The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839?1888), Explorer of Central Asia

by Donald Rayfield

  Vladivostok was not then the busy port and city of today. Its total population was about 500, and although it had shipbuilding timber, was sheltered from gales, and was close to the centre of the Ussuri region, its future was still uncertain. At Posyet the sea was frozen for only two months, the soil was fertile and, above all, the port was much easier to fortify against invasion than the vulnerable peninsula on which Vladivostok stood. Przhevalsky carried out a survey and a census of Vladivostok, and concluded that Posyet was the better port. Then, in mid-November, he left.

  Soon after the expedition crossed the mouth of the Mai-Ho, Przhevalsky made a strange discovery. He had lost the path in thick reeds, and, as was the custom in the Ussuri region, the party sheltered and foraged in a deserted wattle house. But there was a mystery: a bowl of gruel, congealed and frozen, lay on the table; the cats and dogs had vanished, but hay still stood in the racks for the captive deer. The only explanation for this terrestrial Mary Celeste was that the owner had gone out hunting and had been devoured by a tiger. The Ussuri tiger is a subspecies of the Indian tiger and once roamed everywhere in the monsoonal belt, from Pakistan to eastern Siberia. In summer it is like any other tiger, but in the fierce Ussuri winter it grows a thick shaggy coat and a leonine mane that make its bulk and power even more awesome. In those days the Ussuri tiger was not the rarity it is today. An influx of settlers with their dogs and cattle had at first made the tigers bolder and more numerous, before traps and shotguns began to drive them to near extinction. The Chinese house with its paper windows, or the lonely telegraph station manned by one Russian soldier, was a frightening place to stay in, even though tigers were more interested in a dog or a calf than in human flesh.

  Soon Przhevalsky was to see his first tiger. With every day the track became wilder and wildlife more abundant. So fabulous was the sport that Przhevalsky stayed for a few days in one of the two Russian villages that had been built three years earlier in the Suchan valley. One morning a peasant woke him with the news that a tiger had been prowling round the village all night. Footprints showed it had tried to break into the yard where Przhevalsky’s horses were stabled. Przhevalsky seized his carbine and took one of the soldiers, armed with a pike, to hunt it down. There were traces where the tiger had seized a dog and, farther off, in the reeds, had devoured it. Eventually, in the hills, they came across the tiger, which fled before Przhevalsky could press the trigger. The same day another of Przhevalsky’s horses died and the carcase was left out to lure the tiger into an ambush—but in vain.

  From Suchan Przhevalsky headed north to St Olga’s bay, a rocky 160-mile journey along an almost uninhabited coast with no fodder in the coniferous forests. From the cliffs Przhevalsky could see whales spouting and hear the ocean roar. He began to daydream: ‘You would sit down on the top of a cliff, stare at the blue edge of the sea and what a lot of thoughts would swarm in your head. Your imagination would picture distant countries with different people and different nature, countries where eternal spring reigns and where the waves of the same ocean wash shores fringed with palm forests …’ But here fine drizzle soaked the rocks and then froze over. The horses kept slipping; they were half-starved and exhausted, eating only a few pounds of barley and patches of dried grass. Yet Przhevalsky was never easily depressed by ice and snow. At night he would cut branches to sit on while he melted the ink over the fire, wrote up his diary and mapped the mountains, the coastline and his route. After two hours’ work he would be ready for dinner—pheasant, venison or goat, in soup and then as a roast, followed by the brick tea of Mongolia and Manchuria. It was hard to sleep; everyone constantly turned from side to side to be warmed by the fire; the horses’ bells jingled while they searched for grass. Before long, two hours before dawn, the soldiers would rise to catch and load the horses and make tea. The day’s trek was not merely a matter of walking, leading horses and shooting game; regular meteorological records had to be kept, bearings taken, contours mapped, and specimens prepared. Leaves, stems, flowers and roots had to be carefully dried, pressed and packed. Yagunov and Przhevalsky would skin the birds, retain and clean out the skull and then dress the skin with salt and arsenic before wrapping the specimen up. Sometimes they macerated the carcase of a bird or mammal to get the skeleton. A large mammal, such as a bear, would take a whole evening to skin and preserve.

  At St Olga (nowadays just Olga), an anchorage and a village with twelve houses, a church and two state stores, Przhevalsky rested. His party was frozen, dressed in rags and very tired; the horses’ backs were all but broken. He spent a week here, finding new horses, carrying out a census, watching the pelagian sea-eagles, before setting off on the most difficult stage of his journey. From St Olga he went another fifty miles along the coast before turning inland up the Tazusha valley to the mountains. On the Tazusha he bought, as an investment, several hundred sable skins from a Chinese trader. Fully laden, the party set off for the pass. At this point the Sikhote Alin is less than 1,000 feet high, but on the top the climate changed for the worse. At the summit of the pass stood a small Chinese shrine; Przhevalsky did not make any of the usual propitiatory offerings. He had to camp that night in the open air on two feet of snow, in twenty-five degrees of frost. The icicles on his beard thawed, only to drip down his shirt and freeze again. The forests of fir and cedar were enveloped in snow and silence, for all but a few birds had fled. Two more nights like this had to be endured before the party descended far enough into the Ussuri basin to find a Chinese or Udeghe house. Przhevalsky spent Russian New Year’s Eve in a Chinese hovel, thinking of his family.

  The next day he reached Beltsova. He had completed a great circle, 600 miles of it on foot, bringing him back to the Ussuri valley, which was now unrecognizable. The vines were like great white ropes, the trees bowed down with snow, and the impenetrable grass was reduced to just a few tufts sticking through a flat white expanse. In birdless silence the expedition made its way over the snow-covered river to the first Cossack post at Busse.

  The expedition was, officially, at an end. Przhevalsky had gathered enough material for a controversial report on the population and for a definitive account of the flora, fauna and physical geography of the region. But the thought of returning to staff officer’s duties upset him. His letters to his brothers Vladimir and Yevgeni at one moment boast of success, ‘my material will be the best enhancement of the Siberian section of the Geographical Society’s coming Notes’, and the next moment complain, ‘I’ve got to do all the work myself, because although I have an assistant, he is a youth of sixteen who can only dry plants and skin birds’.

  Przhevalsky asked the authorities to extend his expedition by another few months so that he could observe the spring migration at Lake Hanka and then travel up the Sungari River to its source in the mountains of Manchuria. He asked for an interpreter, a thermometer, an aneroid barometer to measure altitude, the new map by Schwartz of Manchuria, silver (for the Chinese did not take Russian paper currency), and three reams of blotting paper for drying plant specimens.

  General Tikhmenev in Nikolayevsk granted the extension, but no supplies arrived. Nevertheless, Przhevalsky set off in February 1868 and arrived at Lake Hanka just before the thaw to observe the migration that began in the first days of March and did not finish until the end of May. These were the happiest of his Ussuri days. Stationed on the north-east shore, at the never-frozen source of the Sungacha, Przhevalsky was overwhelmed by the variety and numbers of birds: over 120 species gathered here, from the white owl of the Arctic which came for the winter, to the red-legged ibis from Japan which came for the warmer months. He wrote to his brothers, ‘You can compare the flocks of geese and ducks of all possible varieties only to clouds of locusts, but that would be a weak comparison.’

  Waterbirds came with the thawing of the ice, to be followed by the cranes which performed their elaborate courtship dances before nesting. But Przhevalsky belonged to a generation of naturalists for whom the gun, not the camera, was the means of recording suc
h sights. When he succeeded in shooting a crane, he ‘was as joyful as a child and started to run with all my strength to the precious quarry’. The red-legged ibis arrived at the end of March, when the temperature still dropped at night to fifteen degrees below zero; he could only establish the fact for science by shooting the bird. But the ibis were canny, and kept to the shore, mingling with the white and grey herons for protection, and only with luck and the wide spread of a shotgun did Przhevalsky, Yagunov and the two Cossacks with them finally kill five of the twenty or thirty rare ibis that had reached the lake to breed.

  All that spring Przhevalsky and his three companions lived on duck and goose. They could be shot from the window of the Cossack post which was Przhevalsky’s base. He would get up before dawn to shoot them from a hide on the lake-shore; almost abashed, Przhevalsky wrote: ‘Of course, there was no real need for such night-time shooting, as you could shoot as many duck as you wanted in daytime, but here a sportsman’s greed was at work so that often I didn’t even know what to do with a whole heap of dead birds.’ Laden with shotgun, carbine and rifle, Przhevalsky would spend the mornings on the lake. Several different species landed and took off in great flocks, and because of their unfamiliarity with human beings, the birds were usually too easy a prey. The only problem was that the crows, the sea-eagles and the kites would raid Przhevalsky’s bag unless he buried the birds he had shot deep in the snow or hung them high up a tree.

  By mid-April the Arctic birds had flown north, leaving the lake to the breeding pairs from the south. Now the marshes were thawing out and by the end of the month the ice on Lake Hanka began to break up. The party moved to the reedbeds by the Sungacha to watch and shoot the new arrivals, the smaller birds, thrushes and doves. With spring came the insects. Przhevalsky was tortured by the mosquitoes, while his pointer grew thin and ill from hundreds of ticks that dropped from the undergrowth onto every warm-blooded creature. But still he persisted; he watched the herds of wild goat picking their way along the sandy ridges that led them across the marshes north of Lake Hanka to new pastures. When the western half of Lake Hanka was free of ice he rowed over its waters, watching the herons that nested on the islands. At the end of May all the ice had gone and the sturgeon began to move in from the River Sungacha; finally, the voice of the Chinese oriole which had come from Indo-China, the last species to nest, was heard, and the spring migration was over.

  Przhevalsky’s next plan was to explore the River Sungari disguised as a merchant (to avoid arousing Manchu hostility). But in the summer of 1868 Chinese insurgents burned down two of the villages south of Lake Hanka and roused many of the Chinese gold-diggers and trappers to destroy Russian posts in the Ussuri. Przhevalsky was telegraphed orders to go to the Suchan valley where he had passed the previous December and to take command of Russian detachments fighting the Chinese hunghutze (bandits). The Suchan had a comparatively dense Chinese population. Under Przhevalsky’s command the bandits, who had only matchlock rifles, slow to load and uncertain to fire, were soon destroyed. He said very little of this campaign, except to comment that it was ‘very like the fighting at the time of the 1863 Polish rebellion.’ It brought him official commendation, and signalled the end of the Chinese presence in the Russian Ussuri region. He was finally accepted as a full General Staff officer by the governor-general of East Siberia, General Korsakov.

  Przhevalsky was now transferred to Nikolayevsk to be senior adjutant, at least for the winter. He loathed the job and carried out the minimum of his administrative duties. His main task was clear: to write an account of his Ussuri expedition, even though it would have to be published at his own expense. He sent to Warsaw for money. In 1867 the first edition of his geography textbook had been published and Fateyev was preparing a second, expanded edition; this brought in useful royalties. But to finance his future book on the Ussuri Przhevalsky needed still more money. He sent the sables he had bought on the Tazusha to his brother Yevgeni for sale in Moscow. Naively he entrusted them to the ordinary post, and the notoriously corrupt customs officials at Irkutsk opened the consignment, took out the good skins and replaced them with low-grade substitutes. Przhevalsky received only 1,000 roubles for them, little more than he had paid.

  Przhevalsky had one infallible means of raising money—he played cards, but not with his brother officers. He struck up an acquaintance with two Nikolayevsk traders and two naval officers. He would go to their homes with only 500 roubles in his pocket, staking up to 200 on a card, and stop playing when he had won 1,000. Then he banked his winnings with a non-playing friend. In the winter months of 1868 he won 12,000 roubles and the nickname of ‘golden pheasant’ for his luck.

  The money Przhevalsky made in Nikolayevsk paid not only for his first major publication, it supplemented the rather meagre grants for his first Central Asian expedition through Mongolia and China. Money was the only salvation for Przhevalsky in the mental and spiritual morass of Nikolayevsk; he wrote, ‘Now I can call myself a man of substance and can dispose of myself independently of the service … I play cards to win myself independence and I have actually attained my end.’

  He found no pleasure or companionship in Nikolayevsk. To Yevgeni he complained, ‘Life in Nikolayevsk is so foul … vodka and cards, cards and vodka. There is about as much intellectual life here as among the Papuans of New Guinea. Here [in East Siberia’s administration] we have crooks, compared with whom any of the convicts in Russia is of high moral fibre …’ He characterized the Amur as ‘one slop-pit (of course I mean people, not nature) where everything low and disgusting is poured off from the whole of Russia’. He told Fateyev, ‘“Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, any official coming to serve here can write in his diary.’

  Although he abstained from drinking vodka, he could not forgo company entirely. Nikolayevsk offered few distractions. The officer’s club, it is said, was closed down because of the frequent quarrels that broke out among the members. The population of about 5,000 were provided with only a few taverns, a small library and the Amur Company’s store for public meeting-places. Przhevalsky had his regular card games; and as adjutant he had to dine with General Baranov at least once a week, and with brother officers, among them a certain Doctor Plaksin, to whom he lent his Academy dissertation on the Amur region; little did he suspect the consequences. One of Nikolayevsk’s prominent citizens, Babkin, struck up an acquaintance with Przhevalsky and presumed to ask him to tutor his adopted daughter, a girl of twelve. Przhevalsky was horrified at the suggestion; he consented only to give her a copy of his Notes on General Geography, and in it he wrote, ‘Dolbi, poka ne vydolbish’’‚ which, loosely translated, means, ‘Get this into your thick head.’ The girl must have had a forgiving nature; in later life she qualified as a doctor and presented Przhevalsky with a copy of her dissertation.

  The worst feature of Nikolayevsk was its remoteness: news of his brother Vladimir’s marriage, of his mother’s harvest ruined by hail, came six months late. Books from Warsaw arrived looking like papier-mâché after their soaking in the bilge of a Siberian river-boat. Przhevalsky sent his collection of plants to Maksimovich at the St Petersburg Botanical Gardens, fearful lest it be ruined on the long haul across Asia and Europe.

  He sought refuge in work. Every morning he gave Nikolay Yagunov lessons in geography and history, and every evening, before dinner, he would test him. Long before his book on the Ussuri was ready he had written reports and articles that were soon to stir Irkutsk and St Petersburg into action. The first response to Przhevalsky’s report on the condition of the Cossacks on the Ussuri came from his commanding officer; it was a curt ‘I didn’t need you to tell me that things are rotten there.’ This did not deter Przhevalsky. He submitted a seventeen-page report on the non-Slav population of the Ussuri for publication in the May issue of the 1869 Notes of the Imperial Geographical Society; then he wrote, for a non-official, prestigious and liberal magazine—Vestnik Yevropy (European Herald)—a description of the Ussuri that criticized the military administrat
ion at Nikolayevsk and Irkutsk.

  Before the storm burst, Przhevalsky was away. He obtained permission to spend spring 1869 once more at Lake Hanka with Yagunov and two Cossacks, and once more hunted and watched the migrating birds. All the previous winter he had dreamed of the lake; he reminisced in his letters to his uncle and brothers about the water lilies, the black-tipped cranes, and the cartloads of duck. Later that spring he made a full survey of the southern and western shores of Lake Hanka. During the summer he was given the job of conducting Adjutant-General Skolkov on a tour of inspection through the Ussuri area. At last his rewards came: he was promoted to staff captain by the army and given a lesser silver medal by the Geographical Society. (It was always a source of bitterness to Przhevalsky that his Ussuri expedition, which he organized single-handed, providing many of his own funds, and which was so fruitful, brought him only the small silver medal, whereas his assistants on later expeditions who had had no say in the planning and were completely subordinate, were awarded large silver medals.)

  At last his tour of duty was over; he had leave to go back to Europe, home and, above all, to St Petersburg where he now had the right to demand support for an expedition to Central Asia. Autumn 1869 was spent in Irkutsk. Przhevalsky gave four public lectures: one culminated in a series of bird imitations so effective that a later traveller on the Ussuri recognized the oriole’s call just from Przhevalsky’s whistling.

  After travelling some 5,000 miles across the snows of Siberia, Przhevalsky arrived in St Petersburg for the new year. The city gave him headaches, a cough and even fainting fits. But he had a lot of petitioning to do. Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky had already promised the Geographical Society’s support for an expedition on Chinese territory. But the situation was now complicated by the Tungan rebellion, which was devastating the west and threatening large areas of northern China. The Russian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of War had to be consulted, for Przhevalsky’s expedition might seem a provocation to the Chinese or be itself threatened by the disorders. The Tungans were, however, of great interest to the Russian authorities. Originally brought to China by the Mongols, probably from Persia and Arab lands, they had been settled in the provinces of Kansu and Shensi. Over the centuries they had become completely Chinese in dress and in language, but they remained Moslems. Under the Manchu Ch’ien Lung, who conquered the remnants of the Mongol khanates in Kashgaria and Dzungaria, the Tungans were settled in many of the oases in the west. Eventually they formed a Chinese-speaking Moslem wedge between the Buddhist Mongols to the north and the Buddhist Tibetans to the south; they were represented, too, in enclaves of Islam in Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. Not until the 1850s, when the decrepit Chinese administration in Shensi began to oppress the Moslems, were they a threat, rather than a prop, to Chinese government over Türki, Mongol and Tibetan peoples. By 1864 there flared up a Tungan rebellion which spread from the borders of the Russian empire in the Tien Shan to within a few miles of Peking. They were supported by many of the Moslem Uighur Turks. Because these rebellious people of eastern Turkestan were co-religionists and also close relatives of the Uzbeks and Kirghiz in Russian Turkestan, they attracted intense Russian interest. (An independent Moslem state, Jeti Shahr—‘Seven Cities’—was set up in eastern Turkestan under Yakub Bey.)