blagoveschensk is built on much the same lines as all the other siberian towns that i have seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed houses straggling over the plain in wide streets that cut one another at right angles. again it was not at all unlike an australian town, a frontier town to all intents and purposes. the side-roads were deep in dust, and the principal shop, a great store, a sort of mild imitation of harrod's, where you could buy everything from a needle to an anchor—i bought a dog-collar with a bell for buchanan—was run by germans. it was a specimen of germany's success in peaceful penetration. it seemed as if she were throwing away the meat for the shadow, for they were interning all those assistants—400 of them. now probably they form the nucleus of the bolshevist force helping germany.
the governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was thronged with people, men mostly, and buchanan and i were passed from one room to another, evidently by people who had not the faintest notion of what we wanted. everybody said “bonjour,” and the governor and everybody else kissed my hand. i said i was “anglisky,” and it seemed as if everybody in consequence came to look at me. but it didn't advance matters at all.
i began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon me, but nothing definite happened. at last, after about two hours, when i was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking officer in khaki came in. he put his heels together and kissed my hand as courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent english that he was the boundary commissioner and they had sent for him because there was an englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of being civil to the representative of their new ally, nobody could make out what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!
i told my story and it was easy enough then. he admired buchanan properly, drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made me out a most gorgeous protection order written in russian. i have it still, but i never had occasion to use it.
opposite blagoveschensk is a chinese town which is called sakalin, though the maps never give it that name, and in vladivostok and peking they call it various other names. but its right name is sakalin, i know, for i stayed there for the best part of a week.
at sakalin the head of the chinese customs is a dane, paul barentzen, and to him and his wife am i greatly beholden. i had been given letters to them, and i asked my friend the kindly russian boundary commissioner if he knew them. he did. he explained to me i must have a permit to cross the river and he would give me one for a week. a week seemed overlong, but he explained the russian government did not allow free traffic across the river and it was just as well to have a permit that would cover the whole of my stay. even now, though i did stay my week, i have not fathomed the reason of these elaborate precautions, because it must be impossible to guard every little landing-place on the long, long, lonely river—there must be hundreds of places where it is easy enough to cross—only i suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later to be called upon to give an account of himself.
the ferries that crossed the amur to the chinese side were great boats built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements for getting across the river did justice to both chinese and russian mismanagement. unlike the efficient japanese, both these nations, it seems to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of trouble to those in authority—that is to say, the maximum of trouble to everybody concerned. the ferry-boats owing to local politics had a monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when they pleased. there was a large and busy traffic, but the boats never went oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as primitive as they possibly could be. there was one little shed with a seat running round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with the chinese hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. and when it did come the passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the rough path up the bank looking as if they had been searched to the skin. they let me through on the chinese side and i found without any difficulty my way to mr paul barentzen's house, a two-storeyed, comfortable house, and received a warm invitation from him and his wife to stay with them.
it was a chance not to be missed. i was getting very weary, i was tired in every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who spoke my own language, on the very outskirts of the chinese empire, was not to be lightly missed, and i accepted with gratitude, a gratitude i feel strongly. mr barentzen was a dane, but he spoke as good english as i do, and if possible was more british. his wife was english. and that night he celebrated the coming into the war of britain. he asked me and the russian boundary commissioner and his wife and another russian gentleman all to dinner in the gardens at blagoveschensk.
the place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands everywhere, the whole city was en fête to do honour to the new addition to the grande entente. when we were tired of walking about the gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music and waved the flags of the allies. but the british flag had not got as far as the capital of the amur province. indeed much farther west than that i found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on it, very much at the taste of the artist, and “anglisky” written boldly across it to make up for any deficiency.
mr barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with nice little silk specimens of the union jack to wear pinned on our breasts. about ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner, with sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that eastern siberia produces. a packed room also dined, while the people on the stage sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes as souvenirs. they sang the belgian, the french and the russian national anthems, and at last we asked for the british.
very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry but the british national anthem was also a german hymn and if he dared play it the people would tear him to pieces. remembering my tribulations a little way down the river, i quite believed him, so i suggested as an alternative rule, britannia, but alas! he had never heard of it. it was a deadlock, and we looked at one another.
then the tall russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from the table, stood up, and saluting, whistled rule, britannia! how the people applauded! and so britain entered the war in far eastern siberia.
we certainly did not go home till morning that day. for that matter, i don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary folk, customs officials may have special privileges. at any rate i came back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the day was breaking, and next day i crossed to sakalin and stayed with the barentzens.
the russians then took so much trouble to keep the chinese on their own side of the river that the russian officers and civil servants, much to the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have chinese servants. the fee for a passport had been raised to, i think, twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a chinaman's while to get one to hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the zeya, a tributary of the amur on the russian side, had fallen off in their yield because cheap labour was no longer possible. the people who did get passports were the chinese prostitutes, though a chinese woman has not a separate identity in china and is not allowed a passport of her own. however, there are ways of getting over that. a man applied for a passport and it was granted him. he handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and on the other side any chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the russian official. remembering my own experience and how i had difficulty in deciding between my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, i could quite believe this story.
blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to mr barentzen, is unsafe. on the first occasion that i crossed the river with him i produced a hundred-rouble note. almost before i had laid it down it was snatched up by the chinese commissioner of customs.
“are you mad?” said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and held out for my acceptance a rouble. i tried to explain that not having change, and finding it a little awkward, i thought that this would be a good opportunity to get it, as i felt sure the man at receipt of custom must have plenty.
“i dare say,” said my host sarcastically. “i don't want to take away anybody's character, but i'll venture to say there are at least ten men within hail”—there was a crowd round—“who would joyfully cut your throat for ten roubles.”
he enlarged upon that theme later. we used to sit out on the balcony of his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of sakalin, and there used to come in the men from the b.a.t. factory, a russian in top-boots who spoke excellent english and a young american named hyde. they told me tales, well, something like the stories i used to listen to in my childhood's days when we talked about “the breaking out of the gold” in australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then were lured away and murdered for their riches. certainly they did not consider blagoveschensk or sakalin towns in which a woman could safely wander. in fact all the siberian towns that they knew came under the ban.
but of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was only to get scraps of news through the telegraph. the young american was keen, i remember. i wonder if he really had patience to wait till his country came in. he talked then in the first week of the war of making his way back to canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even then we felt sure that the outer dominions would want to help the motherland. and the germans were round liège—would they take it? association is a curious thing. whenever i hear of liège i cannot help thinking, not of the belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a balcony with the shadows falling and the lights coming out one by one on the bath-houses that are dotted about a little town on the very outskirts of the chinese empire—the lights of the town. there are the sounds and the smells of the chinese town mingling with the voices of the talkers and the fragrance of the coffee, and the air is close with the warmth of august. there comes back to me the remembrance of the keen young american who wanted to fight germany and the young russian in top-boots who was very much afraid he would only be used to guard german prisoners.
sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward russia, hence the bath-houses, an idea foreign to chinese civilisation; and when i got a piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a japanese doctor i went, accompanied by my host's chinese servant, who, having had the trouble stated by me in english, explained it to another man in chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in russian. luckily that man of medicine was very deft and i expect he could have managed very well without any explanation at all. i have the greatest respect for the japanese leech i visited in sakalin.
on the sunday we had a big picnic. the russian boundary commissioner came across with his wife and little girls, mrs barentzen took her little girl and the chinese tao tai lent us the light of his countenance. he was the feature of the entertainment, for he was a very big man, both literally and socially, and could not move without a large following, so that an escort of mounted police took charge of us. the proper portly chinaman of whom this retinue was in honour spoke no english, but smiled at me benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a russian military cap! the picnic was by a little brook about seven miles from the town and i shall always remember it because of the lush grass, waist-high, and the lovely flowers. i had looked at the siberian flowers from the steamer when they were ungetatable, i had gathered them with joy in saghalien, and now here they were again just to my hand. in june they told me there were abundant lilies of the valley, and i regretted i had not been there in june. truly i feel it would be a delight to see lilies of the valley growing wild, but as it was, the flowers were beautiful enough, and there were heaps of them. there were very fine canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and magnificent white poppies. never have i gathered more lovely flowers, never before have i seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. no one is more truly artistic than the average chinese, and i think the tao tai must have enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good taste in china to look about you.
presently i was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for buchanan, for he, my treasured buchanan, was lost. in the barentzens' house there was, of course, as in all well-regulated chinese houses run by foreigners, a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when i wanted a bath the servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel, which made a very excellent bath-tub. and having bathed myself, i bathed buchanan, whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty chinese streets. he ran away downstairs and i lingered for a moment to put on my dress, and when i came down he was gone. high and low i hunted; i went up and down the street calling his name, and i knew he would have answered, he always did, had he been within hearing. all the customs men were turned out and i went to the chinese tao tai, who promptly put on all the police. but buchanan was gone for a night and i was in despair. mr barentzen's head boy shook his head.
“master saying,” said he, “mus' get back that dog.” so i realised i was making a fuss, but for the moment i did not care. the tao tai gave it as his opinion that he had not been stolen. there were many little dogs like him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows a chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for i was sure buchanan would not stay away from me of his own free will.
and then at last the servants turned up triumphant, buchanan, in the arms of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again. the police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their master's injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further inquiries and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into a certain house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for the cleaning of the streets. this was the first intimation i ever had that the chinese did clean their streets: i had thought that they left that job to the “wonks” and the scavenger crows. the police made inquiries. no, there was no little dog there. but the servants—wise chinese servants—made friends with the people round, and they said: “watch. there is a dog.” so a junior servant was put to watch, and when the gate of the compound was opened he stole in, and there was poor little james buchanan tied up to a post. that servant seized the dog and fled home in triumph.
the t'ai t'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted the pretty little dog.
i was so delighted to get my little friend back that i should have been content to leave things there. not so mr barentzen. he sent for that official, and there in his drawing-room he and i interviewed a portly chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black silk cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails of his little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.
“an officious servant,” he said. he was extremely sorry the commissioner of customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. the servant had already been dismissed. and so we bowed him out, face was saved, and all parties were satisfied. it was very chinese. and yet we knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really his wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have realised was valuable and must have been stolen.
here in sakai in i heard about the doings of the only wolves that came into my wanderings. in the little river harbour were many small steamers flying the russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted bright red. these barrels, explained the customs commissioner, contained spirits which the russians were desirous of smuggling into russian territory. the chinese had not the least objection to their leaving china after they had paid export duty. they were taken up and down the river and finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled across. the trade was a very big one. the men engaged in it were known as the wolves of the amur and were usually caucasians and jews. in 1913, the last year of which i have statistics, no less than twenty-five thousand pounds export was paid on these spirits, and in the years before it used to be greater. i wonder whether with the relaxing of discipline consequent on the war and the revolution the receipts for the export have not gone up.
the wide river was beautiful here, and blagovesehensk, lying across the water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured italy. i am glad i have seen it. i dare not expiate on mr barentzen's kindness. my drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that i have already overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so i can only say i stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which was bound up the amur and the shilka to stretensk and the railway.
i had, however, one regret. i had inadvertently taken my plates and films on which i had all my pictures of the amur and saghalien across the sakalin and i could not take them back again. the russian rule was very strict. no photographs were allowed. everything crossing the river must be examined. now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would be to ruin them. i interviewed a japanese photographer on the sakalin side, but he appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and finally very reluctantly i decided to leave them for mr barentzen to send home when he got the chance. he did not get that chance till the middle of 1916, and i regret to state that when we came to develop them every single one of them was ruined.
the steamer that i embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the river was narrowing. the deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty inches wide and crowded with children; worse, when james buchanan and i went for our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women, mothers, or nursemaids, i know not whieh, propelling the children who could not walk in wheeled chairs, and they thought buchanan had been brought there for their special benefit, a view which the gentleman himself did not share. however, he was my only means of communication with them, for they had no english or french.
but i was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless white, like so many russians had served in british ships and spoke english very well with a slight scots accent. with him i used to hold daily conversations and always we discussed the war. but he shook his head over it. it was not possible to get much news at the little wayside places at which we stopped. there were no papers—the russian peasant under the beneficent rule of the tsar was not encouraged to learn to read—and for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. all would be well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large and influential place for news upon which we could rely.
but that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact i may say it never materialised while i was on the river. there are at least eleven towns marked on the way between blagoveschensk and stretensk, but even the town at the junction where the aigun and the shilka merge into the amur is but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as i know the river banks are only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently keep guard over and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.
it was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather we went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound between wooded hills and it was very lonely. there were occasional, very occasional, little settlements, on the chinese side i do not remember even a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as crystal, reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made our way.
once on the russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little children and innumerable bundles. they had been down, i suppose, to visit the centre of civilisation at blagoveschensk and now were coming home. in the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down thoughtfully at her encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not a sign of man's handiwork anywhere. i hoped there were no tigers about, but she has always lived in my memory as an unfinished story. i suppose we all of us have those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories left unfinished because they are so long drawn out we could not possibly wait for developments, but stories that must finish suddenly, only we are withdrawn. once i looked from a railway carriage window in the midlands and i saw a bull chasing a woman; she was running, screaming for all she was worth, for a fence, but whether she reached it or not i have no means of knowing. another time i saw also from a railway carriage window two men, mother naked, chasing each other across the greensward and left them there because the train went on. of course i have often enough seen men without clothes in the tropics, but in the heart of england they are out of the picture and want explaining. that explanation i shall never get. nor is it likely i shall ever know whether that unknown woman and her little children ever reached their unknown home.
we were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. the russian tea with lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of cream, though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so common. but i was tired and at last feeling lonely. i began to count the days till i should reach home.
on the amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the shilka we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and the next morning i awoke to a grey day. it rained and it rained, not tropical rain, but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either side were veiled in a silvery mist. the river wound so that as we looked ahead we seemed to be sailing straight into the hills. the way looked blocked with hills, sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green showing alluringly through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist lifted and the sun came out, in all the gullies would linger little grey cloudlets, as if caught before they could get away and waiting there screened by the hills till the mist should fall again. occasionally there were lonely houses, still more occasionally little settlements of log huts with painted windows hermetically sealed, and once or twice a field of corn ripe for the harvest but drowned by the persistent rain. but the air was soft and delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board the crowded steamer was it pestilential. the mate told me how, six weeks before, on his last trip up, an englishman had come selling reapers and binders, and he thought that now i had made my appearance the english were rather crowding the amur.
sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying, returning with great branches laden with fruit, and i and buchanan too walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing in the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. i do not know that ever in my life do i remember enjoying rain so much. of course in my youth in australia i had always welcomed the life-giving rain, but thirteen years in england, where i yearned for the sunshine, had somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the river brought me joy. the mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of sunshine found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating its lovely loneliness, then indeed i knew that the earth was the lord's and the fullness thereof.
sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. they were logs bound together in great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each end. twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses built of grass and canvas and wood. they were taking the wood down to nikolayeusk to be shipped to shanghai and other parts of the world for furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must be a mine of wealth to their owners. i do not know whether the wood is cut on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had anything to do with the many dead trees i saw in the forests, their white stems standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.
i have no record of these lovely places. my camera was locked away now in my suit-case, for it was war, and russia, rightly, would allow no photographs.
seven days after we left blagoveschensk we reached stretensk and i came in contact for the first time with the world's war.
