James Holman (1786-1857), a Royal Navy lieutenant who lost his sight at twenty-five, set out in 1822 to travel alone through Russia and Siberia, hoping to go on around the world. He reached Irkutsk, but in January 1824 the Russian authorities, suspicious of him, sent him back to the frontier under the guard of a courier. He learned about places through touch, sound, conversation and the help of hosts and interpreters. This corpus copy is volume 2 of his Travels (London, 1825), covering Tobolsk to Irkutsk and the return through Omsk, Kazan and central Europe. Tartars appear mostly as his servant, as villagers, and as the Kazakhs near Omsk.
How they knew
Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
A mixed label: his Siberian Tatar servant and the Tatars of Kazan and the Baraba steppe, the Kazakhs ('Kirguise Tartars') near Omsk, and the Buryats and Mongols ('Mongul Tartars') near Irkutsk and Kiakhta; 'Mongul Tartary' is his name for the lands between Lake Baikal and China.
Why read it
A rare view of Siberia from a traveller who could not see, including his hands-on visit to a Kazakh felt tent, a governor's collection of excavated 'Tartar' antiquities, and a clear example of the Tartary and Tartarus pun.
Watch out
Holman was blind, so his descriptions rest on touch, sound and what companions told him; he says so himself. He repeats ugly prejudices and rumours (for example about Tatar cooking and trading), and the OCR of this volume is poor in places.
Editorial contextOn the steppe four miles from Omsk, Holman and an interpreter visited a family of Kazakhs in their tent. He learned that the frame was made of neat trellis-work that folded up small for moving, covered with thick matting, with woollen beds round half the wall separated by fine cane screens. A pit dug near the centre kept the lambs warm, while sheep and horses had tents of their own. The family let him examine whatever he liked.
The frame of the tent was made of neat trellis-work, so constructed as to admit of being folded up into a small compass, for the convenience of conveyance, whenever they think proper to change their habitations; this was surrounded by thick matting; around one half of the inner circumference of the tent were placed beds of a coarse woollen stuff
Editorial contextAt Krasnoyarsk the governor showed Holman his collection of 'Tartar' dresses, weapons and armour, along with objects dug up around the province: metal vases that Holman guessed once held the ashes of great chiefs, copper and stone hatchets, knives and arrowheads. These are the kind of finds that came from the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Yenisei and Minusinsk region.
The governor, on the Tuesday, most obligingly submitted to my inspection his cabinet of curiosities, comprising a large collection of Tartar dresses, weapons, and armour, as also many curious remains that had been dug up in different parts of his government; amongst the rest, metal vases, which had probably been the depositaries of the ashes of the great and powerful of their day
Editorial contextNear Irkutsk, Holman heard of a settlement of 'Mongul Tartars' at Tunka near the Chinese frontier, whose chiefs had been made Knights of Malta by Emperor Paul (Paul was Grand Master of the Order from 1798 to 1801). Holman doubts they could have understood the honour beyond the star and ribbon.
The Emperor Paul made some of the chiefs of these Mongul Tartars Knights of Malta! It must be difficult to conceive how these people would contemplate the nature or duties of such a creation, or appreciate the honour conferred upon them
Reported to Holman, not seen; his dismissive comment is his own. Holman puts 'Toonga' about sixty miles from Irkutsk; the identification with Tunka is ours.
Editorial contextHolman's Tatar servant often offered to cook for him, especially fish, but Holman refused because he had heard that Tatars stirred their cooking with a candle 'to give it gout' (flavour). He had also blamed the man's illness on the 'disgusting trash' Tatars liked to eat. The passage shows the kind of gossip about Tatars that travellers passed on without checking.
The Tartar often wanted to prepare dinner for me, particularly when fish was to be met with, but having heard that his countrymen were in the habit of stirring up their cookery with a candle in order to give it gout, I could not reconcile myself to take advantage of his culinary talents.
Editorial contextHolman calls the whole country between Lake Baikal and the trading towns of Kiakhta (Russian) and Maimachin (Chinese) 'Mongul Tartary', wild and rugged and full of wild animals. Here the old map name Tartary survives as a regional label. A page earlier he describes the Buryats as 'of Mongul origin'.
The whole country between these points and the Baikal, which has the name of Mongul Tartary, is wild and rugged in the extreme, and often dangerous to the traveller in consequence of the great number of wild animals that inhabit it.
Editorial contextHolman crossed the marshy Baraba steppe in the rain, having been told of poisonous lakes, fevers, swarms of stinging flies and a disfiguring local disease. He calls it 'this earthly Tartarus', playing on the old pun between Tartary and Tartarus, the Greek underworld. On the next page he describes it as fit only for wild animals, reptiles 'and a few sickly Tartars', and compares it to the land of the legendary poison tree, the Upas.
The above, however, is one of the minor evils of this earthly Tartarus; the insalubrious quality of its atmosphere, loaded with malaria, or miasmatic impregnation, is not only abundantly productive of typhus and intermittent fevers, but gives rise to a disease peculiar to this horrid Steppe.
Editorial contextIn the arsenal at Tobolsk, which smelled more like a stable, Holman was shown the portrait and armour of the Cossack conqueror Yermak. He handled the chain shirt and found it so heavy that he understood why Yermak sank for good when, in his last battle, he stepped short of 'the Tartar king's galley'. He adds that he cannot say whether the story is fable or history.
the portrait and armour of Yermack; the former a miserable daub; the latter consisting chiefly of a chain shirt, so heavy that one cannot wonder at his going irretrievably to the bottom, when, in his last battle, he stepped short of the Tartar king's galley, and fell into water. Whether the history of this banditti leader be fabulous or not, it is at least interesting