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At Zayau-Tologoï, the Chinese drivers were replaced by Mongolian postillions, and the Chinese mandarins gave up the responsibility of escort to Mongolian officials.
The Mongolian mode of harnessing is very strange: a long wooden transversal bar is fastened to the end of the shafts, and on each side a horseman glides under his saddle; then they set off at full gallop. When they halt the horsemen disappear, the shafts fall abruptly to the ground; and the travellers, if they have not a good strong hold, are projected from the vehicle.
The officers of the escort go in advance to prepare tents or wigwams formed of hurdles, upon which is stretched a great awning of felt; the whole has very much the appearance of an enormous umbrella, with a hole at the top, to let out the heated air, and at need the smoke.
As the travellers carried with them a large stock of provisions, and fresh meat could generally be obtained from the nomad shepherds, their table was well served; but owing to the absolute dearth of any other kind of fuel, they were compelled to kindle their fires with argols, or dried cow-dung.
In due time they entered upon the great desert of Gobi, where the grassy plain is covered by a countless multitude of mole-hills, which render locomotion very difficult. This apparently boundless desert, notwithstanding its lack of trees and shrubs and flowers, and its monotonous uniformity, is not without a certain charm, as many travellers have acknowledged. Madame de Bourboulon, writing of it, says:
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—
"I grew accustomed to the desert; it is only for a few days that I have had experience of tent-life, and yet it seems to me as if I had always lived so. The desert is like the ocean: the human eye plunges into the infinite, and everything speaks of God. The Mongolian nomad loves his horse as the sailor loves his ship. It is useless to ask him to be bound by the sedentary habits of the Chinese, to build fixed habitations, and cultivate the soil. This free child of Nature will let you treat him as a rude barbarian, but in himself he despises civilized man, who creeps and crawls like a worm about the small corner of land which he calls his property. The immense plain belongs to him, and his herds, which follow his erratic courses, supply him with food and clothing. What wants he more, so long as the earth does not fail him?"
There is another light in which this vast desert may be looked at. Unquestionably, its influence on the destinies of the human race has been injurious; it has checked the progress of the Semitic civilization. The primitive peoples of India and Tibet were civilized at an early period of the world's history; but the immense wilderness put an impassable barrier between them and the barbarous tribes of Northern Asia. More than the Himalaya, more than the snow-capped peaks of Sirinagur and Gorkha, these boundless wastes, alternately withered by a tropical summer, and blighted by a rigorous winter, have prevented for ages all intercommunication, all fusion between the inhabitants of Northern and those of Southern Asia; and it is thus that India and Tibet
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have remained the only regions of this part of the world which have enjoyed the benefits of civilization, of the refinement of manners, and of the genius of the arts.
The barbarians who, in the last agonies of the Roman Empire, invaded and devastated Europe, issued from the steppes and table-lands of Mongolia. As Humboldt says—"If intellectual culture has directed its course from the East to the West, like the vivifying light of the sun, barbarism at a later period followed the same route, when it threatened to plunge Europe again into darkness. A tawny race of shepherds of Thon-Klüu—that is to say, of Turkish origin, the Hioungum—inhabited, living under sheepskin tents, the elevated table-land of Gobi. Long formidable to the Chinese power, a portion of the Hioungum were driven south into Central Asia. The impulse thus given, uninterruptedly propagated itself to the primitive country of the Fins, on the banks of the Ural, whence irrupted a torrent of Huns, Avars, Chasars, and divers mixtures of Asiatic races. The armies of the Huns first appeared on the banks of the Volga, then in Pannonia, finally on the borders of the Marne and the Po, ravaging the beautiful plains where, from the time of Antwor, the genius of man had accumulated monuments upon monuments. Thus blew from the Mongolian desert a pestilential wind which, even as far as the Cisalpine plains, blighted the delicate flower of art, the object of cares so constant and so tender."[18]
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The temperature is extremely variable in these steppes, so that Madame de Bourboulon records having experienced in the morning a frost of one degree below zero, and some hours afterwards a heat of thirty degrees above zero (Centigrade). These changes are most numerous and most violent in the spring.
The difficulty of travel is increased by the peculiar rapid trot of the Mongol horses and the formidable unevenness of the ground. The jolting is almost intolerable. However carefully the traveller's wares may have been packed, they are infallibly damaged; and Madame de Bourboulon says that they strewed the desert with the wreck of their wardrobe and their linen. Her husband laughingly averred that the very money in the iron-bound chests was broken by the violent friction, and his veracity, at first impugned, was confirmed by the exhibition of a handful of silver filings; a pile of piastres was found pared and ground down as if by a file, and had the journey been much prolonged, "all would have been reduced to dust."
As the travellers advanced, they observed the increasing scarcity of vegetation; here and there might be seen a few tufts of saxifrage lifting up amidst the stones their rose-tinted posies—a rank, thorny, and creeping herbage—
some attenuated heaths, and in the crevices and hollows of the rocks, a little couch grass. They had taken leave of the irises, white, purple, and yellow, and the scarlet anemones, which at first had brightened the
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way, and filled the plains with their delicious balmy odour.
Madame de Bourboulon affords us a glimpse, and an interesting one, of the manners of the nomad tribes:
—"Throughout the day a tropical heat had prevailed, and in the evening, on arriving at Haliptchi, where they were to pass the night, the postillions eagerly moved down upon the vessels of water and camel's milk which the women and children had made ready for them. A violent altercation ensued, because one of the Hagars of the desert had allowed a stranger to drink before her husband had been supplied. The latter emptied out the contents of the vessel and threw some at the head of his immodest wife, amidst the shouts and laughter of the shepherds."
This scene reminded Madame de Bourboulon of the Bible and the age of the patriarchs.
Quitting the desert of the Gobi, our travellers entered the country of the Khalkhas, a region of great forests, pasturages, and crystal rivers; but even this earthly paradise of bloom, verdure, and freshness was not without its dangers. We take an extract, in illustration of them, from Madame de Bourboulon's journal:—
"I rode on horseback this morning," she says, "enticed by the aspect of the beautiful green prairies of Taïrene. My horse bounded over their surface, and giving him the reins I allowed myself to traverse the plain in a furious gallop, lulled by the dull sound of his hoofs, which a thick carpet of grasses deadened, paying no heed to anything around me, and lost in a profound
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reverie. Suddenly I heard inarticulate cries behind me, and as I turned to ascertain their cause, I felt myself pulled by the sleeve of my vest; it was a Mongolian of the escort, who had been sent in pursuit of me. He lowered first one hand and then another, imitating with his fingers the gallop of a runaway horse; at length, perceiving that I did not understand, he pointed fixedly to the soil. My presence of mind returned; I had an intuition of the danger which I had escaped, and I discovered that the animation of our horses was not due to the charm of green pasture, but to fear, the fear of being swallowed up alive. The ground disappeared under their feet, and if they remained still they would sink into the treacherous bogs which do not restore their victims. I tremble still when I think of the peril I have escaped; my horse, better served by its instinct than I by my intelligence, had dashed onwards, while I perceived nothing: a few paces more and I was lost!
"White vapours, rising from the earth, gave our postillions a fantastic appearance; one might have mistaken them for black shadows of gigantic proportions, mounted upon transparent and microscopic horses. Madame de Baluseck and I were amusing ourselves with this grotesque mirage, when our attention was attracted by a still more curious phenomenon: the sun, as it rose, dissipating the morning mists, revealed to us Captain Bouvier, who, hitherto hidden in the obscurity, was galloping about a hundred yards in advance of us; he had become trebled—
that is, on each side of him a
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double had taken its place, imitating faithfully his movements and gestures. I do not remember ever before to have seen such a phenomenon, and I leave it to those who are more learned than I am to decide what law of optics disclosed it to our astonished gaze."
We must pass more rapidly than did our travellers through the land of the Khalkhas, a race who nominally acknowledge the authority of the son of Herica, the great Mandchoo, the descendant of Genghiz-khan, who governs the empire of the Centre, but pay him neither tax nor tribute, and are, in reality, governed and administered by the Guison-Tamba, one of the divine incarnations of Buddha in the body of an eternal child who comes from the holy court of Tibet.
At Guibanoff, on the frontiers of the two empires, Russia and China, our travellers found provided for them, by the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, new means of transport. He had sent them also an escort, and his own aide-de-camp, M. d'Ozeroff, who was to conduct them to Irkutsk. The carriages supplied were tarantas, or large post-chaises, drawn by six horses, and telagas, or four-wheeled waggons. They speedily made their way to Kiakhta, where they met with a most hospitable reception, and were splendidly fêted. Dinner, concert, ball were given in their honour; "nothing was wanting, not even the polka." The large number of
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political exiles always residing here has introduced into the midst of the Siberian deserts the urbanity of the best society; nearly all the ladies speak French.
According to Madame de Bourboulon, Siberia is more civilized than old Russia; so true is it that it is easier to overlay a new country with civilization than to rejuvenate an old one.
On reaching the bank of Lake Baikal, our travellers were greatly disappointed to find that the steamers which navigate the lake had sustained severe injuries, and were undergoing repair. After some hesitation, they decided upon embarking in the sailing-vessels, heavy, lumbering, and broad-beamed boats, intended only for the conveyance of merchandise, and terribly unclean. The tarantas were hauled up on their decks, and after a night of peril, when a sudden hurricane put to the test their solidity and staying qualities, they effected the transit of the lake in safety. The "Holy Sea," as the natives call it, is the third largest lake in Asia—about 400 miles in length, and varying in breadth from nineteen miles to seventy. Though fed by numerous streams it has only one outlet, the Angara, a tributary of the Yenisei. Lying deep among the Baikal mountains, an offshoot of the Altai, it presents some vividly coloured and very striking scenery. Its fisheries are valuable. In the great chain of communication between Russia and China it holds an important place, and of late years its navigation has been conducted by steamboats. An interesting account of it
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will be found in Mr. T. W. Atkinson's "Oriental and Western Siberia."
Irkutsk was very pleasant to our travellers after their long experience of the desert. Once more they found themselves within the generous influences of civilization. Though possessing not more than 23,000 inhabitants, it is a busy and a lively town; and here, as at Kiakhta, the number of exiles gives a certain tone and elevation to the social circle. Here Madame de Baluseck parted company. M. and Madame de Bourboulon, resuming their journey, pressed forward with such alacrity that, in the space of ten hours, they sometimes accomplished 127 versts, though this rate of speed must necessarily have told heavily on the strength of Madame de Bourboulon. The fatigue she endured brought on the sleep of exhaustion, which almost resembles catalepsy. "We arrived," she writes, "at eight in the morning on the banks of the Tenisci; immediately the horses were taken out and forced into the ferry-boat, in spite of their desperate resistance—I did not stir. My carriage was lifted up and hauled on board by dint of sheer physical strength, fifty men being required for the work, and singing their loudest to inspirit their efforts—I heard nothing. On the boat the ropes rattled through the pulleys and the iron chains of the capstans, while the master directed the movements of his crew by sharp blasts on his whistle—I continued to sleep; in fine, by an ordinary effect of the
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profoundest sleep, I awakened only when silence succeeded to this uproar."
Carlyle has a remark to the effect that from the way in which a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it, is the best measure we can get of the man's intellect.[19] Certainly from a record of travel one can form a tolerably correct estimate of the character, disposition, and faculties of the traveller. On every page of her book, for example, Madame de Bourboulon reveals herself as a woman of some culture, of a cheerful temper, a lively apprehension, and refined mind. Her keen remarks indicate that she has been accustomed to good society. Speaking of the daughter of the Governor of Krasuvïarsk, she observes:—"She would be charming, if she did not wear a hat with feathers and white aigrettes, so empanaché as to have a very curious effect on her blonde and roguish ( espiègle) head." She adds, "Wherever I have travelled I have observed that the so-called Parisian modes, the most eccentric things and in the worst possible taste, were assumed by ladies of the most remote countries, where they arrive completely made up, though it is not possible for their makers to ascertain if they will be acceptable to the public. Hence the heterogeneous toilets of strangers who land in Paris, persuaded that they are dressed in the latest fashion."
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At Atchinsk, which separates East from West Siberia, the travellers were received with graceful hospitality, but made no lengthened stay. Onward they sped, over the perpetual plains, intersected by forests of firs and countless water-courses. At Tomsk their reception was not less cordial than it had been at Irkutsk. Next they plunged into the immense marshes of Baraba; into a dreary succession of lakes, and pools, and swamps, blooming with a luxurious vegetation and a marvellous profusion of wild flowers, each more beautiful than the other, but swarming, unhappily, with a plague of insects eager to drink the blood of man or beast. Madame de Bourboulon had a cruel proof of their activity, though she had fortified her face with a mask of horsehair, and thrust her hands into the thickest gloves. "I was seated in a corner," she says, "wrapped up in my coverings; I lift the window-sash of one of the doors; the air is close and warm, the night dark; black clouds, charged with electricity, roll above me, and the wind brings to me the marsh-odours acrid and yet flat.... Gradually I fall asleep; I have kept on my mask, but the window-pane remains open.... A keen sensation of cold and of intolerable itchings in the hands and face awakens me; day has dawned, and the marshes lie before me in all their splendid colouring, but I have paid dearly for my imprudence; every part of my face which my mask touched in the position in which I fell asleep has been stung a thousand times through the meshes of hair by thousands of probosces and suckers athirst for my
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blood—forehead and chest and chin are grotesquely swollen. I do not know myself. My wrist, exposed between the glove and the edge of the sleeve, is ornamented with a regular swelling like a bracelet all round the arm; in a word, wherever the enemy has been able to penetrate, he has wrought indescribable ravage....
"At the next posting-house, I have the satisfaction of seeing that my travelling-companions have not escaped better than myself, and, thanks to the vinegar and water bandages we are forced to apply, we resemble, as we sit at the
breakfast table, an ambulatory hospital!"
The Baraba marshes measure 250 miles in breadth, and in length extend over eight degrees of latitude (from the 52nd to the 60th); a road has been carried across them, consisting of trunks of fir trees fastened together and covered with clay, but it is not very substantial.
Abandoning the steppes and forests of Western Siberia, our travellers crossed the great Ural range of mountains, made their way to Perm, and thence to the Volga. Having disposed of all their vehicles, they transformed themselves into European tourists, with no other incumbrances than boxes and portmanteaus. They traversed Rayan, and in due time arrived at Nijni-Novgorod, just at the season of its famous fair, which in importance equals that of Leipzig, and in variety of interest surpasses it. To the observer it offers a wonderful collection of different types of humanity. There you may see assembled all the strange races of the East,
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elbowing Russians, and Jews, and Cossacks, and the traders of almost every European nation. Among the shows and spectacles, Madame de Bourboulon was most struck by a performance of Shakespeare's "Othello," in which the hero was played by a black actor from the West Indies (Ira Aldridge?), who spoke in English, while all the other characters delivered their speeches in Russian. The result was a curious cacophony. She thought the Othello good, nay, very good, for, she observes, "On returning from China one is not very hard to please."
From Nijni-Novgorod our travellers proceeded to Moscow by rail, and thence to St. Petersburg, returning to Paris through Prussia and Belgium.
In four months they had accomplished a journey of very great length, having traversed from Shanghai to Paris, some 8,000 miles, without accident. We regret to add that Madame de Bourboulon did not long survive her return home; she died at the château of Claireau, in Loiret, on the 11th of November, 1865, at the early age of 37.
FOOTNOTES:
[18]
Humboldt: "Ansichten der Natur," i. 8.
[19]
Thomas Carlyle: "Lectures on Heroes," Lect. iii.
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