" noble birth, what shall we do now?" "Go on.' But at last, finding that it was no use, and that the snow in front of us had drifted over the track to a much greater extent than over that part of the road which we had left behind, I was reluctantly obliged to give the order to return. This he obeyed with the greatest alacrity, the horses as well as the driver, showing by their redoubled exertions, that they were well aware of the change of direction. There is nothing so disheartening to a traveller who wishes to get forward rapidly as the frequent snow-storms which occur in winter in this part of Russia. Days upon days of valuable time are thus lost, whilst any attempt to force a way through at all hazards, will only lead to the extreme probability of your being frozen to death, without enabling you in any way to accelerate your arrival. The inspector at the station laughed heartily when we returned, and said that it was very fortunate I had not to pass the night out in the open. He had previously advised us not to attempt the journey that evening, but wait for daylight. However, I did not believe him, and consequently had to buy my experience. Of all the countries in which it has been my fate to travel, the land where curiosity is most rampant is decidedly Russia. Whether this comes from a dearth of public news and subjects for conversation, or from something innate and specially characterising the Sclavonic race, it is difficult to say. The curiosity of the fair sex, which in other countries is supposed to be the ne plus ultra of inquisitiveness, is in the land of the Tzar far outstripped by the same peculiarity in the male inhabitants. Of course I am alluding more particularly to the lower orders and not to the upper classes, though even with the latter it is a feature that cannot help striking the foreigner. The inspector was a thorough old conservative, and greatly mourned the new order of things, and that he could no longer demand the traveller's podorojnaya, or pass. "Why," he said, "I do not know whom I am addressing; I may be talking to a shopkeeper, and call him Your Excellency, or address a Grand Duke as simply one of noble birth." "Yes," chimed in some travellers who were benighted like myself, "and rogues can travel now, for they are not obliged to go to the police." I was rather amused at this. There was decidedly a wish on the part of the other wayfarers to know who I was; so, pulling my English passport out of my pocket, I said to the inspector, "There, you can look at my podorojnaya." He turned it upside down; and then said, "Ah, yes! you are a Greek, but what a beautiful crown that is on it! You must be some great personage, going to Tashkent." "Perhaps so," I replied, assuming an air of importance. There is a royal highness coming through soon," said the inspector; "I heard it from a pedlar who went by yesterday; and one of his officers is travelling on in front to make preparations. Perhaps his Excellency," turning to me, "is that gentleman." "No," was my answer; when one of the company, who appeared a little annoyed at my evident unwillingness to undergo this process of pumping, remarked that there had been several robberies in the neighbourhood. "Yes, there have," said another, and the assemblage all looked at me as much as to say, "You are the man; now, do not deny it; we shall not believe you." So the evening wore on, till one by one we laid ourselves down to rest, when a sound, very suggestive of a pigsty, awoke the echoes of the night. On looking out at daybreak, I found that the wind had subsided, and the thermometer had risen to within a few degrees of freezing-point. There was no time to be lost, particularly as I could not tell how long this exceptional order of things would last; so, ordering fresh horses, I recommenced the journey. A great deal of snow had fallen during the night, and it was fortunate that we had returned to the station, as in some places, only a little distance beyond the spot from which my driver had retraced his steps, were drifts eight and ten feet deep. "Praise be to God that we did not fall in!" said my Jehu, pointing them out to me as he drove by; "I might have been frozen." A single line of telegraph ran along the side of the road, being part of the wire which connects the capital with Tashkent. The high poles from which the line was suspended served as a capital landmark to point out the route which we must follow. Presently the scenery changed, and some plantations here and there relieved the eye, tired by continually gazing over the endless waste. Low trucks on wooden runners, drawn by two or four horses, and laden with iron rails for the construction of the railway, encountered us on the path. In many places we had great difficulty in passing, owing to the narrowness of the road. My Jehu's vocabulary of expletives was more than once thoroughly exhausted upon the heads of the sleighmen. They had, as it appeared, purposely tried to upset our sleigh by charging it with their heavily-laden vehicles. A few stations further on the road I met General Kryjinovsky, the Governor of the Orenburg district, who was on his way to St. Petersburg, accompanied by his wife and daughter. He had highly distinguished himself in his early career in Turkistan, and to this he owes the important post entrusted to his charge. He is a little spare man, with a keen glance and determined eye, and if I might be allowed to judge from our brief interview, he was not the sort of individual who would care to give me much information about my journey, of which he did not seem to approve. I WAS called at daybreak the following morning. The few preparations required to be made were soon finished, and I found my self in my newly purchased sleigh, which had been thoroughly re paired, driving along in the direction of Smweshlaevskaya, the first station arrived at when travelling towards Orenburg, and about twenty versts from Samara. The country was a dead flat, and of a most uninteresting description. A few trees scattered here and there made by their scarcity the bleak and naked appearance of the adjacent surroundings the more conspicuous. Naught save snow here, there, and everywhere. No signs of life save a few melancholy crows and jackdaws, which from time to time made a short flight to stretch their pinions, and then returned to perch by the side of some kitchen chimney, and extract from the rapidly rising smoke as much warmth as possible. The route much resembled the road between Sizeran and Samara: for, indeed, in winter-time everything in Russia is either alike or hidden from view, buried beneath its blanch white pall of snow. The station-houses along the line of road I was then travelling were fairly clean. The furniture generally consisted of a horsehair sofa and some wooden chairs, whilst a few coloured prints of the Emperor and other members of the Royal Family of Russia were hung about the walls, and made up the attempt at decoration. A book in which to inscribe complaints was also kept, and any traveller who felt himself aggrieved could write down his grievance, which would be subsequently investigated by an inspector, whose duty it was to perform this task once a month. I sometimes used to while away the time whilst waiting for fresh, horses by turning over the pages of the grumblers book-occasionally, indeed, having to add my own grievance to the list-the badness of the horses being a frequent source of annoyance to the passengers. a I reached Bodrovsky, the next station, a little after sunset, only halting sufficient time to drink few glasses of tea, in order the better to resist the rapidly-increasing cold, the thermometer having fallen to 25° below zero (Reaumur), and started again for Malomalisky, about 26 versts distant. I hoped to reach this point about 9 p.m., and there refresh the inner man before proceeding on my journey. It is hungry work, sleigh-driving in the winter, and the frame requires a good deal of support in the shape of food in order to keep up the vitality. However, it is no good forming any plans in which time is concerned in Russia. The natives have a Mohammedan-like indifference to the clock, and travellers must succumb, however unwillingly, to the waywardness of the elements. Presently I became aware by some pistol-like cracks-the sounds of the whip reverberating from the backs of my horses-that there was a difference of opinion between them and the driver. A blinding snow had come on; the darkness was so great that I could not distinguish the driver. Our jaded animals were floundering about in all directions, vainly endeavouring to hit off the original track, from which it was evident that they had strayed. The man now got down from his box, and, leaving me in charge of the horses, made a wide cast round on foot, hoping to discover the road. The snow all this time was falling in a manner unknown to people in this country. It was piling itself up against the sleigh in such volumes that I foresaw, if we did not speedily reach the station, we should inevitably be buried alive. After about half an hour's search the driver returned, and said to me, "Oh, Lord!-you are a misfortune. Let us turn back." I replied, "If you have lost the way, how can you turn back? Besides, if you know the road, we are now half-way, so it is just as easy to go forward as to return." He had found the track, but by this time the sleigh was so buried in the snow that the horses could not stir it. There was only one thing to do, which was for me to get out and help him to lift the vehicle, when we eventually succeeded in regaining the path. The fellow was a good deal surprised at this action on my part, for Russian gentlemen as a rule would almost prefer to be frozen to death than do any manual labour. Presently he said, One of noble birth, what shall we do now?" "Go on." But at last, finding that it was no use, and that the snow in front of us had drifted over the track to a much greater extent than over that part of the road which we had left behind, I was reluctantly obliged to give the order to return. This he obeyed with the greatest alacrity, the horses as well as the driver, showing by their redoubled exertions, that they were well aware of the change of direction. There is nothing so disheartening to a traveller who wishes to get forward rapidly as the frequent snow-storms which occur in winter in this part of Russia. Days upon days of valuable time are thus lost, whilst any attempt to force a way through at all hazards, will only lead to the extreme probability of your being frozen to death, without enabling you in any way to accelerate your arrival. The inspector at the station laughed heartily when we returned, and said that it was very fortunate I had not to pass the night out in the open. He had previously advised us not to attempt the journey that evening, but wait for daylight. However, I did not believe him, and consequently had to buy my experience. Of all the countries in which it has been my fate to travel, the land where curiosity is most rampant is decidedly Russia. Whether this comes from a dearth of public news and subjects for conversation, or from something innate and specially characterising the Sclavonic race, it is difficult to say. The curiosity of the fair sex, which in other countries is supposed to be the ne plus ultra of inquisitiveness, is in the land of the Tzar far outstripped by the same peculiarity in the male inhabitants. Of course I am alluding more particularly to the lower orders and not to the upper classes, though even with the latter it is a feature that cannot help striking the foreigner. The inspector was a thorough old conservative, and greatly mourned the new order of things, and that he could no longer demand the traveller's podorojnaya, or pass. "Why," he said, "I do not know whom I am addressing; I may be talking to a shopkeeper, and call him Your Excellency, or address a Grand Duke as simply one of noble birth." "Yes," chimed in some travellers who were benighted like myself, "and rogues can travel now, for they are not obliged to go to the police." I was rather amused at this. There was decidedly a wish on the part of the other wayfarers to know who I was; so, pulling my English passport out of my pocket, I said to the inspector, "There, you can look at my podorojnaya." He turned it upside down; and then said, "Ah, yes! you are a Greek, but what a beautiful crown that is on it! You must be some great personage, going to Tashkent." "Perhaps so," I replied, assuming an air of importance. "There is a royal highness coming through soon," said the inspector; "I heard it from a pedlar who went by yesterday; and one of his officers is travelling on in front to make preparations. Perhaps his Excellency," turning to me, "is that gentleman." "No," was my answer; when one of the company, who appeared a little annoyed at my evident unwillingness to undergo this process of pumping, remarked that there had been several robberies in the neighbourhood. "Yes, there have," said another, and the assemblage all looked at me as much as to say, “You are the man; now, do not deny it; we shall not believe you." So the evening wore on, till one by one we laid ourselves down to rest, when a sound, very suggestive of a pigsty, awoke the echoes of the night. On looking out at daybreak, I found that the wind had subsided, and the thermometer had risen to within a few degrees of freezing-point. There was no time to be lost, particularly as I could not tell how long this exceptional order of things would last; so, ordering fresh horses, I recommenced the journey. A great deal of snow had fallen during the night, and it was fortunate that we had returned to the station, as in some places, only a little distance beyond the spot from which my driver had retraced his steps, were drifts eight and ten feet deep. "Praise be to God that we did not fall in!" said my Jehu, pointing them out to me as he drove by; "I might have been frozen." A single line of telegraph ran along the side of the road, being part of the wire which connects the capital with Tashkent. The high poles from which the line was suspended served as a capital landmark to point out the route which we must follow. Presently the scenery changed, and some plantations here and there relieved the eye, tired by continually gazing over the endless waste. Low trucks on wooden runners, drawn by two or four horses, and laden with iron rails for the construction of the railway, encountered us on the path. In many places we had great difficulty in passing, owing to the narrowness of the road. My Jehu's vocabulary of expletives was more than once thoroughly exhausted upon the heads of the sleighmen. They had, as it appeared, purposely tried to upset our sleigh by charging it with their heavily-laden vehicles. A few stations further on the road I met General Kryjinovsky, the Governor of the Orenburg district, who was on his way to St. Petersburg, accompanied by his wife and daughter. He had highly distinguished himself in his early career in Turkistan, and to this he owes the important post entrusted to his charge. He is a little spare man, with a keen glance and determined eye, and if I might be allowed to judge from our brief interview, he was not the sort of individual who would care to give me much information about my journey, of which he did not seem to approve. |