5 68 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 13, 1906. 
In Siberia. 
The Tourists’ Compressed Tea. 
A 3-pound slab of this hydraulic-compressed 
tea snugly fits the coat-pocket. Imagine trying 
to squeeze the bulk of a 3-pound package of 
loose tea into your coat-pocket! The brick-tea 
is a higher grade of tea than the average Ameri¬ 
can is accustomed to with his “hyson" and 
“oolong” and “mixed-tea” mysteries. It is 
compressed with such titanic pressure (but with¬ 
out the mixture of any agglutinating agent what¬ 
ever. for that would impair the purity and deli¬ 
cate taste of the tea) that the breaking of a 
chunk off for the tea-cup is sometimes quite a 
warm little work. Siberia and Russian camping- 
outers, trappers and the nomad tribes have 
used the tea-tiling for generations. Soldiers 
along the line of a railroad—to save the labor of 
breaking up the granite-like slabs for the can¬ 
teen huge kettle-boiler—at times avail of the 
passage of a convenient train to run over and 
break up the slabs for them. 
In. addition to its uses as an article of con¬ 
sumption, the compressed tea comes in handy as 
a temporary hammer or mallet (you can drive 
4-inch nails without chipping it); as a handy 
writing tablet—its note-paper size of about 6in. 
by 8in. peculiarly fitting it for this purpose; and 
(would it be believed) troopers on the march 
who have “got down at the heel” have 
actually been known to renew the heels by 
sawing out heel-like chunks from the inch-thick 
tea-slabbing, and (after ripping off the lopsided- 
worn old leather heels) screwing the tea-heels 
in their place. Screws must be used—not nails 
—as the tea-tiling is too resisting for the latter. 
Naturally, it does not wear quite so well as 
leather, particularly in. wet weather, yet it is 
marvelous what wear can be got out of that 
tea-heeling. 
Footsore soldiers have been known to pulvei- 
ize the same brick-tea, and place it in their 
boots to “soften the tread.” It is cooling; and 
possibly the tannic acid of the tea has a certain 
soothing effect on the foot. The pressure of 
walking, however,' again compresses it into a 
more or less thickened cake, and the wearer 
can remove it intact. 
For the illustration of the granite-tea, and 
others interspersed through this paper, credit 
is due to a paper on the trans-Siberian tea- 
caravan route in the Tea Trade Journal, of this 
city. 
An Amusing Passport Error. 
Traveling over slafdom, the passport is a 
very necessary instrument. During my couple 
of years’ transit from the Pacific to Polonia, 
1 had issued to me altogether some seventy or 
eighty documents, including permits from local 
chiefs. One of these I still preserve as a curio. 
At a town in eastern Siberia, one of the 
officials issuing me a document could not under¬ 
stand for the life of him why—among other 
reasons advanced—I should be in Siberia to 
“have a look at the [then-constructing] rail¬ 
road.” 
“Are there not plenty of railroads in your 
own country, America?” 
My knowledge of Russian at the time was 
very limited; but another official came to the 
rescue (or thought he did) in a very novel 
manner. He ventured to help me out to his 
chief with the wonderful proposition that what 
I was trying to struggle out in Russian- 
through the slow process of a pocket-dictionary 
—was not that I was in Siberia “to look at 
the railroad,” but “to look for a wife.” (The 
Russian words for “railroad” and “wife” are 
somewhat similar.) 
Singularly enough, all those present appeared 
to be of this same opinion—self alone excepted 
—for the simple reason I could not make out 
what they were getting at. But it is a usual 
thing in Siberia for a villager, if unable to find 
a wife in his own district, to visit neighboring 
communities for one, and to provide himself 
with a document from the local mayor, certify- 
who he is, etc. In that category, therefore, they 
placed me. So I was innocently furnished with 
A SLAB OF TEA. 
this authorization to “traverse Siberia to look 
for a wife”; and, still ignorant*of the real word¬ 
ing of the paper, was often puzzled in subse¬ 
quent villages visited, by the grouping round 
me at the village hostelries of isolated squads of 
tittering marriageable young women, who, biting 
their nails, would cast good-humored furtive 
glances at the “wild animal from America.” 
Of course, in these villages everybody soon 
knows everybody; and after my document had 
been read, I was soon the object of a trifling- 
important curiosity by the “bride-candidates” 
of the place, who would edge about each other 
abashed, each trying to get behind the other, 
and breaking into laughter at one another’s 
bantering remarks. 
However, we materially failed to understand 
each other—I took the humor in good part, 
and would go my way “happy and rejoicing.” 
Not til] some time later was it explained to 
me by a Russian engineer that those groups of 
young women were an answer to the document 
authorizing me to “traverse Siberia to look for 
a wife.” 
The Siberian Market Place. 
Every Siberian town and townlet has its old- 
junk marketplace, called bazar, where every¬ 
thing is sold from hens and fresh bread to old 
samovars and coffins—new and second-hand. 
There are half-a-dozen museums through Si¬ 
beria, in the big towns; but few travelers know 
that the hundreds of marketplaces throughout 
the land are often veritable unclassified old 
curiosity museums. Often have I spent a couple 
of hours passing slowly from stall to stall, 
rousing the curiosity of the rriujik market- 
men as to what I could find -of earthly interest 
there, since I rarely bought a thing. There are 
stalls containing nothing but rusty discarded 
parts of machinery, and (fairly well posted on 
machinery myself) I would try to figure out 
