Baron Trump’s Marvellous Underground Journey

Chapter II-2

IT WAS ABOUT THE MIDDLE of February when I set out from the Castle Trump, and I journeyed night and day in order to reach Petersburg by the first of March, for I knew that the government trains would leave that city for the White Sea during the first week of that month. Bulger and I were both in the best of health and spirits, and the fatigue of the journey didn’t tell upon us in the least.

*The second largest city in Russia after Moscow, Saint Petersburg has had more name changes than most modern cities. During the Russian Revolution, it was changed to Petrograd, ‘Peter’s City,’ to eliminate the religious ‘Saint.’ It was rechristened Leningrad in 1924, to honor the death of the head of Soviet Russia, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin. (The infamous Siege of Leningrad during World War 2 lasted 872 days). It wasn’t until after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that the storied port city reverted to its original name of Sankt-Petersburg.

The moment I arrived at the Russian capital* I applied to the emperor for permission to join one of the government trains, which was most graciously accorded. Our route lay almost directly to the northward for several days, at the end of which time we reached the shores of Lake Ladoga. This we crossed on the ice with our sledges, as a few days later we did Lake Onega.

*The capital of Russia switched from Moscow to St. Petersburg on more than one occasion. Peter the Great declared it the capital in 1712. In 1728, Peter II reversed his father’s decision but just four years later Empress Anna of Russia reversed his. After the success of the Russian Revolution, Lenin, in 1918, moved the capital back to Moscow as a defense measure against the more vulnerably positioned port city.

Thence by land again, we kept on our way until Onega Bay had been reached, crossing it, too, on the ice, and so reaching the station of the same name, where we halted for a day to give our horses a well-deserved rest. From this point we proceeded in a straight line over the snow fields to Archangel, an important trading-post on the White Sea.

As this was the destination of the government train, I parted with its commandant after a few days’ pleasant sojourn at the government house, and set out, attended only by my faithful Bulger and two servants, who had been assigned to me by the imperial commissioner.

My course now carried me up the River Dwina as far as Solvitchegodsk; thence I proceeded on my way over the frozen waters of the Witchegda River until we had reached the government post of Yarensk, and from here on we headed due East until our hardy little horses had dragged us into the picturesque village of Ilitch on the Ilitch.

Here we were obliged to abandon our sledges, for the snows had disappeared like magic, uncovering long vistas of green fields, which in a few days the May sun dotted with flowers and sweet shrubs.

At Ilitch I was obliged to relinquish from my service the two faithful government retainers who had accompanied me from Archangel, for they had now reached the most westerly point which they had been commissioned to visit. I had become very much attached to them, and so had Bulger, and after their departure we both felt as if we were now, for the first time, among strangers in a strange land; but I succeeded in engaging, as I thought, a trustworthy teamster, Ivan by name, who made a contract with me for a goodly wage to carry me a hundred miles farther north.

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Departure from Castle Trump

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“BUT NOT ANOTHER STEP farther, little baron!” said the fellow doggedly.

I was now really at the foot hills of the Northern Urals, for the rocky crests and snow-clad peaks were in full sight.

I turned many a wistful look up toward the wild regions shut in by their sheer walls and parapets, shaggy and bristling with black pines, for a low, mysterious voice came a-whispering in my inward ear that somewhere, ah, somewhere in that awful wilderness, I should one day come upon the portals of the World within a World!

In spite of all I could do Bulger took a violent dislike to Ivan and Ivan to him; and if the bargain had not been made and the money paid over, I should have looked about me for another teamster. And yet it would have been a foolish thing to do, for Ivan had two excellent horses, as I saw at a glance, and, what’s more, he took the best of care of them, at every post rubbing them until they were quite dry, and never thinking of his own supper until they had been watered and fed.

His tarantass, [four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle] too, was quite new and solidly built and well furnished with soft blankets, all in all as comfortable as you can make a wagon which has no other springs than the two long wooden supports that reach from axle to axle. True, they were somewhat elastic; but I could notice that Bulger was not overfond of riding in this curious vehicle with its rattlety-bang gait up and down these mountain roads, and often asked permission to leap out and follow on foot.

A Siberian driver and his tarantass, c.1885.

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