Russian Rambles

partly because we were thirsting for 'experiences.' It began to look as though our thirst was to be quenched in some degree, since we were in this man's power as to a vehicle, and it might be true that we should not be able to obtain any other in the town, or any horses in the villages, if indeed there were any villages. Fortified by another volley of 'Yay Bogu' of triumphant fervor, we survived a second wait. At last, near nine o'clock, we were able to pack ourselves and our luggage.

The body of our tarantas, made, for the sake of lightness, of woven elm withes, and varnished dark brown, was shaped not unlike a baby carriage. Such a wagon body costs about eight dollars in Kazan, where great numbers of them are made. It was set upon stout, unpainted running-gear, guiltless of springs, in cat's-cradle fashion. The step was a slender iron stirrup, which revolved in its ring with tantalizing ease. It was called a pletuschka, and the process of entering it resembled vaulting on horseback.

Our larger luggage was tied on behind with ropes, in precarious fashion. The rest we took inside and deposited at our feet. As there was no seat, we flattened ourselves out on the clean hay, and practiced Delsartean attitudes of languor. Our three horses were harnessed abreast. The reins were made in part of rope; so were the traces. Our yamtschik had donned his regulation coat over his red shirt, and sat unblenchingly through the heat. All preliminaries seemed to be settled at last. I breathed a sigh of relief, as we halted at the posting-house to pay our dues in advance, and I received several pounds of copper coin in change, presumably that I might pay the non-existent relays.

The troika set off with spirit, and we flattered ourselves that we should not be long on the road. This being a county town, there were some stone official buildings in addition to the cathedral, of which we caught a glimpse in the distance. But our road lay through a suburb of log cabins, through a large gate in the wattled town fence, and out upon the plain.

For nearly five hours we drove through birch forests, over rolling downs, through a boundless ocean of golden rye, diversified by small patches of buckwheat, oats, millet, and wheat. But wheat thrives better in the adjoining government, and many peasants, we are told, run away from pressing work and good wages at hand to harvest where they will get white bread to eat, and return penniless.

Here and there, the small, weather-beaten image of some saint, its face often indistinguishable through stress of storms, and shielded by a rough triangular penthouse, was elevated upon a pole, indicating the spot where prayers are said for the success of the harvest. Corn-flowers, larkspur, convolvulus, and many other flowers grew profusely enough among the grain to come under the head of weeds.

The transparent air allowed us vast vistas of distant blue hills and nearer green valleys, in which nestled villages under caps of thatch, encircled by red-brown fences cleverly wattled of long boughs. In one hollow we passed through a village of the Tchuvashi, a Turkish or Finnish tribe, which was stranded all along the middle Volga in unrecorded antiquity, during some of the race migrations from the teeming plateaux of Asia. The village seemed deserted. Only a few small children and grannies had been left at home by the harvesters, and they gazed curiously at us, aroused to interest by the jingling harness with its metal disks, and the bells clanging merrily from the apex of the wooden arch which rose above the neck of our middle horse.

The grain closed in upon us. We plucked some ears as we passed, and found them ripe and well filled. The plain seemed as trackless as a forest, and our postboy suspected, from time to time, that he had lost his way among the narrow roads. A few peasant men whom we encountered at close quarters took off their hats, but without servility, and we greeted them with the customary good wishes for a plentiful harvest, 'Bog v pomozh' (God help), or with a bow. The peasant women whom we met rarely took other notice of us than to stare, and still more rarely did they salute first. They gazed with instinctive distrust, as women of higher rank are wont to do at a stranger of their own sex.

Although the grain was planted in what seemed to be a single vast field, belonging to one estate, it was in reality the property of many different peasants, as well as of some proprietors. Each peasant had marked his plot with a cipher furrow when he plowed, and the outlines had been preserved by the growing grain. The rich black soil of the fallow land, and strips of turf separating sections, relieved the monotony of this waving sea of gold.

The heat was intense. In our prone position, we found it extremely fatiguing to hold umbrellas. We had recourse, therefore, to the device practiced by the mountaineers of the Caucasus, who, in common with the Spaniards, believe that what will keep out cold will also keep out heat. We donned our heavy wadded pelisses. The experiment was a success. We arrived cool and tranquil, in the fierce heat, at the estate of our friends, and were greeted with fiery reproaches for not having allowed them to send one of their fifteen or twenty carriages for us. But we did not repent, since our conduct had secured for us that novel ride and a touch of our coveted 'experience,' in spite of the strain of our thirty hours' vigil and the jolts of the springless vehicle.

Then we discovered the exact extent of our yamtschik's trick. He had let us off on fairly easy terms, getting not quite half more than his due. By the regular route, we might really have had three relays and made better time, had we been permitted. By the short cut which our wily friend had selected, but one change was possible. This left the price of two changes to be credited to his financial ability (in addition to the tea-money of gratitude, which came in at the end, all the same), and the price of the one which he would not make. And, as I was so thoughtless as not to hire him to carry away those pounds of 'relay' copper, I continued to be burdened with it until I contrived to expend it on peasant manufactures. The postboy bore the reputation of being a very honest fellow, I learned,-something after the pattern of the charming cabby who drove us to Count Tolstoy's estate.

The village, like most Russian villages, was situated on a small river, in a valley. It consisted of two streets: one running parallel with the river, the other at right angles to it, on the opposite bank. The connecting bridge had several large holes in it, on the day of our arrival, which were mended, a few days later, with layers of straw and manure mixed with earth. We continued, during the whole period of our stay, to cross the bridge, instead of going round it, as we had been advised to do with Russian bridges, by Russians, in the certainty that, if we came near drowning through its fault, it would surely furnish us with an abundance of straws to catch at.

In one corner of the settlement, a petty bourgeois,-there is no other word to define him,-the son of a former serf, and himself born a serf, had made a mill-pond and erected cloth-mills. His 'European' clothes (long trousers, sack coat, Derby hat) suited him as ill as his wife's gaudy silk gown, and Sunday bonnet in place of the kerchief usual with the lower classes, suited her face and bearing. He was a quiet, unassuming man, but he was making over for himself a handsome house, formerly the residence of a noble. Probably the money wherewith he had set up in business had been wrung out of his fellow-peasants in the profession of a kulak, or 'fist,' as the people expressively term peasant usurers.

On the other side of the river stood the church, white-walled, green-roofed, with golden cross, like the average country church, with some weather stains, and here and there a paling missing from the fence. Near at hand was the new schoolhouse, with accommodations for the master, recently erected by our host. Beyond this began the inclosure surrounding the manor house, and including the cottages of the coachmen and the steward with their hemp and garden plots, the stables and carriage houses, the rickyard with its steam threshing machine and driers, and a vast abandoned garden, as well as the gardens in use. The large brick mansion, with projecting wings, had its drawing-rooms at the back, where a spacious veranda opened upon a flower-bordered lawn, terminating in shady acacia walks, and a grove which screened from sight the peasant cottages on the opposite bank of the river. A hedge concealed the vegetable garden, where the village urchins were in the habit of pilfering their beloved cucumbers with perfect impunity, since a wholesome spanking, even though administered by the Elder of the Commune, might result in the spanker's exile to Siberia. Another instance of the manner in which the peasants are protected by the law, in their wrongs as well as their rights, may be illustrated by the case of a load of hay belonging to the owner of the estate, which, entering the village in goodly proportions, is reduced to a few petty armfuls by the time it reaches the barn, because of the handfuls snatched in passing by every man, woman, and child in the place.

No sound of the village reached us in our retreat except the choral songs of the maidens on holiday evenings. We tempted them to the lawn one night, and overcame their bashfulness by money for nuts and apples. The airs which they sang were charming, but their voices were undeniably shrill and nasal, and not always in harmony. We found them as reluctant to dance as had been the peasants at Count Tolstoy's village. Here we established ourselves for the harvest-tide.