Identifier: russianroadtochi00bateuoft (find matches)
Title: The Russian road to China
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Bates, Lindon Wallace, 1883-1915
Subjects: Trans-Siberian railroad Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel China -- Description and travel
Publisher: Boston Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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eide Grenadier, in which a refrain of theMarseillaise occurs. A peasant looks quickly up. It is not allowed,that song, he says. Why not? That Is the song of the strikers. But the gaspadine is a foreigner. He may singit. Yes, says the peasant, he may sing It, butI may not. Would that I might! One meets quaint characters in this Inland jour-neying — veteran soldiers of the Turkestan ad-vance; sabbato sectarians, who keep Saturdayholy rather than Sunday; austere Old Believers,traveling peddlers, teamsters who have trampedbeside their ponies over three provinces. One comesupon peripatetic Mussulman doctors, in snug-fitting black coats and small black skull-caps, whoshow their Arabic-worded road-maps and much-thumbed medical works bound in worn leather. Be-side their plates at table the kindly hostess puts pilesof leathery bread, unleavened, and made withoutlard In deference to their caste rules. A shop in one village is kept by a Chinaman,who, lettered like most of his race, seems a far
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■S) z CO < SLEDGING IN TRANSBAIKALIA 151 shrewder and more intellectual person than theuneducated Russian peasants. He invites thestranger to drink tea that his special caravan brings,and presents Chinese candy with the courtesy ofa grandee. When, in reciprocity, the traveler buyssugar for his chai, he receives it wrapped in papercovered with hieroglyphics and exhaling the faintunmistakable Chinese odor. Going always southward, one begins to meetmore and more frequently the villages of the Mon-gol-descended Buriats. Bratskie (brotherly peo-ple) , the Russians call them, for despite the forbid-ding aspect that flat Mongolian features, high thinnoses, yellow-brown skins, and big squat bodiesgive them, no more peaceful, harmless, and hos-pitable people exist. They are great and fearlesshunters, unexcelled riders, and though still only onthe threshold of civilization, are rapidly moving tobetter things. All phases of the advance from the nomad to theagricultural stage may be studied

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