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"Our priests," said one, "have carried our religion wherever our armies have carried conquest, and their efforts to advance Christianity deserve all praise. But abuses exist and have grown up, and the whole system needs to be arranged anew." We had much freight on board, consisting chiefly of muskets for the province of the Trans-Baikal. There were many passengers that lived literally on deck.
We gave them the latest news of the war situation and much to their disgust they realized that had they waited only two weeks longer they could have gone by train, for the attack by the Czechs on the Magyars and the Bolsheviki, in the trans-Baikal region, had cleared the Siberian railway westward as far as Omsk. After half an hour's talk we drove off in opposite directions.
The Trans-Baikal Province is governed by Major General Ditmar, to whom I brought letters of introduction. When Borasdine returned from his visit he brought invitation to transfer our quarters to the gubernatorial mansion, where we went and met the governor.
He was just finishing a tour among the schools in the Trans-Baikal province, and during fourteen years of Siberian life, he had seen a variety of service. He accompanied General Mouravieff oil the first expedition down the Amoor, and wrote a detailed account of his journey. Subsequently he explored the Ousuree in the interest of the Russian Geographical Society.
Even when it was opened it had no important commerce, as it was far removed from the silk, tea, or porcelain districts of China. Plainly the dependence must be upon colonization. The Amoor was peopled under government patronage, many settlers coming from the Trans-Baikal province, and others from European Russia. Nearly all were poor and brought very little money to their new homes.
This liquid misery was on its way to the Trans-Baikal, and the soudna which brought a load of tea would carry vodki as a return cargo. The clouds thinned and broke, the snow ceased falling, and the valley became distinct. While I admired its beauty, we reached the summit of a hill and I saw before me a cluster of glittering domes and turrets, rising from a wide bend in the Angara.
Middendorff's journeys to North and East Siberia had also some very valuable results, and were soon followed, in 1854, by the "expedition to Siberia" undertaken by Schwartz, Schmidt, Glehn, Usoltzev, and associates, extending over the whole region of the Trans-baikal to the Lena and northern tributaries of the Amur.
Chetah stands on the left bank of the Ingodah, nearly three hundred miles above Stratensk, and is the capital of the Trans-Baikal province. For many years it was a small town with a few hundred inhabitants, but the opening of the Amoor in 1854 changed its character.
The settlers had generally reached the self-sustaining point, but they did not produce enough to feed the military and naval force. Until they do this the Amoor will be unprofitable. On the upper Amoor flour was formerly brought from the Trans-Baikal province to supply the settlements down to Habarofka. In 1866 there was a short crop in that province and a good one on the upper Amoor.
On the 13th of December, we were again posting furiously along the Great Siberian Road, past caravans, of tea from Hankow; detachments of Cossacks convoying gold from the placers of the Lena; parties of hard-labour convicts on their way to the mines of the trans-Baikal; and hundreds of sleighs loaded with the products or manufactures of Russia, Siberia, and the Far East.
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