302 FUR FACTS 



haps they had been cleaned before the revolution; I hardly think 

 they have since. In starting on a railway journey you carry your 

 own blankets and you carry your food. 



Elastic Schedules 



"The schedule on Russian railroads is a joke. How fast trains 

 run, when they stop and when they start again, are all matters which 

 depend on the whim of the engineer. When I got ready to leave 

 Harbin I had desired to go west to Omsk, but the reports of Bol- 

 shevik disturbances were so alarming that I finally — fortunately 

 enough as it proved — gave up the idea and decided to return to 

 Vladivostok. I learned at the station that there was one train on 

 the road beyond Harbin. No one knew how far from Harbin it was, 

 whether 50 miles or 500. As Omsk is two-thirds of the way across 

 Asia, as close, in fact, to the European boundary as Harbin is to the 

 sea, it is evident that there was a good deal of room for difference of 

 opinion as to just when that train would arrive. There was a general 

 strike on, caused by the depreciation of the Siberian ruble, and in- 

 formation was hard to get. 



"I was very anxious to get out of Harbin. The weather was 

 terribly hot. There were no rooms to be had. The houses were 

 filled with refugees from portions of Russia under the domination of 

 the Bolsheviki, and there were 80 cases of Asiatic cholera there. 

 Food was plenty, but there the cold-storage facilities are very bad; 

 most of the meat served was tainted, and Northern China is the 

 original home of the fly. Flies are everywhere and in and on every- 

 thing. I waited at the station for that train from 2 o'clock in the 

 afternoon to 11 o'clock of the following night. Then on the advice 

 of the station agent, who thought it very xmlikely that the train 

 would arrive before a comfortable hour next morning, I went back 

 to my room to get a little sleep. 



The Vanishing Rear Platform 

 "The next morning I walked to the station, not being able to 

 find a droschky and taxis now being unknown luxuries in Harbin, 

 just in time to see the rear platform of the last car of that train mov- 

 ing on as it left the station. The situation seemed rather desperate. 

 The railroad people thought it unlikely that there would be a train 

 for three or four months, or as long as the strike lasted. I might say 

 here that after I heard the fate of that train, I had scant regret at 

 missing it. About 100 miles out from Harbin the strikers or Bol- 

 sheviks or Chinese bandits had pulled the spikes from a rail and the 



