Victor Meignan

“ Its streets are badly paved; enormous gutters, separating the roadway from the pavement, expose carriages to danger and exhale noxious odours, filled as they are with filthy water and refuse of every kind.
What strikes one in this city is a general aspect of gloominess. They have tried in all the public buildings to imitate the Grecian Doric, and have only too well succeeded in it. I do not understand at all why the Prussians have adopted this cold style, more sepulchral even than the Egyptian, under a sky so dull, and almost as foggy as that of Old England. ”

“ I thought of the poor inhabitants of Omsk, who look over the steppe so often with longing eyes. It is not from a love for this immense plain, it struck me at the time, but from some vague instinctive hope, of which they are barely conscious, though sensible, to see beyond in the horizon the dawn of something brighter than this endless uniformity, and perhaps in such a hope they find their happiness.
On approaching Krasnoiarsk, the hills rise higher and higher, and become at last, around the city, imposing mountains. ”

“ I had seen Syria and Nubia, lands of the Sun, in their full-blown summer radiance and glory, and I now longed to gaze on Siberia, the region of snow and ice, in its wondrous winter garb. When I am in the humour for a tour, I like to visit countries in their typical season, just as one likes to see a man in the exercise of his proper vocation. ”

“ Nothing is grander than this glacial route of unusual width, and of a uniformity and smoothness which no road laid by the hand of man can approach; without a pebble or a rut, one glides over without a jolt. Nothing interests the traveller more, the first time, than to watch the shores passing before the eye like a panorama; to contemplate the mountains and valleys the frozen way spares him the trouble of traversing; to coast the islands without navigating; and to pass here and there some barque, or perhaps steamer, imprisoned in the ice. ”

“ Thus equipped, we left Nijni-Novgorod on the 17th of December at three o’clock in the afternoon.
This first day’s journey in a sledge was delightful and exhilarating. We felt all the pleasure of the novelty of the locomotion without yet beginning to experience the least fatigue, and at every moment we met other travellers coming, twenty and even thirty leagues, to the city we had just quitted, on their business or pleasure.
However great the distance may be, it is never an obstacle to the Russians: they seem to make nothing of it, and never to calculate it. ”

“ In the immense solitudes of Siberia there are forests presenting diverse features that relieve the eye with the change of colour or form; on the open sea the waves are constantly in movement, movement that is suggestive of life and consequently engages our sympathy; but here in the desert there is a complete absence of change as well as movement. There is nothing but an endless solitude of silence and rest. ”

“ The entrance of the temple is ornamented with sculptured wood painted red and gilded, with lanterns and all sorts of suspended ornaments. Nothing can be more charming, or gayer and prettier, and at the same time more Chinese than this little nook, which is all at once a valley, a grotto, the bed of a rivulet, and a sanctuary. Once in my life only have I desired to be an idol. ”

“ And yet, fully alive to all these severities, I must abstain from recriminating too readily: in the first place, because I learnt on my arrival in China that fresh liberties had been accorded to the Poles in Siberia; and next, because chastisements undoubtedly severe have probably preserved Russia from great evils and the necessity of making the punishment still heavier if a more lenient one had been found insufficient. We must not be blind to the fact that the Poles are not always patriots, and when they demand liberty, it is not always on the side of law and order. ”

“ Few, perhaps, would contend that the beauty of pearls and diamonds is at all commensurate with their price, and yet those who recognise the exaggeration, might not readily perceive that nearly all their value is derived from the esteem they command as badges or insignia of wealth and competence. If beauty has no objective existence—and there is no evidence that it has any other than as a sentiment or idea—it can have no money value at all in a beautiful object, simply because it is not there, but in the brain of the beholder ”

“ I could not believe that the elegant toilettes then before my eyes could in any way ever have adorned two such figures so incapable of embellishment as those that appeared to me at the stage between Kazan and Perm. For they were quite hooded and overloaded with rough and draggled fur; so much like bales of raw hides, so little like human beings, that one would never have suspected that beauty lay there so many skins deep. The reader will readily understand how ill-adapted is the rigorous climate of Siberia to setting off the charms of female beauty. ”

“ The steppe, to the inhabitants of Omsk, is as the desert to the wandering Bedouin, the sea to the navigator, the Alps to the Swiss. They search in its changing aspects for prognostics of the weather, and these determine their daily movements. At Omsk, the people have a strong attachment to the steppe; it furnishes abundant pasture to the flocks and herds, and an exciting hunting ground to these ardent lovers of the chase, who find here no lack of wild animals. The public fêtes take place here, and the promenade is in view of the steppe. ”

“ What struck me all at once on this route was its absolute solitude. The carrying sledges bringing tea and other merchandise from China and the products of the Trans-Baikal to Nijni-Novgorod avoid passing by Omsk; it would be going out of the way to no purpose. It is therefore a rare occurrence to fall in with a sledge in this district. The snow, besides, is scarcely sufficiently beaten down to admit of an easy march. Here, in the absence of such movement, one is oppressed with an impression of wild waste, cheerless immensity, mournful silence. ”

“ The Russians, it is true, are so habituated to a state of patient endurance, in which they live; their resignation is so manifested in their conduct, in their forms of politeness bordering on servility, in their music, and even in their amusements, that it seems impossible there should be a great leader forthcoming from among them capable of changing their destiny. Their neighbours, the Chinese, live under a form of Government, perhaps, still less desirable, and, consequently, these two nations seem incapable of ever escaping from the slavery under which they now live. ”

“ He is irritated at the presence of others there, at their not becoming as light as air; he is angry with everybody and everything that is heavy, because what aggravates the danger by its weight, men or baggage, is exasperating, and, indeed, not without reason, for every ponderous atom, in his imagination, exaggerates the imminence of that desperate moment when, without the resource of a jutting branch or anything stable presented providentially to his grasp, this frail, frozen floor should break under the weight like a pane of glass, and plunge him into all the horrors of a glacial sepulture. ”

“ Sinking ourselves up to the waist, and consequently unable to move one foot before the other without great effort, having to battle besides against the violent cutting wind loaded with the snow it had swept up in its passage and hurled in our faces, we struggled thus desperately to see a few paces, as much as we could hope to see before us, but to no purpose, and were forced to return to our sledge in despair, to breathe again and recover a little more strength. ”

“ There is not, I am sure, any people in the world more disgusting than the Mongols. Water in this region, unhappily, is too precious to admit of its use for any other purpose than drinking. These wretched creatures are therefore putrefying in their wounds: sometimes, in fact, their limbs drop off and they perish piecemeal, inspiring with horror all those who come near them, who can only stand helpless and aghast at such a spectacle of human suffering. ”

“ As to wayfarers afoot, they descend the slope generally otherwise than on their feet and much faster than they like. The cattle, generally so slow, roll down in a few seconds, as if at the sport of Russian mountains. Everything there goes down at a giddy pace. The city offers little to interest the stranger, but it has all the aspect of the East; bazaars in the open air, in spite of the rigour of the climate, call back to the memory those of Syria and Africa. ”

“ The hotel at which we stopped was disposed like the houses of Maimatchin, already mentioned: there was merely that difference between the two which there is in France between an inn and a palace. One thing in particular deserves notice; it is that throughout China, even in the most humble dwellings, art may be recognized, not merely in the general arrangement, but even in the minutest details. The tables that are placed on the estrade of every room, the stools, the little cups out of which rice brandy is sipped, the small teapots, the slender eating sticks, have all an artistic form or look. ”

“ It is an object of great veneration, and cannot be ascended otherwise than on foot. It is not permitted to cultivate the smallest plot or to cut a single tree there; so that this is the sole wooded mountain amid the immense bare surface of Mongolia. The inhabitants of this dismal land often leave their homes and retire into the recesses of this wood to meditate here, weeks and even months in gloomy solitude over the vanities of the things of this world, and to enjoy the consolation procured by leading the life of an anchorite. ”

“ From the foot of the column dedicated to Sviataslof Vsevolovitch, on the spot where he vanquished the Swedes and Poles, that rises on one of the highest summits of the great hill on which Novgorod is built, the stranger may50 contemplate a prospect that might serve as a type of a Russian landscape in winter. In the plain below sleeps the Volga, silent and still to the senses in its winter dress; for the frost, one of nature’s forces, the most imposing from its effects, has already congealed the surface of its running stream into the solidity and quiescence of the plain. ”

“ Siberia, as it is pictured to our imagination, is vividly associated with the stirring incidents of a rigorous arctic winter; it is in this, its most characteristic aspect, that we delight to regard it and muse3 over it; moreover, in winter only is it so remarkably dissimilar from the nature we are accustomed to see in milder and more genial climates, and in this season alone, with its mighty ice-bound rivers and boundless snow-capped forests, does it present to the wondering eye of the stranger the interest and attractiveness of a striking novelty. ”

“ Straight streets parting from the Kremlin, as a common centre, intersect all the circular arteries, in such a way, that it is impossible to lose one’s self in the city, notwithstanding its immensity.
Each Russian city has its kremlin. It is an enclosure that contains generally a fortress, a residence for the Emperor, and one or many churches. The Kremlin of Moscow is much celebrated on account of its vastness, its historical souvenirs, and the wealth of its sanctuaries. ”

“ Just as in a carriage, when the horses are rushing on with uncontrolled impetuosity, he instinctively throws himself backwards, as if to struggle against the force that would hurl him to destruction, or, standing on the ridge of a precipice, he impulsively recoils towards surer ground from the abyss yawning to devour him, so, the first time he travels over the frozen river, he shrinks from a movement, but from one against which it is in vain to struggle ”

“ My imagination in fact, stirred up, no doubt, by the poesy of the journey, brought to my mind Dame Fortune saving the life of a sleeping infant on the brink of a well. The complete absence of wheels, however, soon brought me round to sober reality, and I explained the situation to Constantine with a conciseness that might serve as a model to many an orator. He questioned the yemschik on the matter, who replied with complete indifference: “Yes, sir, it is thawing; but it is merely the snow melting: the ice is just as thick as ever.” ”

“ Petersburg and Paris, to get something more tempting for the big nuggets they have found, and how they manage to gratify their exaggerated wants in the cheerless depths of Siberia. They prefer, no doubt, to be seen and known by every inhabitant of Irkutsk and Kiachta, than to pass unnoticed in the immense crowds on the banks of the Neva, in Hyde Park, or in the Bois de Boulogne. ”

“ The first of these three young men—one of my best friends, who, whilst we were travelling a few miles apart on the plain of Pekin, I thought was in Paris—was the Baron Benoist Méchin; his two comrades were the Viscomte de Gouy d’Arsy and Monsieur Guillaume Jeannel. They arrived at the legation as I came in sight of the fortifications of the capital of China.
At this sight I felt quite a glow of enthusiasm. The longer one has had an object in view, and the more efforts he has made to attain it, the greater is the joy on reaching it at last. ”

“ How often we vainly imagine we secure it in acquiring some charming tableau de genre or bit of old china, some rare gem or inimitable enamel, and, at the end of a few months’ familiarity with it, are disappointed at finding that it no longer rouses the enthusiasm we felt on first beholding its wondrous beauty! ”