CHAPTER XLVIII.
The many vehicles in motion made a good road twelve hours after the storm ceased. The thermometer fell quite low, and the sharp frost hardened the track and enabled the horses to run rapidly. I found the temperature varying from 25° to 40° below zero at different exposures. This was cold enough, in fact, too cold for comfort, and we were obliged to put on all our furs. When fully wrapped I could have filled the eye of any match-making parent in Christendom, so far as quantity is concerned. The doctor walked as if the icy and inhospitable North had been his dwelling-place for a dozen generations, and promised to continue so a few hundred years longer. We were about as agile as a pair of prize hogs, or the fat boy in the side show of a circus.
My beard was the greatest annoyance that showed itself to my face, and I regretted keeping it uncut. It was in the way in a great many ways. When it was outside my coat I wanted it in, and when it was inside it would not stay there. It froze to my collar and seemed studying the doctrine of affinity. A sudden motion in such case would pull my chin painfully and tear away a few hairs. It was neither long nor heavy, but could hold a surprising quantity of snow and ice. It would freeze into a solid mass, and when thawing required much attention. The Russian officers shave the chin habitually, and wear their hair pretty short when traveling. I made a resolution to carry my beard inviolate to St. Petersburg, but frequently wished I had been less rash. A mustache makes a very good portable thermometer for low temperatures. After a little practice one can estimate within a few degrees any stage of cold below zero, Fahrenheit. A mustache will frost itself from the breath and stiffen slowly at zero, but It does not become solid. It needs no waxing to enable it to hold its own when the scale descends to -10° or thereabouts, and when one experiences -15° and so on downward, he will feel as if wearing an icicle on his upper lip. The estimate of the cold is to be based on the time required for a thorough hardening of this labial ornament, and of course the rule is not available if the face is kept covered.
There is a traveler’s story that a freezing nose in a Russian city is seized upon and rubbed by the bystanders without explanation. In a winter’s residence and travel in Russia I never witnessed that interesting incident, and am inclined to scepticism regarding it. The thermometer showed -53° while I was in St. Petersburg, and hovered near that figure for several days. Though I constantly hoped to see somebody’s nose rubbed I was doomed to disappointment. I did observe several noses that might have been subjected to friction, but it is quite probable the operation would have enraged the rubbee.
EXCUSE MY FAMILIARITY.
EXCUSE MY FAMILIARITY.
During our coldest nights on the steppe we had the unclouded heavens in all their beauty. The stars shone in scintillating magnificence, and seemed nearer the earth than I ever saw them before. In the north was a brilliant aurora flashing in long beams of electric light, and forming a fiery arch above the fields of ice and snow. Oh, the splendor of those winter nights In the north! It cannot be forgotten, and it cannot be described.
Twilight is long in a Siberian winter, both at the commencement and the close of day. Morning is the best time to view it. A faint glimmer appears in the quarter where the sun is to rise, but increases so slowly that one often doubts that he has really seen it. The gleam of light grows broader; the heavens above it become purple, then scarlet, then golden, and gradually change to the whiteness of silver. When the sun peers above the horizon the whole scene becomes dazzlingly brilliant from the reflection of his rays on the snow. In the coldest mornings there is sometimes a cloud or fog-bank resting near the earth, from the congelation and falling of all watery particles in the atmosphere. When the sun strikes this cloud and one looks through it the air seems filled with millions of microscopic gems, throwing off many combinations of prismatic colors, and agitated and mingled by some unseen force. Gradually the cloud melts away as it receives the direct rays of light and heat.
FROSTED HORSES.
FROSTED HORSES.
The intense cold upon the road affects horses by coating them, with white frost. Their perspiration congeals and covers them as one may see the grass covered in a November morning. Nature has dressed these horses warmly, and very often their hair may justly be called fur. They do not appear to suffer from the cold; they are never blanketed, and their stables are little better than open sheds. One of their annoyances is the congelation of their breath, and in the coldest weather the yemshicks are frequently obliged to break away the icicles that form around their horses’ mouths. I have seen a horse reach the end of a course with his nose encircled in a row of icy spikes, resembling the decoration sometimes attached to a weaning calf.
In a clear morning or evening of the coldest days the smoke from the chimneys in the villages rises very slowly. Gaining a certain height, it spreads out as if unable to ascend farther. It is always light in color and density, and when touched by the sun’s rays appears faintly crimsoned or gilded. Once when we reached a small hill dominating a village, I could see the cloud of smoke below me agitated like the ground swell of the ocean. I had only a moment to look upon it ere we descended to the level of the street.
I have not recorded the incidents of each day on the steppe in chronological order, on account of their similarity and monotony. Just one week after our departure from Barnaool we observed that the houses were constructed of pine instead of birch, and the country began to change in character. At a station where a fiery-tempered woman required us to pay in advance for our horses, we were only twenty versts from Tumen.
It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and it is only a steppe (a thousand miles wide) between Tomsk and Tumen. Travelers from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg consider their journey pretty nearly accomplished on getting thus far along. The Siberians make light of distances that would frighten many Americans. “From Tumen you will have only sixteen hundred versts to the end of the railway,” said a gentleman to me one day. A lady at Krasnoyarsk said I ought to wait until spring and visit her gold mines. I asked their locality, and received the reply, “Close by here; only four hundred versts away. You can go almost there in a carriage, and will have only a hundred and twenty versts on horseback.”
The best portion of Tumen is on a bluff eighty or a hundred feet above the river Tura. The lower town spreads over a wide meadow, and its numerous windmills at once reminded me of Stockton, California. We happened to arrive on market day, when the peasants from the surrounding country were gathered in all their glory for purposes of traffic. How such a lot of merchandise of nearly every kind under the Siberian sun could find either buyer or seller, it is difficult to imagine. The market-place was densely thronged, but there seemed to be very little traffic in progress.
The population of Tumen is about twenty thousand, and said to be rapidly increasing. The town is prosperous, as its many new and well-built houses bear witness. It has shorn Tobolsk of nearly all her commerce, and left her to mourn her former greatness. It is about three hundred versts from the ridge of the Urals, and at the head of navigation on the Tura. Half a dozen steamers were frozen in and awaited the return of spring, their machinery being stored to prevent its rusting.
In the public square of Tumen there was a fountain, the first I saw in Siberia. Men, women, boys, and girls were filling buckets and barrels, which they dragged away on sleds.
When we returned from our drive, and were seated at dinner, the cook brought a quantity of “Tumen carpets” for sale. He used all his eloquence upon me, but in vain. These carpets were made by hand in the villages around Tumen, their material being goat’s hair. From their appearance I judged that a coarse cloth was “looped” full of thread, which was afterward cut to a plush surface. Some of the figures were quite pretty. These carpets can be found in nearly every peasant house in Western Siberia, where they are used as bed and table coverings, floor mats, and carriage robes.
From Tumen to Nijne Novgorod the post is in the hands of a company, and one can buy a ticket for any distance he chooses. We bought to Ekaterineburg, 306 versts, paying nine copecks a verst for each vehicle. At the stations it is only necessary to show the ticket, which will bring horses without delay. The company has a splendid monopoly, protected by an imperial order forbidding competition. The peasants would gladly take travelers at lower rates if the practice were permitted. The only thing they can do is to charter their horses to the company at about one-third the ticket prices. Alexander would make many friends among the people by curtailing the monopoly.
From the Tura the country became undulating as we approached the Urals, but we passed no rugged hills. A great deal of the road lay between double rows of birch trees, that serve for shade in summer and do much to prevent the drifting of snow in winter. Forests of fir appeared on the slopes, and were especially pleasing after the half-desolation of the steppe.
The villages had a larger and more substantial appearance, that indicated our approach to Europe. Long trains laden with freight from Perm, blocked the way and delayed us. A few collisions made our sleigh tremble, and in two instances turned it on its beam ends. We were ahead of the tea trains that left Irkutsk with the early snows, so that we passed few sledges going in our own direction. The second night found us so near Ekaterineburg that we halted a couple of hours for the double purpose of taking tea and losing time.
At the last station, about six in the morning, we were greeted with Christmas festivities. While we waited in the traveler’s room, two boys sung or chanted several minutes, and then begged for money. We gave them a few copecks, and their success brought two others, who were driven away by the smotretal. I was told that poor children have a privilege of begging in this manner on Christmas morning. There are many beggars in the towns and villages of the Urals, and in summer there is a fair supply of highwaymen. Several beggars surrounded our sleigh as we prepared to depart and seemed determined to make the most of the occasion.
The undulations of the road increased, and the fir woods became thicker as we approached Ekaterineburg, nestled on the bank of the Isset. Just outside the town we passed a large zavod, devoted to the manufacture of candles. An immense quantity of tallow from the Kirghese steppes undergoes conversion into stearine at this establishment, and the production supplies candles to all Siberia and part of European Russia.
As we entered theslobodkaand descended rapidly toward the river, the bells were clanging loudly and the population was generally on its way to church. The men were in their best shoobas and caps, while the women displayed the latest fashions in winter cloaks. Several pretty faces, rosy from the biting frost, peered at the strangers, who returned as many glances as possible. Our yemshick took us to the Hotel de Berlin, and, for the first time in eighteen hundred versts, we unloaded our baggage from the sleighs. Breakfast, a bath, and a change of clothes prepared me for the sights of this Uralian city.
For sight-seeing, the time of my arrival was unfortunate. Every kind of work was suspended, every shop was closed, and nothing could be done until the end of the Christmas holidays. I especially desired to inspect theGranilnoi Fabric, or Imperial establishment for stone cutting, and the machine shop where all steam engines for Siberia are manufactured. But, as everything had yielded to the general festivities, I could not gratify my desire.
Ekaterineburg is on the Asiatic side of the Urals, though belonging to the European government of Perm. It has a beautiful situation, the Isset being dammed so as to form a small lake in the middle of the city. Many of the best houses overlook this lake, and, from their balconies, one can enjoy charming views of the city, water, and the dark forests of the Urals. The principal street and favorite drive passes at the end of the lake, and is pretty well thronged in fine weather. There are many wealthy citizens in Ekaterineburg, as the character of the houses will attest. I was told there was quite a rage among them for statuary, pictures, and other works of art. Special care is bestowed upon conservatories, some of which contain tropical plants imported at enormous expense. The population is about twenty thousand, and increases very slowly.
VIEW OF EKATERINEBURG.
VIEW OF EKATERINEBURG.
The city is the central point of mining enterprises of the Ural mountains, and the residence of the Nachalnik, or chief of mines. The general plan of management is much like that already described at Barnaool. The government mines include those of iron, copper, and gold, the latter being of least importance. Great quantities of shot, shell, and guns have been made in the Urals, as well as iron work for more peaceful purposes. Beside the government works, there are numerous foundries and manufactories of a private character. In various parts of the Ural chain some of the zavods are of immense extent, and employ large numbers of workmen. At Nijne Tagilsk, for example, there is a population of twenty-five thousand, all engaged directly or indirectly in the production of iron.
The sheet iron so popular in America for parlor stoves and stove pipe, comes from Ekaterineburg and its vicinity, and is made from magnetic ore. The bar iron of the Urals is famous the world over for its excellent qualities, and commands a higher price than any other. Great quantities of iron are floated in boats down the streams flowing into the Kama and Volga. Thence it goes to the fair at Nijne Novgorod, and to the points of shipment to the maritime markets.
The development of the wealth of the Urals has been largely due to the Demidoff family. Nikite Demidoff was sent by Peter the Great, about the year 1701, to examine the mines on both sides of the chain. He performed his work thoroughly, and was so well satisfied with the prospective wealth of the region that he established himself there permanently. In return for his services, the government granted a large tract to the Demidoffs in perpetuity. The famous malachite mines are on the Demidoff estate, but are only a small portion of the mineral wealth in the original grant. I have heard the Demidoff family called the richest in Russia—except the Romanoff. Many zavods in the Urals were planned and constructed by Nikite and his descendants, and most of them are still in successful operation and have undergone no change. The iron works of the Urals are very extensive, and capable of supplying any reasonable demand of individual or imperial character. At Zlatoust there is a manufactory of firearms and sword blades that is said to be unsurpassed in the excellence of its products. The sabres from Zlatoust are of superior fineness and quality, rivaling the famous blades of Damascus and Toledo.
Close by the little lake in Ekaterineburg is theMoneta Fabric,or Imperial mint, where all the copper money of Russia is coined. It is an extensive concern, and most of its machinery was constructed in the city. The copper mines of the Urals are the richest in Russia, and possess inexhaustible wealth. Malachite—an oxide of copper—is found here in large quantities. I believe the only mines where malachite is worked are in the Urals, though small specimens of this beautiful mineral have been found near Lake Superior and in Australia.
About twenty-five years ago an enormous mass of malachite, said to weigh 400 tons, was discovered near Tagilsk. It has since been broken up and removed, its value being more than a million roubles. Sir Roderick Murchison, while exploring the Urals on behalf of the Russian government, saw this treasure while the excavations around it were in progress. According to his account it was found 280 feet below the surface. Strings of copper were followed by the miners until they unexpectedly reached the malachite. Other masses of far less importance have since been found, some of them containing sixty per cent. of copper.
The gold mines of the Ural are less extensive now than formerly, new discoveries not equaling the exhausted placers. They are principally on the Asiatic slope, in the vicinity of Kamenskoi. The Emperor Alexander First visited the mines of the Ural in 1824, and personally wielded the shovel and pickaxe nearly two hours. A nugget weighing twenty-four pounds and some ounces was afterward found about two feet below the point where His Majesty ‘knocked off’ work. A monument now marks the spot, and contains the tools handled by the Emperor.