Part 30

As the top of the highest mountain towers above all others, so did he excel all, for he sent two well-aimed balls into the body of the archar and brought it to the yurt.

Every huntsman wished to bring in booty, but only one had his wish fulfilled: to us was joy, and to thee, noble lady, whom I now address.

All the people are delighted, not the men only, to see thee, to greet thee; all of us wish thee joy, and a thousand years of life and health.

And of thy good pleasure receive our homage. Thou mayest well have seen a better people, but no truer has ever offered greeting and welcome.

May God bless thee, thee and thy house and thy children. I cannot find words enough to praise thee, but God has given me my tongue, and it has spoken, the red tongue, what sprang from the heart.”

We left the Arkat mountains, and soon thereafter the district governed by our kind host, whom we left at the hunting-ground; and very shortly afterwards we were welcomed in Sergiopol, the first town in Turkestan, by Colonel Friedrichs, who greeted us in the name of the governor of this great province, and gave us escort on our way. Kirghiz chiefs became our guard of honour, and supplied us with draught-horses which could never before have done duty as such, so madly did they at first try to run off with the heavy wagon. Kirghiz sultans showed us hospitality, looked after our food and shelter, and erected yurts at every place where we wished to rest, or were expected to do so. Kirghiz also caught snakes and other creeping things for our collections, threw their nets on our behalf into the steppe-lakes, and followed us like faithful dogs on our hunting expeditions. Thus we journeyed through the steppe-land, now gorgeous in the full beauty of spring, delaying for a time to hunt and collect at Alakul (“the shining lake”), crossing valleys full of blossom and smiling hills, to Lepsa, the Cossack settlement on the Alatau, one of the grandest of the steppe mountains. We traversed the settled region, a little paradise, flowing with milk and honey; ascended the high mountains, rejoicing in the rushing torrents, the green Alpine lakes, and the lovely vistas, and finally directed our course to the north-east towards the Chinese frontier, for the shortest and most convenient route to the Altai led us through a portion of the Celestial Empire.

In Bakti, the last Russian outpost, news was brought to us that His Ineffability the Jandsun Dyun, the Governor of the province Tarabagatai, sent to greet us in the name of China, and invited us to a banquet. To meet the hospitable wishes of the noble mandarin, we rode on the 21st May to Tchukutchak or Tchautchak, the capital of the said province.

The company which rode through the summer glory of the steppe was larger and more splendid than ever. Partly in order to have a quite necessary security in a country disquieted by insurrection, partly in order to appear with dignity, not to say with pomp, before his Highness, we had added to our ranks. For, besides the thirty Cossacks from Sachan, under the leadership of our new escort, Major Tichanoff, and besides our old Kirghiz friends, we had with us a half sotnia of Cossacks from Bakti. The beating hoofs of our small army sounded strangely in the otherwise desolate steppe. All our Kirghiz were arrayed in holiday dress, and their black, blue, yellow, and red kaftans, covered with gold and silver braid, vied in sheen and splendour with the uniforms of the Russian officers. At the boundary, which had recently been agreed upon, a Chinese warrior of high rank waited to greet us. Thereupon he wheeled round and galloped off as fast as his horse would bear him to inform his commander of our approach. Stumbling over rubbish heaps, between half-ruined and half-built houses, but also between blossoming gardens, our horses bore us towards the town. There apish Mongolian faces grinned at us, and appallingly ugly women outraged my sense of beauty. Our cavalcade drew up in front of the Governor’s house, and we craved admission at the broad portal. Opposite it rose a wall of beautiful workmanship, with some strange animal figure in the centre; while to right and left on the ground lay some Chinese instruments of torture. An official of the house bade us enter, but indicated at the same time that the Cossacks and Kirghiz were to remain outside. The governor received us with the greatest solemnity in what seemed at once his sitting-room, office, and court of justice. Preserving all the dignity of a high mandarin, sparse of speech, in fact, uttering but a few disjointed words, always accompanied, however, with a cheerful, grinning smile, he gave us his hand, and bade us sit down at the breakfast-table. This gave promise of tea, and bore innumerable small dishes with strange delicacies, and “we raised our hands to the daintily prepared meal”. The food consisted of rice, various fruits dried and preserved in oil, slices of ham as thin as parchment, dried shrimp-tails, and a multitude of unknown, or, at any rate, unrecognizable tit-bits and sweets; the drinks consisted of excellent tea and sickeningly sweet rice-brandy of the strength of spirits of wine. After the meal, which I, at least, managed to get through with impunity, having fortified myself beforehand with a substantial snack of a less doubtful kind, the hookahs were produced, and we were shown various intelligible and unintelligible objects of interest in that room and the one adjoining. Among these were landscapes and pictures of animals, commendatory letters from the government, the great seal of state wrapped up with comical carefulness in brightly coloured silk, extraordinary arrows of an import which only a Chinese mind can fathom, samples of European industry, and so forth. The conversation was extremely limited, and unspeakably dignified. Our addresses had to be translated from French to Russian, from Russian to Kirghiz, and from Kirghiz into Chinese; and the answers had to pass through the reverse process. Little wonder, then, that the speeches acquired a tone of great solemnity! After breakfast some Chinese archers came in to display their warlike valour and skill; thereafter the Jandsun himself in all his glory led us to his kitchen-garden to let us taste its produce. At length he bade us farewell, and we rode again through the streets and markets of the town, and found hospitality in the house of a Tartar, where we enjoyed an excellent meal, especially graced by the presence of a young wife, as pretty as a picture, who was summoned to the men’s apartments to do us honour. It was towards sunset that we left the town, which is not without historic interest.

Tchukutchak is that town which in 1867, after a prolonged siege, fell into the hands of the Dungani, a Mongolian tribe, of Mohammedan faith, who had been for long in persistent insurrection against the Chinese rule. It was razed to the ground and no living creature spared. Of the thirty thousand souls who are said to have inhabited the town, over a third had found refuge in flight; the rest, confident in the success with which repeated assaults had been repulsed, remained to their destruction. When the Dungani succeeded in storming the town, they showed the same inhuman cruelty which the Chinese had shown to them. What the sword did not claim was destroyed by fire. When our escort, Captain Friedrichs, visited the place some fourteen days after the town had been stormed, the clouds of smoke had cleared from the charred ruins. Wolves and dogs, with bellies swollen from eating human flesh, slunk away sated, or refused to be disturbed in their horrible festival, and continued to gnaw at the bones of their old foes or masters. Eagles, kites, ravens, and crows shared the spoil. In places where the insurgents had made space for themselves, the corpses were thrown together in heaps, dozens and hundreds together; in other parts of the town, in the streets, courts, and houses, corpses lay singly, in couples, in tens,--husband and wife, great-grandparents, grandmothers, mothers, and children, whole families and neighbours who had sought refuge with them. Their foreheads were gashed with sword-cuts, their features decayed and burned, their limbs gnawed and torn by the teeth of dogs and wolves, their bodies headless and handless. Whatever horror the maddest imagination ever pictured was here realized.

At the present day there are at most a thousand inhabitants in Tchukutchak, and the newly-erected battlemented fort is actually under the protection of the small Russian picket of Bakti. That the Dungani have not yet laid down their arms nor been subdued, was sufficiently proved by the recent march of a Chinese army into the valley of the Emil, where insurrection is again threatened.

Under the escort of Major Tichanoff and his thirty Cossacks we traversed this valley without seeing a single Dungani, indeed without meeting a human being for days. The Emil, arising from the Zaur, flows between the Tarabagatai and Semistan--two mountain ranges which meet at an acute angle--and receives numberless small tributaries on either side. The genius which the Chinese have for irrigation had utilized all the streams, and made a fruitful garden of the whole valley till the Dungani broke into and devastated the fertile land, and surrendered it once more to the steppe-land from which it had been won. In the neighbourhood of the town we passed through several small villages, and we came across a Kalmuck aul, but apart from these we saw only the ruin of former possession, comfort, and industry. Over the fields Nature herself had drawn a veil with gentle hand, but the ruined villages, not yet destroyed by storm and tempest, cried aloud to heaven. When we visited these villages, the tragedy of bygone days was appallingly clear. Between the crumbling walls, whose roofs had been burnt and whose gables had wholly or partially fallen in, on the mouldering rubbish over which poisonous fungi ran riot, amid remnants of Chinese porcelain, and half-charred and thus preserved plenishings, we came everywhere on human remains, crumbling skulls, bones broken by the teeth of carnivores, and certain parts of the skeletons of domesticated animals, especially of the dog. The skulls still bore traces of the heavy blows which shattered them. The inhabitants had fallen before the rage of their murderous foes, and the dogs had shared the fate of their masters whom they may have been trying to protect; the other domestic animals had been driven away, plundered like the rest of the useful property, and the apparently useless residue had been broken up and burnt. Only two semi-domesticated animals remain, the swallow and the sparrow; the rest are replaced by ruin-loving birds.

We passed cheerlessly through the desolate valley. Not one of the Dungani was to be seen, for behind our thirty Cossacks was the great power of Russia. The first human beings we came across were Russian Kirghiz, who, though in Chinese territory, were pasturing their flocks and tilling their fields as usual, and had even erected a monument to one of their dead.

From the valley of the Emil we crossed the Tarabagatai by one of the lowest passes of the range, and thence descended to the almost flat plateau of Tchilikti, which lies over five thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by the Tarabagatai, Zaur, Manrak, Terserik, Mustau, and Urkashar. Crossing the plateau, passing some enormously large Kurgans or sepulchral mounds of the natives, we followed the serpentine valleys of the infinitely irregular Manrak mountains in order to reach the plain of Zaizan and the delightful town of the same name which had been erected as an outpost some four years previously. Here, close to the Chinese-Russian boundary, we found European comfort and civilization for the first time since leaving Lepsa. In the society which we enjoyed we seemed to be back again in St. Petersburg or Berlin. There was talking, playing, singing, and dancing both within the family circle and in the public gardens. The melody of nightingales accompanied the dance and song; one forgot where one was.

I used the time of our sojourn here to hunt “ullars”, mountain-fowl resembling partridges, but as large as black-cock, and in so doing not only became acquainted with the wild grandeur of the Manrak mountains, but saw the life of the poorer Kirghiz herdsmen in a light new to me, and returned much satisfied with my excursion.

On the afternoon of the 31st May we again set off in our wagon, making for the Black Irtish in order to meet General Poltoratski at an appointed rendezvous in the Altai mountains. We drove rapidly through the rich steppe-land, over coal-black soil, and afterwards over the drier high-steppes till we came to the river, whose rolling waves bore us next day to the lake of Zaizan. Hitherto all the Siberian rivers and streams had seemed rather tedious; but on the Black Irtish it was far otherwise. We got lovely views of the two great mountains--Zaur and Altai--and the adjacent ranges, while the fresh green banks, cheerful with singing birds, gladdened our eyes and ears. A rapid cast of the net brought us an abundant catch of delicious fishes, and proved that the river was as rich as it was beautiful. On the 2nd June we crossed the shallow and muddy lake, exceedingly rich in fishes, but attractive only in the peeps of distant scenery which were to be got from its surface, and on the next day we traversed the dreariest part of the steppe which we had yet seen. Here, however, we made the acquaintance of three most noteworthy steppe animals--the wild horse or kulan, the saiga antelope, and Pallas’ sand-grouse. Our Kirghiz secured a kulan foal and shot one of the birds. In the evening we rested among the spurs of Altai, and next day we met our former hosts at the appointed place, and continued our journey under their guidance.

It was a delightful journey, though wind, snow, and rain were all too frequent, and robbed the pleasant yurt (which we carried with us) of much of its comfort, though torrents barred our path, and though we had to find our way along precipitous slopes such as at home a chamois-hunter, but certainly no horseman would attempt. A Russian Governor does not travel like an ordinary mortal, least of all when he journeys through uninhabited territory. He is accompanied by the district-officers and their subordinates, by the elders and clerks of the community, by the elite of the district which he visits, by a troop of Cossacks and their officers including the captain, by his own servants and those of his escort, &c. And when, as in this case, the expedition is to a comparatively unknown country, when it is necessary to consult with Kirghiz communities, the cavalcade is enormously increased. For not only have yurts and tents to be carried, as is usual on steppe journeys, but flocks of sheep have to go on in front of the little army to feed the hundreds on their way through the barren wilderness. Since leaving the Zaizan lake we had been once more in China, and a journey of several days had to be faced before we could hope to come across human settlements, which are confined to the deeper valleys among the mountains.

At first we were accompanied by more than two hundred men, mostly Kirghiz, who had been summoned to receive an imperial order relating to the suspension of their pasture-rights in the crown-lands of the Altai, and to come to an agreement as to consequent changes in their wanderings. But even after the deliberations were ended, our retinue still numbered over a hundred horses and sixty men. In the early morning the yurts were raised from over our heads and sent on in front with the baggage; then we followed in companies, riding slowly until the ladies, the General’s amiable wife and daughter, overtook us. We breakfasted at some suitable spot, waited till the last of the pack-horses had gone ahead, and then went on, usually reaching our halting-place along with the daily dwindling flock of sheep which always started first. Thus, every evening, we had an opportunity of watching the pleasant picture of camp-life take form before us. Lovely verdant valleys full of spring’s fragrance invited us; from the lofty precipitous mountains, still snow-capped, we got glimpses of the distant highlands and of the steppe-land, which we had traversed, stretching to the Zaur and the Tarabagatai; and at last we caught sight of Markakul--the pearl among the mountain lakes of the Altai--and entered the highlands proper. For three long days we journeyed along the lake, hindered by bad roads and bad weather, and delayed by a Chinese embassy sent to the Governor; then we rode through dense forests and over scarce surmountable passes, and down by breakneck paths towards the Russian frontier, and into the fertile valley of the Buchtarma. There in the newly-established Cossack settlement the Altaiskaya-Stanitza, we were again able to enjoy Russian hospitality and to rest in comfort.

The officers of the Stanitza were kind enough to present us with samples of the produce of the district, and we continued our journey on the 12th of June. The sun shone cheerfully down from a cloudless sky on the splendid landscape, now for the first time unveiled. Immense park-like valleys, surrounded by steeply towering, snow-capped mountains, suffused with bewitching colours, beautiful trees on the meadows, blossoming bushes on the slopes, and an infinite wealth of flowers, beautiful beyond description, and as it were exultant in the sunlight long denied to them, newly unfolded wild roses, the call of the cuckoo and songs from a hundred throats, the auls of the Kirghiz in the broader valleys, and the Russian villages surrounded by green shrubs, grazing herds, fruitful fields, rushing brooks, and jagged rocks, mild air and the balmy fragrance breathing of spring--such were some of the elements which intoxicated the senses and made our journey a continual delight. Soon we crossed the boundaries of the crown-lands of the Altai, a property not much smaller than France! At the end of a day’s journey we reached the little town of Serianoffsk with its silver mines. After we had been hospitably entertained and had inspected all the works, we turned again to the Irtish, and were borne by the rapid stream through deep and picturesque gorges past Buchtarminsk to Ustkamenogorsk, whence we journeyed in wagons once more through these crown-lands which give promise of a rich future. Steppe-like plains adjoin the pleasant tracts which lie along the spurs of the mountains; extensive forests alternate with cultivated land. Large prosperous villages; valuable, fertile fields of coal-black soil; well-built men with a look of conscious prosperity, beautiful women in picturesque costume, both child-like in their inquisitiveness and in their good-nature; excellent, serviceable, untiring horses, and powerful, shapely oxen lying at ease in large herds; an endless succession of caravans bearing ore and coal along well-made roads, marmots on the slopes of the mountains, souslik on the plains, imperial eagles on the guide-posts by the highway, charming little gulls on the water-basins and about the townships--such cheerful pictures enlivened our route. We hastened through the country as if in flight, paying a passing visit to the mining town appropriately called Schlangenberg (Snake-town), and allowing ourselves but a short rest in the country-town of Barnaul. Thence we journeyed to the little hill-town of Zalair, and thence to the great government-town of Tomsk.

Before we came to Barnaul we had reached the Obi; at Barnaul we crossed it, and at Tomsk we embarked on board a boat. Through its tributary the Tom we entered this giant river, whose basin is larger than that of all the west European rivers taken together, and sailed for about 1700 miles, towards the north. For four days and nights the river--flooded to its highest water-mark--bore us at a rate almost twice as quick as a steamboat hastening up-stream; we required eleven full days and nights to cover the distance between the mouth of the Irtish and that of the Shtchutshya, although we only rested a few hours in Samarowo and Bereosoff, and did not include in our reckoning the two days which we spent in Obdorsk, the last Russian village on the river. The river is gigantic and most impressive, dreary and monotonous though it be called. In one valley, whose breadth varied from six to sixteen miles, it split up into numerous branches surrounding countless islands, and often broadening out into extensive lake-like shallows; near its mouth the depth of water in the main stream--miles in breadth--was on an average about 90 feet. Primeval forests, hardly broken by clearings, into whose heart not even the natives have penetrated, clothed the true banks of the river; willow-woods in all stages of growth covered the islands, which are continually carved at by the floods, eaten away, and built up afresh. The further down we went the poorer became the land, the thinner and more scanty the woods, the more miserable the villages, though as the river nears its mouth the water liberally supplies the food which the land itself denies. Not far below Tomsk, beyond Tobolsk, the soil ceases to reward cultivation, further down the grazing of cattle gradually ceases; but the river teems with shoals of valuable fishes, and the primeval forests along its shores yield rich spoil to the huntsman. Fisher-folk and huntsmen replace the peasants, and the reindeer herdsmen the cattle tenders. Russian settlements become more and more rare, the homes of the Ostiaks become more frequent, until at length the only visible signs of man’s presence are the movable, conical, birch-bark huts or “tshums” of the Ostiaks, and occasional exceedingly miserable log-huts, the temporary shelters of Russian fishermen.

We had determined to explore a tundra or moss-steppe, and had therefore fixed upon the Samoyede peninsula between the Ob and the Kara Sea, all the more because a solution of certain important commercial problems was to be looked for in this portion of the broad treeless zone which encircles the pole--a region, moreover, on which Europeans had scarcely as yet set foot. In Obdorsk and further down-stream we hired for this journey several Russians, Syryanians, Ostiaks, and Samoyedes, and set out on the 15th of July.

From the northern heights of the Ural range, which is here represented by lofty mountains, three rivers arise near one another, the Ussa, a tributary of the Petchora, the Bodarata, which enters the Kara Sea, and the Shtchutshya, which flows into the Obi. It was the basin of the last, Shtchutshya, which we determined to visit. But no one could tell us what the country was like, how we should fare, whether we might hope to find reindeer or be forced to go afoot.

To the mouth of the Shtchutshya river we journeyed in the usual fashion, paying off our oarsmen at each Ostiak settlement and hiring others; when we reached the river our own followers began their work. For eight days we worked slowly up the stream, following its countless serpentine windings further into the monotonous, indeed dismally tedious tundra, now approaching the Ural range, and again diverging from it. For eight long days we saw no human beings, but only traces of their presence,--their necessary property packed on sledges for the winter, and their burial-places. Treacherous swamps on both sides of the river prevented us from making inland excursions, and millions of bloodthirsty mosquitoes tormented us without ceasing. On the seventh day we saw a dog--quite an event for us and our crew; on the eighth day we came upon an inhabited tshum, and in it the only man who could tell us about the country before us. We took him with us as a guide, and with him, three days later, we set out on an expedition which proved as dangerous as it was fatiguing.

We were told that reindeer were to be found nine full days’ journey from us, on the pasturage of Saddabei in the Ural range; at this season there was not one to be got near the Shtchutshya. There was nothing for it but to set off on foot, and to face, as best we might, the difficulties and hardships of a journey through a pathless, barren, mosquito-plagued district, altogether hostile to man, and worst of all--unknown!

After careful and prolonged consultation with the natives our preparations were made, the burdens which each one was to bear were carefully weighed, for the spectre of starvation loomed before us. Full well we knew that only the nomad herdsman--but no huntsman--was able to keep body and soul together on the tundra; well we knew by previous experience all the trials of the pathless way, all the torments which the army of mosquitoes promised, the inconstancy of the weather, and the general inhospitability of the tundra, and we made our preparations with due consideration of all these. But we could not prepare for what we did not know and could not foretell, and for what, in fact, eventually befell us. Not that we wished to turn back, though, had we foreseen what was to happen, we might well have done so.

Dressed in short fur, heavily laden with knapsack, weapons, and ammunition, we set off on the 29th of July, leaving our boat in the charge of two of our company. Painfully we tramped, gasping under our burdens, stopping every hour and half hour, and at length every thousand paces, but finding no rest on account of the mosquitoes, which tortured us day and night without ceasing. We ascended countless hills, and traversed as many valleys, we waded through as many marshes and morasses; we passed by hundreds of nameless lakes, and crossed a multitude of swamps and streams.

As it happened, the tundra could not well have been more inhospitable. The wind beat the drizzling rain into our faces; drenched to the skin we lay down on the soaking soil, without roof to cover us, or fire to warm us, and unceasingly tormented by mosquitoes. But the sun dried us again, gave us new courage and strength, and on we went. A piece of good news did us more good than sun or sleep. Our followers discovered two tshums, and with our field-glasses we distinctly saw the reindeer around them. Heartily delighted, we already pictured ourselves stretched comfortably in the sledge, the only possible vehicle in such a district, and we seemed to see the quickly-stepping antlered team. We reached the tshum and the reindeer; a dismal sight met our eyes. For among the herds splenic fever was raging--the most dreadful, and for man also the most dangerous of plagues, the most inexorable messenger of death, unsparing and merciless. Against its ruin-bringing attacks man is powerless; it reduces peoples to poverty, and claims its victims as surely from among men as among beasts.

I counted seventy-six dead reindeer in the immediate neighbourhood of the tshum. Wherever the eye turned it lighted on carcasses or on beasts, both young and old, lying at their last gasp. Others came, with death at their heart, to the sledges already loaded for departure, as if they hoped to find help and safety in the neighbourhood of man. They would not be driven away, but remained stock-still for a couple of minutes with staring eyes and crossed fore-legs, then swayed from side to side, groaned and fell; a white foam issued from mouth and nose, a few convulsions, and another was dead. Milk-giving mothers and their calves separated themselves from the herd; the mothers succumbed with similar symptoms; the calves looked on curiously, as if amazed at their mother’s strange behaviour, or grazed unconcernedly beside the death-bed. When they came near, and found instead of their devoted mother a corpse, they snuffed at this, recoiled in terror, and hastened away, straying hither and thither and crying. They sought to approach one or other of the adults, but were repulsed by all, and continued lowing and searching until they found what they did not seek--death, from an arrow sped by the hand of their owner, who sought to save at least their skin. Death was equally unsparing of old and young; before the destroying angel the strongest and stateliest stags fell as surely as the yearlings of both sexes.

Schungei, the owner of the herd, his relatives and servants, hurried to and fro among the dead and dying beasts, seeking with mad eagerness to save whatever was possible. Although not unaware of the dreadful danger to which they exposed themselves if the minutest drop of blood or a particle of the infected foam should enter their system, knowing well that hundreds of their race had died in agony from the incurable plague, they worked with all their strength skinning the poisoned corpses. A blow from a hatchet ended the sufferings of the dying deer, an arrow killed the calves, and in a few minutes the skin--which for weeks is quite capable of spreading the infection--was off and lying beside the others. With blood-stained hands the men dipped morsels cut from the bodies of the calves into the blood collected in the chest-cavity, and swallowed them raw. The men seemed like executioners, the women like horrible harpies, and both like blood-smeared hyænas wallowing in carrion. Careless of the sword of death which hung over their heads, rather by a gossamer thread than by a hair, they grubbed and wallowed, helped even by their children, from half-grown boys down to a little girl hardly more than a suckling.