The Dream of Lhasa
The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky
(1839–1888),
Explorer of Central Asia
DONALD RAYFIELD
… Whose house I have made the wilderness
and the barren land his dwellings.
He scorneth the multitude of the city,
neither regardeth he the crying of the driver.
The range of the mountains is his pasture,
and he searcheth after every green thing.
JOB 39.6–8
Contents
Title Page
Epigraph
List of Plates
Introduction
1 The Making of an Explorer
2 Siberian Jungle
3 Two Mongolian Winters
4 Invitation to Lhasa
5 Lob Nor Rediscovered
6 The Great Tibetan Expedition
7 The Eagle’s Nest
8 Conflicts and Conquests
9 Dreams and Fulfilment
Select Bibliography
Index: Persons and places
Animals and plants
Plates
Copyright
List of Plates
1 Olga Makaryevna, Przhevalsky’s nanny
2 Przhevalsky in his late 30s
3 Fyodor Eklon
4 Kalgan in 1918
5 Choibseng lamasery, Kansu
6 The main church of Choibseng lamasery
7 The Do Chu; photograph by Roborovsky
8 Lob Nor; photograph by Roborovsky
9 Lob Nor reed huts; photograph by Roborovsky
10 Kunchikan Bek and his son; photograph by Roborovsky
11 Equus Przhevalsky
12 Przhevalsky’s camp at Lob Nor, 1885; photograph by Roborovsky
13 Przhevalsky, Roborovsky and Kozlov in 1886; photograph by Roborovsky
14 Lob Nor; photograph by Roborovsky
MAPS
Przhevalsky’s central Asian routes
1 Part of first and second journeys (1871–73 and 1876–78); part of third journey (1879–80); part of fourth journey (1883–85)
2 Part of first journey (1871–73); part of third journey (1879–80); part of fourth journey (1883–85); Ussuri journey (1867–8)
Introduction
He was Captain, Colonel or General Prejevalsky to the English reader of his gripping accounts of travels in Central Asia in the 1870s. He is Przewalski (the Polish form of his name) to the visitor to the London Zoo who looks at the wild horse, Equus przewalskii, that he discovered in Dzungaria. But we ought to spell his name in a form more like the Russian—Przhevalsky—and to pronounce it something like Purr-zhe-val-skee, the stress coming on val, and zh sounding like the s in leisure.
No matter how we spell his name, Nikolay Przhevalsky was one of the most remarkable men born in Russia in the nineteenth century. He was an explorer and adventurer as single-minded as Livingstone. As a zoologist and botanist he was so productive that his collections are still being analysed. As a geographer he mapped an unknown area of western China, Mongolia and Tibet even larger and more hostile than the ‘black heart’ of Africa. He personified the thrust of Russia’s empire in Asia with the vigour of a conquistador. His four expeditions made an indelible contribution not just to our atlases and our knowledge of a vast expanse of Central Asia, but to the rivalries and tensions of the area.
Przhevalsky’s image in history and science is heroic, but his personality is enigmatic. A man of ruthless determination and of shy tenderness, an apostle of European superiority who loathed European society, an explorer of China who despised the Chinese, a big-game hunter on an epic scale who mourned the death of his dogs, a major-general who disliked the army, a materialist and a Byronic Romantic, he had the paradoxical temperament and universality of genius. He has intrigued writers as different as Chekhov and Nabokov. He has had many Russian biographers; I am the first English biographer.
The bibliography at the end of this book will show much of my indebtedness. My research was greatly assisted by a grant of £150 from the Sir Edward Cassel Educational Trust. I also owe a great deal to the Overseas Missionary Fellowship, to the librarians of the Royal Geographical Society in London and the Geograficheskoye Obshchestvo of Leningrad (especially to its archivist Tamara Matveyeva). I ought to express my gratitude to the Leningrad O.V.I.R. for organizing permission to drive to Przhevalsky’s estate north of Smolensk; I wish I could say the same of the Mongolian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without whose help this book had to be written.
No expert will find my system of transliteration entirely satisfactory. Russian names are given in the usual ‘British’ system; Chinese names are given according to the Giles-Wade system. In many cases the Mongol, Tibetan or Turkic names of towns and places which Przhevalsky used in western China are also given, in the spelling that is most familiar to English readers. Where the Chinese name is merely a rendering of the Turkic or Mongol, I have used the Turkic or Mongol place-name.
During the nineteenth century the Russian calendar lagged twelve days behind the rest of the world; accordingly, except in quotations, both Russian and international dates are placed together, e.g. 1/13 April 1839.
The following short glossary may help readers to cope with Central Asian place-names:
English Chinese Mongol Tibetan Turkic/
Iranian
lake hai, hu nor, nur tso kol, kul
mountain(s). shan ul(a) la tag, tau
river ho gol, müren,
usu chu su, darya
town k’ou khoto dzong shahr
1
The Making of an Explorer
The strongest man is he who stands alone.
IBSEN
In the latter half of the sixteenth century Karnila Parovalsky, one of the famous Zaporozhye Cossacks, entered the service of the Polish king, changed his surname to a Polish form, Przewalski, and was granted five villages in what is now the Russian province of Smolensk and was then the eastern outposts of the Polish empire. In the Przhevalsky family Cossack blood, with its resilience and roughness, now mingled with the blood of Polish nobility.
At the end of the eighteenth century Poland contracted and Russia expanded. The Przhevalsky estates were now Russian. Przhevalsky’s grandfather, Kazimir, switched his national allegiance as a boy. He absconded from the Jesuit school in the town of Polotsk, russified his name to Kuzma Fomich, and was registered among the Russian nobility. His brother Franz became a major in the Russian army.
But the Przhevalsky family, though it had found its roots again, did not prosper. Kuzma had no estates of his own; he was a manager for a landowner near Smolensk. He must have been a disappointed man, for he did not live to see his grandsons; and his son Mikhail, Przhevalsky’s father, was an unfortunate figure. He started off as a Junker—an officer cadet—in 1817 and served in the army for fourteen years. While fighting in the campaign of 1831 to crush the Polish rebellion against Russian rule, Mikhail fell ill. Never strong, he was now triply afflicted: a cataract clouded his eyes; his cough turned into tuberculosis; and in Poland he caught plica polonica, a scalp infection which matted his hair and forced him constantly to wear a bonnet.
Weighed down by illness, pensioned off in 1835 at the age of thirty-two, Mikhail went home to stay with his father, Kuzma. He was a sensitive man, he knew that his condition was incurable, and he was destitute. Not far from the estate which Kuzma managed lay the village of Kimborovo. Kimborovo belonged to Aleksey Karetnikov, who had three
daughters; the youngest, Yelena, was still unmarried. Mikhail Przhevalsky set his sights on Yelena and did not give up until, three years later, he married her.
The Karetnikovs were everything that the Przhevalskys were not. The Przhevalsky family was in decline, the Karetnikov family was rising. Aleksey Karetnikov was born an ordinary household serf. He went to St Petersburg to serve in the Tsar’s suite, and in 1809 he was granted a St Petersburg post as a customs official. By promotion he escaped serfdom and became a member of the landowning gentry, a dvoryanin. He was a big, handsome man, affable and much liked. During his career he amassed enough money to buy three houses in St Petersburg. He made a good marriage and had four sons and three daughters. All his sons were educated at commercial schools and his daughters were sent to a pension.
But not everything went as Aleksey Karetnikov planned. He himself was very punctual, worked hard and went to bed at eight o’clock every night. His only eccentric indulgence was to keep one room of his house full of nightingales and goldfinches and another full of Barbary apes. But his sons, despite their business education, were getting into bad ways and running up gambling debts. So, in the early 1830s, Aleksey Karetnikov sold two of his three houses and with the money bought an estate of 3,000 acres 25 miles south-east of Smolensk. He was now the owner of a modest gentleman’s estate with 160 male serfs and their families to rule over.
The move to the country came too late to save his sons from their reckless and dissolute habits. But his daughters were doing well. The eldest, Yelizaveta, married Colonel, later General, Zavadovsky; the second, Aleksandra, married a Lieutenant-Captain Potyomkin. He must have had high hopes of a suitable match for Yelena when, to his dismay, Mikhail Przhevalsky presented himself as a suitor.
When it became clear that this gangly, pallid, ugly man, with eyes glazed and head always covered, was interested in Yelena, Aleksey Karetnikov told him he was no longer welcome. But Mikhail persisted, and Yelena must have encouraged him. By now, 1837, she was twenty-one. She was a woman of exceptionally strong will, clever and good-looking. She wanted independence, and Mikhail Przhevalsky was the man to take her away from Aleksey Karetnikov and his menagerie.
In the end Aleksey Karetnikov gave way, and in 1838 Mikhail Przhevalsky married Yelena. But Karetnikov never overcame his dislike of his son-in-law and the newly-married couple had, at first, a rough time. The first year they were hardly better off than peasants. Then, on 31 March/12 April 1839 (as Mikhail himself believed), or on 1/13 April (as the Smolensk Consistory records), a son was born, Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky. Aleksey Karetnikov consented to be godfather and was sufficiently reconciled to the marriage of Yelena and Mikhail to give them two villages; they were now provided with a small income, plenty of produce and a cabin in the forest in which to live.
In May 1840 a second son, Vladimir, was born. Then Yelena’s sister Yelizaveta died and in her will left Yelena 2,500 roubles. It was enough to build a proper house, called Otradnoye (Joyful), about a mile from Kimborovo and to enable them to settle down. But Nikolay and Vladimir had an odd childhood, free, almost savage. Otradnoye was in unspoilt country; wild boar hunted crabs in the marshes, bears came down to feed on the raspberries and oats. The brothers spent the summer days in the woods, cut off from human contact. Yet it was a strangely matriarchal life. Nikolay Przhevalsky hardly remembered his father: ‘I have heard that he was a practical man’ was all he could find to say in the autobiographical sketch he dictated in 1881. The family and estate were run by Yelena, with the help of the boys’ nurse, Olga Makaryevna.
Olga Makaryevna was as formidable as Yelena. She had started as a lady’s maid, but in this small household her ruthless efficiency had made her the housekeeper, the nurse, almost the co-mistress. She was a short, stout spinster, with a masculine brow, tiny penetrating eyes, and an equine face. She tyrannized the servants and kept the peasant women, when they were not in the fields, working hard weaving poplin. But Olga Makaryevna was passionately fond of Nikolay and Vladimir and, in return, Nikolay Przhevalsky adored her all his life. She read him fairy stories about Ivan the great hunter, she fed him apples, she beat him with birch twigs. Nikolay Przhevalsky never felt a greater attachment to any woman. These two strong-willed women were allies; their formative influence on Przhevalsky—on his attitude to peasants, to morality, to discipline, for instance—was irreversible.
With time, life at Otradnoye became easier. In April 1842 Aleksey Karetnikov died; his will divided the estate between his widow and his surviving children. Yelena, who was a hard-headed woman, acted quickly. She mortgaged Otradnoye and with the money bought up her mother’s and her brother Aleksandr Karetnikov’s shares of Kimborovo. She could not persuade the other brothers, Gavriil and Pavel to sell, but she was now the owner of a substantial part of the Kimborovo estate.
Gavriil and Pavel did not prosper long. They left their share of the estate in the hands of managers, while they continued to live and spend freely in St Petersburg. In a year or two they were ruined. A neighbouring landowner, Povalo-Shvyykovsky—a name which is to recur in Przhevalsky’s life—bought the Karetnikov brothers out for virtually nothing, with a covenant to maintain them at his expense until their deaths. Povalo-Shvyykovsky did not keep his covenant; Gavriil and Pavel became homeless paupers. Pavel Karetnikov, however, eventually found shelter with the Przhevalskys as a tutor to the two boys.
Pavel was as weak as his sister Yelena was strong. He could no longer gamble, but he still drank and he still had pride. He was an educated man and he knew his field sports. With Yelena’s help he taught the Przhevalsky boys to read and write. Above all, he taught them to shoot, to love hunting and at the same time to love the animals they were shooting.
Though they drifted apart later, Nikolay and Vladimir were fond of each other. Their boyhood had its stormy moments. One day, Vladimir found his elder brother staring down a well. ‘Climb down it,’ Nikolay Przhevalsky ordered, fixing him with a steely gaze. Vladimir refused, whereupon Nikolay picked him up bodily, flung him over the edge and walked away. A passing peasant rescued Vladimir, miraculously unhurt, and took him home. Yelena thrashed Nikolay for this wilful brutality. But they grew up and were taught together under Pavel Karetnikov’s tutelage; both were addicted all their lives to shooting game, everything that moved, from sparrows to bears. It was, as Przhevalsky later said, ‘the most spartan education’. There were hardly any books in the house—though later Yelena ordered books about travel, for she wanted her sons to be successful. The household had few contacts among the neighbouring gentry; the Przhevalsky boys played with the servants’ children.
In 1843 the Przhevalskys had another son, Yevgeni. All three boys had much of their mother’s character in common. They inherited her determination and pedagogical talent. All reached the top of their professions: Nikolay became one of the world’s great explorers, Vladimir was one of Moscow’s best jurists, and Yevgeni became notorious to every Russian schoolboy as the author of a set of five-figure logarithm tables. All three were extraordinarily good at teaching and explaining their expertise to others.
In December 1846, Mikhail, whose hold on life had so long been tenuous, died. Yelena was determined to have her sons educated at cadet college for a safe career in the mighty and still prestigious army. But this needed greater resources and far better standing than she possessed. In the end she had to make do with the gimnaziya (grammar school) in Smolensk, at least for Nikolay and Vladimir.
It was not until the middle of November that the Smolensk gimnaziya opened for the year 1849. Makaryevna’s younger sister, Anna, was to keep house for them in Smolensk; the serf Ignat, the father of one of their playmates, was given the task of carrying their books to school and keeping them out of mischief.
The two brothers rented rooms on Armyanskaya (now Sobolev) Street, by the River Dnepr near the city walls, for two-and-a-half roubles a month. Every schoolday they would walk three-quarters of a mile up the hill into the centre of Smolensk to school. Smolensk gimn
aziya, now the intermediate school No. 7, is a stuccoed neo-classical building in a quiet square. Its teachers and its curriculum were less impressive. Przhevalsky found little to be grateful for. The switch from the freedom of Otradnoye and the justice of Makaryevna to the repressive discipline of school dismayed him.
Nikolay and Vladimir had been so well prepared that they passed into the second form. But academically Nikolay was undistinguished. He loathed the teaching by rote, he despised the apathetic, sometimes drunken, teachers. Latin and mathematics both distressed him. Like his brother Vladimir, he discovered he had a phenomenal gift, which saved him from disaster in examinations—a photographic memory. For many years afterwards, Przhevalsky had only to be told a page number to be able to recite by heart entire pages of a textbook that he had read only once.
Inevitably, Przhevalsky’s Smolensk days were unhappy. Winter and spring were drudgery, interspersed with thrashings; the only relief was playing ball games by the Dnepr, catching sparrows with other schoolboys, or rare visits from Yelena who brought some delicacies to eat.
Przhevalsky’s real life was lived in the summer. In 1851 Yelena gave him his father’s shotgun, with the end of the barrel sawn off to make it usable. Vladimir would borrow a flint rifle from one of the servants and they would go off all day in search of game. They had no money for ammunition and would make bullets out of the lead foil in which Russian tea was wrapped and collect spent shot for re-use. That summer Przhevalsky shot his first fox and burst into the house, blood on his shirt, his prey in his hand, to scare the wits out of Yelena.
The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839?1888), Explorer of Central Asia Page 1