De Paris à Pékin par terre: Sibérie-Mongolie

by Victor Meignan

De Paris à Pékin par terre: Sibérie-Mongolie by Victor Meignan is a travelogue written in the late 19th century. It traces an overland journey from France to Beijing via Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, and the Gobi Desert, mixing practical travel detail with reportage on places and people. Expect close observations on Siberian commerce, Russian society and bureaucracy, river-and-canal schemes versus railways, and the rigors of winter travel by sleigh. The opening of the narrative sets out the author’s aim to correct Western clichés about Siberia, highlighting its industrial hubs (like Tomsk) and rich Transbaikal goldfields, and arguing that river steamers and canals, not railways, best suit the region’s trade. He then departs Paris, passes through gloomy Berlin, and endures a vexing Russian customs inspection before arriving in Saint Petersburg, where a moonlit Neva and Francophile salons contrast with his difficulty finding a companion. Securing official letters and postal privileges, he meets the border commissary Pfaffius—whose Bouriate servant pointedly invokes his rights as a subject—attends Glinka’s La vie pour le Tzar, and moves on to Moscow in severe cold to buy proper furs. In Moscow he surveys the Kremlin, notes the custom of uncovering before the Virgin at the Spassky Gate, sketches the Orthodox past, visits the fabulously wealthy Troitsa monastery, and finally finds a capable companion in the Siberian Constantine Kokcharof. The story then shifts to Nizhny Novgorod’s bustling bazaars and the logistics of sleigh travel: the hierarchy of travel permits (podarojnaia), the meticulous packing of the sled, the behavior of the fiery little horses, and the social life of post-stations. It closes this opening stretch with the first fast stages along the frozen Volga, a night of relay stops, and a tense, watery thaw on the ice before dawn breaks through thick fog.