The great arc on which Mirzash led them had at least a few wells and a little fodder, but the heat was so great and the Kirghiz camels, despite their imposing appearance, so unused to caravan work that each day exhausted them. There was little game: chukar (Alectoris kakeli) fed on the berberis and ephedra berries in the sheltered valleys; Eklon shot twelve partridges, and Przhevalsky shot a wild sheep and a vulture. But illness and doubts about his men and animals discouraged him. As they approached the carriage road from Manas to the border town of Chuguchak (T’a-ch’eng, Tarbagatai), the cold weather set in (26 September/8 October) but it brought no relief. Przhevalsky’s diary records: ‘Today, next to our camp, there were piles of straw left over from threshing. Early in the evening I went to the straw, got into it and sat there for about an hour. I vividly recalled my childhood when I used to lie about just like that on the straw under the shed in Otradnoye.’
Turghud pickets in Chinese service tried to halt the expedition; they could not read Przhevalsky’s passport. He chased them off with blows from his whip. A week later, a Turghud officer asked him to stop until authorization came from the nearest town, Bulun Tokhoi (Fu-hai). Przhevalsky threatened to shoot him, and went on. Illness was getting the better of him; the weight he had put on in Kulja had vanished: ‘My testiculi are itching badly as before, I wash them every evening and morning in a tobacco infusion—it doesn’t do any good … It’s as if I’ve put the evil eye on my health.’ His face swelled up; the nicotine he washed in, to kill any scabies mites, did nothing but further irritate his skin and finally poison his whole system. Only a stinking mixture of tar and mutton lard brought temporary relief. The severe cold that now covered the Dzungarian desert made the itch far worse. Then he developed a boil on one buttock which soon became an abscess: riding became so painful he had to dismount, and walking made him more tired.
There was little game and the price of sheep in this war-devastated region was such that it was hard to feed eleven men. Rations were cut: a sheep now had to last three days instead of two. Their route led them within two days’ gallop of the Russian post of Zaysansk (now Zaysan), but Przhevalsky dared not send Mirzash for supplies lest he fail to return, and he could not induce any of the Turghuds to ride there, for they were afraid of being murdered by the Moslem Kirghiz. So he had to trudge on, without medicine or newspapers. Some of the Turghud chieftains were friendly, but Przhevalsky was in no mood for talk: ‘To get out of visits from all this rabble I decided to move on, despite the fact that the abscess on my behind hurts unbearably.’ Even the ducks on the Bulin River did not tempt him: ‘I prefer to put up with pain rather than stop in inhabited areas.’
At this point the expedition turned south-east for the 300 miles across desert to Guchen (Ch’i-t’ai). It was flat and easy country, but the wells were foul and at Badan Khuduk, 200 miles from Guchen, with sixty-five waterless miles ahead, they dug out the remains of a well to find only a few drops of moisture left. Once again, Przhevalsky’s luck held out: snow began to fall and the camels and horses were able to stave off complete dehydration. But there was no fodder and the horses had to subsist on rice. Early in November, across 100 miles of desert, the 17,500-foot Bogdo Ula, the sacred mountain of the Tien Shan, came into sight. Przhevalsky felt sad that he had no one with whom he could share his impressions. The cold was intense; the expedition had left its ger and felt boots in Kulja. Not until mid-November did they reach Guchen, men and beasts hardly able to stand.
Przhevalsky stayed away from the town, sending Abdul, Mirzash and a Cossack to deal with the authorities, buy supplies and seek out a Chinese doctor. Anointment with tar had peeled all the skin from his groin: he was desperate. He tried applications of tobacco ash in olive oil, but the nicotine made him vomit and turn delirious. The Cossacks seemed happy to rest; they met some Tatars who had come to trade in Guchen; they laughed and played the balalaika. Chebayev came back from Guchen drunk, to Przhevalsky’s utter disgust. But after a week the Cossacks found an old ger in which Przhevalsky could rest and treat himself. One of the Tatars advised him to anoint himself with ground vitriol on pieces of fat from a sheep’s tail: he trustingly did so, and wrote in his diary: ‘I couldn’t bear the unendurable pain and irritation for more than ten minutes.’ Three more times he tried the ground vitriol treatment until he could take no more and called in a Chinese doctor. The doctor came out from Guchen with a mixture, to be drunk and applied, of forty different herbs, among which Przhevalsky recognized medicinal rhubarb and ginseng. The doctor made Przhevalsky cut out his staple diet of mutton and sweets; he tried salt and alum and, as a last resort, an ointment of mercury and musk oil. It was all in vain, though Przhevalsky offered the doctor fifteen liang for a cure.
He lost interest in the expedition. Chinese soldiers whipped the Cossack Chebayev; Przhevalsky sent only Abdul to protest. He took refuge in reading Markov’s Barchuki (The Squire’s Children) for the tenth time, ‘My own childhood as in a mirror’. He began to shun the Cossacks and they him. His diary is no longer a mixture of high-flown sentiment and astute observation, but a confused and ill-tempered record of depression: ‘Filth, cold, tiredness. Morally still worse … even the company of my Cossacks is far from being suitable for an intellectually advanced man … The Cossacks themselves can instinctively sense this and fear my ger like the plague.’ Only in reading and writing could he soothe his pain and irritation.
The Tatars were now leaving Guchen for Russia. Przhevalsky asked them to tell the authorities in Zaysansk to send medicine and papers. But the very next day he changed his mind and decided to turn back and make for the Zaysansk hospital himself. His hands were shaking, his strength was failing with the terrible cold and the smoke of the pathetic fire inside the ger; soot and dust only aggravated his skin disease. The last of his scientific instruments, his chronometer, was blocked with the dust that filled the air of Guchen.
He was disgusted by his Cossacks who were only too pleased to be on the move and on the way home. They were, he concluded, no better than the Asiatic animals on whose strength any expedition was forced to rely: ‘A good man wouldn’t come out of it alive. But on the other hand, with companions like mine, especially Cossacks, you have to be extremely strict … You can’t find any anxiety to please or devotion. Everything is done out of fear of the stick …’ Only Eklon commiserated. Przhevalsky was so immobilized by pain that they bought the front half of a Russian cart, set it up on an axle, and made a wooden box for the sick man to lie in. Harnessed to a camel, this cart jolted Przhevalsky over the desert; it was hardly less painful than walking or riding, but at least he could undress and anoint himself with tar and lard every hour, till his clothes stank of tar and he could bear exposure to the freezing air no more.
All their supplies had to be taken with them, for Przhevalsky could not entrust them to the Chinese. The camels were rested, but still unfit for the journey. Nevertheless, they covered the 450 miles to Zaysansk in a month. Mirzash had gone ahead and met the party with some medicine and a bottle of champagne; Przhevalsky was so grateful that he invited the ‘kumys-shitter’ to spend the night in his ger, but Mirzash retched and spat so violently after a feast of mutton that Przhevalsky and Eklon threw him out. The Russian authorities sent post-horses to the frontier picket of Tsagaan Obo and Przhevalsky was rushed to Zaysansk.
He spent January and February 1878 in private quarters, anointing his groin with whatever the hospital could provide. Zaysansk was a typical frontier settlement, every bit as bad as Nikolayevsk on the Amur. The officials drank, played cards, whored and embezzled. There were no amenities. Przhevalsky’s medicines came in old blackcurrant cordial bottles; he had to order medicated soap from Semipalatinsk. These were ‘the worst days of my life’. Eklon too had pruritus, but he was recovering. Two Cossacks, Chebayev and Urosov, had caught it. Only when Przhevalsky had resigned himself to going to Omsk for treatment did the disease seem to abate. But he found little to cheer him. Zaysansk seemed to demoralize his Cossacks; he sent Chebayev back
to the army for drunkenness and theft. Even Eklon did not please him. The only agreeable company Przhevalsky found was a German taxidermist called Habergauer who had come to collect birds on Lake Zaysan.
Przhevalsky tried drinking potassium iodine and, although his throat was badly burnt, his skin began to heal. Spring was coming and he wanted to go to Lake Zaysan himself and watch the spring migration. Eklon stayed behind to buy new camels and re-equip for the expedition’s third departure. But cold nights spent on the lake-shore resulted in a relapse and Przhevalsky was forced back to Zaysansk. On 18/30 March 1878, the eve of the expedition’s departure, a messenger came from Semipalatinsk, ordering them to halt. The Chinese government was insisting on the extradition of the Tungans and was about to send a legation to Petersburg in the hope that the Russian government would be more amenable over the Ili Valley than was its ambassador, Byutsov, in Peking. But the Russians, exhilarated by their triumph over the Turks, were standing firm, and war was in the offing. Przhevalsky would not stay in Zaysansk, but agreed to halt a day’s march away at Kenderlyk to await further orders. He stayed there a week, observing the birds on the river, while supplies continued to arrive. Pyltsov sent quinine, citric acid and confectionery. A camera and two chronometers came, but they had been overturned and wrecked while crossing the River Irtysh. Another two Cossacks, Kalmynin and Teleshov—the latter to become Przhevalsky’s favourite—joined the expedition.
Since coming to Zaysansk Przhevalsky was perturbed not to have heard from his mother. He telegraphed enquiries, only to have a strange message from Tolpygo, his stepfather, that she had a bad hand and could not write. He persisted with more telegrams and eventually, at Kenderlyk, was told that Yelena had died of stomach cancer nine months before in June 1877. Pyltsov had not wanted to break off the expedition and had concealed her death. Now there was no point in secrecy; four days later orders were telegraphed from Petersburg telling Przhevalsky to postpone his journey until the political crisis was over. Secretly relieved, though very depressed, Przhevalsky disbanded his men, stored or sold his supplies, and went home on leave to Otradnoye. But he was resolved to return: his diary closes: ‘Interruption, not end of diary’.
The 1878 crisis was global. Russian armies had reached the suburbs of Constantinople; the British and French were subjecting Russia to severe pressure, demanding that she relinquish much of the territory she now proposed to make over to a pro-Russian Bulgaria. In case of war, General Kaufmann had mobilized an army of 20,000 men to cross the Pamirs and invade British India; and although the Chinese were sending a Manchu, Ch’ung-hou, to negotiate the return of Ili, an Anglo-Turko-Chinese alliance was threatening Russia.
For the fourth time Przhevalsky had to put aside his dream of reaching Lhasa. But he decided: ‘A year will pass, the misunderstandings with China will be settled, my health will recover —and then I shall take up the wanderer’s staff and set off again into the Asiatic wilderness.’ He passed through Petersburg, where the doctors prescribed daily bathing, and went straight to Otradnoye. His account of Lob Nor had already been published, and he had no work to preoccupy him. The Lob Nor account, despite its brevity, was a sensation. In Berlin, Baron Richthofen, the most distinguished of German explorers of China praised Przhevalsky’s enterprise but cast doubt on the authenticity of his Lob Nor, because it was too far south and not saline. Przhevalsky replied with a polite rebuttal, which prefaced the English translation of his account, emphasizing that he had found no river flowing away from the Tarim which could lead to a lake elsewhere and dismissing Chinese maps as worthless. Not until after his death could it be shown that Richthofen and Przhevalsky were both right: Lob Nor ‘wandered’. Przhevalsky was awarded the first gold Humboldt Medal from Berlin, and medals came from London and Paris. Sir Douglas Forsyth, like Przhevalsky a former emissary to Yakub Bey, wrote a preface to the English translation by Delmar Morgan. The Royal Geographical Society in London lauded Przhevalsky for having shed more light on Central Asia than anyone since Marco Polo.
The Russian government was naturally anxious for Przhevalsky to resume his explorations as soon as possible. In Petersburg, Ch’ung-hou proved a remarkably naive negotiator: the Ili question was being resolved as the Russians wished; the Chinese were being committed to surrender much of the valley to Russia and to pay an indemnity for the rest, thus financing a Trans-Siberian railway and securing all Russia’s needs in the Far East. In Berlin, the Russian Foreign Minister, Gorchakov, agreed to Disraeli’s idea of ‘peace with honour’; the risk of China finding an ally in Britain vanished. A Russian fleet under Admiral Lesovsky sailed off to warn the Chinese that, however strong General Tso Tung-t’ang might be in Central Asia, Russia could hurt maritime China far more badly. Byutsov was recalled to Petersburg to help Milyutin and Girs, the Deputy Foreign Minister, subdue Ch’ung-hou; a chargé d’affaires, Koyander, began to discuss Przhevalsky’s new expedition with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tsung-li-yamen. The Chinese had already granted Count Széchenyi, the Hungarian explorer, a safe conduct from Kansu to Tibet; to refuse Przhevalsky would have created an anomaly.
Przhevalsky quickly recovered in Otradnoye from illness and the shock of his mother’s death. He reflected: ‘True, our education was very spartan, but it hardened our strength and made our character self-sufficient. Peace be to your ashes, dear mama.’ At Otradnoye his old nurse Makaryevna saw to his needs with the same energy and with even greater devotion. The summer flew past; the days were spent bathing and shooting. In August Przhevalsky sent a memorandum to the Geographical Society and the War Ministry, setting out his plans.
His memorandum stressed that Russian approaches to Tibet from the north had met with more success than those of missionaries from the wild eastern borderlands of Amdo and Kham, or of the British (except for their pandits) from India. He drew a picture of Lhasa as the Rome of Asia with spiritual power stretching from Ceylon to Japan over 250 million people: the most important target for Russian diplomacy. He mentioned the scientific value of ethnological study and mapping, but he stressed the political goal, the spread of Russian influence to Tibet and the Himalayas, encircling China and threatening India. ‘Besides, scientific explorations—as is very rightly put in the Deputy Foreign Minister’s [Girs’] letter to the Minister of War on 6/18 June 1878—will mask the political aims of the expedition and deflect any suspicions of those hostile to us.’
He still wanted a small expedition, but it expanded to include himself, two assistants, a taxidermist, two interpreters, two native guides and seven Transbaykalian Cossacks: fifteen in all. Nine thousand roubles were left over from the Lob Nor expedition; Przhevalsky asked only for another 18,500 for a two-year journey, carrying out a full survey, climatic observations and collections of flora, fauna and minerals, via Dzungaria and Hami to Lhasa, returning direct across war-torn Lob Nor, on the assumption that ‘the Chinese are always willing to see Europeans out of their country’.
The memorandum was a formality; as long as Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky was at the Imperial Geographical Society and Milyutin at the Ministry of War, Przhevalsky got whatever he asked for.
In the autumn he called on his brothers in Moscow and went to Petersburg to do the tiresome round of lectures, banquets and meetings without which no expedition was conceivable. In November he gave a public lecture which contrasted the dark state of knowledge about Central Asia before his Lob Nor Expedition with the information it had amassed. Lob Nor had been located, the Altyn Tag had been discovered 200 miles north of its conjectured latitude, and the route of the old silk road along the wells and oases between the plateau and the desert had been accounted for.
One thing preoccupied Przhevalsky: the choice of a travelling companion to replace poor Yevgraf. Przhevalsky wrote to Fateyev again, asking for help in the choice: ‘Every extra person is a tie, especially if he doesn’t answer to the demands of the expedition … where friendship and brotherhood must reign, together with unconditional obedience to the leader of the cause.’ Civilian
s were out of the running. In the end Przhevalsky interviewed a school-fellow of Eklon’s, Vsevolod Roborovsky. Roborovsky was a lance-corporal in the Novocherkassk Regiment and, to Przhevalsky’s delight, he had a talent for drawing as well as a knowledge of surveying. There was now no need to burden the expedition with delicate photographic equipment.
In January 1879 the Tsar returned from the Crimea and gave his approval for the release of 10,000 silver, and 10,000 paper roubles for the expedition. Przhevalsky wasted no time. He, Eklon, Roborovsky and two Cossack N.C.O.’s made straight for Moscow. Przhevalsky stayed with Vladimir, whose house was turned into a shambles by the mass of equipment and the comings and goings. It was a holiday for Vladimir’s daughter, Alevtina; boxes and rifles cluttered up the hall, soldiers and Cossacks crowded the kitchen, and only their evident adoration of Przhevalsky taught her not to be afraid. But the family joked that Alevtina was the only girl Uncle Kolya could ever fall in love with, so that Przhevalsky’s niece blushed and cried with embarrassment.
He stayed just a few days; Vladimir was left a complicated list of instructions for issuing pensions to their half-brothers and the family servants. By mid-February the expedition had reached the new railhead of Orenburg; another month on fast post-horses across 1,600 miles of snow brought them to Zaysansk again. Here Przhevalsky found Andrey Kolomeytsov, who had travelled with Potanin over Mongolia and with Severtsov in Turkestan. Severtsov had left Kolomeytsov stranded in Zaysansk with nothing but a collection of birds and mammals and his position as a retired N.C.O. to support him. Przhevalsky paid his debts, put his collections in the custody of the Zaysansk police and took him on as a taxidermist to assist Eklon. The rest of the men—Dondok Irinchinov, Teleshov, Kalmynin and Garmayev among the Cossacks, not to mention Abdul Basid Yusupov and the Kirghiz horse-thief Mirzash—were waiting at the frontier post of Kenderlyk for Przhevalsky. The most magnificent of his journeys was about to begin.
The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839?1888), Explorer of Central Asia Page 13
