I went straight to M. Pfaffius. “I had no idea,” he said, “you would have been so long in coming from Irkutsk.” I related to him my adventures of the Baikal. “The little caravan of tea-merchants which you were to join, left here yesterday morning. But you will lose nothing by it, for there will be another caravan leaving here in a week. You will then have plenty of time to make all your preparations to accompany it to Pekin, and we shall have the pleasure of your company here all the week.” I went to announce this news to Ivan Michäelovitch Nemptchinof, who was so highly delighted, and offered me, with so much courtesy, the hospitality of his father’s house, that I shall never forget the occasion.
Ivan Michäelovitch’s father,[25] with whom I lodged at Kiachta, is a cousin of the Nemptchinof I have already mentioned as one of the three proprietors of the richest gold mine of Trans-Baikalia. Not feeling disposed to risk his fortune in gold-hunting, so often precarious, he preferred devoting himself to the tea business, and has acquired in it an immense fortune.
The flourishing state of the tea trade by caravan is due to two causes: first, the great consumption of tea in Siberia and Russia, and particularly in Russia, where it is the necessary part of their meals: secondly, to its free entry into Eastern Siberia, which the Czar has accorded to his Eastern subjects. Since the customs’ duty is considerable on the tea imported by Odessa, it follows that nearly all the tea that is drunk in Russia passes through the hands of the Kiachta merchants, and not without leaving in them a great many roubles.
These merchants are a little frightened, just now, by the appearance of a competition, the success of which, still doubtful, it is true, would ruin them completely. This rival enterprise would have for its object the conveyance of tea by sea, from the mouth of the Yang-Se’ to the port of Vladivostok, and thence to Irkutsk, by the Ussuri and the Amoor rivers. If this communication were established, there is no doubt that tea could be sold very much cheaper than at present, for the overland carriage, through Mongolia and the Desert of Gobi, is very expensive; but the undertakers of the new project would be obliged to make so considerable an outlay from the commencement, that it is feared the failure of it would be decisive before a single chest could find its way by this route to Irkutsk.