Some Heroes of Travel, or, Chapters from the History of Geographical Discovery and Enterprise

A fresh team having been obtained, the travellers resumed their journey; but the cold had increased, the wind blew more furiously, and their suffering was severe. In thick flakes fell the constant snow, and the driver had much ado to keep the track, while the half-fed horses floundered along heavily, and frequently sank up to the traces in the gathering drift. The cracks of the whip resounded from their jaded flanks like pistol-shots. With sarcastic apostrophes the driver endeavoured to stimulate their progress: —

“Oh, sons of animals!” (whack!)

“Oh, spoiled one!” (whack!) This to a poor, attenuated brute.

“Oh, woolly ones!” (whack, whack, whack!) Here all were upset into a snow-drift, the sleigh being three-parts overturned, and the driver flung in an opposite direction.

The sleigh was righted; the travellers once more took their seats; and on through the darkening day they drove, until they came to a long straggling village, where the horses stopped before a detached cottage. Benumbed with the bitter cold, Major Burnaby and his companion dashed inside, and made haste, in front of a blazing stove, to restore the suspended circulation. Then, while the women of the house made tea in a samovar, or urn, they unfroze in the stove some cutlets and bread which they had carried with them, and proceeded to enjoy a hearty repast. In one hour’s time they were ready to start; but their driver demurred. The snowstorm was heavy; wolves prowled along the track; the river ice might give way. It was better to wait until the morning, when, with beautiful horses, they might go like birds to the next station. The two travellers could do nothing with him, and were compelled to resign themselves to pass the night on the hard boards, in an atmosphere infested by many unpleasant smells. A good hour before sunrise all were again in motion. The Major and his companion abandoned their heavy troika, and engaged two small sleighs with a pair of horses to each, one for themselves and one to carry their luggage.

It was a glorious winter morning, and the sun came forth like a bridegroom to run his course, invested with indescribable pomp of colour. First, over the whole of the eastern horizon extended a pale blue streak, which seemed, like a wall, to shut off the vast Beyond. Suddenly its summit changed into rare lapis-lazuli, while its base became a sheet of purple. From the darker lines shot wondrous waves of grey and crystal; and in time the purple foundations upheaved into glowing seas of fire. The wall broke up into castles, battlements, and towers – all with magical gleams, which gradually floated far away, while the seas of flame, lighting up the whole horizon, burst through their borders and swelled into a mighty ocean. The sight was one on which the eye of man could scarcely gaze. The sunny expanse of the winter-bound earth reflected as in a mirror the celestial panorama. Shafts of light seemed to dart in rapid succession from earth to sky, until at last the vast luminous orb of day rose from the depth of the many-coloured radiance, and with its surpassing glory put everything else to shame.

The travellers reached Samara – a well-built prosperous town, situated on a tributary of the Volga. There Major Burnaby parted from his companion, whose road thenceforward lay in a different direction, and proceeded to make his preparations for a drive across the steppes to Orenburg.

He started next morning, in a sleigh which he had purchased, and had caused to be well repaired, and took the road towards Orenburg. The country was flat and uninteresting; buried beneath a white shroud of sand, with a few trees scattered here and there, and at intervals a dreary-looking hut or two. The first post-station, for changing horses, was Smeveshlaevskaya, twenty versts (a verst is two-thirds of an English mile); the next, Bodrovsky, where Burnaby arrived a little after sunset. After drinking a few glasses of tea to fortify himself against the increasing cold (25° below zero, R.), he pushed forward in the hope of reaching Malomalisky, about twenty-six and a half versts, about nine p.m. But plunging into the heart of a terrible snowstorm, he and his driver were so blinded and beaten, and the horses so jaded by the swiftly forming snow-drifts, that he was compelled to give the order to return, and to pass the night at Bodrovsky.

At daybreak the resolute guardsman was on his way. In the course of the day he fell in with General Kryjonovsky, the governor of the Orenburg district, who was bound for St. Petersburg; and a brief conversation with him showed that the authorities, as he had suspected, by no means approved of his expedition to Khiva. At one of the stations, the man assigned to him as driver had been married only the day before, and undertook his duties with obvious reluctance. His sole desire was to return as quickly as possible to his bride, and with this intent he lashed his horses until they kicked and jumped in the most furious contortions. The Major was thrown in the air, and caught again by the rebound; upset, righted, and upset again; gun, saddle-bags, cartridge-cases, and traveller, all simultaneously flying in the air. After a third of these rough experiences, the Major resolved to try the effect of a sharp application of his boot.

“Why do you do that?” said the driver, pulling up his horse. “You hurt, you break my ribs.”

“I only do to you what you do to me,” replied the Major. “You hurt, you break my ribs, and injure my property besides.”

“Oh, sir of noble birth,” ejaculated the fellow, “it is not my fault. It is thine, oh moody one!” to his offside horse, accompanied by a crack from his whip. “It is thine, oh spoilt and cherished one!” to his other meagre and half-starved quadruped (whack!) “Oh, petted and caressed sons of animals” (whack, whack, whack!), “I will teach you to upset the gentleman.”

At length, after a journey of four hundred versts, Orenburg was reached. At this frontier town, situated almost on the verge of civilization, our traveller was compelled to make a short sojourn. He had letters of introduction to present, which procured him some useful friends; a servant to engage, provisions to purchase, information to collect about the route to Khiva, and his English gold and notes to convert into Russian coin. Through the good offices of a Moslem gentleman, he was able to engage a Tartar, named Nazar – not five feet high – as a servant; and after some delay he obtained from the military chief a podorojoraya, or passport, as far as Kasala, or Fort No. 1. This pass ran as follows: “By the order of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander, the son of Nicolas, Autocrat of the whole of Russia, etc., etc. From the town of Orsk to the town of Kasala, to the Captain of the English service, Frederick, the son of Gustavus Burnaby, to give three horses, with a driver, for the legal fare, without delay. Given in the town of Orenburg, 15th December, 1875.”

The next day, Frederick, “the son of Gustavus Burnaby,” with his Tartar servant, took their departure from Orenburg, and in a few minutes were trotting along the frozen surface of the river Ural. Every now and then they fell in with a caravan of rough, shaggy, undersized camels, drawing sleighs laden with cotton from Tashkent; or a Cossack galloped by, brandishing his long spear; or a ruddy-faced Kirghiz slowly caracolled over the shining snow. Three stations were passed in safety, and Burnaby resolved on halting at the fourth, Krasnojorsk, for refreshment. But as the afternoon closed in, the Tartar driver began to lash his weary jades impatiently; as an excuse for his vehemence, pointing to the clouds that were rising before them, and the signs of a gathering snowstorm. Soon the air was filled with flakes; the darkness rapidly increased; the driver lost his way, and, at length, the team came to a standstill, breast deep in a snow-drift. What was to be done? It was equally impossible to go forward or to return; there was no wood in the neighbourhood with which to kindle a fire, no shovel with which to make a snow house; nothing could the belated wayfarer do but endure the bitter cold and the silent darkness, and wait for morning. Burnaby suffered much from the exposure, but the great difficulty was to prevent himself from yielding to the fatal lethargy which extreme cold induces – from falling into that sleep which turns inevitably into death. How he rejoiced when the day broke, and he was able to despatch the driver on one of the horses for assistance; and how he rejoiced when the man returned with three post horses and some peasants, and the road was regained, and the journey resumed, and the station reached at last! There they rested and refreshed themselves, before, with invigorated spirits, they dashed once again into the snow-bound depths of the steppes.

After a while the aspect of the country grew more cheery. The low chain of mountains to the north-east was sometimes abruptly broken, and a prominent peak thrust its summit into the interval. Through the fleecy snow various coloured grasses were visible. Olive-tinted branches, and dark forests of fir and pine, contrasted strongly with the whitely shining expanse that spread as far as the eye could see. Spider-like webs of frozen dew hung from the branches. The thin icicles glistened like prisms with all the colours of the rainbow. Thus, through a succession of fairy landscapes, such as the dwellers in Western lands can form but a faint idea of, the travellers dashed onward to Orsk.

Then the face of the country underwent another change. They were fairly in the region of the steppes – those wide and level plains which, during the brief summer, bloom with luxuriant vegetation, and are alive with the flocks and herds of the nomads, but in the long drear winter, from north to south and east to west, are buried deep beneath frozen snow. Wherever you direct your gaze it rests upon snow, snow, still snow; shining with a painful glare in the mid-day sun; fading into a dull, grey, melancholy ocean as noon lapses into twilight. “A picture of desolation which wearies by its utter loneliness, and at the same time appals by its immensity; a circle of which the centre is everywhere, and the circumference nowhere.” Travel, in this world-beyond-the-world, in this solitude which Frost and Winter make all their own, tests the courage and endurance of a man, for it makes no appeal to the imagination or the fancy, it charms the eye with no pleasant pictures, suggests no associations to the mind. But it has its dangers, as Major Burnaby experienced. He had left the station of Karabootak (three hundred and seventeen miles from Orsk), and as the road was comparatively smooth, and the wind had subsided, he leaned back in his sleigh and fell asleep. Unluckily he had forgotten to put on his thick gloves, and his hands, slipping from the fur-lined sleeves of his pelisse, lay exposed to the full potency of the cold air. In a few minutes he awoke with a feeling of intense pain; and looking at his hands, he saw that the finger-nails were blue, blue too the fingers and back of the hands, while the wrists and lower part of the arms had assumed the hue of wax. They were frost-bitten! He called his servant, and made him rub the skin with some snow in the hope of restoring the vitality. This he did for some minutes; but, meanwhile, the pain gradually ascended up the arms, while the lower portion of the arms was dead to all feeling, all sensation. “It is no good,” said Nazar, looking sorrowfully at his master; “we must drive on as fast as possible to the station.”

The station was some miles off. Miles? Each mile seemed to the tortured traveller a league; each league a day’s journey; the physical pain consumed him, wore him down as mental anguish might have done. But at last the station was reached; Burnaby sprang from the sleigh, rushed into the waiting-room, and to three Cossacks whom he met there showed his hands. Straightway they conducted him into an outer apartment, took off his coat, bared his arms, and plunged him into a tub of ice and water up to the shoulders. He felt nothing.

“Brother,” said the eldest of the soldiers, shaking his head, “it is a bad job; you will lose your hands.”

“They will drop off,” remarked another, “if we cannot get back the circulation.”

“Have you any spirit with you?” asked a third.

Nazar, on hearing this inquiry, immediately ran out, and returned with a tin bottle containing naphtha for cooking purposes; upon which the Cossacks, taking the Major’s arms out of the icy water, proceeded to rub them with the strong spirit.

Rub, rub, rub; the skin peeled under their horny hands, and the spirit irritated the membrane below. At last a faint sensation like tickling – we are using the Major’s own words – pervaded the elbow-joints, and he slightly flinched.

“Does it hurt?” asked the eldest Cossack.

“A little.”

“Capital, brothers,” he continued; “rub as hard as you can;” and after continuing the friction until the flesh was almost flayed, they suddenly plunged his arms again into the ice and water. This time, the pain was sharp.

“Good,” exclaimed the Cossacks. “The more it hurts, the better chance you have of saving your hands.” And after a short time they let him remove his arms from the tub.

“You are fortunate, little father,” said the eldest Cossack. “If it had not been for the spirit your hands would have dropped off, even if you had not lost your arms.”

“Rough, kind-hearted fellows were these poor soldiers,” adds Major Burnaby; “and when I forced on the oldest of them a present for himself and comrades, the old soldier simply said, ‘Are we not all brothers when in misfortune? Would you not have helped me if I had been in the same predicament?’”

The Major shook his hand heartily, and retired to the waiting-room to rest upon the sofa, as the physical shock he had undergone had for the moment thoroughly prostrated him. Moreover, his arms were sore and inflamed, the spirit having in some places penetrated the raw flesh; and several weeks elapsed before he thoroughly recovered from the effects of his carelessness.

At Terekli, about five hundred miles from Orenburg, our traveller entered the province of Turkistan, and found himself in the region which acknowledges the authority of General Kauffmann – a restless and ambitious soldier, to whose energy much of Russia’s recent advance eastward would seem to be due. He still pushed forward with characteristic resolution, braving the terrors of the climate and the dangers of the road in his determined purpose to reach Khiva. At one station no horses were to be obtained, and, instead, three gigantic camels were harnessed to the tiny sleigh. A strange spectacle! “I have tried many ways of locomotion in my life, from fire-balloons to bicycles, from canoes and bullocks to cows, camels, and donkeys; whilst in the East the time-honoured sedan of our grandfathers has occasionally borne me and my fortunes; but never had I travelled in so comical a fashion. A Tartar rode the centre camel. His head-gear would have called attention, if nothing else had, for he wore a large black hat, which reminded me of an inverted coal-scuttle, whilst a horn-like protuberance sticking out from its summit gave a diabolical appearance to his lobster-coloured visage. The hat, which was made of sheepskin, had the white wool inside, which formed a striking contrast to the flaming countenance of the excited Tartar. He had replaced the usual knout used for driving, by a whip armed with a thin cord lash, and he urged on his ungainly team more by the shrill sounds of his voice than by any attempt at flagellation, the Tartar seldom being able to get more than four miles an hour from the lazy brutes.

“All of a sudden the camel in the centre quickly stopped, and the rider was precipitated head-over-heels in the snow. Luckily, it was soft falling; there were no bones broken, and in a minute or two he was again in the saddle, having changed the system of harnessing, and placed one of the camels as leader, whilst the other two were driven as wheelers. We got on very fairly for a little while, when the foremost of our train having received a rather sharper application of the lash than he deemed expedient remonstrated with his rider by lying down. Coaxing and persuasion were now used; he was promised the warmest of stalls, the most delicious of water, if he would only get up. But this the beast absolutely declined to do, until the cold from the snow striking against his body induced him to rise from the ground.

“We now went even slower than before. Our driver was afraid to use his whip for fear of another ebullition of temper on the part of the delinquent, and confined himself to cracking his whip in the air. The sounds of this proceeding presently reaching the ears of the leader, perhaps made him think that his companions were undergoing chastisement. Anyhow, it appeared to afford him some satisfaction, for, quickening his stride, he compelled his brethren behind to accelerate their pace; and after a long, wearisome drive we arrived at our destination.”

Under the influence of milder weather the aspect of the country rapidly modified and brightened, and instead of a uniform sheet of frozen snow, broad patches of vegetation met the eye. On these the Kirghiz horses were browsing with evident delight. How they live through the winter is a mystery, as their owners seldom feed them with corn, and they are compelled to trust to the scanty grasses which may still be partially alive underneath the snow. Nor are they in any way protected from the cold. As a necessary consequence, the spring finds them reduced to mere skeletons, whose ribs are barely covered by their parchment-like skin; but they soon gain in flesh and strength when once the rich pasturage of the steppes is at their disposal. Their powers of endurance are wonderful; and without rest, or water, or food, they will accomplish surprising distances, maintaining a first-rate speed. An instance is on record of a Kirghiz chief having galloped two hundred miles, over a rocky and mountainous ground, in twenty-four hours. A Russian detachment of cavalry, mounted on Kirghiz horses, marched 333 miles in six days.

Major Burnaby was soon apprised that he was nearing the Sea (or Lake) of Aral by the salt breeze which blew persistently in his face. The whole district for miles around was impregnated with salt, and the springs and streams had all a brackish taste and strong saline flavour. At Nicolaivskaya his road touched close upon the north-eastern extremity of the sea. This great inland basin of brackish water is separated from the Caspian by the dense plateau of Ust-Urt. It measures about 260 miles from north to south, and 125 from east to west. On the north-east it receives the waters of the Syr-Daria, or Jaxartes; on the south-east those of the Amu-Daria, or Oxus. As it is on the same level with the Caspian, we may reasonably suppose that both seas were at one time connected. Owing to the excessive evaporation which takes place, it is understood to be decreasing in size.

At Kasala, or Fort No. 1, our traveller struck the Syr-Daria, some forty or fifty miles above its outlet in the Aral. Kasala is inhabited by nomad Kirghiz, who pitch their kibitkas in its outskirts in the winter, to resume their migratory life with the first breath of spring; by Russian and Tartar merchants, who dwell in one-storied houses, built of brick or cement; and by a motley population of Greeks, Khivans, Bokharans, Tashkentians, and Turcomans generally, attracted thither by the hope of gain. Owing to its geographical position, it is the centre of a considerable trade; for all goods to Orenburg from Western Turkistan must pass through it. Its civil population numbers about 5000 souls; its garrison consists of about 350 infantry and 400 cavalry, and it is also the head-quarters in winter of the sailors of the Aral fleet, which is made up of four small steamers of light draught. As for the fort, it is simply an earthwork, constructed in the shape of a half-star, with a bastion on the south extending to the bank of the Syr-Daria. A dry ditch, thirty feet broad by twelve feet deep, and a parapet, eight feet high and twelve feet thick, surround it. Sufficiently strong to overawe the Kirghiz, it could offer no effective resistance to an European force.

Major Burnaby paid a visit to a Kirghiz kibitka, or tent, and his description of it may be compared with Mr. Atkinson’s. Inside it was adorned with thick carpets of various hues, and bright-coloured cushions, for the accommodation of the inmates. In the centre a small fire gave out a cloud of white smoke, which rose in coils and wreaths to the roof, and there escaped through an aperture left for the purpose. The fuel used is saxaul, the wood of the bramble tree, and it emits an acrid, pungent odour. The women in the tent had their faces uncovered; they received their visitor with a warm welcome, and spread some rugs for him to sit down by their side. They were all of them moon-faced, with large mouths, but good eyes and teeth.

The master of the kibitka, who was clad in a long brown robe, thickly wadded to keep out the cold, poured some water into a large caldron, and proceeded to make tea, while a young girl handed round raisins and dried currants. A brief conversation then arose. The Kirghiz were much surprised to learn that their visitor was not a Russian, but had come from a far Western land, and were even more surprised to find that he had brought no wife with him – a wife, in the opinion of the Kirghiz, being as indispensable to a man’s happiness as a horse or camel. In entering into matrimony, the Kirghiz have one great advantage over the other Moslem races; they see the girls whom they wish to marry, and are allowed to converse with them before the bargain is concluded between the parents, one hundred sheep being the average price given for a young woman.

On the 12th of January Major Burnaby left Kasala for Khiva. His retinue consisted of three camels, loaded with a tent, forage, and provisions, his Tartar servant, who bestrode the largest camel, and a Kirghiz guide, who, like himself, was mounted on horseback. His provisions included stchi, or cabbage soup, with large pieces of meat cut up in it, which, having been poured into two large iron stable buckets, had become hard frozen, so that it could be easily carried slung on a camel’s back. He also took with him twenty pounds of cooked meat. A hatchet, to chop up the meat or cut down brushwood for a fire, and a cooking lamp, with a supply of spirit, formed part of his equipment.

Crossing the icy surface of the Syr-Daria, our traveller once more plunged into the solitude of the steppes, bravely facing the storm-wind and the ridges of snow which rolled before it, like the wave-crests of a frozen sea. After a five hours’ march, he called a halt, that the camels might rest and be fed – for they will feed only in the daytime; wherefore it is wise to march them as much as possible during the night. Their ordinary pace is about two miles and a third in an hour; and the best plan is to start at midnight, unload them for about two hours in the day to feed, and halt at sunset: thus securing sixteen hours’ work per day, and accomplishing a daily journey of at least thirty-seven miles.

The kibitka was soon raised. “Imagine,” says our traveller, “a bundle of sticks, each five feet three inches in length, and an inch in diameter; these are connected with each other by means of cross sticks, through the ends of which holes are bored, and leather thongs passed. This allows plenty of room for all the sticks to open out freely; they then form a complete circle, about twelve feet in diameter, and five feet three in height. They do not require any pressing into the ground, for the circular shape keeps them steady. When this is done, a thick piece of cashmar, or cloth made of sheep’s wool, is suspended from their tops, and reaches to the ground. This forms a shield through which the wind cannot pass. Another bundle of sticks is then produced. They are all fastened at one end to a small wooden cross, about six inches long by four broad; a man standing in the centre of the circle raises up this bundle in the air, the cross upwards, and hitches their other ends by means of little leather loops one by one on the different upright sticks which form the circular walls. The result is, they all pull against each other, and are consequently self-supporting; another piece of cloth is passed round the outside of this scaffolding, leaving a piece uncovered at the top to allow the smoke to escape. One stick is removed from the uprights which form the walls. This constitutes a door, and the kibitka is complete.”