Alpheus Spring Packard - "Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution"

Desiderius Erasmus - "The Praise of Folly"

Caius Valerius Catullus - "The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus"

Colonel Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq - "Battle Studies"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

From Pole to Pole

S >> Sven Anders Hedin >> From Pole to Pole




From Mukden Port Arthur is an easy eight hours' railway journey
south-westwards; and it is only an hour and a half more to Dalny, which
in Japanese hands has grown to a large and important commercial town.


THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY

On December 28, 1908, we stepped into the train in Dalny, and commenced
a railway journey which lasted without a break for eleven days.

First we have to go back to Mukden, and then a somewhat shorter journey
to the last Japanese station. At the next the stationmaster is a
Russian, and Russian guards replace the Japanese. In the afternoon the
train draws up at Kharbin on the Sungari River, a tributary of the great
Amur. It was towards Kharbin that the Russians slowly retired after
their defeat, and on this very platform Prince Ito, the first Japanese
Resident-General of Korea, was murdered barely a year later.

At Kharbin we have to wait two hours for the international express,
which runs twice a week from Vladivostock to Moscow.

Next morning we stay for two hours at a station in Manchuria, on the
boundary between Manchuria and Siberia, between China and Russia, and
here our luggage is examined by the Russian customs officers. We put our
watches back one and a half hours--that is the difference of time
between Kharbin and Irkutsk. We are now travelling from east to west, in
the same direction as the sun. If the train went as fast as the sun we
should enjoy perpetual day; but the train lags behind, and we only gain
an hour in the twenty-four.

The Trans-Siberian railway is the longest in the world, the distance
from Dalny to Moscow being 5400 miles. The railway was completed just in
time for the war, but as it had only one track, it taxed all the energy
of the Russians to transport troops and war material to the battlefields
in Manchuria. A second track is now being laid.

By using this railway a traveller can go from London to Shanghai in
fourteen days, the route being to Dover, across the Channel to Calais,
by rail to Moscow, from Moscow to Vladivostock by the Trans-Siberian
railway, and from Vladivostock to Shanghai by sea. The sea voyage from
London by the P. and O.--calling at Gibraltar, Marseilles, Port Said,
Aden, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong--takes about six weeks,
which can be reduced to a month by travelling by train across Europe to
Brindisi (at the south-eastern corner of Italy), and thence by steamer
to Port Said, where the liner is joined. There is still a third route,
across the Atlantic to the United States or Canada, by rail to San
Francisco or Vancouver, and then by steamer to Shanghai _via_ Japan.
This journey can also be accomplished in a month.

[Illustration: THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY.]

On the last day of the year we pass through the Yablonoi Mountains and
enter the region called Transbaikalia, because it lies on the farther,
that is, the eastern, side of Lake Baikal. Here dwell Buriats, a
Mongolian people--in winter in wooden huts surrounded by enclosures for
domestic animals, in summer in tents. When we awoke on the morning of
New Year's Day the train was passing along the southern shore of Lake
Baikal, and one of the most enchanting scenes in the world was displayed
to the eyes of the passengers. On the eastern shore the mountains stood
clearly defined in the pure morning air, while the ranges to the west
were lit up by the clear sunshine. Here and there the slopes were
covered with northern pine and fir-trees. The line runs all the way
along the lake shore, sometimes only a couple of yards from the water.
This part of the Trans-Siberian railway was the most difficult and
costly to make, and the last to be completed. During its construction
traffic between the extremities of the line was provided for by great
ferry-boats across the lake. The line winds in and out, following all
the promontories and bays of the lake, and the train rolls on through
narrow galleries where columns of rock are left to support a whole roof
of mountain. Sometimes we run along a ledge blasted out of the side of
the mountain, above a precipitous slope which falls headlong to the
lake. We rush through an endless succession of tunnels, and on emerging
from each are surprised by a new view of the mountainous shore.

Baikal, or the "Rich Lake," is the third inland sea of Asia, only the
Caspian and the Sea of Aral being larger. Its height above sea-level is
1560 feet; the water is light-green in colour, sweet, and crystal clear,
and abounds in fish, among them five species of salmon. There is also a
kind of seal, and in general many of the animal forms of Baikal are
allied to those of the salt sea. Baikal is the deepest lake in the
world, soundings having been taken down to 5618 feet. Steamers cross the
lake in various directions, and in winter sleighs are driven over the
ice from shore to shore. At the beginning of January the whole of the
deep lake is so cooled down that ice begins to form, and the lake is
usually frozen over to the middle of April.

We stop an hour at Irkutsk to change trains. Irkutsk is the largest town
in Siberia, and has 100,000 inhabitants; it stands on the bank of the
river Angara, which flows out of Lake Baikal, and thus forms the outlet
of all the rivers and streams which empty themselves into the lake, the
largest of which is the Selenga. Although the Angara is five times as
large as the Yenisei, it is called a tributary of the latter. The
Yenisei rises in Chinese territory, and, running northwards right
through Siberia, falls into the Arctic Ocean. It receives a large number
of affluents, most of them from the east. Its banks are clothed with
forest, and from Minusinsk downwards the river is navigable.

The Lena, the great river which passes through eastern Siberia
north-east of Baikal, is not much smaller than the Yenisei. There stands
the town of Yakutsk, where the temperature falls in winter down to-80 deg.,
and rises in summer to 95 deg. North of Yakutsk, on the river Yana, lies
Verkhoiansk, the coldest place in the world, the centre of low
temperature or pole of cold.

In area Siberia is larger than the whole of Europe, but the population
in this immense country is no greater than that of Greater London,
_i.e._ about seven millions. Of these 60 per cent are Russians, 20 per
cent Kirghizes, and the remainder is made up of Buriats, Yakuts,
Tunguses, Manchus, Samoyeds, Ostiaks, Tatars, Chukchis, etc. No small
part of the Russian population consists of convicts transported to
Siberia, whose hard lot is to work under strict supervision in the gold
mines. Their number is estimated at 150,000. Before the railway was made
they had to travel tremendous distances on foot. They marched ten miles
a day in rain and sunshine, storm and snow, through the terribly cold
and gloomy Siberia. Before and behind them rode Cossacks, who would not
let them rest as they dragged their chains through the mud and mire of
the road. Frequently women and children followed of their own free will
to share their husbands' and fathers' fate during their forced labour in
the mines. Now there is a great improvement. The labour, indeed, is just
as hard, but the journey out is less trying. The unfortunate people are
now forwarded in special prison vans with gratings for windows. They are
like travelling cells, and can often be seen on side tracks at a
station.

In the neighbourhood of the Lena River dwell Yakuts of the Turkish-Tatar
race. They number only 230,000 men, are nominally Christians, and pursue
agriculture and trade. East of the Yenisei are the Tunguses, a small
people divided into "settled," "horse," "reindeer," and "dog" Tunguses,
according to the domestic animal of most importance to their mode of
life. In western Siberia, the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk, live
Ostiaks, a small Finnish tribe of 26,000 persons, who are poor fisher
folk, hunters and nomads with reindeer. This tribe is rapidly dying out.
North of them, in the northern parts of western Siberia and in
north-eastern Europe, live the Samoyeds, of Ural-Altai origin, who are
still fewer in number than the preceding tribe, and live by
reindeer-breeding and fishing.

All these Siberian tribes and many others are Shamanists, and are so
called after their priests, Shamans. They believe in an intimate
connection between living men and their long-deceased forefathers. They
entertain a great dread of the dead, and do everything they can to
exorcise and appease their souls, bringing them offerings. All this
business is attended to with much black magic and witchcraft by the
Shamans, who are also doctors. When any one dies the spirit of the dead
must be driven out of the tent, so the Shaman is summoned. He comes
decked out in a costly and curious dress, and with religious enthusiasm
performs a dance which soon degenerates into a kind of ecstasy. He
throws himself about, reels and groans, and is beside himself. And when
he has carried on long enough he catches hold of a magic drum, whose
soothing sounds calm him and bring him back to his senses. When he has
finished his performance the soul is gone!

Over white plains, over hills, and through valleys, the train bears us
on farther north-westwards through the government of Irkutsk. At
Krasnoiarsk we cross the Yenisei by a fine bridge nearly two-thirds of a
mile long. In summer vessels can ascend as far as Minusinsk, in a
district of southern Siberia, rich in gold and iron and productive soil.
In general Siberia is a rich country. Gold, silver, and copper, lead,
graphite, and coal occur, besides many other valuable minerals and
stones in the mountains. The country has also good prospects of future
development owing to its remarkably excellent agricultural land. Most of
this is situated near the railway, and all Siberia is intersected by a
net of waterways. From one of the tributaries of the Obi steamers can
pass by canal to the Yenisei, and thence on to the Lena. Omsk, the third
town of Siberia, with 89,000 inhabitants, is the centre of this water
system. More than 6000 miles of river can be navigated by large
steamers, and nearly 30,000 by smaller boats. In western Siberia, around
Tomsk and Omsk, the agricultural produce increases year by year, and the
time will certainly come when these regions will support a population
many times as large as at present, and export large quantities of corn
in addition. This is the only thing which will make this enormously long
railway pay, for it cost somewhere about L11,000,000 to build.

We have passed Tomsk and crossed the Obi by a fine massive bridge of
stone and iron. The Obi is the largest river of Asia. In length it is
equal to the Yenisei and Blue River, but its drainage basin is larger
than that of either of the others. Where the great affluent, the Irtish,
runs in from the west, the Obi has a breadth of nearly two miles, and at
its mouth, in the Gulf of Obi on the Arctic Ocean, the breadth has
increased to twelve miles. The Irtish also receives from the west a
large tributary, the Tobol, and at the confluence stands the town of
Tobolsk.

One day passes after another, and one night after another rises up blue
and cold from the east. We have left every mountain and hill behind us,
and the boundless plains, like a frozen sea, lie buried under deep snow.
Sometimes we travel for a whole hour without seeing a farm or village.
Only occasionally do we see to the north a small patch of _taiga_, or
the Siberian coniferous forest, silent and dark. A clump of birch-trees
is a rare sight. The country is open, flat, monotonous, and dead-white
as far as the horizon.

Thus we travel on by degrees through Siberia, this immense country
bounded on the south by the Altai, Sayan, the Yablonoi and Stanovoi
Mountains, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Huge areas of northern
Siberia are occupied by _tundras_--moss-grown, marshy steppes, with
little animal life, frozen hard as stone in winter and thawed during the
short summer into dangerous swamps.

In the frozen ground of northern Siberia, and particularly in old flood
plains, have been found complete specimens of the mammoth. This animal
is an extinct species of elephant, which, during the diluvial period,
was distributed over all northern Asia, Europe, and North America. The
mammoth was larger than the elephant of the present day, had tusks as
much as 13 feet long, a thick fur suitable for a cold climate, and quite
a luxuriant mane on the back of the head and neck. That prehistoric man
was a contemporary of the mammoth is proved by ancient rude drawings of
this animal.

Larches, pine and spruce, birch and willow, compose the forests of
Siberia. The larch manages to exist even round the pole of cold. The
Polar bear, the Arctic fox, the glutton, the lemming, the snow-hare, and
the reindeer are the animals in the cold north. In the central parts of
the country are to be found red deer, roedeer, wild swine, beaver, wolf,
and lynx. Far away to the east, on the great Amur River, which is the
boundary between the Amur province and Manchuria, as well as in the
coast province of Ussuri, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, occur tigers
and panthers. The most valuable animals, the furs of which constitute
one of the resources of Siberia, are the sable, the ermine, and the grey
squirrel. The south-eastern parts of this great country are a
transitional region to the steppes of central Asia, and there are to be
found antelopes, gazelles, and wild asses.

At length, on January 5, we are up in the Ural Mountains, and the line
winds among hills and valleys. Near the station of Zlatoust stands a
granite column to mark the boundary between Asia and Europe.


THE VOLGA AND MOSCOW

From the boundary between Europe and Asia the train takes us onwards
past Ufa to Samara. The hills of the Urals become lower and the country
flattens out again. Snow lies everywhere in a continuous sheet, and
peasants are seen on the roads with sledges laden with hay, fuel, or
provisions. At Batraki we pass over the Volga by a bridge nearly a mile
long. The Volga is the largest river in Europe; it is 2300 miles long,
and has its source in the Valdai hills (between St. Petersburg and
Moscow) at a height of only 750 feet above sea-level. It flows,
therefore, through most of Russia in Europe, traversing twenty
governments. The right bank is high and steep, the left flat; and at its
mouth in the Caspian Sea it forms a very extensive delta. The Volga is
navigable almost throughout its length, and has also forty navigable
tributaries. The river is frozen over for about five months in the year,
and when the ice breaks up in spring with thundering cracks it often
causes great damage along the banks. Crowds of vessels, boats, and rafts
pass up and down the sluggish stream, as well as passenger steamers
built after the pattern of the American river boats. By the Volga and
its canals one can travel by steamer from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea,
and from the Caspian Sea by the Volga into the Dwina and out to the
White Sea. The Volga is not only an important highway for goods and
passengers, but also an inexhaustible fish preserve; indeed the sturgeon
and sterlet fisheries constitute its greatest wealth.

When the train has rattled heavily and slowly over the Volga, it
proceeds west-north-west into the very heart of holy Russia, and late on
January 7, 1909, we roll into the station of Moscow, the old capital of
Russia.

Moscow is a type of the old unadulterated Russia, a home of the simple,
honest manners and customs of olden days, of faith and honour, of a
child-like, pure-hearted belief in the religion of the country, the
Catholic Greek Church. In its crooked, winding, badly-paved streets
swarm Tatars, Persians, and Caucasians, among Slav citizens and
countrymen, those inexterminable Russian peasants who suffer and toil
like slaves, look too deep into the _vodka_[20] cup on Saturday, yet are
always contented, good-tempered, and jovial.

The town stands on both sides of the small Moskva River, which falls
into the Oka, a tributary of the Volga, and is inhabited by more than a
million souls. The Kremlin is the oldest part, and the heart of Moscow
(Plate XXIII.). Its walls were erected at the end of the fifteenth
century; they are 60 feet high, crenellated, and provided with
eighteen towers and five gates. Within this irregular pentagon, a mile
and a quarter in circumference, are churches, palaces, museums, and
other public buildings. There stands the bell tower of Ivan Veliki, 270
feet high, with five storeys. From the uppermost you can command the
whole horizon, with Moscow beneath your feet, the streets diverging in
every direction from the Kremlin like the spokes of a wheel, and crossed
again by circular roads. Between the streets lie conglomerations of
heavy stone houses, and from this sea of buildings emerge bulb-shaped
cupolas with green roofs surmounted by golden Greek crosses. Large
barracks, hospitals, palaces, and public buildings crop up here and
there. Right through the town winds the Moskva in the figure of an S,
and the walls of the Kremlin with their towers are reflected in the
water.

[Illustration: PLATE XXIII. THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.]

In the tower of Ivan Veliki hang thirty-three bells of various sizes. At
its foot stands the fallen "Tsar" bell, which weighs 197 tons and is 65
feet in circumference. In its fall a piece was broken out of the side,
and it is therefore useless as a bell, but it is set up on a platform as
an ornament.

Within the walls of the Kremlin is also the Church of the Ascension of
the Virgin, which is crowned by a dome 138 feet high, with smaller
cupolas at the four corners. Standing in the centre of the Kremlin, this
church is the heart not only of Moscow but of all Russia, for here the
Tsars are crowned, while the bells of Ivan Veliki peal over the city.
The interior of the cathedral presents an indescribable effect. The
light from the narrow windows high up is very dim, and is further dulled
by gilded banners with pictures of saints and crosses. The temple nave
is crammed with religious objects, iconostases and icons, sacred
portraits of solid gold with only the hands and faces coloured. Wax
candles burn before them, from which the smoke rises up to the vaulted
roof, floating about the banners in a greyish-blue mist.

To the orthodox Russians the Kremlin is almost a holy place. They make
pilgrimages to its temples and cloisters with the same reverence as
Tibetans to the sanctuaries of Buddha. "Moscow is surpassed only by the
Kremlin, and the Kremlin only by heaven," they say.

Perhaps no year in the history of Moscow is so famous as the year 1812.
Then the city was taken by Napoleon and the Grande Armee. The Russian
army abandoned the city, and the citizens left their homes. Napoleon
entered on September 14, and next day the city began to burn. The
Russians had set fire to it themselves in several places. Three-fourths
of the city lay in ashes when the French evacuated Moscow after an
occupation of five weeks and the loss of 30,000 men. The remembrance of
this dreadful time still survives among the populace.


ST. PETERSBURG AND HOME

From Moscow an express train takes us in eleven hours to the capital of
Peter the Great, St. Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva, in the Gulf
of Finland. Here we are in the midst of very different scenes from those
in Moscow. Here is no longer genuine uncontaminated Russia, but Western
civilisation, which has come and washed away the Slavonic. The churches
and monasteries indeed are built in the same style as in Moscow, and the
eyes meet with the same types and costumes, and the same heavily laden
waggons and carts rumble over the Neva bridges; but one feels and sees
only too plainly that one is in Europe.

The Neva is forty miles long and a third of a mile broad, and comes from
Lake Ladoga. It is spanned by four fine bridges, always crowded with
carriages and foot passengers, and in summer numerous small steamboats
ply up and down. In winter thick ice lies on the river during four
months.

St. Petersburg has nearly two million inhabitants, which is rather more
than a hundredth part of the population of the whole Russian empire. The
appearance of the town shows that it is new, for the streets are
straight and broad. The climate is very raw, damp, and disagreeable, and
it rains or snows on 200 days in the year.

A walk through the streets of St. Petersburg shows the traveller much
that is strange. Tiny chapels are found everywhere--in the middle of a
bridge or at a street corner. They contain only a picture of a saint
with candles burning before it. Many persons stop as they pass by,
uncover their heads, fall on their knees, cross themselves and murmur a
prayer, and then vanish among the crowd in the streets. It is also
noticeable that this city is full of uniforms. Not only do the soldiers
of the large garrison wear uniforms, but civil officials, schoolboys,
students, and many others are dressed in special costumes with bright
buttons of brass or silver. But what especially attracts the stranger's
attention are the vehicles. Persons of the upper classes drive in open
sleighs and cover themselves with bearskins lined with blue, and are
drawn by tall, dark, handsome trotters. Sometimes also a _troika_, or
team of three horses abreast, is seen, one of the horses in the middle
under the arch which keeps the shafts apart, while the other two, on
either side, go at a gallop. The hackney sleighs are also common, so
small that two persons can hardly find room to sit, and as there is no
support or guard of any kind, they must cling to each other's waists in
order not to be thrown off at sharp corners. These small sledges have no
fixed stands, but they are drawn up in long rows outside hotels, banks,
theatres, railway stations, and other much-frequented places, and may be
found singly almost anywhere in the streets. The drivers are always
merry and cheerful, and keep up a running conversation with their
passenger or their horse, which they call "my little dove." All drive at
the same reckless pace, as if they were running races through the
streets.

St. Petersburg is rich in art collections and museums,
picture-galleries, churches, and fine palaces. The finest building in
the city, however, is the Isaac Cathedral, with its high gilded dome,
surrounded by four similar but smaller gilded cupolas. The cross at the
top is 330 feet above the ground, and the great dome is the first thing
in St. Petersburg to be seen on coming by steamer from the Gulf of
Finland. When the Cathedral was built, it cost more than two and
three-quarter million pounds. It was finished fifty years ago, but has
never been in really sound condition, and is always undergoing extensive
repairs.

* * * * *

The last stage of our journey is now at hand. One evening we drive in a
_troika_, with much ringing of sleigh bells, to the station of the
Finland Railway, whence the train takes us through Viborg to Abo, the
old capital of Finland. Here a steamer is waiting to take us over to
Stockholm, which was the starting-point of our long journey.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] A seaport of New Hampshire, U.S.A.

[20] A Russian alcoholic liquor usually made from rye.




PART II




I

STOCKHOLM TO EGYPT


TO LONDON AND PARIS

Again we set out from Stockholm in the evening by train, and the next
morning we reach Malmoe, a port on the west coast of Sweden, not many
miles north of Trelleborg, from which we started on our journey
eastwards across Asia. From Malmoe a steamer soon takes us across the
narrow sound to Copenhagen, the beautiful capital of Denmark, and then
we take the train across the large, rich, and fertile island of Zealand.
There farms are crowded close together among the tilled fields; there
thriving cattle graze on the meadows, yielding Denmark a superfluity of
milk and butter; there the productive soil spreads everywhere, leaving
no room for unprofitable sandy downs and heaths, as on the west coast of
Jutland. The Danes are a small people, but they make a brave struggle
for existence. Their country is one of the smallest in Europe, but the
first in utilising all its possibilities of opening profitable commerce
with foreign lands. Much larger are its possessions in the Arctic Ocean,
Greenland, and Iceland, but there the population is very scanty and the
real masters of the islands are cold and ice.

At Korsoer, on the Great Belt, we again go on board a steamer which in a
few hours takes us between Langeland and Laaland to Kiel, the principal
naval port of Germany. Here we are on soil which was formerly Danish,
for it was only during her last unfortunate war that Denmark lost the
two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.

We travel by train from Kiel through fertile Holstein southwards to the
free Hansa town of Hamburg on the Elbe, the greatest commercial emporium
on the mainland of Europe, and, after London and New York, the third in
the world.

From Hamburg the train goes on through Hanover and Westphalia, across
the majestic Rhine, through South Holland, not far north of the Belgian
frontier, to the port of Flushing, which is situated on one of the
islands in the delta of the Scheldt. Here another steamer is ready for
us, and after a passage of a few hours we glide into the broad
trumpet-shaped mouth of the Thames and land at Queenborough. There again
we take a train which carries us through the thickly-peopled,
well-cultivated country of Kent into the heart of London, the greatest
city of the world.

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