Awakening

Awakening by Maud Diver (1911)

The Great Siberian Railway* by Francis E. Clark is a first-person travel account of one of the earliest journeys made across Russia from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg entirely by steam, undertaken in the summer of 1900. Clark, traveling with companions including his wife and a young boy, departs Vladivostok on June 1st, shortly after the completion of the Trans-Baikal section of the Siberian Railway, making his party among the first passengers to traverse the full route by uninterrupted steam power. The journey proceeds in stages. From Vladivostok, Clark takes a short rail line to Khabarovsk, where he boards the Amour River steamer Baron Korff. Through advance arrangements made by the Governor of Vladivostok, General Tchitchagoff, Clark secures preferential treatment and reserved accommodations throughout much of the route, assistance that proves essential given the difficulties ahead. The river journey along the Amour covers roughly fifteen hundred miles, passing through terrain that forms the boundary between Russian Siberia on the north bank and Chinese Manchuria on the south. Clark describes the Amour as one of the great rivers of the world, largely uninhabited along its banks yet surrounded by fertile land capable of supporting millions. He observes the constant soundings taken by leadsmen due to treacherous sandbars, the frequent groundings of the steamer, and the convict barges towed alongside, carrying prisoners to exile in the far east of the empire. At Blagoveshchensk, a city Clark describes as surprisingly substantial for its remote location, the party changes to smaller vessels for the upper reaches of the river, where the water is shallower and delays more frequent. The steamer Ivan Vishnegradskie and later the Admiral Chicachoff carry them onward, repeatedly running aground and losing many hours. After the Amour, the party transfers to an even smaller barge, the Diana, for the journey up the Shilka River to Stretinsk, the eastern terminus of the Trans-Baikal Railway. This final river segment Clark describes as the most uncomfortable of the entire journey, with wretched food, overcrowded decks, and primitive conditions. At Stretinsk, Clark boards the newly opened Trans-Baikal Railway, a line so recently completed that it has not yet been formally accepted by the government. The cars range from barely adequate fourth-class wooden-benched coaches to freight wagons marked for horses or men indiscriminately. A bridge burned by a careless fireman causes an additional thirty-six hour delay. Despite these hardships, Clark conveys vivid descriptions of the Siberian landscape, the devout character of the Russian peasants, the picturesque stations with their Orthodox churches, and the colorful costumes of settlers and indigenous Buriats. He notes the enormous military and emigrant traffic heading eastward, prompted by the Boxer Uprising then underway in China. Crossing Lake Baikal on the great ice-breaking ferry, with a further maddening delay caused by a senior official who refuses to depart until his personal convenience is satisfied, the party reaches Irkutsk, the capital of Central Siberia. Here Clark boards the celebrated Trans-Siberian train de luxe for the long run to Moscow. He provides a careful and somewhat deflating account of this famous train, noting that its best cars had been sent to the Paris Exposition and that what remains, while vastly superior to the emigrant trains, falls well short of the luxury advertised. The sleeping compartments are comfortable, the dining car adequate, the porters lazy, and the speed across Siberia little better than fourteen miles per hour. Over the following eight and a half days, the train crosses the great Siberian plains, passing through Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, and other frontier cities, traversing the Yenisei and Ob river systems on substantial iron bridges, and finally ascending through the Ural Mountains into European Russia. Clark describes the scenery as consistently pleasant if not dramatic, the land as uniformly fertile and overwhelmingly empty, and the forests as seemingly boundless. He reflects repeatedly on Russia's peaceful colonization of Siberia as a geopolitical strategy, contrasting the vitality of Russian settlement with the weakness and corruption he perceives in China. The narrative closes with practical advice for future travelers. Clark calculates the journey at thirty-eight days from Vladivostok to Moscow and estimates the full cost at roughly one hundred and fifty dollars, inclusive of first-class fares and living expenses. He concludes that the journey is rewarding for those with flexible schedules and a tolerance for hardship, but unsuitable for anyone with fixed engagements, given the impossibility of predicting delays. Appended to the main narrative are a synopsis of the Russian alphabet and a basic English-Russian vocabulary intended to assist subsequent travelers through a country where French, German, and English are almost entirely unavailable.

By Maud Diver · First published 1911 · Genre: Travel Literature, Non-fiction, Memoir · 35 chapters · 151,347 words

First lines

"I stay my haste, I make delays, For what avails the eager pace? I stand amid eternal ways -- And what is mine shall know my face. " BURROUGHS.

"Where on earth did she spring from? And who, in the name of all that's exquisite, can she be?"

What this Textopian page supports

Awakening is listed on Textopian as a novel by Maud Diver, dated 1911 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

erotic · sensual · sexual awakening · taboo · female desire · coming-of-age · romance · provocative · controversial · sexual exploration · intimacy · liberation

Contents

More by Maud Diver