In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser explains the search for gold:

The government, anxious to develop the gold-mining industry - for Russia is in need of money - has temporarily remitted all duty on gold-mining machinery sent into the country. All over Siberia, therefore, is the intruding Kayoshnik, gold-hunter - English, French, or American engineers sent out usually by a syndicate to inspect places where gold is said to exist.

A Siberian prospecting party consists of a leader, an overseer, eight workmen, ten horses, eighteen saddle bags, provisions and tools, the outlay being about £500. When a likely valley is found, the gold-hunter seeks in the river-bed for pyrites, iron, slate, clay, or quartz coated with crystals. If the verdict on these is favourable trees are felled and a hut built.

The thickness of the earth covering the gold varies from two to twenty feet, and in regard to this I should point out that owing to the almost continuously frozen state of the soil and the dense forests, the gold deposits are protected against the denuding action of the water. If the tests yield 3/4 oz. of gold to 1 1/2 tons of earth, the result is good. If there is less than an eighth of an ounce it is poor. Sometimes as much as half a pound weight of gold is found in a ton and a half of earth.

If it is found worth while to mine, two posts are stuck up, one at each end of the ground, and the place is registered by the Commissioner of Police, or under an authority from the Director of Mines. A government surveyor next inspects the ground and prepares a map. After that the finder can borrow money on the security of his mine at the rate of from 20 to 30 per cent.

A claim is usually about three miles long. The breadth is determined by the distance between the two mountains in which the gold seam lies, but it is generally from 500 to 1,000 feet. No one is permitted to bold claims of more than three consecutive miles, but if you want to hold more the claims can be entered in the names of your wife, partner, or friends. When a mine is once registered it must be worked. If the finder has not the means, he may sell his claim or transfer it. But if it is not worked it is forfeited to the Crown.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser crosses Lake Baikal on an English icebreaker:

The pestering thought that the chief thing of British manufacture I had found in Siberia was sauce vanished as I saw the big steamer was the Angara, built by Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., Newcastle. Here, at least, England was holding her own!

I looked for the great Baikal that is supposed to scorn ice packs and does carry three trains across the lake. But she was not to be seen, though there was the special jetty which gripped her when trains wore run on board, and a hundred yards away was a black monster of a floating dock, where she can be housed when repairs are necessary.

It is certainly an advantage being a stranger in Russia. Foreigner spells “good tips” to servants, and so the cabin steward on the Angara gave me a good cabin, saw my luggage safe, and handed me the key.

Lunch? Certainly! There was a nice little buffet on board, and a hobbling old waiter, who had all the habits of his tribe, though he was four thousand miles east of the nearest European city, brought me cutlets and peas and bottled ale.

I saw somebody glance sideways at me through the window, somebody with a ruddy, clean-shaven face and a little cloth cap. So I went out.

“By the cut of your jib you’re a Britisher,” I said.

“Yes, Isaac Handy, of Sunderland. Glad to see you.”

Here was an honest-tongued north-countryman who had come here with others to put the Baikal together after she had been sent out in pieces from Newcastle. Also he superintended the building of the Angara on which we now stood; he was giving an eye to the building of the floating dock, also keeping watch on the steamer Ftoroy, specially built for the rapids on the Angara river. It was his duty to be about and be useful if anything went amiss with the engines which the Russians could not understand. He was one of the modest army of Britishers one drops across in odd corners of the world.

****

As the vessel slowly churned her way across, Mr. Handy told me about the lake. He pointed out a huge boulder lying in the mouth of the Angara which the natives regard with awe, because they believe that were it removed all the water would run out of the Baikal. Certainly the water tears into the river at a terrific speed. This is not to be wondered at, as the Baikal is nearly 1,600 feet above sea level.

Presently there came steaming down the lake huge four-funnelled vessel, white painted, by no means pretty, and rather like a barn that had slipped afloat. That was the Baikal, one of the most wonderful vessels in the world, coming back from Misovaya, and carrying two goods trains fully laden. If necessary she could carry three trains and eight hundred passengers, but at present the Baikal is used for merchandise and the Angara for passengers.

The Baikal passed sufficiently near for me to appreciate her great size, and as the fore gates were open I caught a glimpse of red-painted goods waggons. The ship is of over 4,000 tons, close on 300 feet long, and has nearly 60 feet beam. She has three triple expansion engines of 1,250 horse-power, two amidships and one in the bow. This power is required in the ice-breaking. She will break through ice 36 inches thick, and her bow is made with a curve, so that when the ice is thicker she can be backed and then go full steam at the ice, partly climb on it with her impetus, and then crush it with her weight. This means that the Baikal sometimes takes a week to cross the lake.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser meets some Russian officials:

On all sides I heard grumblings about the corruption of officials. There must be honest officials, but commercial men declare the officials are continually blocking the way, not only with dilatory red-tapeism, but by hindering everybody who will not give enough in bribes. Indeed, I was told that the bribing here, there, and everywhere, which cannot be avoided, is often such that very little margin of profit remains. The foreigners get disgusted with the oiling of palms that must be gone through at every turn. Here, indeed, a very pressing reform is needed, and the best reform should be the better remuneration of these officials. They are wretchedly paid.

The number of officials met with is simply amazing to the man from Western Europe. One is staggered at the thought of what must be the cost of this army of government employees, notwithstanding their poor pay. Every man in government service wears uniform, and as it takes at least four Russians to do in a post office what a girl of eighteen will do at home, some glimmering of an idea may be obtained of their number. In a small town through which pass four passenger trains a day, and, say, eight goods trains, you will find two, or maybe three, great buildings. They belong to the Railway Administration, and eighty or a hundred men will be employed. You wonder what on earth they can find to do.

Now and then I got into conversation with officials, and dropped more than a broad hint that they wasted time, and suggested that if they intend to do much with so wonderful and rich a land as Siberia they must wake up. Never once did I find them resent my attitude. They got along very well, they said, and they didn’t see why they should race and tear about like Englishmen and Americans. There the Eastern nature peeped out. Hurry they don’t understand.

One travelled Russian was quite candid. “It is no good,” he said; “a Russian can’t do a thing quickly. If he tries he only makes a mess.”

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser discusses one of Russia’s less orthodox religions:

I have mentioned religious liberty in Siberia. This does not exist in Russia proper. From there, sects objectionable to the Orthodox Church are driven beyond the Urals. But once in Siberia they can do much as they like. It is the same in politics. Politics are tabooed in Russia, but in Siberia more freedom is exercised.

Strange faiths appeal to the untutored mind. So among the Siberian peasantry flourish fantastic beliefs. There are many of them, and a narration of some of their tenets would raise a smile.

The principal body of dissenters really worth mentioning call themselves Raskolniks, or Old Believers. There are quite a hundred thousand of these in Siberia. They are the descendants of people who were exiled from Russia in the 18th century. Their chief peculiarity is their strict temperance and horror of innovation. They take neither tea nor coffee. They never smoke nor will allow anyone to smoke in or near their dwellings. The women have a disease called equarter brought on immediately by the smell of tobacco. They give short, frequent cries whilst suffering. The Raskolniks won’t look at potatoes, and they won’t cat or drink from any dish or cup used by another.

Yet, despite their oddities, the Raskolniks are much esteemed. They are always sober, and always industrious - two qualities that cannot be applied to Russians generally.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser visits a cathedral in Irkutsk:

You find paradox in Irkutsk as elsewhere.

Being the wildest, the most wicked city in East Siberia, it is also the most saintly, devout, sabbatarian place within the realms of the Great White Czar.

Sunday is as strictly observed there as it is north of the Tweed. In all other towns there is trade on the Sunday. The Government, however, is the Lord’s Day Observance Society in Irkutsk, and inflicts fine and imprisonment if you sell a pennyworth of anything. There are two cathedrals, one new and one old, also 25 Greek churches, two synagogues for the Jews, and other places for other people.

There is religious liberty in Siberia - Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Sunnites, and pagans live in peace - except that perversion from the State Greek Church is forbidden and punishable if done.

The tinsel Byzantine decorations of many churches you see in European Russia make the eye ache with their gilt gaudiness. But in Siberia the churches have mostly a quiet quaintness, a simplicity that is effective, nothing more than Doric walls whitewashed, a long, slightly sloping roof, green painted, and a needle of a spire, green painted also.

At sundown on the Saturday night -the air soft, fragrant, and full of pellucid blueness - all Irkutsk seemed to clang with bells calling the faithful to prayers. It was a mellow, vibrant sound, for the bells, many toned, were struck with wooden hammers.

With a friend I drove to the cathedral - a distance from the town, as everything is in Siberia. It, however, has not the Slavonic demure prettiness of the other churches. It is new. It is a huge domed structure, a sort of miniature St. Peter’s, stucco-faced and drab-coloured. It stands on a sandy waste and has a cramped appearance.

A long, covered colonnade with steps leads up to he church, and on them squat wrinkle-faced, sore-eyed, and twisted-limbed old men stretching palsied arms for charity.

At the top of the steps as we push open the glass door, the thick aroma of incense fills the nostrils. Dusk has fallen, and a weird gloom, broken by a hundred taper lights, pervades the church. The cup of the dome is blue, sprinkled with golden stars. There are no pews or seats. A purple carpet covers the floor, and on it are kneeling men and women.

In front is a great screen of gold, and the candle lights catch cornices and make them glow like shafts from the sun. Possibly all this massed gold would be ostentatious in the light of day. But now, in the softness of the evening, ostentation fades away. Everywhere are pictures of saints, and before them stand heavy candelabra with a hundred sockets. It is for the devout to bring their tapers, fix them, and do reverence.

But something better than incense fills the air. It is the sound of men’s voices. There is no organ; there are no stringed instruments. There is a choir of men, and their throats have deep richness. With the majesty of a Gregorian chant, they sing their Slavonic adoration, but tinged with pity, like the low melody of wind on the plains.

A door in the middle of the screen swings open. There are priests, long-haired and long-whiskered, in heavy canonical robes, silver-twined. One, a tall man, sallow-faced, lustre-eyed, his black beard that of a young man, his hair falling over his shoulders, comes forward swaying a censer. He stands on the step, and in a voice of sweetness and strength cries, “Gospodi pomilui” - “Lord, have mercy!”

His face is like that of Christ - not an unusual type among Russian priests.

“Gospodi pomilui,” responded the worshippers, kneeling and touching the ground with their foreheads.

Beyond the screen, within the Holy of Holies, where lights flicker on a cross, is an older priest, elevating his hands and praying.

Upon his prayer like a wave breaks the billow of sound from the choristers. And the people who have come to pray cry, “Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!” many times.

The light is dim. The tapers blink before the gold-encompassed saints. The cathedral is full of music and incense.

There are worshippers continually coming. They carry tapers, some only one, some many, and as they bow before the altar they make the sign of the cross. Far more than half those present are women.

Here comes a lady, dark-featured, well-dressed, with fashionable cape upon her shoulders, and on her head a bonnet that might have come from Regent Street. She goes to the picture of a saint, makes obeisance, and then she lights a taper from another taper. To make it grip she puts the end of her taper in the flame for a second, and presses it tight in the gilt socket, Then she goes to the picture, kisses the foot of the saint, and, kneeling, crosses herself, and prays with her forehead on the ground. She moves to another picture.

There is a peasant, heavily bearded, his sunburnt face rugged and furrowed. He wears a red shirt, velvet trousers, and big boots. He has no taper, but he stands taut, like a soldier, and he crosses himself and bows and cries, “Lord, have mercy.”

The big voice of the singers soars over all, repeating the liturgy in Slavonic.

A gentleman in frock-coat, begloved, and carrying a cane, comes forward, takes his candle, bows, and goes away.

A couple of slim boys, in the dull grey uniform of the Gymnasium, hurry along. They stand, heel-clapped, and with dexterous wrist make the cross signs. They light their tapers. But the tapers won’t stick upright in their sockets. They are well-behaved little fellows, but as the tapers will persist in toppling over, the boyish sense of humour asserts itself and they grin. At last they are fixed, and the lads stand watching the candles with a half-amused glance, wondering if there are to be any more tricks. No; they hold. Then the boys swing round, make their bows, and hasten away.

Here comes tottering an old lady - a very old woman, short and bent, and with a black shawl round her head. From the rim of black shawl peers a worn face, the upper lip fallen in, the eyes sunken and dull and yet with that beautiful resignation, shining through the countenance, you often see on the faces of old women whose thoughts are not of this world.

There is a picture of the Madonna and Child - the young Mother with eyes all love looking upon her new-born Son. Many, many tapers are before this icon, which glows with a special radiance.

To this the old woman comes with clasped and knotted hands. Her face is upturned, and the full gleam of the tapers falls upon it. There is a yearning in the sunken eyes. The dried, yellow lips quiver. The bones of the old woman ache, for she groans as she kneels. She lowers her face to the ground, and there she stays long, a dark, crouching figure of adoration before the picture.

When she looks up there are no tears; only, I think, there is a brighter light in the eyes than before.

She rises. With faltering steps she goes to the picture and reverently kisses the feet of the Child. Then she kisses the arm that holds Him.

The old woman finds peace and comfort to her soul. Maybe she sees the lifting of the curtain. It is not for one of another faith to say aught in disparagement. It is a pathetic sight. So I nudge my companion and we come away.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser learns a little about the Siberian gold industry:

Irkutsk is in the middle of the gold district, stretching far down the banks of the Lena, far into the mountains of Trans-Baikal, and also among the fastnesses bordering Mongolia, only a hundred miles away. The law is being modified, but till recently all the gold from mines in East Siberia had to pass through the Government Laboratory at Irkutsk. Only about half of it did. Even then six hundred million roubles worth of gold passed through in the last thirty years - that is 1,173,456 pounds avoirdupois of gold.

There are stacks of yellow ingots at the Irkutsk Laboratory that would make the mouths of Bank of England directors water. Two old men guard it at night. A force of Cossacks formerly guarded the gold. But one evening they marched off with the lot. Thereupon the mind of the Russian authorities went to work. Their reasoning was thus: “It is dangerous to have a body of stalwart fellows on guard, for they might up and away with the gold any hour. It would be much better to have two old men who couldn’t carry a bar between them.” The possibility of these two being hit on the head some night with a mallet was lost sight of.

The other half of the gold has been squandered in riotous living. If you are a miner, and have stolen gold, you must dispose of it somehow. In side streets are greasy, blue-bloused Chinamen, ostensibly dealers in tea. Though never a cake of tea enters their stores, they grow rich. Their enemies say they buy the stolen gold.

How to get gold out of Russian territory without discovery requires cuteness. But the ways of the Chinaman have become poetically proverbial. Even Chinamen die. And a dead Chinaman must sleep his long sleep in his native land. So his good brother Chinamen in Irkutsk embalm him, and put him in a box, and burn candles over him, and send him away to rest with his fathers.

Peeping through a, keyhole at an embalming operation not long ago, the Irkutsk police saw gold dust blown through a tube up the nostrils into the empty skull. So they discovered why the Chinese were so anxious to give the soul of their dead brother peace by burial at home. His head was to serve as carrier of gold till he reached the Flowery Land, and then the dust was to be extracted.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser recounts his arrival in Irkutsk, the Paris of Siberia:

That the greatest city of Siberia was at hand was shown in the altered appearance of the passengers as they sprang from the cars and hastened to the buffet for tea, coffee, and fresh rolls. Men who had worn the same flannel shirt for a week came forth in white front and collar and bright tie. Razors had been busy, for many a ten days’ scrub of whisker was gone. Women whom I had seen with light shawl thrown over head and shoulders fluttered in the glory of tailor-made jackets and radiant hats.

The only folk who still wore the same clothes, the bright shirts and patched baggy trousers and cumbrous big boots, and who hadn’t shaved or washed or combed, were the peasants.

At the wayside station were other passengers waiting. They were boys and girls from ten to sixteen, the lads in grey, with a black belt round the waist and a peaked cap, and on their backs cow-hide bags containing school-books - smart lads going into Irkutsk to the Gymnasium. The girls were dressed exactly the same as you find school-girls of the same age in Leeds or Manchester or Edinburgh. They carried their school-bags neatly strapped and behaved demurely, as young misses should, though their brothers were noisy youngsters, crowding into the same carriage and yelling and behaving exactly as their Anglichani cousins five thousand miles away behave when they go from their suburb to school in the big town.

It was a raw, grey morning, that Thursday, September 5th, as the train crawled upon the wooden bridge spanning the dead blue Irkut river, broad, sullen, and strong, sweeping to the mighty Yenisei, and emptying thousands of miles away within the Arctic circle. Over the low-hanging fog peered the dome of a cathedral, and great buildings loomed. There was the whistling and shrieking of engines. As we waited on the bridge for the signal to go on I thought of the stop on Grosvenor Bridge, over the Thames, before the south country trains rumble into Victoria Station.

Slowly we went on. There was a road crossing, with a mass of carts and people waiting till the train had passed. The axles creaked through a goods yard. Then, before we quite realised it, we were in Irkutsk Station. Porters boarded the train like banditti, and fought with one another to carry baggage. The corridors were blocked, and people got angry, and there was swearing and indignation, and - well, the scene was not at all peculiarly Siberian. It might have been any European station.

When my belongings were packed on a droshki, away I was carried, humpity-bumpity, over the vile, uneven road. I felt. I and the droshki were playing a game of cup and ball. I was caught every time. There was a tributary of the Irkut to be crossed, the Angara, by a jolting, uneven bridge of boats. We banged across it. And so we were in Irkutsk, four thousand miles east of Moscow, further east, indeed, than Mandalay: a thriving, jostling, gay city “the Paris of Siberia” you call it when you want to please.

It is not a description I would apply myself. Irkutsk is more like a restless, bustling Western American town near the region of gold diggings. There is one street two miles long, and all the others are at right angles.

It is a white and green town. Most of the buildings are stucco-faced, whitewashed, with sheet-iron roofs painted green. The effect is one of cleanness and coolness.

****

It is getting ahead in public buildings. The Greek Cathedral is an imposing building of heavy-domed architecture. There is a resplendent Opera House that cost £32,000. There is a museum of all things Siberian from the days of the mammoth to the latest device in gold-washing, in charge of an intelligent young Russian. There is a school of art, a public library, and, besides the gymnasium for the better class boys and a high school for the better class girls, there are thirty-two other schools, and all sorts of philanthropic institutions, including an orphan home.

The town is under the control of a municipality, elected every four years. It consists of sixty members, and the mayor is chosen from their number. The rates imposed are slight. Still I have seen some shrugging of the shoulders as to what becomes of all the money.

There are houses which for outward appearance rival some in Park Lane. The restaurant where I lunched and dined each day was Parisian, save that there was one of those huge hurdy-gurdy organs playing archaic music-hall tunes. Fancy “A Bicycle Made for Two” being played in Eastern Siberia!

The shops are fine. You can buy anything in them - even English patent medicines. There are drapery stores that seem like a bit of Regent Street. The hairdresser’s shop near my hotel was as well fitted up as any such establishment on the Boulevard des Italiens. The electric light blazed everywhere.

And yet with all these there is a rawness about Irkutsk that made me exclaim a hundred times, “It is just like a mushroom city in Western America.”

The roads were no better than tracks, either all dust or all mire. The pavement was a side walk of boards, some of which were missing. A grand new building had as neighbour a rough wooden shanty. All the sanitary arrangements were insanitary. Everything costs about three times as much as it does in London.

There is a small fortune awaiting the man who will build a good hotel. There are several hotels, but, while they are all dear, they are all dirty. I have met several Europeans here - Europeans as distinct from Russians - and after mutual agreement that the popular idea in England and America about Siberia is all wrong, the conversation has invariably turned to the domestic habits of the Russian people - which are not cleanly - then to the filthy state of the Irkutsk hotels, and finally - not a polite topic perhaps - to the size, behaviour, and intelligence of the Siberian bug.

****

If of the towns I know I sought one that Irkutsk is really suggestive of, I would select San Francisco. Physically they are unlike. But the social atmosphere is the same. There is the same free-and-easy, happy-go-lucky, easy-come, easy-go, devil-may-care style of living.

All the business is one of dealing, importing European goods, re-selling to far-away towns in Siberia, working mines, buying skins, and exporting to Europe. The smash-ahead commercial people here are Russians from the Baltic provinces, really Germans. They are all energy. The Russian himself - with that ineradicable strain of the Tartar in him - is more dilatory. The impulsive Britisher or American, hustling about, is to him something of a madman -clever, but still mad.

Money-making in Irkutsk has been so easy for several generations that the new whirl that has come into the town with the Trans-Siberian Railway has startled even the millionaires. They are sturdy old men, most of them, with character written deep on their strong faces. For all the new-fangled Western ideas that have swept into the town they have a little contempt. Several of the wealthiest still keep to their rude peasant clothes.

But Irkutsk is beginning to put on airs, and even a grimy millionaire in red shirt and dirty top-boots will not be tolerated in the fashionable restaurants. A police order was issued recently that anyone not wearing a white shirt and collar could be refused admittance. Also there are notices stuck up requesting the guests not to get drunk, but to remember they belong to a civilised country!

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser tries to keep track of railway time:

There is one thing to be said for the Trans-Siberian Railway - that hardly ever does a train arrive, behind time. Indeed, I have known the train run into a station twenty minutes before time, and as a rule it is five minutes in advance.

At first you find the time-table a Chinese problem. It took me a whole morning to grasp it. First you find your watch doesn’t tally with the obvious time of day, and when you look at the station clock that clock is unmistakably hours behind. You see the train is down to arrive at a particular place at a particular time, say half-past seven; but you know it is actually mid-day. There is confusion, which is due to the line running continuously towards the sun.

To keep things in order, however, the railway authorities ignore the sun, and keep Petersburg time. So in Eastern Siberia, when the sun is setting, the station clock will indicate lunch time. Therefore, first of all, the time-table shows Petersburg time. But as every station is about ten miles from the town it is supposed to serve, intending passengers cannot be expected to make a special trip to find railway time. Accordingly, on the time-table is printed in red the local time as well. You personally want local sun time, and, when you have mastered the time-table so far, you set your watch in the morning by the red figures. But when you glance at your watch towards evening you find something wrong, that your watch is quite ten minutes behind local time. You marvel, think your watch has got out of repair, and what a nuisance this is in a country like Siberia. Suddenly, however, you condemn yourself as a dunderheaded idiot for not understanding before that local time is continuously changing.

It is endless worry trying to keep pace. I didn’t try. Each morning I just put my watch ten minutes ahead of the local time, and was content with its being correct, there or thereabouts, for the rest of the day.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser realizes that he is being spied on:

It was at Taiga I became conscious of the fact I was being watched. I felt the knowledge of the fact creep in somewhere at the back of my neck. I turned hurriedly and caught the departing side-glance of a short, inquisitive-eyed and tufty-bearded gentleman. I knew he was watching me. Maybe he belonged to that mysterious body, the Russian Secret Police. Maybe he thought I was a Soho-Nihilist - though I hope there was nothing suggestive of Soho in my attire, save my old knockabout slouch hat.

I took a stroll to the far end of the platform. He followed and pretended not to be looking when I turned, but when I again passed him I could feel his gaze, like a Rontgen-ray, go into the side of my head.

When the Moscow-Irkutsk post train arrived I hunted out a carriage and prepared to make myself comfortable for four nights. Suddenly the door was jerked open, and as suddenly jerked shut again. It was my little spy. I heard whispering in the next compartment, and when I went into the corridor my spy - I got to regard him as my own particular property after three days - and the conductor came and stared.

Whenever I left my carriage he left his. I couldn’t go into the buffet and have a cup of soup without my spy sitting opposite me. If I wandered for ten minutes into the woods to take a photograph, or climbed a bank to get a snapshot of the train, he was near.

Truly, as a spy, he played the game badly. It was all too patent. If I could have really acted suspiciously I would have done so, just to fool him to the top of his bent. All I could think of was to look at embankments, simulating wisdom, as though calculating how much dynamite it would need to blow them into the air, or walk along the line and inspect the rails, as though I had some deep design in mind. But I maintained an air of sublime ignorance that he was on the earth.

It was the evening before we reached Irkutsk, and the train was halting for half-an-hour, when, all at once, there was a row next door. I sprang into the corridor to see.

There were the railway officials ignominiously throwing my spy and his belongings out. The inquisitive little fellow had never seen a foreigner before, and he was travelling first-class with a second-class ticket. He was very petulant at this indignity of ejection. He fretted and fumed. But “out you go and get into a back carriage,” was the attitude of the officials. As he picked up his bedding and kettle he looked at me. I could not resist the temptation to give him two broad, slow British winks and then laugh. It was the only revenge I had.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser explains why Tomsk stop on the Trans-Siberian is actually 50 miles out of town:

Tomsk, the capital of Siberia, is eighty-two versts from the junction station of Taiga, which means “in the woods.”

And why doesn’t the Great Trans-Siberian Railway run through the capital? It is an old story I was always hearing with regard to this line. It was laid in corruption.

“How much will you give us if we bring the line past Tomsk? ” asked the surveyors and engineers who mapped the route.

“Nothing!” replied Tomsk. “We are the capital of Siberia, and you can’t avoid coming here.”

“Oh, can’t we?” replied the route-finders. “If you don’t produce so many thousand roubles there will be insurmountable engineering difficulties that will prevent us coming within a long way of Tomsk.”

These engineering difficulties were discovered, and so the Trans-Siberian Railway sweeps along fifty miles to the south of Tomsk.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser shares his impressions of the Kyrgyz people:

In the afternoon I drove out to the plain beyond Omsk and visited a Khirgiz camp. The Khirgiz are the Red Indians of the West Siberian steppes.

The Russians have conquered themy and pushed them upon the least fertile tracts of land to make room for immigrants. The race is decreasing in number, and will one of these days disappear from the face of the earth altogether.

They are not unlike the “Red Man of the Wild West” in feature, but are listless and drowsy. There is a strong strain of the Tartar in them, shown by the slit of the eye. They are nomads, driving flocks of sheep before them. Indeed, the sheep is their standard of value. A woman is only worth four sheep, but a cow is worth eight sheep, a horse is worth four cows, and they will give three horses for a gun.

I found them very agreeable, smiling folk. Their tents looked like huge cocoanut shells cut in half. They were framework covered with coarse felt. The men were clad in sheep-skins, but the women had bright-hued cotton wraps, red and yellow print. They showed hospitality by offering me fermented mare’s milk, which I lied about by saying it was delightful, though I was near to sickness with the vile stuff. It took a fortnight to get the taste out of my mouth.

We squatted on mats and smiled and nodded. When I suggested taking their photographs, which they understood, they were delighted. But there was a delay, for even feminine vanity extends to the Kirghiz, and we had to wait till the young women decked themselves in their gorgeous native costumes. One put on a huge red hat trimmed with foxskin. I was with the Kirghiz only some half-an-hour. As, however, I bade them farewell native fashion, by holding both hands in mine and shaking them, I could not help but feel sorry for those children of the Siberian plain, who have lost their heritage and are soon to be extinct. The touch of civilisation means death to them.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser talks to an American and a Dane about doing business in Siberia during the last decades of the Tsarist era:

Omsk, you should bear in mind, is the very centre of 2,000 square miles of the finest pasture land in the world. I met two Americans in the town pushing the sale of American agricultural implements. One, the representative of the Deering Manufacturing Company, said to me, “Sir, I have been all over the United States, and this is my third summer visit to do business in Omsk. I tell you Siberia is going to be another America.” He also told me that three years ago he sold only 40 reaping machines. That year, 1901, he sold 1,500, and next year he proposed to bring out 4,000. Deering’s were doing a good trade because they are first in the field. The Government were buying their machines, and then selling them again to the emigrants, getting repayment by instalments. Altogether there are eight American agricultural implement manufacturers’ representatives in Omsk.

“Any English?” I inquired.

“Not one,” he laughed back, and I saw the glow of Yankee satisfaction at getting what he afterwards called “the bulge on John Bull.”

Besides Americans selling agricultural wares, chiefly mowers and reapers, there are fourteen firms in Omsk engaged in the newly-developed Siberian butter trade with England. The largest firm belongs to a Russian Jew; the other thirteen belong to Danes. It was a Dane in St. Petersburg who four years back accidentally saw Siberian butter. He was struck with its excellence. Three years ago 4,000 buckets, each containing about 36 lb., were shipped by way of Riga and Revel to England, and sold in the English market, I’ve a suspicion, as “the best Danish.”

Last summer (1901) 30,000 buckets a week were exported from Siberia to England.

I got into a talk with a Dane engaged in butter-buying.

“Yes,” said he, “the way the butter business has sprung up is amazing, But what has been done is but a tiny scrap to what will be done in the future. You’ve seen the cows, what miserable looking things they are. But the pasturage is so good that there is seven per cent. of butter fat in the milk. There are only two steam dairies in all Siberia; all the other butter is made in primitive fashion by hand. The conditions are such that it is not so clean-flavoured as it should be. But it is splendid butter all the same. The output at present, with a thin population and defective methods, is small, and the competition among the rival firms to get it is American in its keenness. I travel six or seven hundred versts every week on either side of the railway line, buying butter from the peasants. It is brought in native carts all that way to the railway. But the peasant doesn’t understand business. I’ll make a contract for so much butter to be delivered to me in Omsk at a certain price - about eleven roubles (22s.) the pood (36 lb.) has been the price this summer; but when in Omsk the man may meet one of my competitors, and he has no hesitation, if offered a few kopeks (pence) more a pood, in selling it to my rival. When I remonstrate he simply said the other man offered more. He doesn’t understand the morality of a bargain.”

“And about the morality of the other butter buyer?” I questioned.

“Well,” the Dane answered, “competition is right up to the knife. This week five train loads of nothing but butter have left Omsk for Riga. You’ve seen the trains may-be, painted white, with all the latest refrigerating appliances fitted up. The Russian Government is delighted at what is taking place. The authorities will do anything for us. They have just issued a pamphlet in Russian showing how the Siberian peasants can start profitable dairying with the necessary machinery for an outlay of 500 roubles (£50). The Russian peasant, however, is slow. But the Jews have come into the business, and many are already making fortunes by dairying. My firm started a big dairy about 400 versts south from here. The peasants would not believe a machine could separate the butter from the milk. They said the devil was in the machine. There’s been a drought down there. Everybody believed it was because the Almighty was angry that they should allow these devil machines in the country. So they wrecked the place and smashed every separator we had. But it will be all right in a year or two, as soon as they get more civilised. They are beginning to see the advantage of machinery. The winter food for the cows has had to be cut by hand. Now these people are beginning to we that if the grass is cut by machines they can get far more hay, and keep four or five times as many cows, and then the separators make better milk; so some of them are on their way to becoming rich.”

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.In today’s excerpt, Fraser takes a Droshki ride through Omsk, and meets his first Russian policeman:

The droshki I was in was a real droshki. The thing they call a droshki in Petersburg is a sort of abortive Victoria. The genuine article has a humped-up seat with no back, so that every bump you are jolted in a way to mike your bones rattle, and you are in constant imminent peril of being pitched into the adjoining pool.

At one violent lurch off went a bag of mine into the mud. I tried to be indignant, but the driver, as he went back, only laughed and exclaimed, “Nitchevo!” - a word which takes the Russian happily through life, and means “What does it matter; nothing matters; why worry?”

It was midnight, and pitch dark. The horse, though a sorry animal, could go well - perhaps because its stable was at Omsk; and we jolted on, far ahead of anyone else. We were tearing across a bleak and muddy plain. I addressed my driver, a hulking fellow, as “My little dove!” which is the proper thing to call your coachman in Russia when you want to please him, though he was as much like a dove as I am like a man-o’-war. He was delighted, and whacked the horse again.

Omsk looked as though it had gone to bed. It was like a big village, with the streets very wide and uneven, and most of the houses one-storey and ram-shackle. There were tipsy wooden posts at the corners, and on their summits were flickering little back-kitchen kind of oil lamps. Not a soul was to be seen.

Suddenly there was a clatter-clatter-clatter-clatter of a wooden rattle. I had not heard that sound since I was in Western China. Siberia is next-door neighbour to China. I knew what it was. It was the policeman on his rounds. In England we make our constables wear rubber-soled boots at night so they may move about stealthily and surprise thieves. In Siberia the police keep the rattles going, so the thieves have full warning when the guardian of the peace is approaching!

You can’t convince a Siberian any more than you can a Chinese that the thing is stupid. “Ours is the best plan,” says the Siberian, “for it gives householders confidence that the police are about.”

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

In today’s excerpt, Fraser meets Prince Hilkoff, the Minister responsible for Russia’s railways:

At St. Petersburg I met officials. Everyone spoke English. It was not mere courtesy that led them to speak appreciatively of things English. That kind of talk is easily to be seen through. But their liking was honest and deep-seated. They measured things by English standards.

More than once I remarked, “It seems strange that you, a Russian, should take such an interest in English life and methods.” The answer was invariably the same: “I daresay it does; but you must remember that my nursery governess was an English-woman.”

That impressed me. It was not long before I learned that the kindly regard for English folk you find among the upper classes of Russia is to be traced direct to the influence exercised in the nursery by spare-figured English governesses.

[…]A man I had two talks with was Prince Hilkoff, Minister of Ways of Communication, the chief of the railway administration, also of the post roads, rivers, and canals. When I was first received I found in the ante-room, awaiting audience, uniformed officials with rows of orders upon their breasts-a gorgeous, eye-aching display of picturesque garb. I half anticipated to find his Excellency in dazzling dress; but I was greeted by an elderly gentleman in a navy blue lounge suit, and with the easiest of manners. There was nothing Russian or official about him. He looked American, with his long, strong, bronzed face and little tuft of beard that the Americans call a goatee. He spoke English like an American.

“Yes,” he said, “I studied engineering at Birkenhead and afterwards in America. It was when I was a deal younger than I am now. It was at the time of the liberation of the serfs, and my family and I didn’t see that disputed point exactly in the same light. So I packed up and went abroad to shift for myself. It was a little rough, but I guess I got over that. I came back to Russia just when Russia was beginning to be interested in railways. I got a small position - oh! a very small position in the administration.”

“And since then?” I urged.

“Oh, since then,” he replied, “I’ve just worked. I’m just a working man, you know - a sort of blacksmith. But I never worry. What is the good of worrying? When my work is done, I like to shut it right away. Then I play tennis with my children, or I hunt or fish. That’s a great thing I like about English business men. When their work is finished it is really finished, and they get out of doors for exercise. Now, an American can’t play golf without thinking about business. The Americans are a fine go-ahead people, the most go-ahead in the world, but if they would just think there was something else besides business, why I guess they’d get some real value out of life.”

He was very proud of this great Trans-Siberian line, was Prince Hilkoff.

This post is one of a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.

In 1901, British Journalist John Foster Fraser travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back again, mostly by rail. On his return, he recorded his experiences (and prejudices) in “The Real Siberia”.

Over the next few weeks, Siberian Light will be publishing a series of excerpts this fascinating book.

Today, Fraser departs from Moscow:

THE bell in the big stuccoed and whitewashed ‘JL’ Moscow station gave a clang. Thereupon brawny and black-whiskered men took off their caps, put their arms about each other’s necks, and gave a brother’s kiss upon the lips.

There was uproar. The train for Siberia was starting. A bunch of officers, well-set young Russians, in neat white linen jackets with gold straps on the shoulders, crowded a window and laughed good-byes to friends.

From the windows of the next car were the uncouth faces of peasants, their hair tangled and matted, their red shirts open at the throat. They were stolid and brutal. They were the moudjiks emigrating to the mysterious, evil-omened Siberia. On the platform stood their wives-dumpy, unattractive women, in short skirts, and with gaudy handkerchiefs about their heads. They did not understand the language of farewell. With eyes tear-red and with quivering lips they looked upon the hulking hairy men with the sleepy animal faces. But they said nothing.

Three mechanics, drink laden, came reeling along, bumping everyone with their kits. Their eyes were glazed, and they grinned slobberingly and lurched like coal barges beating up against a gale.

The bell clanged twice. Everybody must get aboard now. Once more the brother’s kiss. From the car window the young fellows got long and ardent hand grips. They were in the blush of life, and off to Siberia with laughter in their hearts.

Standing a little back was an ordinary soldier, a fair-haired lad, slim and beardless. He was at attention, his heels clapped, his arms taut by his side. He was more than head and shoulders taller than the wizened little woman, her tanned old face all seared with care, who was clutching at him, and kissing him on the tunic and dulling its whiteness with mother’s tears. And she was praying a mother’s prayer.

Clang, clang, clang! Three times, and all aboard now.

There was a shrill whistle. The cars creaked and moved. Everybody, in the train and on the platform, made the sign of the cross. The perilous unknown was ahead of them.

Some husky shouts of farewell were thrown from the windows, and there was some dimness of eyes. Even a scampering foreigner felt the solemnity of the occasion. But in a few seconds we were in the sunshine of a blazing afternoon, and the train was lumbering on its way to Siberia. It was Thursday afternoon, August 22nd, 1901.

This was not the famous Siberian Express about which so much has been written and which starts twice a week from Moscow, “the fairest jewel in the crown of the Czars,” for the far-off city of Irkutsk in Central Siberia, a continent away indeed, 3,371 miles, and which is reached in exactly eight days. The Russians are an enthusiastic and credulous people, and in all the world they think there is nothing so magnificent as this Siberian Express. They come in their hundreds to the Moscow station every Tuesday and Saturday night, the grandees in their furs and their pearls, the red-shirted, matted-haired moudjiks, and the shaven-chinned, American felt-hatted commercial men who have the spice of the West in their veins, and they all stand and gaze at the people Siberia-bound as most of us will look at the first traveller to Mars. Siberia is a long way off. Has anybody ever returned from Siberia? Hearts grow big and words choke. Tears stain many cheeks. Yet laughter and merriment rings over sorrow.

Remembering this is slothful Russia and not slap-dash, bang-about America, it is a luxurious train, is the Siberian Express, with its electric lights, restaurant, library, observation car, bath rooms, ladies’ boudoir, piano, and all that is considered “up-to-date” in travelling. Europe is now looking towards Siberia as half a century ago it looked towards Western America - it is the wheatfield of the world; it has the finest grazing to be found in the two hemispheres; no horses are like the Siberian horses; its butter is shouldering “best Danish” from the market; great areas yield coal and iron; its hills ooze gold. There is a Siberian “boom.”

The rich speculators, engineers, Government officials, Germans searching for trade, to build a bridge or to open a store, all travel by this train. It is invariably crowded. You have to sleep four in a coupé, two on the seats and two on the improvised bunks above. To be sure of a place you must book weeks ahead.

I had no desire to travel like this. I am a vagabond fond of taking things slowly. So what did it matter if it took eight or eighteen or twenty-eight days to reach Irkutsk? I had no mining concession. It was the last thing in my mind to open a store. Mine was but a mission of curiosity. I wanted to see Russia; I wanted to see the poor, crushed, depraved Russian peasants; above all I wanted to see Siberia. So I did what no wise foreigner had ever been known to do before. I travelled by the ordinary daily train that jogs alone, slowly, stopping, at the wayside stations, picking up moudjiks, putting moudjiks down. It took very much longer, but there was a charm about that. Besides, it was much cheaper and it required only a very small bribe pressed into the hand of the black-whiskered, astrakan-capped conductor to get a carriage to myself. I spoke four words of Russian, and I carried all my belongings in a couple of bags.

Off to Siberia!

This post is the first in a series of excerpts from John Foster Fraser’s “The Real Siberia”. Further excerpts can be found in the Siberian Light archive.

The full text of The Real Siberia is available online at Friends & Partners.