on the 25th july 1914, at nine o'clock in the evening, i left saghalien, and as the ship steamed away from the loom of the land into the night i knew that at last, after eighteen months of voyaging in the east, i had turned my face homeward. i had enjoyed it, but i wanted to go home, and in my notebook i see evidences of this longing. at last i was counting the days—one day to nikolayeusk, three days to kharbarosvk, three days more to blagoveschensk—and i was out in my calculations in the very beginning. the ships of the volunteer fleet take their time, and we took three days wandering along the island of saghalien and calling at ports i should think mail steamer had never before called at before we turned again towards the mainland.
and yet in a way it was interesting, for i saw some of the inhabitants of the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, i should never have otherwise seen. gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. they have the long straight black hair of the mongolian, and sometimes they were clad in furs—ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of furs—sometimes merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away nations.
they live by the fish. there is nothing else.
i tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to get them into focus. i produced cigarettes, i offered sugar, but as soon as they found out what i was about they at once fled, even though their boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody who was on board. i did eventually get some photographs, but they shared the fate of the rest of my russian pictures, and i am sorry, for i do not suppose i shall ever again have the chance of photographing the gilyak in his native haunts. he belongs to a dying race, they told me, and there are few children amongst them.
and though we lay long at de castries bay they would not let me take pictures there at all. it was forbidden, so i was reduced to doing the best i could through my cabin port. in alexandrosvk the police officer had aided and abetted my picture-making, but in nikolayeusk it was a forbidden pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a fort, and when i boarded the kanovina on the river, the post steamer bound for blagoveschensk, i met with more difficulties.
there was on board a mrs marie skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster of the nikolayeusk “real” school, and she spoke very good english and was a kind friend to me. through her came a message from the captain to the effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it was forbidden in russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was looking on. that made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and there was always not one person but probably a score of people taking a very great interest. the captain was not brass-bound as he had been in the john cockerill, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki, with military caps, and it was sometime before i realised them as the ship's officers. the captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who was having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they charged us three roubles more for the trip to blagoveschensk than the amur company would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. it was in her i met the saloon the windows of which would not open, and the water in my cabin had gone wrong, and when i insisted that i could not be happy till i had some, it was brought me in a teapot! they never struck the hours on this steamer as they had done on the john cockerill, and gone was the excellent cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which i am bound to say there was any quantity.
but in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board with women who were not their 'wives. these last were so demonstrative that i always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a cossack officer whom i met farther on explained:
“not 'wives. oh no! it is always so! it is just the steamer!”
whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the discomforts of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, i do not know. perhaps i struck a particularly amorous company. i am bound to say no one but me appeared to be embarrassed. it seemed to be all in the day's work.
it was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who could explain things to me. every day it grew warmer, for not only was the short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going south again. and mrs skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her english and told me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters to england to give them an english education, and i promised to look out for her and show her the ropes and how she could best manage in london. in two years' time! and we neither of us knew that we were on the threshold of the greatest war in the world's history.
i took the breaking out of that war so calmly.
we arrived at kharbarosvk. i parted from mrs skibitsky, who was going to vladivostok, and next day i looked up my friend the colonel's wife with whom i had travelled on the john cockerill. she received me with open arms, but the household cat flew and spat and stated in no measured terms what she thought of buchanan. the lady caught the cat before i realised what was happening and in a moment she had scored with her talons great red lines that spouted blood on her mistress's arms. she looked at them calmly, went into the kitchen, rubbed butter on her wounds and came back smiling as if nothing in the world had happened. but it was not nothing. i admired her extremely for a very brave woman. presently her husband came in and she just drew down her sleeves to cover her torn arms and said not a word to him. he was talking earnestly and presently she said to me:
“there is war!”
i thought she meant between buehanan and the cat and i smiled feebly, because i was very much ashamed of the trouble i and my dog had caused, but she said again:
“there is war! between austria and serbia!”
it did not seem to concern me. i don't know that i had ever realised serbia as a distinct nationality at all before, and she knew so little english and i knew no russian at all, so that we were not able to discuss the matter much, though it was evident that the colonel was very much excited. that, i thought, might be natural. he was a soldier. war was his business, though here, i think, he was engaged in training boys.
after the midday meal—déjeuner, i think we called it—she and i went for a walk, and presently down the wide streets of kharbarosvk came a little procession of four led by a wooden-legged man bearing a russian naval flag, the blue st andrew's cross on a white ground. i looked at them.
they meant nothing to me in that great, empty street where the new little trees were just beginning to take root and the new red-brick post office dominated all minor buildings among many empty spaces.
“they want war! they ask for war!” said my friend. i was witnessing my first demonstration against germany! and i thought no more of it than i do of the children playing in the streets of this kentish village!
she saw me on to the steamer and bade me farewell, and then my troubles began. not a single person on that steamer spoke english. however, i had always found the russians so kind that the faet that we could not understand one another when the going was straight did not seem to matter very much. but i had not reckoned with the russians at war.
at kharbarosvk the river forms the chinese-russian boundary and a little beyond it reaches its most southern point, about lat. 48°. but the china that was on our left was not the china that i knew. this was manchuria, green and fresh as siberia itself, and though there was little or no agriculture beyond perhaps a patch of vegetables here and there, on both sides of the broad river was a lovely land of hills and lush grass and trees. here were firs and pines and cedars, whose sombreness contrasted with the limes and elms, the poplars and dainty birches with whieh they were interspersed. the russian towns were small, the merest villages, with here and there a church with the painted ball-like domes they affect, and though the houses were of unpainted logs, always the windows and doors were painted white.
and at every little town were great piles of wood waiting for the steamer, and whenever we stopped men hastily set to work bringing in loads of wood to replace that which we had burnt. and we burnt lavishly. even the magnificent forests of siberia will not stand this drain on them long.
the other day when the national service papers came round one was sent to a dear old “sister” who for nearly all her life has been working for the church in an outlying district of london. she is past work now, but she can still go and talk to the old and sick and perhaps give advice about the babies, but that is about the extent of her powers. she looked at the paper and as in duty bound filled it in, giving her age as seventy. what was her surprise then to receive promptly from the department a suggestion that she should volunteer for service on the land, and offering her, by way of inducement, good wages, a becoming hat and high boots! that branch of the department has evidently become rather mechanical. now the russians all the way from saghalien to petrograd treated me with sueh unfailing kindness that i was in danger of writing of them in the stereotyped fashion in which the national service department sent out its papers. luckily they themselves saved me from such an error. there were three memorable, never-to-be-forgotten days when the russians did not treat me with kindness.
the warmest and pleasantest days of my trip on the amur we went through lovely scenery: the river was very wide, the blue sky was reflected in its blue waters and the green, tree-clad hills on either side opened out and showed beyond mountains in the distance, purple and blue and alluring. it was the height of summer-time, summer at its best, a green, moist summer. we hugged the russian bank, and the manchurian bank seemed very far away, only it was possible to see that wherever the russians had planted a little town on the other side was a chinese town much bigger. the russian were very little towns, and all the inhabitants, it seemed, turned out to meet us, who were their only link with the outside world.
the minute the steamer came close enough ropes were flung ashore to moor it, and a gangway was run out very often—and it was an anxious moment for me with buchanan standing on the end, for he was always the first to put dainty little paws on the gangway, and there he stood while it swayed this way and that before it could make up its mind where to finally settle down. then there was a rush, and a stream of people going ashore for exercise passed a stream of people coming on board to sell goods. always these took the form of eatables. butter, bread, meat, milk, berries they had for sale, and the third and fourth class passengers bought eagerly.
i followed buchanan ashore, but i seldom bought anything unless the berries tempted me. there were strawberries, raspberries and a blue berry which sometimes was very sweet and pleasant.
at first the people had been very kind and taken a great deal of interest in the stranger and her pretty little dog, but after we left kharbarosvk and i had no one to appeal to a marked change came over things. if i wanted to take a photograph, merely a photograph of the steamer lying against the bank, my camera was rudely snatched away and i was given to understand in a manner that did not require me to know russian that if i did that again it would be worse for me. poor little buchanan was kicked and chunks of wood were flung at him. as i passed along the lower decks to and from the steamer i was rudely hustled, and on shore not only did the people crowd around me in a hostile manner, but to my disgust they spat upon me.
i could not understand the change, for even in the first-class saloon the people looked at me askance. and i had ten days of the river before i reached stretensk, where i was to join the train. it is terrible to be alone among hostile people, and i kept buchanan close beside me for company and because i did not know what might happen to him. if this had been china i should not have been surprised, but russia, that had always been so friendly. i was mightily troubled.
and then came the explanation, the very simple explanation.
just as the river narrowed between the hills and looked more like a river, and turned north, there came on board at a tiny wayside town a tall young cossack officer, a soinik of cossacks, he called himself. he wore a khaki jacket and cap, and dark blue breeches and riding-boots. he had a great scar across his forehead, caused by a chinese sword, and he had pleasant blue eyes and a row of nice white teeth. he was tall and goodly to look upon, and as i sat at afternoon tea at a little table on deck he came swaggering along the deck and stood before me with one hand on a deck-chair.
“madame, is it permitted?” he asked in french.
of course madame permitted and ealled for another glass and offered him some of her tea and cake. possibly he had plenty of his own, but no matter, it was good to entertain someone in friendly fashion again after being an outcast for three days. and it took a little while to find out what was wrong, he was so very polite.
“madame understands we are at war?”
madame opened her eyes in astonishment. what could a war in the balkan provinces have to do with her treatment on the amur river thousands of miles in the east?
however, she said she did.
“and madame knows———” he paused, and then very kindly abandoned his people. “madame sees the people are bad?”
madame quite agreed. they were bad. i had quite an appetite for my tea now that this nice young man was sympathising with me on the abominable behaviour of his countrymen.
he spread out his hands as if deprecating the opinion of sueh foolish people. “they think—on the ship—and on the shore—that madame is a german!”
so it was out, and it took me a moment to realise it, so little had i realised the war.
“a german!” i did not put it in capital letters as he had done. i had not yet learned to hate the germans.
“a—spy!”
“oh, good gracious!” and then i flew for my passports.
in vain that young man protested it was not necessary. he had felt sure from the moment he set eyes upon her that madame was no german. he had told the captain—so the depressed corporal had been taking an interest in me—she might be french, or even from the north of spain, but certainly not german. but i insisted on his looking at my passports and being in a position to swear that i was british, and from that moment we were friends and he constituted himself my champion.
“the people are bad,” he told me. “madame, they are angry and they are bad. they may harm you. here i go ashore with you; at blagoveschensk you get a protection order from the governor written in russian so that somebody may read.”
then he told me about the war. russia and france were fighting germany. he had come from tsitsihar, on the mongolian border, across manchuria, and before that he had come from kodbo, right in the heart of the great western mongolian mountains, and he was going as fast as he could to chita, and thence he supposed to the front.
“c'est gai a la guerre, madame, c'est gai!” i hope so. i earnestly hope he found it so, for he was a good fellow and awfully good to me.
he was a little disquieting too, for now it dawned upon me it would be impossible to go back through germany with germany at war with russia, and my friend was equally sure it would be almost impossible to go by way of st petersburg, as we called petrograd then. anyhow we were still in the amur province, in eastern siberia, so i did not worry much. now that the people were friendly once more it all seemed so far away, and whenever we went ashore my cossack friend explained matters.
but he was a little troubled.
“madame, why does not england come in?” he asked again and again, and i, who had seen no papers since i left tientsin, and only the north china herald then, could not imagine what england had to do with it. the idea of a world war was out of the question.
it was more interesting now going up the beautiful river, narrowed till it really did look like a river. i could see both banks quite plainly. my friend had been stationed here a year or two before, and he told me that there were many tigers in the woods, and wild boar and bear, but not very many wolves. and the tigers were beautiful and fierce and dangerous, northern tigers that could stand the rigours of the winter, and they did not wait to be attacked, they attacked you. there was a german professor in blagoveschensk a year or two ago who had gone out butterfly-hunting, which one would think was a harmless and safe enough pastime to satisfy even a conscientious objector, and a tiger had got on his tracks and eaten him incontinently. they found only his butterfly net and the buttons of his coat when they went in search of him.
the plague had broken out during this officer's stay on the river, and the authorities had drawn a cordon of cossacks round to keep the terrified, plague-stricken people from fleeing and spreading the disease yet farther, and he pointed out to me the house in which he and two comrades had lived. it was merely a roof pitched at a steep angle, and the low walls were embedded in earth; only on the side facing the river was a little window—it did not open—and a door. a comfortless-looking place it was.
“but why the earth piled up against the sides?” i asked. it was sprouting grass now and yellow buttercups and looked gay and pretty, the only attractive thing about the place.
“madame, for the cold,” said he, “for the cold.” and remembering what they had told me about the cold of kharbin, what i myself had experienced at manchuria on the way out in much the same latitude as this, i could quite well believe that even sunk in the earth this poor little hut was not a very good protection against the cold.
the river widened again, winding its way across a plateau. on the chinese side were great oak forests where my cossack told me were many pig that gave them good hunting and many bees, but this was not china as i knew it. it was inhabited, he said, by nomad tribes who were great horsemen, and we saw occasional villages and—a rare sight—cattle, red and white, standing knee-deep in the clear water. particularly was i struck by the cattle, for in all those thousands of miles of travel i could count on my fingers—the fingers of one hand would be too many—the numbers of times i saw herds of cattle. once was in saghalien, and twice, i think, here, curiously enough, for the pure chinese does not use milk or butter on the chinese side of the river. of course there must have been cows somewhere, for there was plenty of milk, cream and butter for sale, but they were not in evidence from the river.
on the russian side the landing-places did not change much, only now among the women hawkers were chinese in belted blouses, green, yellow, blue, pink, red; they rioted in colour as they never did in their own land, and they all wore sea-boots.
and still over twelve hundred miles from the sea it was a great river. and then at last i saw what i had been looking for ever since i embarked—fields of corn, corn ripe for the harvest. this was all this lovely land needed, a field of corn; but again it was not on the russian side, but on the chinese.
the spires and domes of blagoveschensk, the capital of the amur province, came into view. all along the russian bank of the river lay this city of eastern siberia. its buildings stood out against the clear sky behind it, and approaching it was like coming up to a great port. the river, i should think, was at least a mile wide. i am not very good at judging distances, but it gave me the impression of a very wide river set here in the midst of a plain—that is, of course, a plateau, for we had come through the hills.
and here my cossack friend came to bid me good-bye and to impress upon me once again to go straight to the governor for that protection order. he was sorry he could not see me through, but his orders were to go to chita as fast as he could, and someone would speak english at blagoveschensk, for it was a great city, and then he asked for the last time:
“but, madame, why does not england come in?”
and then the question that had troubled me so was answered, for as we touched the shore men came on board wild with excitement, shouting, yelling, telling the war news, that very day, that very moment, it seemed, england had come in!
and i appeared to be the only representative of britain in that corner of the world! never was there such a popular person. the sailor-men who worked the ship, the poorer third and fourth class passengers all came crowding to look at the englishwoman. i had only got to say “anglisky” to have everyone bowing down before me and kissing my hand, and my cossack friend as he bade me good-bye seemed to think it hardly necessary to go to the governor except that a member of a great allied nation ought to be properly received.
but i had been bitten once, and i determined to make things as safe as i could for the future. so i got a droshky—a sort of tumble-down victoria, held together with pieces of string, and driven by a man who might have been russian or might have been chinese—and buchanan and i went through the dusty, sunny streets of the capital of the amur province to the viceregal residence.
