FOOTNOTES:[17]"Fuji," without equal; "yama," mountain.[18]The Emperor Mutsuhito died on July 30, 1912, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshihito, who was born in 1879.
[17]"Fuji," without equal; "yama," mountain.
[17]"Fuji," without equal; "yama," mountain.
[18]The Emperor Mutsuhito died on July 30, 1912, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshihito, who was born in 1879.
[18]The Emperor Mutsuhito died on July 30, 1912, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshihito, who was born in 1879.
Our journey eastwards ends with Japan, and we turn westwards on our way back to Europe. The portion of the mainland of Asia which lies nearest to Japan is Korea, and the passage across the straits from Shimonoseki to Fu-san takes only about ten hours. The steamer sails in the morning, and late in the afternoon we see to larboard the Tsushima Islands rising out of the water like huge dolphins. Our course takes us almost over the exact place where, on May 27, 1905, Admiral Togo annihilated the squadron of the Russian Admiral Rozhdestvenski.
The Russian fleet had sailed round Asia, and steamed up east of Formosa to the Strait of Korea. The Admiral hoped to be able to reach Vladivostock, on the Russian side of the Sea of Japan, without being attacked, and on May 27 his fleet was approaching the Tsushima Islands. But Admiral Togo, with the Japanese fleet, lay waiting off the southern coast of Korea. He had divided the straits into squares on a map, and his scouting boats were constantly on the look-out. They could always communicate with Togo's flagship by wireless telegraphy. And now currents passing through the air announced that the Russian fleet was in sight, and was in the square numbered 203. This number was considered a good omen by the Japanese, for the fate of the fortress of Port Arthur was sealed when the Japanese took a fort called "203-metre Hill" (Port Arthur, which lies on the coast of the Chinese mainland, had fallen into the hands of the Japanese on January 1, 1905).
When the news came, Togo knew what to do. With his large ships and sixty torpedo boats he fell upon the Russianfleet, and the battle was decided within an hour. The Russian Admiral's flagship sank just on the spot where we are now on the way to Fu-san. The Admiral himself was rescued, sorely wounded, by the Japanese. His fleet was dispersed, and its various divisions were pursued, sunk, or captured. The Russians lost thirty-four ships and ten thousand men. It was a bloody encounter which took place on these usually so peaceful waters. The Japanese became masters of the sea, and could, unhindered, transport troops, provisions, and war material over to the mainland, where the war with Russia still raged in Manchuria.
From Fu-san, which for two hundred years has been a Japanese town, the railway takes us northwards through the Korean peninsula. We ascend the beautiful valley of the Nak-tong-gang River. Side valleys opening here and there afford interesting views, and between them dark hills descend steeply to the river, which often spreads out and flows so gently that the surface of the water forms a smooth mirror. The sky is clear and turquoise-blue in colour, and spans its vault over greyish-brown bare mountains. Where the ground on the valley bottom is level it is occupied by rice and wheat fields. Every now and then we pass a busy village of grey thatched houses, where groups of women and children in coloured garments are seen outside the cabins. The men wear long white coats, and on the head a thin black hat in the form of a stunted cone with flat brim. Seldom are the eyes caught by a clump of trees; as a rule the country is bare. Innumerable small mounds are often seen on the slopes; these are Korean graves.
The signs of Japan's peaceful conquest of Korea are everywhere apparent. Japanese guards, policemen, soldiers, and officials are seen at the stations; the country now contains more than 200,000 Japanese. Settlers from Japan, however, take up their residence only for a time in the foreign country. For example, a landowner in Japan will sell half his property there, and with the proceeds buy land in Korea three or four times as large as all his estate in the home country, and in fertility at least as good. There he farms for some years, and then returns home with the profits he has earned. Numbers of Japanese fishermen also come yearly to the coasts of Korea with their boats, and return home to Japan with their catch. Thus Korea is deluged with Japanese of all kinds. The army is Japanese, Japanese fortresses are erected along the northern frontier, the government and officials areJapanese, and soon Korea will become simply a part of the Land of the Rising Sun.
PLATE XXII.
We cross the range of mountains which runs like a backbone all through Korea from north to south, and late in the evening we come to the capital, Seoul, which has 280,000 inhabitants, a fifth of whom are Japanese. The town is confined in a valley between bare cliffs, and from the heights all that can be seen is confusion of grey and white houses with gabled roofs covered with grey tiles. In the Japanese quarter life goes on exactly as in Japan; rows of coloured paper lanterns hang now, at night, before the open shops, and trade is brisk and lively. In the Korean quarters the lanes are narrow and dismal, but the principal streets are wider, with tramcars rattling amidst the varied Asiatic scenes. Here are sedan chairs (Plate XXII.), caravans of big oxen laden with firewood, heavy carts with goods, men carrying unusually heavy loads on a framework of wooden ribs on their backs, women sailing past in white garments and a veil over their smooth-plaited hair. A row of grown men and boys pass through the streets carrying boards with Korean inscriptions in red and white: those are advertisements. Before them marches a drum and flute band, filling the streets with a hideous noise.
Korea has 13 million inhabitants, and in area is just about as large as Great Britain. It is now subject to Japan, and is administered by a Japanese Resident-General, whose headquarters are at Seoul.
From Seoul we travelled northwards by rail to Wi-ju, a small place on the left bank of the Yalu River, which forms the boundary between Korea and Manchuria. Opposite, on the right or north bank of the Yalu, stands An-tung, a town with 5000 Japanese and 40,000 Chinese inhabitants. The river had just begun to freeze over, and the ice was still so thin that it could be seen bending in great waves under the weight of our sledge, which a Chinaman pushed along at a great speed with a long iron-shod pole. However, we reached the other side in safety.
From An-tung to Mukden is only 200 miles, but the journey takes two whole days. The little narrow-gauge railway was laid down during the Russo-Japanese War toenable the Japanese to transport provisions and material to the front. The small track goes up and down over the mountains in the most capricious curves and loops, and the train seldom accomplishes the whole journey without a mishap. The Japanese Consul at An-tung, who had made the journey eight times, had been in four railway accidents, and two days previously the train had rolled down a declivity with a general and his staff.
The view through the carriage windows is magnificent. This part of Manchuria is mountainous, but in the depths of the valleys lie farms and fields. Manchus in long blue coats and black vests wind along the road tracks, some on foot, others mounted, while others again drive two-wheeled carts drawn by a horse and a pair of mules. All the watercourses are frozen, but there is no snow. It is sunny, clear, and calm in these valleys, where the thunder of battle has long died away among the mountains.
Half-way to Mukden we halt for the night, and start next morning before daybreak in biting cold. Some Chinese merchants join the train, attended by servants bearing paper lanterns. A small party of Japanese soldiers also is here. They are in thick yellow coats with high collars,bashliks, red shoulder knots, caps with a red border, leather-covered felt boots, and are armed with cutlasses and rifles. They are sinewy and sturdy fellows, neat and clean, and always seem cheerful.
At length the Christmas sun rises glowing red, and the ice flowers vanish from the windows. Here, where the winter cold is so piercing, it is oppressively hot in summer. Our little toy train crosses a river several times on fragile bridges of beams, which seem as though they might at any moment collapse like a house of cards. Small strips of tilled land, creaking ox-carts on the deeply rutted roads, tiny Buddhist oratories, primitive stations with long rows of trucks of fuel, a country house or two—that is all that is to be seen the whole day, until late in the evening we arrive at Mukden.
Manchuria is one of the dependencies of China. The Russians constructed a railway through the country to the fortress of Port Arthur, but, as is well known, the Japanese succeeded in capturing the fortress during the war. By the peace of Portsmouth,[19]concluded in September 1905, the Japanese acquired Port Arthur, the adjacent commercial port of Dalny, with the surrounding district, the southern half ofthe large island Sakhalin, the supremacy over Korea, together with the South Manchurian Railway—so that the Russians had unknowingly built this railway for the benefit of their enemies.
Round Mukden was fought the greatest battle of the whole Russo-Japanese War. The contest lasted twenty days; more than 850,000 men and 2500 guns were engaged, and 120,000 were left dead on the field. On March 1, 1905, the whole Japanese army began to move, and formed at last a ring round the Russians and Mukden. Thus the Japanese became for the time being the masters of Manchuria, but on the conclusion of peace the country was handed back to China.
The life in the singular streets of Mukden is varied and attractive. The Manchus seem a vigorous and self-confident people; they are taller than the Chinese, but wear Chinese dress with fur caps on their heads. The women seldom appear out of doors; they wear their hair gathered up in a high knot on the crown, and, in contrast to the Chinese women, do not deform their feet. Among the swarming crowds one sees Chinamen, merchants, officers, and soldiers in semi-European fur-lined uniforms, policemen in smart costumes with bright buttons, Japanese, Mongols, and sometimes a European. Tramcars drawn by horses jingle through the broader streets. The houses are fine and solidly built, with carved dragons and painted sculpture, paper lanterns and advertisements, and a confusion of black Chinese characters on vertically hanging signs. At the four points of the compass there are great town gates in the noble Chinese architecture, but outside stretches a bare and dreary plain full of grave mounds.
In Pe-ling, or "Northern Tomb," rests the first Chinese Emperor of the Manchu dynasty, and his son, the great Kang Hi, who reigned over the Middle Kingdom for sixty-one years. Pe-ling consists of several temple-like buildings. The visitor first enters a hall containing an enormous tortoise of stone, which supports a stone tablet inscribed with an epitaph extolling the deceased Emperor. At the farthest extremity of the walled park is the tomb itself, a huge mass of stone with a curved roof. In a pavilion just in front of this building the Emperor of China is wont to perform his devotions when he visits the graves of his fathers. Solemn peace reigns in the park, and under the pine-trees stone elephants, horses, and camels gaze solemnly at one another.
From Mukden Port Arthur is an easy eight hours' railway journey south-westwards; and it is only an hour and a halfmore to Dalny, which in Japanese hands has grown to a large and important commercial town.
On December 28, 1908, we stepped into the train in Dalny, and commenced a railway journey which lasted without a break for eleven days.
First we have to go back to Mukden, and then a somewhat shorter journey to the last Japanese station. At the next the stationmaster is a Russian, and Russian guards replace the Japanese. In the afternoon the train draws up at Kharbin on the Sungari River, a tributary of the great Amur. It was towards Kharbin that the Russians slowly retired after their defeat, and on this very platform Prince Ito, the first Japanese Resident-General of Korea, was murdered barely a year later.
At Kharbin we have to wait two hours for the international express, which runs twice a week from Vladivostock to Moscow.
Next morning we stay for two hours at a station in Manchuria, on the boundary between Manchuria and Siberia, between China and Russia, and here our luggage is examined by the Russian customs officers. We put our watches back one and a half hours—that is the difference of time between Kharbin and Irkutsk. We are now travelling from east to west, in the same direction as the sun. If the train went as fast as the sun we should enjoy perpetual day; but the train lags behind, and we only gain an hour in the twenty-four.
The Trans-Siberian railway is the longest in the world, the distance from Dalny to Moscow being 5400 miles. The railway was completed just in time for the war, but as it had only one track, it taxed all the energy of the Russians to transport troops and war material to the battlefields in Manchuria. A second track is now being laid.
By using this railway a traveller can go from London to Shanghai in fourteen days, the route being to Dover, across the Channel to Calais, by rail to Moscow, from Moscow to Vladivostock by the Trans-Siberian railway, and from Vladivostock to Shanghai by sea. The sea voyage from London by the P. and O.—calling at Gibraltar, Marseilles, Port Said, Aden, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong—takes about six weeks, which can be reduced to a month by travelling by train across Europe to Brindisi (at the south-easterncorner of Italy), and thence by steamer to Port Said, where the liner is joined. There is still a third route, across the Atlantic to the United States or Canada, by rail to San Francisco or Vancouver, and then by steamer to ShanghaiviaJapan. This journey can also be accomplished in a month.
THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY
On the last day of the year we pass through the Yablonoi Mountains and enter the region called Transbaikalia, because it lies on the farther, that is, the eastern, side of Lake Baikal. Here dwell Buriats, a Mongolian people—in winter in wooden huts surrounded by enclosures for domestic animals, in summer in tents. When we awoke on the morning of New Year's Day the train was passing along the southern shore of Lake Baikal, and one of the most enchanting scenes in the world was displayed to the eyes of the passengers. On the eastern shore the mountains stood clearly defined in the pure morning air, while the ranges to the west were lit up by the clear sunshine. Here and there the slopes were covered with northern pine and fir-trees. The line runs all the way along the lake shore, sometimes only a couple of yards from the water. This part of the Trans-Siberian railway was the most difficult and costly to make, and the last to be completed. During its construction traffic between the extremities of the line was provided for by great ferry-boats across the lake. The line winds in and out, following all the promontories and bays ofthe lake, and the train rolls on through narrow galleries where columns of rock are left to support a whole roof of mountain. Sometimes we run along a ledge blasted out of the side of the mountain, above a precipitous slope which falls headlong to the lake. We rush through an endless succession of tunnels, and on emerging from each are surprised by a new view of the mountainous shore.
Baikal, or the "Rich Lake," is the third inland sea of Asia, only the Caspian and the Sea of Aral being larger. Its height above sea-level is 1560 feet; the water is light-green in colour, sweet, and crystal clear, and abounds in fish, among them five species of salmon. There is also a kind of seal, and in general many of the animal forms of Baikal are allied to those of the salt sea. Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, soundings having been taken down to 5618 feet. Steamers cross the lake in various directions, and in winter sleighs are driven over the ice from shore to shore. At the beginning of January the whole of the deep lake is so cooled down that ice begins to form, and the lake is usually frozen over to the middle of April.
We stop an hour at Irkutsk to change trains. Irkutsk is the largest town in Siberia, and has 100,000 inhabitants; it stands on the bank of the river Angara, which flows out of Lake Baikal, and thus forms the outlet of all the rivers and streams which empty themselves into the lake, the largest of which is the Selenga. Although the Angara is five times as large as the Yenisei, it is called a tributary of the latter. The Yenisei rises in Chinese territory, and, running northwards right through Siberia, falls into the Arctic Ocean. It receives a large number of affluents, most of them from the east. Its banks are clothed with forest, and from Minusinsk downwards the river is navigable.
The Lena, the great river which passes through eastern Siberia north-east of Baikal, is not much smaller than the Yenisei. There stands the town of Yakutsk, where the temperature falls in winter down to-80°, and rises in summer to 95°. North of Yakutsk, on the river Yana, lies Verkhoiansk, the coldest place in the world, the centre of low temperature or pole of cold.
In area Siberia is larger than the whole of Europe, but the population in this immense country is no greater than that of Greater London,i.e.about seven millions. Of these 60 per cent are Russians, 20 per cent Kirghizes, and the remainder is made up of Buriats, Yakuts, Tunguses, Manchus, Samoyeds,Ostiaks, Tatars, Chukchis, etc. No small part of the Russian population consists of convicts transported to Siberia, whose hard lot is to work under strict supervision in the gold mines. Their number is estimated at 150,000. Before the railway was made they had to travel tremendous distances on foot. They marched ten miles a day in rain and sunshine, storm and snow, through the terribly cold and gloomy Siberia. Before and behind them rode Cossacks, who would not let them rest as they dragged their chains through the mud and mire of the road. Frequently women and children followed of their own free will to share their husbands' and fathers' fate during their forced labour in the mines. Now there is a great improvement. The labour, indeed, is just as hard, but the journey out is less trying. The unfortunate people are now forwarded in special prison vans with gratings for windows. They are like travelling cells, and can often be seen on side tracks at a station.
In the neighbourhood of the Lena River dwell Yakuts of the Turkish-Tatar race. They number only 230,000 men, are nominally Christians, and pursue agriculture and trade. East of the Yenisei are the Tunguses, a small people divided into "settled," "horse," "reindeer," and "dog" Tunguses, according to the domestic animal of most importance to their mode of life. In western Siberia, the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, live Ostiaks, a small Finnish tribe of 26,000 persons, who are poor fisher folk, hunters and nomads with reindeer. This tribe is rapidly dying out. North of them, in the northern parts of western Siberia and in north-eastern Europe, live the Samoyeds, of Ural-Altai origin, who are still fewer in number than the preceding tribe, and live by reindeer-breeding and fishing.
All these Siberian tribes and many others are Shamanists, and are so called after their priests, Shamans. They believe in an intimate connection between living men and their long-deceased forefathers. They entertain a great dread of the dead, and do everything they can to exorcise and appease their souls, bringing them offerings. All this business is attended to with much black magic and witchcraft by the Shamans, who are also doctors. When any one dies the spirit of the dead must be driven out of the tent, so the Shaman is summoned. He comes decked out in a costly and curious dress, and with religious enthusiasm performs a dance which soon degenerates into a kind of ecstasy. He throws himself about, reels and groans, and is beside himself. And when he has carried onlong enough he catches hold of a magic drum, whose soothing sounds calm him and bring him back to his senses. When he has finished his performance the soul is gone!
Over white plains, over hills, and through valleys, the train bears us on farther north-westwards through the government of Irkutsk. At Krasnoiarsk we cross the Yenisei by a fine bridge nearly two-thirds of a mile long. In summer vessels can ascend as far as Minusinsk, in a district of southern Siberia, rich in gold and iron and productive soil. In general Siberia is a rich country. Gold, silver, and copper, lead, graphite, and coal occur, besides many other valuable minerals and stones in the mountains. The country has also good prospects of future development owing to its remarkably excellent agricultural land. Most of this is situated near the railway, and all Siberia is intersected by a net of waterways. From one of the tributaries of the Obi steamers can pass by canal to the Yenisei, and thence on to the Lena. Omsk, the third town of Siberia, with 89,000 inhabitants, is the centre of this water system. More than 6000 miles of river can be navigated by large steamers, and nearly 30,000 by smaller boats. In western Siberia, around Tomsk and Omsk, the agricultural produce increases year by year, and the time will certainly come when these regions will support a population many times as large as at present, and export large quantities of corn in addition. This is the only thing which will make this enormously long railway pay, for it cost somewhere about £11,000,000 to build.
We have passed Tomsk and crossed the Obi by a fine massive bridge of stone and iron. The Obi is the largest river of Asia. In length it is equal to the Yenisei and Blue River, but its drainage basin is larger than that of either of the others. Where the great affluent, the Irtish, runs in from the west, the Obi has a breadth of nearly two miles, and at its mouth, in the Gulf of Obi on the Arctic Ocean, the breadth has increased to twelve miles. The Irtish also receives from the west a large tributary, the Tobol, and at the confluence stands the town of Tobolsk.
One day passes after another, and one night after another rises up blue and cold from the east. We have left every mountain and hill behind us, and the boundless plains, like a frozen sea, lie buried under deep snow. Sometimes we travel for a whole hour without seeing a farm or village. Only occasionally do we see to the north a small patch oftaiga, or the Siberian coniferous forest, silent and dark. A clump ofbirch-trees is a rare sight. The country is open, flat, monotonous, and dead-white as far as the horizon.
Thus we travel on by degrees through Siberia, this immense country bounded on the south by the Altai, Sayan, the Yablonoi and Stanovoi Mountains, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Huge areas of northern Siberia are occupied bytundras—moss-grown, marshy steppes, with little animal life, frozen hard as stone in winter and thawed during the short summer into dangerous swamps.
In the frozen ground of northern Siberia, and particularly in old flood plains, have been found complete specimens of the mammoth. This animal is an extinct species of elephant, which, during the diluvial period, was distributed over all northern Asia, Europe, and North America. The mammoth was larger than the elephant of the present day, had tusks as much as 13 feet long, a thick fur suitable for a cold climate, and quite a luxuriant mane on the back of the head and neck. That prehistoric man was a contemporary of the mammoth is proved by ancient rude drawings of this animal.
Larches, pine and spruce, birch and willow, compose the forests of Siberia. The larch manages to exist even round the pole of cold. The Polar bear, the Arctic fox, the glutton, the lemming, the snow-hare, and the reindeer are the animals in the cold north. In the central parts of the country are to be found red deer, roedeer, wild swine, beaver, wolf, and lynx. Far away to the east, on the great Amur River, which is the boundary between the Amur province and Manchuria, as well as in the coast province of Ussuri, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, occur tigers and panthers. The most valuable animals, the furs of which constitute one of the resources of Siberia, are the sable, the ermine, and the grey squirrel. The south-eastern parts of this great country are a transitional region to the steppes of central Asia, and there are to be found antelopes, gazelles, and wild asses.
At length, on January 5, we are up in the Ural Mountains, and the line winds among hills and valleys. Near the station of Zlatoust stands a granite column to mark the boundary between Asia and Europe.
From the boundary between Europe and Asia the train takes us onwards past Ufa to Samara. The hills of the Uralsbecome lower and the country flattens out again. Snow lies everywhere in a continuous sheet, and peasants are seen on the roads with sledges laden with hay, fuel, or provisions. At Batraki we pass over the Volga by a bridge nearly a mile long. The Volga is the largest river in Europe; it is 2300 miles long, and has its source in the Valdai hills (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) at a height of only 750 feet above sea-level. It flows, therefore, through most of Russia in Europe, traversing twenty governments. The right bank is high and steep, the left flat; and at its mouth in the Caspian Sea it forms a very extensive delta. The Volga is navigable almost throughout its length, and has also forty navigable tributaries. The river is frozen over for about five months in the year, and when the ice breaks up in spring with thundering cracks it often causes great damage along the banks. Crowds of vessels, boats, and rafts pass up and down the sluggish stream, as well as passenger steamers built after the pattern of the American river boats. By the Volga and its canals one can travel by steamer from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea, and from the Caspian Sea by the Volga into the Dwina and out to the White Sea. The Volga is not only an important highway for goods and passengers, but also an inexhaustible fish preserve; indeed the sturgeon and sterlet fisheries constitute its greatest wealth.
PLATE XXIII.
When the train has rattled heavily and slowly over the Volga, it proceeds west-north-west into the very heart of holy Russia, and late on January 7, 1909, we roll into the station of Moscow, the old capital of Russia.
Moscow is a type of the old unadulterated Russia, a home of the simple, honest manners and customs of olden days, of faith and honour, of a child-like, pure-hearted belief in the religion of the country, the Catholic Greek Church. In its crooked, winding, badly-paved streets swarm Tatars, Persians, and Caucasians, among Slav citizens and countrymen, those inexterminable Russian peasants who suffer and toil like slaves, look too deep into thevodka[20]cup on Saturday, yet are always contented, good-tempered, and jovial.
The town stands on both sides of the small Moskva River, which falls into the Oka, a tributary of the Volga, and is inhabited by more than a million souls. The Kremlin is the oldest part, and the heart of Moscow (Plate XXIII.). Its walls were erected at the end of the fifteenth century; they are 60 feet high, crenellated, and provided with eighteentowers and five gates. Within this irregular pentagon, a mile and a quarter in circumference, are churches, palaces, museums, and other public buildings. There stands the bell tower of Ivan Veliki, 270 feet high, with five storeys. From the uppermost you can command the whole horizon, with Moscow beneath your feet, the streets diverging in every direction from the Kremlin like the spokes of a wheel, and crossed again by circular roads. Between the streets lie conglomerations of heavy stone houses, and from this sea of buildings emerge bulb-shaped cupolas with green roofs surmounted by golden Greek crosses. Large barracks, hospitals, palaces, and public buildings crop up here and there. Right through the town winds the Moskva in the figure of an S, and the walls of the Kremlin with their towers are reflected in the water.
In the tower of Ivan Veliki hang thirty-three bells of various sizes. At its foot stands the fallen "Tsar" bell, which weighs 197 tons and is 65 feet in circumference. In its fall a piece was broken out of the side, and it is therefore useless as a bell, but it is set up on a platform as an ornament.
Within the walls of the Kremlin is also the Church of the Ascension of the Virgin, which is crowned by a dome 138 feet high, with smaller cupolas at the four corners. Standing in the centre of the Kremlin, this church is the heart not only of Moscow but of all Russia, for here the Tsars are crowned, while the bells of Ivan Veliki peal over the city. The interior of the cathedral presents an indescribable effect. The light from the narrow windows high up is very dim, and is further dulled by gilded banners with pictures of saints and crosses. The temple nave is crammed with religious objects, iconostases and icons, sacred portraits of solid gold with only the hands and faces coloured. Wax candles burn before them, from which the smoke rises up to the vaulted roof, floating about the banners in a greyish-blue mist.
To the orthodox Russians the Kremlin is almost a holy place. They make pilgrimages to its temples and cloisters with the same reverence as Tibetans to the sanctuaries of Buddha. "Moscow is surpassed only by the Kremlin, and the Kremlin only by heaven," they say.
Perhaps no year in the history of Moscow is so famous as the year 1812. Then the city was taken by Napoleon and the Grande Armée. The Russian army abandoned the city,and the citizens left their homes. Napoleon entered on September 14, and next day the city began to burn. The Russians had set fire to it themselves in several places. Three-fourths of the city lay in ashes when the French evacuated Moscow after an occupation of five weeks and the loss of 30,000 men. The remembrance of this dreadful time still survives among the populace.
From Moscow an express train takes us in eleven hours to the capital of Peter the Great, St. Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva, in the Gulf of Finland. Here we are in the midst of very different scenes from those in Moscow. Here is no longer genuine uncontaminated Russia, but Western civilisation, which has come and washed away the Slavonic. The churches and monasteries indeed are built in the same style as in Moscow, and the eyes meet with the same types and costumes, and the same heavily laden waggons and carts rumble over the Neva bridges; but one feels and sees only too plainly that one is in Europe.
The Neva is forty miles long and a third of a mile broad, and comes from Lake Ladoga. It is spanned by four fine bridges, always crowded with carriages and foot passengers, and in summer numerous small steamboats ply up and down. In winter thick ice lies on the river during four months.
St. Petersburg has nearly two million inhabitants, which is rather more than a hundredth part of the population of the whole Russian empire. The appearance of the town shows that it is new, for the streets are straight and broad. The climate is very raw, damp, and disagreeable, and it rains or snows on 200 days in the year.
A walk through the streets of St. Petersburg shows the traveller much that is strange. Tiny chapels are found everywhere—in the middle of a bridge or at a street corner. They contain only a picture of a saint with candles burning before it. Many persons stop as they pass by, uncover their heads, fall on their knees, cross themselves and murmur a prayer, and then vanish among the crowd in the streets. It is also noticeable that this city is full of uniforms. Not only do the soldiers of the large garrison wear uniforms, but civil officials, schoolboys, students, and many others are dressed in special costumes with bright buttons of brass or silver. But whatespecially attracts the stranger's attention are the vehicles. Persons of the upper classes drive in open sleighs and cover themselves with bearskins lined with blue, and are drawn by tall, dark, handsome trotters. Sometimes also atroika, or team of three horses abreast, is seen, one of the horses in the middle under the arch which keeps the shafts apart, while the other two, on either side, go at a gallop. The hackney sleighs are also common, so small that two persons can hardly find room to sit, and as there is no support or guard of any kind, they must cling to each other's waists in order not to be thrown off at sharp corners. These small sledges have no fixed stands, but they are drawn up in long rows outside hotels, banks, theatres, railway stations, and other much-frequented places, and may be found singly almost anywhere in the streets. The drivers are always merry and cheerful, and keep up a running conversation with their passenger or their horse, which they call "my little dove." All drive at the same reckless pace, as if they were running races through the streets.
St. Petersburg is rich in art collections and museums, picture-galleries, churches, and fine palaces. The finest building in the city, however, is the Isaac Cathedral, with its high gilded dome, surrounded by four similar but smaller gilded cupolas. The cross at the top is 330 feet above the ground, and the great dome is the first thing in St. Petersburg to be seen on coming by steamer from the Gulf of Finland. When the Cathedral was built, it cost more than two and three-quarter million pounds. It was finished fifty years ago, but has never been in really sound condition, and is always undergoing extensive repairs.
The last stage of our journey is now at hand. One evening we drive in atroika, with much ringing of sleigh bells, to the station of the Finland Railway, whence the train takes us through Viborg to Abo, the old capital of Finland. Here a steamer is waiting to take us over to Stockholm, which was the starting-point of our long journey.
FOOTNOTES:[19]A seaport of New Hampshire, U.S.A.[20]A Russian alcoholic liquor usually made from rye.
[19]A seaport of New Hampshire, U.S.A.
[19]A seaport of New Hampshire, U.S.A.
[20]A Russian alcoholic liquor usually made from rye.
[20]A Russian alcoholic liquor usually made from rye.
Again we set out from Stockholm in the evening by train, and the next morning we reach Malmö, a port on the west coast of Sweden, not many miles north of Trelleborg, from which we started on our journey eastwards across Asia. From Malmö a steamer soon takes us across the narrow sound to Copenhagen, the beautiful capital of Denmark, and then we take the train across the large, rich, and fertile island of Zealand. There farms are crowded close together among the tilled fields; there thriving cattle graze on the meadows, yielding Denmark a superfluity of milk and butter; there the productive soil spreads everywhere, leaving no room for unprofitable sandy downs and heaths, as on the west coast of Jutland. The Danes are a small people, but they make a brave struggle for existence. Their country is one of the smallest in Europe, but the first in utilising all its possibilities of opening profitable commerce with foreign lands. Much larger are its possessions in the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, and Iceland, but there the population is very scanty and the real masters of the islands are cold and ice.
At Korsör, on the Great Belt, we again go on board a steamer which in a few hours takes us between Langeland and Laaland to Kiel, the principal naval port of Germany. Here we are on soil which was formerly Danish, for it was only during her last unfortunate war that Denmark lost the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
We travel by train from Kiel through fertile Holstein southwards to the free Hansa town of Hamburg on the Elbe, the greatest commercial emporium on the mainland of Europe, and, after London and New York, the third in the world.
From Hamburg the train goes on through Hanover and Westphalia, across the majestic Rhine, through South Holland, not far north of the Belgian frontier, to the port of Flushing, which is situated on one of the islands in the delta of the Scheldt. Here another steamer is ready for us, and after a passage of a few hours we glide into the broad trumpet-shaped mouth of the Thames and land at Queenborough. There again we take a train which carries us through the thickly-peopled, well-cultivated country of Kent into the heart of London, the greatest city of the world.
MAP SHOWING JOURNEY FROM STOCKHOLM TO PARIS
After a few days' stay in London we go on to Paris—by train to Dover, across the Channel at its narrowest part in a swift turbine steamer, and again by rail from Calais to Paris, through one of the most fruitful districts of France, vying with the valleys of the Rhone and Garonne in fertility. In a little over seven hours after leaving London we arrive at the great city (Plate XXIV.) where the Seine, crossed by thirty bridges, describes a bend, afterwards continuing in the most capricious meanderings to Rouen and Havre.
PLATE XXIV.
The first thing the stranger notices in Paris is the boulevards—broad, handsome streets, with alleys of leafy trees between rows of large palatial houses, theatres, cafés, and shops. The oldest, the boulevards proper, were formerly the fortifications of the town with towers and walls; "boulevard" is, then, the same word as the English "bulwark." Louis XIII., who enlarged and beautified Paris, had these bulwarks pulled down, and the first boulevards laid out on their site. They are situated on the north side of the Seine, and form a continuous line under different names, Madeleine, des Capuchines, des Italiens, and Montmartre. This line of boulevards is one of the sights of Paris. In later times boulevards were also laid out where there had been no fortifications before. Under Louis XIV. and his successors Paris grew and increased in splendour and greatness; then it was the scene of the great Revolution and its horrors; then under Napoleon it became the heart of the mightiest empire of that time. With the fall of Napoleon Paris was twice entered by the forces of the Allies, and in 1871 it was besieged and captured by the Prussians. Since then Paris has been spared from disastrous misfortunes, and is, as it has been for many centuries, the gayest and most animated city in Europe.
Let us take a rapid walk through the town, starting at the Place de la Bastille, on the north bank of the Seine, where formerly stood the fortress and prison of the Bastille. This prison was stormed and destroyed at the commencement of the Great Revolution, on July 14, 1789, and since that year July 14 has been the chief national festival-day. In the middle of the square stands the July Column, and from its summit a wonderful view of Paris can be obtained. We now follow the Rue de Rivoli, the largest and handsomest street in Paris. On the left hand is the Hôtel de Ville, a fine public building, where the city authorities meet, where brilliant entertainments are given, and where the galleries are adorned with canvases of famous masters.
Farther along, on the same side, is the largest public building of the city, the palace of the Louvre. Like the British Museum, it would require months and years to see properly. Here are stored colossal collections, not only of objects of art and relics from great ancient kingdoms in Asia and Europe, but also of the finest works of European sculptors and painters of all periods.
We walk on north-westwards through the luxuriantgardens of the Tuileries, and stop a moment in the Place de la Concorde to enjoy the charming views presented on all sides—the river with its quays and bridges, the parks and avenues, the huge buildings decorated with exquisite taste, the wide, open spaces adorned with glorious monuments, and the never-ending coming and going of pleasure-loving Parisians and Parisian ladies in costumes of the latest fashion.
From the Place de la Concorde we direct our steps to the Champs Élysées, a magnificent park with a broad carriageway along which the fashionable world rides, walks, or drives in smart carriages and motor cars. At the northern side of the park lives the President of the Republic in the palace of the Élysées.
If we now follow the double row of broad avenues northwards we come to the Place de l'Étoile, a "circus" where twelve avenues of large streets meet. One of them, a prolongation of the Champs Élysées, is named after the grand army of Napoleon and leads to the extensive Bois de Boulogne. In the middle of the Place de l'Étoile is erected a stately triumphal arch, 160 feet high, in memory of Napoleon's victories.
From here we follow a busy street as far as the bridge of Jena, and on the opposite bank of the Seine rises the Eiffel Tower, dominating Paris with its immense pillar 1000 feet high. The Eiffel Tower is the highest structure ever reared by human hands, twice as high as the cathedral of Cologne and the tallest of the Egyptian pyramids. At the first platform we are more than 330 feet above the vast city, but the hills outside Paris close in the horizon. When the cage rises up to the third platform we are at a height of 864 feet above the ground, and see below us the Seine with its many bridges and the city with its innumerable streets and its 140 squares. A staircase leads up to the highest balcony, and at the very top a beacon is lighted at night visible 50 miles away. From the parapet we hardly dare allow our eyes to look down the perpendicular tower to the four sloping iron piers at its base, especially when it blows hard and the whole tower perceptibly swings. There is no need to go up in a balloon to obtain a bird's-eye view of Paris; from the top of the Eiffel Tower we have the town spread out before us like a map.
When we have safely descended from the giddy height, we make our way across the Champ de Mars to the Hôteldes Invalides. Formerly several thousand pensioners from the great French armies found a refuge in this huge building, but now it is used as a museum for military historic relics.