Part 39

These difficulties were got rid of in various ways. Fresh water, made by boiling the salt water of the Caspian and condensing the steam, was carried in vats or tuns over the road to the working parties. At a later date water was conveyed in pipes from the mountains to fill cisterns at the stations, whence it was carried in canals or underground conduits along the line, every well and spring on the route being utilized.

To overcome the shifting of the sand, near the Caspian it was thoroughly soaked with salt water, and at other places was covered with a layer of clay. But there are long distances where no such means could be employed, at least two hundred miles of utter wilderness, where the surface resembles a billowy sea, the sand being raised in loose hillocks and swept from the troughs between, flying in such clouds before every wind that an incessant battle with nature is necessary to keep the road from burial. To prevent this, tamarisk, wild oats, and desert shrubs are planted along the line, and in particular that strange plant of the wilderness, the saxaoul, whose branches are scraggly and scant, but whose sturdy roots sink deep into the sand, seeking moisture in the depths. Fascines of the branches of this plant were laid along the track and covered with sand, and in places palisades were built, of which only the tops are now visible.

Yet despite all these efforts the sands creep insidiously on, and in certain localities workmen have to be kept employed, shovelling it back as it comes, and fighting without cessation against the forces of the desert and the winds. In the building of the road, and in this battling with the sands, Turkomans have been largely employed, having given up brigandage for honest labor, in which they have proved the most efficient of the various workmen engaged upon the road.

Aside from the peculiar difficulties above outlined, the Transcaspian Railway was remarkably favored by nature. For nearly the whole distance the country is as flat as a billiard-table, and the road so straight that at times it runs for twenty or thirty miles without the shadow of a curve. In the entire distance there is not a tunnel, and only some small cuttings have been made through hills of sand. Of bridges, other than mere culverts, there are but three in the whole length of the road, the only large one being that over the Amu-Daria. This is a hastily built, rickety affair of timber, put up only as a make-shift, and at the mercy of the stream if a serious rise should take place.

The whole road, indeed, was hastily made, with a single track, the rails simply spiked down, and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling the saints in their graves.

Over such a road no great speed can be attained. Thirty miles an hour is the maximum, and from ten to twenty miles the average speed, while the stops at stations are exasperatingly long to travellers from the impatient West. To the Asiatics they are of no concern, time being with them not worth a moment's thought.

In the operation of this road petroleum waste is used as fuel, the refining works at Baku yielding an inexhaustible supply. The carriages are of mixed classes, some being two stories in height, each story of different class. There are very few first-class carriages on the road. As for the stations, some of them are miles from the road, that of Bokhara being ten miles away. This method was adopted to avoid exciting the prejudices of the Asiatics, who at first were not in favor of the road, regarding it as a device of Shaitan, the spirit of evil. Yet the "fire-cart," as they call it, is proving very convenient, and they have no objection to let this fiery Satan haul their grain and cotton to market and carry themselves across the waterless plains. The camel is being thrown out of business by this shrill-voiced prince of evil. The road is being extended over the oases, and will in the end bring all Turkestan under its control.

It almost takes away one's breath to think of railway stations and time-tables in connection with the old-time abiding-place of the terrible Tartar, and of the iron horse careering across the empire of barbarism, rushing into the metropolis of superstition, and waking with the scream of the steam whistle the silent centuries of the Orient. Nothing of greater promise than this planting of the railroad in Central Asia has been performed of recent years. The son of the desert is to be civilized despite himself, and to be taught the arts and ideas of the West by the irresistible logic of steel and steam.

But this enterprise is a minor one compared with that which Russia has recently completed, that of a railway extending across the whole width of Siberia, being, with its branches, more than five thousand miles long--much the longest railway in the world. Work on this was begun in 1890, and it is now completed to Vladivostok, the chief Russian port on the Pacific, a traveller being able to ride from St. Petersburg to the shores of the Pacific Ocean without change of cars. A branch of this road runs southward through Manchuria to Port Arthur, but as a result of the war with Japan this has been transferred to China, Manchuria being wrested from the controlling grasp of Russia. It is a single-track road, but it is proposed to double-track it throughout its entire length, thus greatly increasing its availability as a channel of transport alike in war and peace.

All this is of the deepest significance. The railroad in Asia has come to stay; and with its coming the barbarism of the past is nearing its end. The sleeping giant of Orientalism is stirring uneasily in its bed, its drowsy senses stirred by the shrill alarum of the locomotive whistle. New ideas and new habits must follow in the track of the iron horse. The West is forcing itself into the East, with all its restless activity. In the time to come this whole broad continent is destined to be covered with railroads as with a vast spider-web; new industries will be established, machinery introduced, and the great region of the steppes, famous in the past only as the starting-point of conquering migrations, must in the end become an active centre of industry, the home of peace and prosperity, a new-found abiding-place of civilization and human progress.

AN ESCAPE FROM THE MINES OF SIBERIA.

The name Siberia calls up to our minds the vision of a stupendous prison, a vast open penitentiary larger than the whole United States, a continental place of captivity which for three centuries past has been the seat of more wretchedness and misery than any other land inhabited by the human race. To that far, frozen land a stream of the best and worst of the people of Russia has steadily flowed, including prisoners of state, religious dissenters, rebels, Polish patriots, convicts, vagabonds, and all others who in any way gave offence to the authorities or stood in the way of persons in power.

Not freedom of action alone, but even freedom of thought, is a crime in Russia. It is a land of innumerable spies, of secret arrest and rapid condemnation, in which the captive may find himself on the road to Siberia without knowing with what crime he is charged, while his friends, even his wife and family, may remain in ignorance of his fate. Every year a convoy of some twenty thousand wretched prisoners is sent off to that dismal land, including the ignorant and the educated, the debased and the refined, men and women, young and old, the horror of exile being added to indescribably by this mingling of delicate and refined men and women with the rudest and most brutal of the convict class, all under the charge of mounted Cossacks, well armed, and bearing long whips as their most effective arguments of control.

It may be said here that the misery of this long journey on foot has been somewhat mitigated since the introduction of railroads and steamboats, and will very likely be done away with when the Trans-siberian Railway is finished; but for centuries the horrors of the convict train have piteously appealed to the charity of the world, while the sufferings and brutalities which the exiles have had to endure stand almost without parallel in the story of convict life.

The exiles are divided into two classes, those who lose all and those who lose part of their rights. Of a convict of the former class neither the word nor the bond has any value: his wife is released from all duty to him, he cannot possess any property or hold any office. In prison he wears convict clothes, has his head half shaved, and may be cruelly flogged at the will of the officials, or murdered almost with impunity. Those deprived of partial rights are usually sent to Western Siberia; those deprived of total rights are sent to Eastern Siberia, where their life, as workers in the mines, is so miserable and monotonous that death is far more of a relief than something to be feared.

Many of the exiles escape,--some from the districts where they live free, with privilege of getting a living in any manner available, others from the prisons or mines. The mere feat of running away is in many cases not difficult, but to get out of the country is a very different matter. The officers do not make any serious efforts to prevent escapes, and can be easily bribed to allow them, since they are enabled then to turn in the name of the prisoner as still on hand and charge the government for his support. In the gold-mines the convicts work in gangs, and here one will lie in a ditch and be covered with rubbish by his comrades. When his absence is discovered he is not to be found, and at nightfall he slips from the trench and makes for the forest.

To spend the summer in the woods is the joy of many convicts. They have no hope of getting out of the country, which is of such vast extent that winter is sure to descend upon them before they can approach the border, but the freedom of life in the woods has for them an undefinable charm. Then as the frigid season approaches they permit themselves to be caught, and go back to their labor or confinement with hearts lightened by the enjoyment of their vagrant summer wanderings. There is in some cases another advantage to be gained. A twenty years' convict who has escaped and lets himself be caught again may give a false name, and avoid all incriminating answers through a convenient failure of memory. If not detected, he may in this way get off with a five years' sentence as a vagrant. But if detected his last lot is worse than his first, since the time he has already served goes for nothing.

There is another peril to which escaping prisoners are exposed. The native tribes are apt to look upon them as game and shoot them down at sight. It is said that they receive three roubles for each convict they bring to the police, dead or alive. "If you shoot a squirrel," they say, "you get only his skin; but if you shoot a varnak [convict] you get his skin and his clothing too."

Atkinson, the Siberian traveller, tells a remarkable story of an escape of prisoners, which may be given in illustration of the above remarks. One night in September, 1850, the people of Barnaoul, a town in Western Siberia, were roused from their slumbers by the clatter of a party of mounted Cossacks galloping up the quiet street. The story they brought was an alarming one. Siberia had been invaded by three thousand Tartars of the desert, who were marching towards the town. Nearly all the gold from the Siberian gold-mines lay in Barnaoul, waiting to be smelted into bars and sent to St. Petersburg. There was much silver also, with abundance of other valuable government stores. All this would form a rich booty for an army of nomad plunderers, could they obtain it, and the news filled the town with excitement and alarm.

As the night passed and the day came on, other Cossacks arrived with still more alarming news. The three thousand had grown to seven thousand, many of them armed with rifles, who were burning the Kalmuck villages as they advanced, and murdering every man, woman, and child who fell into their hands. Some thought that the wild hordes of Asia were breaking loose again, as in the time of Genghis Khan, and the terror of many of the people grew intense.

By noon the enemy had increased to ten thousand, and the people everywhere were flying before their advance. Hasty steps were taken for defence and for the safety of the gold and silver, while orders were despatched in all directions to gather a force to meet them on their way. But as the days passed on the alarm began to subside. The number of the invaders declined almost as rapidly as it had grown. They were not advancing upon the town. No army was needed to oppose them, and Cossacks were sent to stop the march of the troops. In the course of two days more the truth was sifted from the mass of wild rumors and reports. The ten thousand invaders dwindled to forty Circassian prisoners who had escaped from the gold-mines on the Birioussa.

These fugitives had not a thought of invading the Russian dominions. They were prisoners of war who, with heartless cruelty, had been condemned to the mines of Siberia for the crime of a patriotic effort to save their country, and their sole purpose was to return to their far-distant homes.

By the aid of small quantities of gold, which they had managed to hide from their guards, they succeeded in purchasing a sufficient supply of rifles and ammunition from the neighboring tribesmen, which they hid in a mountain cavern about seven miles away. There was no fear of the Tartars betraying them, as they had received for the arms ten times their value, and would have been severely punished if found with gold in their possession.

On a Saturday afternoon near the end of July, 1850, after completing the day's labors, the Circassians left the mine in small parties, going in different directions. This excited no suspicion, as they were free to hunt or otherwise amuse themselves after their work. They gradually came together in a mountain ravine about six miles south of the mines. Not far from this locality a stud of spare horses were kept at pasture, and hither some of the fugitives made their way, reaching the spot just as the animals were being driven into the enclosure for the night. The three horse-keepers suddenly found themselves covered with rifles and forced to yield themselves prisoners, while their captors began to select the best horses from the herd.

The Circassians deemed it necessary to take the herdsmen with them to prevent them from giving the alarm. Two of these also were skilful hunters and well acquainted with the surrounding mountain regions, and were likely to prove useful as guides. In all fifty-five horses were chosen, out of the three or four hundred in the herd. The remainder were turned out of the enclosure and driven into the forest, as if they had broken loose and their keepers were absent in search of them. This done, the captors sought their friends in the glen, by whom they were received with cheers, and before midnight, the moon having risen, the fugitives began their long and dangerous journey.

Sunrise found them on a high summit, which commanded a view of the gold-mine they had left, marked by the curling smoke which rose from fires kept constantly alive to drive away the mosquitoes, the pests of the region. Taking a last look at their place of exile, they moved on into a grassy valley, where they breakfasted and fed their horses. On they went, keeping a sharp watch upon their guides, day by day, until the evening of the fourth day found them past the crest of the range and descending into a narrow valley, where they decided to spend the night.

Thus far all had gone well. They were now beyond the Russian frontier and in Chinese territory, and as their guides knew the country no farther, they were set free and their rifles restored to them. Venison had been obtained plentifully on the march, and fugitives and captives alike passed the evening in feasting and enjoyment. With daybreak the Siberians left to return to the mine and the Circassians resumed their route.

From this time onward difficulties confronted them. They were in a region of mountains, precipices, ravines, and torrents. One dangerous river they swam, but, instead of keeping on due south, the difficulties of the way induced them to change their course to the west, alarmed, probably, by the vast snowy peaks of the Tangnou Mountains in the distance, though if they had passed these all danger from Siberia would have been at an end. As it was, after more than three weeks of wandering, the nature of the country forced them towards the northwest, until they came upon the eastern shore of the Altin-Kool Lake.