Harry De Windt

“ At daybreak the weather turned to a blizzard, which raged for twenty-four hours and nearly buried us in snow; but when the storm lulled a bit we struggled painfully on for about fifteen miles, and hailed the sight of a povarnia with delight, for it meant, at any rate, shelter and a fire. Povarnias are merely mud-huts erected at intervals along the track, when the stancias are long distances apart. They are dark, uninhabited hovels, generally half full of snow, and open to the winds, and yet these crazy shelters have saved many a traveller from death by cold and exposure on this lonely road. ”

“ In hazy weather land and sky formed one impenetrable veil, with no horizon as dividing line, when, even at a short distance away, men and dog-sleds resembled flies crawling up a white curtain. But on clear days, unfortunately rare, the blue sky was Mediterranean, and at such times the bergs out at sea would flash like jewels in the full blaze of the sunshine, while blocks of dark green ice, half buried in snow under shadow of the cliffs, would appear for all the world like cabochon emeralds dropped into a mass of whipped cream. ”

“ So the days crawl wearily away. Passengers come and passengers go, but this train, like the brook, goes on for ever. Although the travelling was luxurious I can honestly say that this was the most wearisome portion of the entire journey. But all things must have an end, even on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and on the tenth day out from Moscow we reach (unconsciously) our destination—Irkutsk. For it is two o'clock in the morning and we are aroused from pleasant dreams in a warm and cosy bed to embark upon a drive of about three miles through wind and snow in an open droshky. ”

“ I had imagined that nothing could be worse than a Lena post-house, but the latter were luxurious compared to the native yurta, which is merely a log-hut plastered with mud. You enter a low, narrow aperture, the door of which is thickly padded with felt, and find yourself in a low dark room considerably below the surrounding ground, with a floor of beaten mud, slippery with the filth of years, and windows of ice. The walls are of mud-plastered logs, also the ceiling, which would seriously inconvenience a six-foot man. ”

“ The wind troubled us most, for here there is no happy medium between a dead calm and a tearing gale, and the latter occurred on an average every second day. Northerly and north-westerly winds prevailed, and we whistled in vain for a southerly buster to clear the coast of ice. And yet notwithstanding our many miseries there were pleasant days, still and sunlit, when I would stroll to the summit of a grassy hill near the settlement, where the sward was carpeted with wild flowers and where the soothing tinkle of many rivulets formed by melting snow were conducive to lazy reverie. ”

“ Tchort, however, was a sad thief and stole everything he could lay his hands, or rather teeth, upon, from seal-meat to a pair of moccasins. At night, therefore, when other dogs were free to roam about camp, my leader was invariably fastened firmly to a sled, where he usually revenged himself by howling dismally at intervals. But he was a capital leader and as steady as a rock, excepting when the team, at the sight of a distant object on the snow, would give one piercing yelp of joy, and bolt towards it at breakneck speed, utterly regardless of the brake or curses of the driver. ”

“ Towards the Pole this desert gradually loses itself in fields of ice; towards the south in dwarfed woods, becoming itself a field of snow and ice when the long winter sets in, while stunted trees struggle for existence only in the deepest valleys or on the sunniest slopes. This region is the tundra. Our language possesses no synonym for the word tundra. Our fatherland possesses no such track of country, for the tundra is neither heath nor moor, neither marsh nor fen, neither highlands nor sand-dunes, neither moss nor morass, though in many places it may resemble one or other of these. ”

“ The weather, however, was mostly bright and clear all the way from the Lena to the coast, which was fortunate, for with sunshine and blue sky we could generally afford to laugh at cold and hunger, while on dull, grey days the spirits sank to zero, crushed by a sense of intolerable loneliness, engendered by our dismal surroundings and the daily increasing distance from home. The stage from Tostach was perhaps the hardest one south of the Arctic, for we travelled steadily for twelve hours with a head-wind and driving snow which rendered progress slow and laborious. ”

“ In summer time the river as far as Yakutsk is highly cultivated, and smiling villages and fertile fields can be discerned from the deck of a steamer, but in winter, from a sleigh, nothing is visible day after day, week after week, but an unvarying procession of lime-stone, pine-clad cliffs, which completely shut out any scenery which may lie beyond them, and between which the bleak and frozen flood lies as inert and motionless as a corpse. ”

“ Four days after this the hideous Yukon flats were reached, a vast desert of swamp and sand dunes, through which the great river diffuses itself, like a sky-rocket, into hundreds of lesser streams, lakes, and aqueous blind alleys, which severely taxed the skill and patience of our skipper. Here the outlook was even more depressing than on the dreary Lena. Before reaching Circle City the Yukon attains its most northerly point and then descends in a south-easterly direction for the remainder of its course. ”

“ As we proceed the Lena gradually widens until it resembles a succession of huge lakes, where even our practised drivers have some difficulty in finding the way. The Russian language is now seldom heard, for in the villages a kind of native patois is spoken. And yet the country is more thickly populated than upriver, although the pretty Russian isba has given place to the Yakute yurta, a hideous flat-roofed mud-hut, with blocks of ice for window-panes, and yellow-faced weirdly clad inmates, with rough, uncouth manners and the beady black eyes of the Tartar. ”

“ For on cloudy days the snow would assume a dull leaden appearance, and the sea-ice become a slate grey, with dense banks of woolly, white fog encircling the dismal scene. Fair and foul weather in the Arctic reminded me of some beautiful woman, bejewelled and radiant amid lights and laughter, and the same divinity landing dishevelled, pale, and sea-sick from the deck of a Channel steamer. ”

“ We saw Yakutsk at its best, for in summer time the dusty streets and dingy dwellings are revealed in all the dirt and squalor which were concealed from our gaze by a clean mantle of snow. There are no public buildings to speak of, but the golden domes of half a dozen fine churches tower over the dull drab town, partly relieving the sombre effect produced by an absolute lack of colour. Even the palace of the Governor is a mean-looking one-storied edifice, scarcely fit for the ruler of a province seven times the size of France! A Cossack stockade of great age faces the palace ”

“ There is no lack of money in Irkutsk, for gold-mining millionaires abound, and I generally spent the afternoon watching the cavalcade of well-appointed sleighs dashing, with a merry clash of bells, up and down the crowded street, and sauntering amongst the groups of well-dressed women and brilliant uniforms, until darkness drove me back to our unsavoury quarters at the Metropole. My companions generally patronised the skating rink, a sign of advancing civilisation, for ten years ago there was not a pair of skates to be found throughout the length and breadth of Siberia. ”

“ Grey skies and frequent snow-flurries were experienced as we neared Nijni-Kolymsk, and as each mile was covered the vegetation on either side grew scantier, for even at Srendi-Kolymsk the pine forests had lost their grandeur. Here they dwindled away to scanty fir-trees, stunted larches and grey-green willows drooping in the snow. There is no sadder [Pg 179] sight in creation than a sunset in these regions, when the heart seems to sink in sympathy with the dying day, and a dull despair to deaden the mind, as darkness creeps over a frozen world. ”

“ Climatically the journey is a delightful one in winter time, for Siberia is then at its best—not the Siberia of the English dramatist: howling blizzards, chained convicts, wolves and the knout, but a smiling land of promise and plenty even under its limitless mantle of snow. The landscape is dreary, of course, but most days you have the blue cloudless sky and dazzling sunshine, so often sought in vain on the Riviera. At mid-day your sunlit compartment is often too warm to be pleasant, when outside it is 10° below zero. ”

“ The distance from Yakutsk to Verkhoyansk is 934 versts, or about 625 English miles. Most of the way lies through a densely wooded region and across deep swamps, almost impassable in summer. About half-way the Verkhoyansk range is crossed, and here vegetation ceases and the country becomes wild in the extreme. Forests of pine, larch, and cedar disappear, to give place to rugged peaks and bleak, desolate valleys, strewn with huge boulders, and slippery with frozen streams, which retard progress, for a reindeer on ice is like a cat on walnut-shells. ”

“ On leaving Summit station the train enters a short tunnel, from which it emerges with startling suddenness upon a light, iron bridge which spans, at a giddy height, a desolate gorge. This spidery viaduct slowly and safely crossed, we skirt, for a while, the mountain side, still overhanging a perilous abyss. Every car has a platform, and at this point many passengers instinctively seek the side away from the precipice, which would in case of accident benefit them little, for there is no standing room between the train and a sheer wall of overhanging rock, the crest of which is invisible. ”

“ But I had not seen Sredni-Kolymsk. And yet, if we were here forty-eight hours and it seemed a lifetime, what must an enforced sojourn of five or six years mean to the unhappy exiles, some of whom had been here for a quarter of a century. Let the reader imagine, if possible, the blank despair of existence under such conditions; day after day, year after year, nothing to do or look at of interest, tortured by heat and mosquitoes in summer, perished by cold and hunger in the dark, cruel winter, and cut off as completely as a corpse from all that makes life worth living. ”

“ Beyond these nothing but the single telegraph wire which connects Yakutsk with civilisation. Coated with rime it used to stand out like a jewelled thread against the dazzling sky, which merged imperceptibly from darkest sapphire overhead to tenderest turquoise on the horizon. Who can describe the delights of a sleigh journey under such conditions, or realise, in imagination, the charm and novelty of a wild gallop over leagues of snow behind game little Siberian horses, tearing along to the clash of yoke-bells at the rate of twenty miles an hour! ”

“ But beyond the Urals we are once more lost in the desolate plains across which the train crawls softly and silently at the rate of about ten miles an hour. I know of only one slower railway in the world, that from Jaffa to Jerusalem, where I have seen children leap on and off the car-steps of the train while in motion, and the driver alight, without actually stopping his engine, to gather wildflowers! We cross the great Obi and Yenisei rivers over magnificent bridges of iron and Finnish granite, which cost millions of roubles to construct. ”

“ But the air is too dry and bracing for discomfort, although the pleasant breeze we are enjoying here will presently be torturing unhappy mortals in London in the shape of a boisterous and biting east wind. On the other hand, the monotony after a time becomes almost unbearable. All day long the eye rests vacantly upon a dreary white plain, alternating with green belts of woodland, while occasionally the train plunges into dense dark pine forest only to emerge again upon the same eternal "plateau" of silence and snow. ”

“ And yet every winter more miserable hovels are prepared for the reception of comrades; every year Sredni-Kolymsk enfolds fresh victims in her deadly embrace. "You will tell them in England of our life," said one, his eyes dim with tears, as I entered the dog-sled which was to bear me through weeks of desolation to the Bering Straits. And the promise then made in that lifeless, forsaken corner of the earth, where, as the exiles say, "God is high and the Tsar is far away," I have now faithfully kept. ”

“ Ebelach is more than seven hundred versts from Verkhoyansk, and we accomplished the journey in under a week. Only one place, the povarnia of Tiriak-Hureya, is deserving of mention, for two reasons: the first being that it exactly resembled the valley of Chamonix, looking down it from Mont Blanc towards the Aiguilles. I shall never forget the glorious sunset I witnessed here, nor the hopeless feeling of nostalgia instilled by the contemplation of those leagues of forest and snowy peaks, the latter gradually merging in the dusk from a delicate rose colour to bluish grey. ”