Читать книгу From Paris to Pekin over Siberian Snows - Victor Meignan - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The Volga in winter—Varieties of podarojnaia—What is necessary for a long sledge journey—Departure from Nijni—Posting relays—A momentary thaw—The snow—Arrival at Kazan.

Hardly had I arrived at Novgorod, when I wished to begin my journey in a sledge as soon as possible. Thus man is attracted towards unknown adventures, even should he feel he is doomed to become, in consequence of them, a sufferer.

I went at once to the governor of the province, in order that he might afford me every facility for obtaining horses at the several posting stages. To obtain relays, there are three kinds of recommendations, which are called in Russian podarojnaia.

The most valuable and important of the three is the podarojnaia de courrier, which can only be obtained for exceptional cases, for an envoy extraordinary of the Emperor for instance.

When a traveller arrives at a stage provided with this order, the posting master is obliged to furnish horses immediately, and if they are not there, to demand them elsewhere by requisition; he also commands the driver to gallop without intermission.

The Crown podarojnaia, although an order of the second rank, is, nevertheless, much appreciated. It is generally accorded to the functionaries who are returning to their posts, or to those who are travelling in the public service. It was with one of these orders that the governor of Nijni-Novgorod was pleased to furnish me. The posting masters should always reserve a troïka or droïka (a vehicle with three horses) in case a traveller should present himself furnished with a Crown podarojnaia. It is therefore a rare occurrence to the bearer of this important order when he presents himself at a posting stage not to be provided with horses immediately. The drivers, under this order, have copper badges attached to their caps and arms which warn afar off other conductors coming in a contrary direction to clear the way immediately, under a penalty of severe chastisement in case of neglect; they also drive almost always at a gallop, like the drivers of the podarojnaia de courrier.

Between the Crown podarojnaia and the simple podarojnaia, there is a great difference. This is for the mass of ordinary travellers. It is necessary to pay at once, pretty dearly, to get it at all, and then the traveller is quite at the mercy of the postmasters, who will not give him horses unless they are disposed to do so.

The rule is that each relay should have six hours’ rest between each course. It, therefore, often happens that the traveller finds at the stages no other relays than those taking their usual rest, excepting always the reserve for the Crown podarojnaia. I have frequently seen travellers who had been waiting, two or three days, until the posting master was disposed to accommodate them or had been tired out with having his guests on his hands.

Unfortunately, the contractors of relays find every advantage in prolonging such a delay. The guest does not pay for his lodging, which is gratuitous, but he always takes there some provisions, and the postmasters hope to receive in the end, when he is tired out with waiting, a liberal gratuity in addition, in order to furnish a troïka, even with horses fatigued from a recent course.

The organization of the posting between Nijni-Novgorod and Tumen does not at present belong to the Government. It is conceded temporarily to M. Michaelof, who is making a rapid fortune by letting his horses at a high rate.

Provided, as I have mentioned, with a recommendation from this fortunate contractor, and also with a Crown podarojnaia, for which I was indebted to the governor of Nijni, I thought I should be able to start the following morning.

But, alas! I had reckoned, this time again, without Siberian frosts.

To complete my preparations for a prolonged journey in a sledge, I was obliged the whole morning to run about from shop to shop. The number of objects to be bought was incalculable. Constantine had made out a list as long as an apothecary’s bill. I did not get back to my hotel till one in the afternoon, worn out with fatigue, in a very bad humour, thirsty and dying with hunger, and, moreover, so knocked up, that I wished for nothing more than to go to bed at once and rest my weary limbs.

I was in this state, when Constantine said to me with all the coolness in the world: “Now, monsieur, we are quite ready; do you wish to start?” I was about to propose not to get into the sledge till the following day, or to wait at least a few hours, when I happened to cast my eyes over my acquisitions, standing in a great heap in the middle of the room.

The heap that had bewildered me, when I paid my visit to M. Pfaffius, was a mere hillock beside this mountain. There were here heaped up soft leather trunks filled with clothing, to be put at the bottom of the sledge to deaden the jerks, round valises, to serve as bolsters at night, touloupes, a dacha in sheepskin, cushions, mattresses, veal and mutton sausages, felt boots, felt rugs, bottles of brandy, ropes, a hammer, a liberal supply of tools for iron and wood work, eight pairs of large worsted stockings, belts, bags, a store of white bread, pillows, and I don’t know what else. And then, my trunks being no longer of any use, all the clothing I had brought from France lay distributed everywhere in this little room, and for the first time found themselves in such strange company. Neither the most crammed railway cloak rooms, nor chinoiserie shops, nor back rooms of pawnshops, nothing, in fact, except perhaps the brain cases of certain inveterate political reformers or the witches’ caldron in Macbeth, could give any idea of such a perplexing jumble.

This exhilarating spectacle at once restored my courage; I then had but one object in view—to get out of it as speedily as possible and start. I ordered horses on the instant.

“THE SLEDGE BEING AN OPEN ONE, WE COULD ENJOY A VIEW OF THE COUNTRY.”

While a servant had gone in search of the team, we, Constantine and myself, set to work to pack all the articles I have just enumerated into a sledge, which I had ordered from the manufactory of Romanof—the most celebrated of Russian coachbuilders. This sledge, especially, was wonderfully built. Lightness and strength, the two most important qualities of a good vehicle, were united in it to the highest point of excellence. The sledge being an open one, at least in front, we could enjoy, during the daytime, a view of the country; whilst a fixed hood, which we closed in completely at night with tarred canvas, protected us pretty well against the wind and the snow. Two pieces of wood, fixed at a little height above the ground and disposed in a sloping position from the front to the back, prevented the sledge from overturning, at least in ordinary circumstances, and protected the body of the vehicle against obstacles and shocks—encounters that were met with, I believe, verily twenty or thirty times a day.

Just as you make your bed, you lie on it, says the proverb. And in Russia, just as one arranges his sledge, he bears up in proportion against the fatigue of the journey. Constantine had, in this art, real talent. He laid the mattresses in a slanting position, just nicely calculated; he adroitly smoothed over, in some way, every jutting angle or boss as often as one or the other arose from the settling of the contents during a long journey. As soon as a cavity had formed from the jolting, no matter where, he immediately filled up the vacant space with hay, and everything kept its place to the advantage of our ease. He transformed, in short, our sledge into a comfortable soft bed, which would have enabled us to support, without fatigue, the fifteen hundred leagues we had to traverse as far as Irkutsk, if circumstances, which I shall subsequently relate, had not occurred. When all these preparations had been made and the horses put to, I began to wrap myself in my travelling costume.

Those who have not visited Siberia have no idea of the excessive wrapping-up and muffling necessary to a traveller on a long journey in that climate.

To put on such a great number of garments is no light matter, and cannot be accomplished, the first time especially, without laughing outright a great deal and perspiring much more.

We first put on four pairs of worsted stockings and over them, like jack boots, a pair of felt stockings that covered our legs. We then wrapped ourselves in three garments of fur, one over the other. Then we covered our heads with an astrakan and a bachelique. When we had got into the sledge we wrapped our legs in a fur rug and then buried ourselves side by side in two more fur rugs.

These accoutrements, which would be excessive to protect one’s self merely for a few hours against the cold, even the most intense, become light enough and barely sufficient when the traveller remains exposed to the air a long time, and especially to the fatigue of a sledge journey prolonged night and day, without stopping to sleep.

The only defect in the construction of Siberian sledges is the want of a seat for the yemschik or driver: this unhappy individual is obliged to sit on a wooden platform, that covers the travellers’ legs, with his legs hanging either on the right or left side, and, consequently, has to drive from either side. When he has troublesome horses to manage he gets on his knees, or even stands up on the platform. This arrangement is all the more inconvenient, inasmuch as it requires unusual dexterity to drive and hold in the mettlesome little horses of Northern Asia. The moment they feel the harness on their backs, whether from natural ardour alone or from a want to get warm, there is no holding them; their impatience is unparalleled in horseflesh. They tremble with excitement, they paw and scrape the ground, nibble at the snow, or make a huge ball with it, and then scatter it in a cloud of fine particles. The drivers have a very difficult task to calm their impetuosity; they accomplish this in the most soothing manner, by means of a steady trill on their lips; they sustain this more intensely the moment they leap on the platform of the sledge, which is for them a very delicate gymnastic feat, demanding great agility. At this critical moment, the horses, feeling no further restraint, uncurbed, rampant, start off in a mad gallop, le diable en queue. If, on the other hand, the driver should lucklessly make an abortive attempt, he is hurled over the crosspieces like a tile by the passing gale, and the travellers go on without a whip, flying on the wings of the wind.

This was just the hairbreadth escape that happened to the first yemschik chance had thrown in our way. His horses, just as he seized the platform to leap on to it, started off at a furious pace. Like a brave fellow, he kept his grip on it like a bulldog, and, luckily, on the reins too, and was thus hauled over the snow at our side for some minutes. At the end of this critical interval he found some lucky projection beside the sledge, where he could support his knee, and at last, thanks to the herculean strength of his arms and the help we gave him, he succeeded in gaining his seat and then tenaciously clung to it to the end of the stage. Thus equipped, we left Nijni-Novgorod on the 17th of December at three o’clock in the afternoon.

This first day’s journey in a sledge was delightful and exhilarating. We felt all the pleasure of the novelty of the locomotion without yet beginning to experience the least fatigue, and at every moment we met other travellers coming, twenty and even thirty leagues, to the city we had just quitted, on their business or pleasure.

However great the distance may be, it is never an obstacle to the Russians: they seem to make nothing of it, and never to calculate it. A lady at St. Petersburg said to me one day: “You should go and see the cascade of Tchernaiarietchka: I went there the other day, and I was charmed with it; I never dreamt there was anything so beautiful at our city gates.” On making inquiries about it a few days later, and as to how I could get there, I found that it would take forty-eight hours by rail, and twelve by diligence. I daresay they will think of sending the poor seamen who are ordered to join their ships at Nicolaefsk to St. Petersburg gates; it is only three hundred leagues from the Russian capital. The reader will learn subsequently, if he is interested in continuing the journey with me, that the Siberians, of the fair sex even, are not at all dismayed at the prospect of undertaking journeys of fifteen hundred, nay, two thousand leagues in a sledge, with young children to boot, and these sometimes at the breast.

On account of the great novelty and variety of the spectacle, I found the trip delightful on leaving Novgorod. The time passed more rapidly than the banks of the river, over whose congealed surface our horses continued fleeing at a mad pace as if pursued by a phantom.

This imposing Volga is of a character truly quite exceptional. France, certainly, has no river worthy of so much admiration for its grandeur. During the summer it is enlivened with an incessant movement of steamers, and is of immense importance as a waterway; and during winter also it continues rendering great services to humanity, affording the means for the transport of the grain that it has fertilized with its beneficent waters. Nothing is grander than this glacial route of unusual width, and of a uniformity and smoothness which no road laid by the hand of man can approach; without a pebble or a rut, one glides over without a jolt. Nothing interests the traveller more, the first time, than to watch the shores passing before the eye like a panorama; to contemplate the mountains and valleys the frozen way spares him the trouble of traversing; to coast the islands without navigating; and to pass here and there some barque, or perhaps steamer, imprisoned in the ice.

In about three hours and a half after leaving Novgorod, we reached our first stage, it being then quite dark.

In all these posting stages, there is a room for the travellers; and this room, though heated at the proprietor’s expense, becomes really a free home for the wanderer: he may eat, drink, and sleep there; do, in fact, whatever he likes; and what is still more singular, lodge there as long as he wishes, no one having a right to dislodge him.

Although this privilege is secured by contracts made between the posting masters and the Imperial administration, it would undoubtedly be quite consistent with the Russian character to accord it if it were not compulsory, the people being essentially hospitable.

This amiable quality results, perhaps, from the rigour of the climate; but I am rather disposed to believe—so general and spontaneous is it—that it is the consequence of a happy and generous disposition.

I shall have something more to say, by-and-by, on the merits of the Russian peasantry. I do not say that they have a monopoly of this benevolent spirit, for, indeed, it is common to all classes. The society of St. Petersburg cannot, certainly, be suspected to be wanting in kindness towards strangers; even the old Muscovite noble, notwithstanding his haughtiness, notwithstanding his hatred of new social institutions, notwithstanding his regret to see Moscow no longer the residence of the emperors, and, moreover, his antipathy for European ideas and fashions, adopted in the new capital;—in spite of all that, the Muscovite lord has retained profoundly rooted in his nature the old traditions of respect towards him who is his guest, and he regards hospitality, not simply as a passive virtue, but seriously as an active duty.

At the Siberian posting stages, the stranger often finds pleasant company or something to amuse him in the travellers’ room; it is rare to find it unoccupied; and when people are disposed to talk, subjects of conversation are not wanting. Those who are going in a contrary direction begin inquiring about everything that interests them on the way; about the state of the route; about the difficulties, more or less serious, that have been encountered in getting horses. Those who are taking the same way have generally already met at one or more stages, and now salute one another as old acquaintances. When the stage happens to be in a village, the principal persons of the neighbourhood generally come to pass away an hour or two very sociably with the travellers. They are very curious to know all about political matters from those who come from the West, and business affairs from those coming from the East. They all chat together in a manner perfectly free and easy, without the least exclusiveness on account of class, profession, or position. Their intercourse is always marked with the utmost good-nature and affability.

But at the stages that link Nijni to Kazan this kind of society is not always so agreeable.

The travellers around here are, in fact, a little too much civilized to be always quite so simple and warm-hearted. They are, perhaps, a little too well initiated in the new social principles of égalité and fraternité to believe that these amiable sentiments have so profoundly modified human nature as they find it in their surroundings. They look on the people accident throws in their way rather as competitors for accommodation, whose presence there may contribute to retard their journey, and would, if they had the liberté, such as their brethren and equals understand it (from the purely practical side of the formula), much rather smash their brethren’s sledges, than give them a helping hand under difficulties.

I did not linger very long in these first stages, where, on account of the privileged recommendations I was favoured with for obtaining horses, I met only with unfriendly looks and gestures; therefore, in twelve hours from my departure, I had already accomplished more than a quarter of the distance that separated me from Kazan.

We continued travelling over the Volga. A little before daybreak I was surprised at the strange noise that was being produced by the horses’ feet over the ice: it was no longer the dull, hollow sound that had terrified me at Nijni-Novgorod. It was to me one quite novel, and people generally, especially the most experienced,—a circumstance far from reassuring,—begin to get uneasy at it. This sound seemed to me the most fearful that one could hear on the ice; it was a splashing. I listened in terror; but as my companion had smiled at my first affright at Nijni, I did not venture, till after a long interval, to reveal it to him this time.

Through an excess of amour-propre which I probably now derived from intercourse with Russians, I was just going to allow him to fall off asleep, when I was splashed full in the face, and my terror, excited to its highest pitch, could no longer be smothered. I started up, leaping almost over Constantine, who, to use a Siberian saying, “was snoring enough to frighten the wolves.” It was but a poor resource against actual danger. Whilst I was rousing him, my wits seemed to be going a-wool-gathering; what wonderful feat were they not going to perform in such a peril as this? My imagination in fact, stirred up, no doubt, by the poesy of the journey, brought to my mind Dame Fortune saving the life of a sleeping infant on the brink of a well. The complete absence of wheels, however, soon brought me round to sober reality, and I explained the situation to Constantine with a conciseness that might serve as a model to many an orator. He questioned the yemschik on the matter, who replied with complete indifference: “Yes, sir, it is thawing; but it is merely the snow melting: the ice is just as thick as ever.”

The sky being very cloudy, the night was profoundly dark. Experience principally served to guide the driver in his course, and then the water—a fatal indication, indeed, of the way, when this way is over the bed of a frozen river! I crept back, without saying a word more, into the bottom of the sledge; but I must admit that it seemed to me that the ice successively yielded, cracked, and opened, and then, freezing over again with sufficient thickness, bore us up firmly. What does not the imagination shadow forth to an excited brain?

Gradually, but very gradually, the day came forth, or it would be more exact to say rather a kind of twilight, for a thick fog veiled nearly every object from our eyes. The summits of the hills that continuously command the right bank of the Volga marked a shadow on the horizon barely more sombre. Everything else appeared confounded in a general grey hue, and nothing, not even the shore, could be distinguished. Our ears soon began to catch the ominous sounds of a crackling under the horses’ feet, thereby announcing that the thaw had begun its work, now, indeed, on the ice. Then we could just distinguish very portentous fissures, starting right and left under the passage of the sledge. The yemschik at last, discovering that the situation was becoming perilous, thought it now high time to take precautions. He therefore dashed on as if chased by a pack of famishing wolves as far as the first village, and here we were glad to set foot at last on terra firma.

The following night snow began to fall, to our great discomfiture; for no state of the atmosphere here is so disagreeable to travellers in a sledge only partially closed.

Fatigued by the exciting emotions of the preceding night, and especially by thirty-six hours’ duration of a kind of locomotion to which I was not yet accustomed, I had fallen into a sound sleep. As it was not very cold, Constantine and I had never thought of lowering the canvas that partially closes in the front of the vehicle, and, moreover, we had neglected to take the precaution to cover our faces. But as the warmth of our breath dissolved the flakes that would otherwise have interrupted our respiration, we had scarcely noticed our situation. The snow, indeed, had penetrated and fallen thickly everywhere; our faces even were quite covered; it had insinuated itself in the openings of our dachas, and melting there, saturated our inner mantles: water was now running fast down our necks and sleeves; we were drenched: and it was likely to have been a very serious matter if the cold, which then commenced to make itself felt very acutely, had not roused us from our slumbers. But what a transition was that awakening! My mind, which seemed at first to be wandering far away from actual life, could in no way account for the situation; we opened our eyes, it is true, but were unable to distinguish anything; we felt a load pressing us down everywhere, and yet we were unable to grasp anything. I fancied myself one moment in a delirium and in the next the victim of a vivid nightmare; but the cold at last brought me to my senses. The first thing we did was to urge the yemschik to drive as fast as he could, that we might dry ourselves as soon as possible at the first stage. The wind now turned towards the north, the clouds had dispersed, and a piercing cold benumbed our limbs. Everything was frozen to our garments, which had become to the touch as rigid as tanned hides bristling “like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”

Fortunately, in this plight, the distance that separated us from Kazan was not very great. The surface of the Volga, on which we were enabled to continue our journey at daybreak, contributed very much to shorten the way, and on the 19th of December, about one in the afternoon, we drove into the ancient capital of the Tartars, after having accomplished what they consider in Siberia a short, easy journey.