia, and by the other _viâ_ China and India. The latter wires are those of the Great Northern Telegraph Company, opened in 1871, and passing through Hakodate and Nagasaki, thence to Shanghai and Amoy, and so on to India and Suez. The latter wire goes by the route I followed as far as Khabarofka, there meeting wires from Nikolaefsk, and then continues across Siberia by the route I travelled. The number of messages sent in 1878 from Russia to China was 595, and to Japan 515, or 1,100 in all.
Of the two Siberian wires, one, I found, is reserved for international correspondence. Of 20,000 messages passing from the south through Vladivostock, no less than 15,000 were in English. Of the remaining 5,000, those in the French and German languages absorbed the larger proportion.[11]
The director of the Great Northern Company was Mr. Russell, at whose house I dined, and whose wife played the harmonium at the Sunday service. I have already mentioned the heartiness with which Russians and foreigners alike assisted these services in the Primorsk. At Nikolaefsk, not only did the authorities send round notice of what was to take place, but they seemed to vie with one another in offering assistance. The military commandant offered the use of a room at the club; the captain of the port, being a Protestant, seemed almost aggrieved that his house from the first had not been chosen, and the chief civil authority lent the best room in the Governor’s residence, and attended the service with other dignitaries in full uniform. There were present on the first Sunday 33 persons, Greeks, Romans, and Protestants, representing Russia, Poland, England, America, Finland, Germany, and Sweden. Some came, doubtless, out of curiosity to see the first English service on the Amur, but many were able to understand; and on the second Sunday, which was wet, there were 20 persons present, all men but one. At Vladivostock the service was held in the new Lutheran church. The congregation numbered 27 persons, representing quite as many nationalities as at Nikolaefsk, and some Swiss besides. So few were familiar with the offices of the English Church that I was compelled to make the service of an irregular character; but it was pleasant, after the sermons, to have one and another grasping one’s hand, and expressing their thanks for what they had heard. Some of them had not had such an opportunity for a long time. I was greatly struck with one thing that reached me in connection with these services. Some of the Russians had never attended a Protestant service before, and more than one remarked upon its solemnity. This I thought remarkable as coming from persons who from childhood had been accustomed to an ornate and very elaborate ritual, and none other. They were plainly struck by the quietness that prevailed and by the appeal to the intellect as manifest in the sermon, in contrast to their service of worship only, with persons moving hither and thither; and a well-educated officer, commenting upon the solemnity of the service, said that he had never before been impressed by a sermon in his life.
The offertory at Vladivostock was given to the building fund, for the church was not quite finished. A resident pastor was expected to arrive in the course of a few months, which would make four Lutheran ministers in Siberia, instead of the former three living in or near Omsk, Tomsk, and Irkutsk, their general superintendent, Pastor Jürgenssen, living at Moscow. The number of Protestant churches in Siberia is five, and of Protestants about 7,000. At Ekaterineburg are living some 300 German Protestants, but nine persons, we heard, was considered a large Sunday congregation. In the vicinity of Tobolsk some of the Lettish peasants were said to have joined the Russian Church, and some to have fallen away from religion altogether. The account, however, of 1,800 Finns living at Ruschkova was better. They had petitioned for, and were awaiting, a pastor.
At Vladivostock I took my farewell of Siberian exile life at an experimental penal colony called “First River” village. Accompanied by the German captain of the _Cyclop_, Captains Boris and Charles de Livron, and a lady, we proceeded thither on horseback, by a pretty ride through a partially-cleared forest, till, from the top of a hill, we saw a brewery, brick-fields, and, not far distant, nestling among the trees, the exiles’ village. It consisted of about 20 log houses, occupied by 15 convicts and five others who had served their time, and who might have removed elsewhere, but they so far liked their quarters that they chose to remain. Two naval men lived in the village for the purpose, ostensibly, of keeping order, and a few Chinese had been attracted to settle in the place. Four of the convicts were under sentence of 15 years’ hard labour, one for 20 years, and one for life. They were condemned to Sakhalin, but, seeing that their wives had accompanied them, and that there was not enough work in the coal-mines, the kind-hearted Governor had obtained permission to place them in the little colony as an experiment. The men had built their own houses, and took it in turns to go into Vladivostock, from eight to twelve, to do night work. They might earn what they could by day, and the wives were able to add to the store by laundry work. One wife had by this means possessed herself of two cows.
Besides this, they might take as much land as they chose to cultivate. They were growing potatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, and cabbages, but the soil was said to be unsuitable for corn. Pigs and poultry were running about; and though, according to their own account, one of them with seven children found it difficult to make a living, yet the others did so easily.
One of the convicts, thinking I was a Government official, informed me that he had not yet received his new clothes, whereupon I learned that, when they begin to colonize, they receive monthly 72 lbs. of flour and 5_d._ a day. Every year they received a _shuba_, or sheepskin coat, underlinen, two pairs of winter boots, three pairs of summer shoes, and, once in three years, a long coat. In one of the best of the houses we found a clean, orderly room, with a good samovar, and plenty of pictures and photographs. The owner possessed two cows and a horse; so we were told, at least, by a fellow-convict, who took us into his garden and seated us beneath a bower of wild vines. Milk and wild grapes were afterwards brought for our refreshment. This man had been in the Imperial Guard, and had finished his military service, when, having invited some friends to his house, he killed one of them in a drunken quarrel. I tried to get at the relative positions of some of these convicts before the committal of their crimes and after, and found in one case that in Russia the man was a drunkard and poor, whereas in this village he could live well, and could not get intoxicated so easily, by reason of his distance from Vladivostock. There were but one man and one woman in the village who could read, and one had friends who corresponded with him from Russia. The children were educated at the industrial school at Vladivostock. Thus my last specimen of Siberian exile life was the most favourable of all.
I had now followed the exiles from Moscow all across Siberia, and, with the exception of the mines at Nertchinsk and Dui, had seen them under the varying circumstances in which they live. Looking at the matter calmly and dispassionately, I am bound to say that “exile to Siberia” no longer calls up to my mind the horrors it did formerly. I am quite prepared to believe that instances have occurred of bad management, oppression, and cruelty. I have already quoted some cases; but that the normal condition of things has been exaggerated I am persuaded. Taken at the worst, “condemned to the mines” is not so bad as it seems, and in the case of peasant exiles, willing to work, I cannot but think that many of them have a better chance of doing well in several parts of Siberia than at home in some parts of Russia. English people are accustomed to think of exiles like the parents of “Elizabeth,” banished to a region in the far north where scarcely anything grows; but a little consideration would show this to be, in the great number of cases, extremely unlikely, for the Government would then have to keep them, whereas in the south they can keep themselves. On the sea coast, women convicts get excellent places as servants. One hardship connected with their lot is that, until they have served their time or gained their good conduct class, they cannot marry; and even then the husband, if a free man, must undertake not to quit Siberia and so leave his wife behind. This law is rigidly enforced. I heard of one case of a woman who had behaved particularly well, and whose husband wished to return to Russia, for which even the Governor of a province petitioned, but the request was refused.
A lady told me at Vladivostock that some of her convict servants had recently said to her, “We have such a good time of it here in Siberia, that, had we known it, we would certainly have committed a crime before to get here; and now we mean to write to our relations and tell them to do something to get sent here too,”--a speech that will probably strike the reader as the foolish saying of a servant girl, but the truth of which, _in this particular case_, I do not doubt. The servant had the good fortune to be taken into the service of Madame Boris de Livron, who had spent many years in America, and of whose home I can speak, because I dined therein; and one had only to contrast with it some wretched _izba_ in European Russia, from which, perhaps, the woman came, and her laborious work in the fields, to render it exceedingly likely that she spoke, after all, only the sober truth. That this was an exceptional case may very well be, and so also the exile village was in a manner exceptional, for the exiles are usually planted, on their release, among colonists, rather than put into villages by themselves; but I have quoted these instances as the least repulsive forms of exile life that came under my notice, and to show that, once set free from prison, the prosperity of the banished is pretty much in their own hands.
Before leaving Vladivostock I called upon the priest, who gave me information about the church, and I likewise made the acquaintance of several of the merchants, among them Mr. Lindholm, who had whaling vessels in the Sea of Okhotsk. With him I exchanged my paper money, at the rate of two roubles four kopecks per Mexican dollar, taking with me a draft on his partners, Messrs. Walsh, Hall, and Co. of Yokohama. Thus prepared I awaited the return of the Governor, and on Monday afternoon, September 29th, the admiral’s flag appeared in the harbour; the naval captains and military officers assembled to present their reports, and I got my luggage on board the _Djiguitt_. Madame Erdmann insisted on my coming, however, the same evening to be introduced to the admiral, which I thought very kind, immediately after his prolonged absence, and the weariness of his journey. A warm reception was accorded me by the Governor, a lively interest manifested in my plans, and I left _terra firma_ to sleep in the ship.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Réclus gives these statistics concerning Russian trade with China:--
Average of 1827-31, £120,000 exports, £20,000 imports, £140,000 total; _i.e._, 1 per cent. of total Russian trade.
” 1842-46, £650,000 exports, £650,000 imports, £1,300,000 total; _i.e._, 8 per cent. of total Russian trade.
” 1864-68, £580,000 exports, £450,000 imports, £1,030,000 total; _i.e._, 2·5 per cent. of total Russian trade.
The year 1876, £250,000 exports, £1,410,000 imports, £1,660,000 total; _i.e._, 2 per cent. of total Russian trade.
[2] The number of Chinese and their congeners in the Russian littoral was estimated, in 1873, at from 3,000 to 7,000; and this would be multiplied a hundredfold if free emigration were permitted. In 1861, after the cession of the Sea Coast to the Russians, the Chinese Government forbade its subjects any longer to colonize in the country with their wives. The rich, therefore, returned home, leaving the poor; and these were joined by Manchu brigands and vagabonds, generically called Manzas, or Freemen--so named in reproach by the Chinese as outlaws, though the Manzas call themselves _Pao-toui-tzi_, that is, “walkers” or “couriers.”
[3] In 1873 there were about 3,500 Coreans in the Primorsk, of whom, says Réclus, more than half permitted themselves to be baptized--the correctness of which latter statement I am disposed to doubt. I heard nothing of any such number of Corean Christians, and the priest at Vladivostock told me that in ten years he had baptized only about 10 pagans. He was not a missionary, it is true, nor did I hear of one so far south.
[4] In Russian towns having not less than 5,000 inhabitants there are 30 supervisors, three more being added for each 1,500 of the population; and it is over these the mayor presides. Other civic arrangements, applying to towns, are an _uchastok_, consisting of from 10 to 20 houses; a _quartal_, or square, or block; a chast, consisting of from five to ten quartals; and a _government_ town of three chasts and upwards. The police-master is at the head of affairs; under him is a _chastny pristaf_ for each chast, under whom are chiefs of quartals, with uchastok officers under them.
[5] Manufactured goods were brought to the town to the value of £100,000, of which £40,000 worth were transported into the interior, and the increase of trade was reported to be 20 per cent. on that of the previous year; but I am not aware to what departments of trade this increase is to be apportioned, or whether it was due to the abnormally large garrison. Réclus gives the commerce of Vladivostock in 1879:--Imports, £218,495; and exports, £10,452.
[6] For instruction and books the first three classes pay 18_s._ a year, the three higher classes £3 2_s._ a year. In certain places only they can board and lodge, in which case they pay £24, or, with clothing, £32 per annum. The average total cost of a boy’s education, exclusive of food and clothing, up to the age of 21, in high-class schools in Russia, is £240, and for special schools for army, navy, etc., £300.
[7] The subjects of Russian study are as follows: Prayers learnt _memoriter_; explanation of most important chapters in Old and New Testaments; Old and New Testament history; principles and doctrines of the Orthodox Church; catechism; Divine revelation, sacred legends, and holy writings; ancient and modern books; faith, hope, charity: Greek and Russian Church histories; Sclavonic and Russian language and literature: Latin, Greek; arithmetic, algebra, geometry, plane trigonometry, and physical geography: natural sciences, electricity, galvanism, light, heat, motion, meteorology, chemistry: natural history, geology, botany, zoology: history, ancient, modern, Oriental, Greek, and Roman: geography: German, and one other modern language at choice, except that in certain seaport towns (as at Vladivostock) it _must_ be English. This course applies to boys’ gymnasia throughout Russia, and all the principal subjects are compulsory. Others may be studied out of the gymnasium, such as music, languages, technology, practical chemistry, etc.
[8] Thus, whilst 7 years’ service is exacted from a recruit who is uneducated, and 3 years from one who has passed through an elementary school, a boy who goes from the 5th class of a gymnasium serves as a soldier only 2 years; from the 6th class only 1 year; and from the 7th class, or the university, only 6 months, after which he can be examined for an officer’s commission, or may retire into the first reserve during 10 years, and then into the second reserve up to 40 years of age, after which he is altogether free from military service.
[9] I learnt something of Russian teachers’ salaries. At the institute the directress received £150 per annum; two teachers £100 each; an assistant £60; linen custodian £25; housekeeper £30. They had 42 scholars; and in the building they employed 8 male and female servants, at a salary of £1 per month each. Beside this home staff there were 15 outside teachers, amongst whom the priest received £70 a year. At the boys’ gymnasium the teacher of English received £7 10_s._ per month, and the teacher of German £25; or, to put it in another way, teachers of languages and of the four higher classes received 10_s._ a lesson, and those of the lower three classes 6_s._ The teachers elect from their own number an inspector, who receives an additional £60 per annum and a house rent free. Further, the Government appoints a director, at a salary of £250 per annum. All teachers in Siberia appointed by the Government receive an increase of 25 per cent. of their salary every five years; and after ten years’ service have an annual pension of half their salary.
[10] Thus the official report dealing with the morality of the people called attention to the fact that many are convicts and soldiers sent to the district for punishment, to the unusually large importation of alcohol and Chinese brandy, to the high price of necessaries, the insufficient number of free marriageable women, and, lastly, to the low condition of education. The chief causes of crime were given as gambling and drunkenness; and the crimes committed in 1878 were: insubordination to authorities 13, breaking prison bounds 4, vagrancy 31, murder 5, personal violence 11, libel and assault 12, theft 27, and highway robbery 11.
[11] A comparison of the salaries of the clerks shows the English company to pay a higher rate. The English company has 25 European clerks, independently of Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese subordinates. The European clerks begin at a salary of £320 a year, and go on to £420, after which they ascend to higher offices and shorter hours as superintendents, etc., and rise to £800 a year or more. In the Russian service a clerk begins at £2 12_s._ a month if speaking only Russian, and receives £2 10_s._ a month extra for each new language acquired. A first-class clerk has about £120 a year, with a house and perquisites; and even a superintendent receives only £280, with the like additions, part of which consist of rye meal or flour. I heard one man say he bought up this meal of his fellow-clerks to give to his horse and chickens. They also receive travelling-money periodically. I was favourably impressed with the bearing of the telegraph officials throughout Siberia. In some cases they live a most secluded life. At Busse, for instance, I met one who had been shut off from the world in that tiny place on the Ussuri for nearly ten years, hoping to realize a pension of £36 a year. The English company gives a pension, three-tenths of salary after 10, one-half after 20, and seven-tenths after 30 years’ service.