Across Siberia on a Bicycle
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Citation
Robert Louis Jefferson. Across Siberia on a Bicycle. 1896. cyclearchive.com, https://cyclearchive.com/books/across-siberia-on-a-bicycle-r-jefferson-1896/
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Contents
- Jefferson explains why he titled the whole 6,574-mile London-to-Irkutsk ride 'Across Siberia on a Bicycle', compressing the European leg into a brief five-chapter summary since it was Siberia he wanted to deal with, and disclaims any pose as an authority on Siberian affairs given his ignorance of Russian.
- Opens with a warning letter from Ludwig Block of Moscow calling a Siberian bicycle ride certain destruction, then describes the specially built grey Rover roadster (35 lb unloaded, 54 lb loaded) before the ride starts on March 21, 1896 from the Wood Green track with a Middlesex County Sports Club send-off, through Enfield, Epping and Chelmsford to Colchester on a filthy, rain-soaked first day of 51 1/4 miles.
- Crosses into Germany, riding via Bremen (visiting the North German Lloyd shipyards) and on through Koslin, Schlawe and Stolp to Danzig, where he tours the harbour and a German battleship and is hosted by Mr Kling of the Danzig Bicycle Club, loading his revolver against savage dogs as he nears the Russian frontier.
- Crosses the Russo-German frontier at Touroggan and rides via Schawli, Mitau and Riga, welcomed there by the Touring Club de Russie and the First Riga Verein cyclists, then on through worsening frost and mud via Wenden to St Petersburg, entered under the Moscow Gate on April 30th at the second-thousand-mile mark of the ride.
- A rain-drenched, prolonged stay in Moscow during preparations for the Tsar's coronation is followed by Nizhni Novgorod, where the great chaussée from the German frontier ends and the Great Russian Exhibition is about to open; from here he leaves 'Western civilization' behind for Tartar and Cheremis country along the Volga toward Kazan.
- Describes Kazan, its Tartar mosque quarter and a local cyclists' club with its own practice track, then the roadless, mosquito- and wolf-plagued province of Viatka inhabited by Tartars, Votiaks and Bashkires en route to Perm, followed by six days climbing the beautiful, Alp-like scenery of the Ural Mountains.
- On June 26th, 1896 Jefferson reaches the summit of the Ural pass and the stone marking the boundary between Europe and Asia, pausing to reflect on the vast, unknown Siberia ahead before begging a glass of milk from a woodman's family at a log hut behind the stone and descending into Asia.
- East of Ekaterinburg, escorted fifty versts by Captain Barashova and local club members over dusty, rutted roads through squalid log villages menaced by savage dogs, he passes an encampment of women gold-washers panning the streams draining the Urals before reaching the straggling village of Biloyarski.
- Explains that the 'great Siberian road' is not a made road at all but a track worn into the native earth by centuries of caravans, navigable only by following wheel-ruts and the line of telegraph posts, with stretches of sand too soft to ride or even walk through.
- Seen from the river Irtish, Omsk looks handsome at a distance, but crossing by a ferry crowded with jostling Khirghiz cossacks reveals filthy, unpaved streets of ricketty one-storey log houses, and introduces the wild, nomadic Khirghiz hordes of the Baraba steppe that lie ahead.
- A rare good day on the open Baraba steppe brings smooth, dry going and a following wind, letting him ride in comfort for the first time since the European chaussée, pedalling through long grass past a solitary ox-drawn tarantass, the only sign of life for thirty-five miles.
- Leaving the dismal town of Kainsk, he strikes across trackless grassland toward where he believes the telegraph line must lie, sinking nearly to his waist in a hidden quagmire and losing his way for hours until a band of Khirghiz horsemen, wheeling round him at a gallop, guide him back to the telegraph posts and the road.
- Pressing on toward Tomsk via the wretched Zemski lodgings of Kolyvan, he finds the village of Prokokovo reduced to smouldering ruins by a fire that consumed every house within hours, before nearing Tomsk itself, 'rightly or wrongly' reputed the third city of importance in Siberia.
- A biting account of Tomsk's filthy, unpaved, unsanitary streets despite its electric light and university, and of the 'Nummero' hotel system that charges separately for a bare room, a pillow, a candle and even hot water; ends with the hospitality of Nicolas Beloborodoff, a cycling architect of the new Siberian railway, and his wife, the only lady cyclist in Tomsk province.
- Riding through forested mountain ranges along the watershed of the Ob and Tom rivers, rich in timber and streams and, in his judgement, ripe for colonisation, Jefferson notes the villages here are markedly more prosperous and cheerful than those of the steppe further west.
- A post-master's claim that the next thousand miles to Irkutsk is a properly made chaussée strikes Jefferson as 'the champion Siberian lie'; soon after he overtakes and passes a mile-long convict caravan bound for the mines, tarantasses of prisoners' wives and children followed by some five hundred shackled men marching under armed guard.
- Discusses the status of exiled convicts in the penal settlement of Krasnoiarsk, some of whom become prosperous traders once their sentence is served, and finds the town bright, comfortable and the pleasantest yet, with fifteen to twenty local cyclists giving him a jingling, horn-tooting escort out of the city on the morning of August 8th.
- Crosses the Yenesei below Krasnoiarsk by an unusual cable-hauled ferry, then climbs through mountain gorges he likens to Switzerland and the Balkans, repeatedly startling caravan horses into smashed vehicles, before reaching the gold-caravan village of Procrashensk on the road to Kansk.
- Leaving Kansk, he enters the great forest stretching through the Yeneseisk and Irkutsk provinces and is tormented for three days by clouds of mosquitoes, describing moujiks' tar-smoke defences and cattle driven inside burning log crescents for relief, and recounts shooting a savage dog after villagers set their pack on him.
- Crossing the river Udinsk into Nijni Udinsk, the last town before Irkutsk with 315 versts still to go, Jefferson collapses with a burning fever after a night spent vainly trying to get food, and is found the next morning too weak to move, the illness nearly ending his ride within sight of its goal.
- Describes Irkutsk's social divide between poorly paid officials and rich merchants, the Chinese quarter where a Chinese doctor cures his toothache, and the city's extraordinary mix of Buriats, Mongols, Circassian exiles and Poles, plus a steamer excursion to Lisvisnicia on Lake Baikal, 'Siberia's greatest sight', as the weather turns cold and the goal of his ride is finally reached.