[31] The Russian soldier does a great amount of day labor. Far from disporting himself in brilliant uniform before the admiring eyes of boys and “servant girls,” he digs, builds, carpenters, makes shoes and harness, and does a good civil day’s work in addition to his military duties, and is paid for this as “piecework” on a fixed scale, his daily earnings being duly entered in a book. When he has served his time these are handed over to him, and a steady, industrious man makes enough to set himself up in a small business or on a farm. _Vodka_ and _schnaps_ are the Russian soldier’s great enemies. CHAPTER XIX KOREAN SETTLERS IN SIBERIA The chief object of my visit to Russian Manchuria was to settle for myself by personal investigation the vexed question of the condition of those Koreans who have found shelter under the Russian flag, a number estimated in Seoul at 20,000. It was there persistently said that Russia was banishing them in large numbers, and that several thousands of them had already recrossed the Tu-men, and were in such poverty that the King of Korea had sent agents to the north who were to settle them on lands in Ham-gyöng Do. But in Wladivostok the servant-interpreter difficulty was absolutely insurmountable. No efforts on the part of my friends could obtain what did not exist, and I was on the verge of giving up what proved a very interesting journey, when the Director of the Siberian Telegraph Lines very kindly liberated the senior official in his department, who had not had a holiday for many years, to go with me. Mr. Heidemann, a German from the Baltic provinces, spoke German, Russian, and English with nearly equal ease, and as a Russian official was able to make things smoother than they might otherwise have been in a very rough part of Primorsk. He was tall, good-looking, and verging on middle age, very gentlemanly, never failed in any courtesy, understood how to manage _moujiks_, and was a capable and willing interpreter; but he was official, reticent, and uninterested, and gave me the impression of being frozen into his uniform! Fortified as to my project by the cordial approval of the Governor, the courtesy of the Telegraph Department, and the singular splendor of the weather, I left Wladivostok by a red sunrise in a small steamer, which accomplished the 60 miles to Possiet Bay in seven hours, landing us in a deep inlet of clear water and white sand, soon to be closed by ice, at the foot of low and absolutely barren hills fringing off into sandy knolls, where Koreans with their ox-carts awaited the steamer. A well spread tea-table at the house of the Russian postmaster was very welcome. Such a strong-looking family I had seldom seen, but afterwards I found that size and strength are characteristic of the Russian settlers in Primorsk.