Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/15



CHAPTER I

THE FIRST PETRELS

UT across the cold stretches of Siberia toward the warming rays of the rising sun Russia for centuries pushed, like a great primitive giant, her bulwark of physical power, until finally it reached down to the very tip of a lovely forest-covered peninsula, where the towering range of the Sikhota Alin came down to bathe itself in the iridescent waters of the Pacific. Just where the mountain steps out of the sea the giant built his cairn, that should apprise all men of his extended might, and called the mass of masonry and stone Vladivostok, "Ruler of Eastern Empire."

Later time softened somewhat his ways and, as his people came to do his will and live their little lives of frontier abandon and joy, they called their capital "The Pearl of the East," a name it full deserved before man's hand wrenched loose the covering shell of never-changing solitude.

The peninsula, that it might be entered in the printed annals of the world, was designated Muravieff-Amursky, and the waters which washed its eastern and western shores took their surnames from the two great rivers of 3