Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus Part 5

Notwithstanding its vast extent and its thinly scattered population, the traveller is safer there than in any other country. But this state of things is to be ascribed rather to the political situation of the people, than to the strict administration of the police, and it is easy to conceive that in a country, in which there are none but slaves bound to the soil, highway robberies, generally speaking, are morally impossible, because they can scarcely ever yield any gain to their authors. There existed, nevertheless, in Bessarabia, from 1832 to 1836, a very formidable gang of robbers, of which the police found it extremely difficult to rid the country. The captain, of whom a thousand extraordinary tales are told, was a revolted slave, unconsciously playing the part of Fra Diavolo, in a corner of Russia. He waged war not against individuals, but against society. It is alleged, that he never killed any one, and that many a peasant found with him an asylum and protection. He was a daring fellow, beloved by his gang, and a merciless plunderer of landlords, and above all of Jews. It was not until the close of 1836 that he was taken, through the treachery of a girl he was attached to, who betrayed him to the officers of justice. He died under the knout; the death of their leader dispersed his gang, and they fell one by one into the hands of the police.

Some days after my husband's return, we took our leave of the baroness to return to Clarofka. Our main journey through the Kalmuck steppes and to the Caucasus, being fixed for the following spring, part of the winter was spent in making preparations for our departure. Count Voronzof most obligingly furnished us with letters for the governors and authorities of the countries we were to pa.s.s through.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The name applied collectively to the islands and channels formed by all the great rivers of Southern Russia.

[4] A favourite Russian dish, a sort of porridge of buckwheat or Indian corn.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX.

_Petty Larceny._--"Highway robbery and burglary, with violence, are things wholly unknown in the greater part of Russia. The peasants laugh when they see foreigners travelling about with swords, pistols, and a whole a.r.s.enal of weapons. The Russian trader journeys from one end of the empire to the other, often with all he is worth in the world, and does not think it necessary even to carry a knife in his pocket; yet one never hears of their being robbed by force on the highways, at least in the parts of the country with which I was more intimately acquainted.

Cases of the kind do indeed occur in the southern provinces, adjoining the Turkish dominions, and in Siberia, where so many malefactors are settled, and where there is often extreme distress. Some may be disposed to ascribe this unfrequency of highway robbery to the great remoteness of the villages from each other, and to the severity of the climate, which must deter rogues from remaining much in the open air, especially at night. But even in summer, and in the more populous regions, where the villages are tolerably close together, highway robbery is equally rare, and the absence of this crime seems to me attributable rather to the character of the people themselves, to whom the practice seems repugnant and unnatural. It were to be wished that they had the same instinctive aversion to robbery without violence, but this unfortunately is not the case. As I was a frequent sufferer from the nimbleness of their fingers, I had occasion enough to ponder on the causes of this striking propensity of theirs, and I came to the conclusion, paradoxical as it may perhaps seem, that it arises not so much from want of moral feeling as from want of intellectual cultivation. Most of the common folk who are given to this vice (for among educated persons it is as rare and is reputed as infamous as in any other country) see no harm at all in pilfering, and are, therefore, p.r.o.ne to practise it whenever they have an opportunity. I am fully persuaded that these people, who are often the most good-natured and even honest-hearted fellows, would desist from the practice if they were once taught to regard it in a different light, and were made conscious of its impropriety. This is a case as to which primary instruction, village schools, and church sermons, in the vernacular tongue, would deal most happily and beneficially for the morals of the nation. But village schools are rare, and sermons or religious instruction of any kind, are rarer still; books there are none, and if there were any the populace could not read them.

What means then have they of becoming enlightened as to themselves and the things around them, and of correcting the views and notions handed down to them from generation to generation? Centuries ago they worked out for themselves their own system of ethics, if I may so speak, and they now make the best they can of it. Certain things, for instance, such as household furniture and the like, are regarded as sacred; the owners may leave them all night in the street, and be sure of finding them again in the morning, whereas there are a thousand other things which they cannot watch too carefully, though far less serviceable, and consequently less tempting. On the former there is a sort of interdict laid by tacit consent, whereas the latter are looked upon as common property. The same man who will not hesitate to pick another's pocket, or to filch something from his table, will never, even though quite safe from detection, open a closed door, or put his hand in at an open window to take any thing out of a room. He would call this 'stealing'

(_vorit_,) and that has an ugly sound even in Russian ears, and is considered a great sin. But the first-mentioned little matters he looks on as allowed, or at least not forbidden, and he applies to them the endearing diminutive _vorovat_, a pretty, harmless word, not at all a.s.sociated with the odious idea of thieving properly so called. To put this matter in a clearer light I will relate two little incidents that came under my own personal observation.

"I was once in the house of a common chapman on an affair of business, in which he behaved like an upright worthy man. We had finished the transaction between us, and were sipping our tea, when an old man with an open, honest-looking countenance, but very poorly clad, came in and offered the chapman a silver spoon for sale. After some chaffering the latter bought the spoon at a price much below its worth, and said, banteringly, as he paid over the money: '_Sukin tu sin, tu vorovat_.'

'You pilfered it, you son of a b----.' (This last phrase, as I have elsewhere remarked, is practically equivalent to 'my good friend,' or the like.) The old man looked at him with a roguish twinkle of the eye, laid his hand on his breast, and said very gravely: '_Niet sudar, Bog podal_,' 'No, sir, G.o.d bestowed it,' and then went quietly about his business. I often took pains to come at the special meaning of this '_Bog podal_,' by a series of indirect questions, and every time I became more and more a.s.sured that by many persons the phrase was understood as signifying a sort of divine permission to steal.

"The second anecdote is perhaps still more characteristic. In the year 1816 I was on my way with a German friend to the country-seat of Count S. We thought we were the only persons in our little open carriage who understood the German language, in which we conversed, when, to our surprise, our long-bearded _ishvorshtik_ (coachman) joined in the discourse with great fluency, though his German was somewhat broken.

Observing our astonishment, he told us that he had been in Germany, and had served in a detached corps of the army, which had been organised in the form of a _landwehr_, or local militia: he had pa.s.sed a summer in Saxony, and seen Leipsig, Dresden, Wittenberg, &c. All this he told us with an air of no small self-complacency. 'And how did you like Germany?' said I. 'Why, pretty well,' he answered, 'only for one thing that I could not abide at all.' He might have settled there advantageously, and his colonel would have given him his discharge, as the corps was to be disbanded; but this _one thing_ he talked of was not to be got over, and so he had preferred to return home. 'And what was this thing that stuck so in your stomach?' 'Sir,' said he, turning to us with one eye half shut, and speaking almost in a whisper, '_Sudar, vorovat ne velat_,' 'Sir, they won't allow a body to do a wee bit of pilfering.' We were not a little confounded by this unexpected reply, and my friend, who had not been long in Russia, was beginning to lecture him on the enormity of such principles, when the coachman, who had no mind to hear a long sermon, laughingly cut short the preacher's harangue, and gave him to understand that he was wandering wide of the mark. 'O, you don't understand me, _sudar_, I don't mean stealing; of course not; I know very well it is a bad thing; I only mean _vorovat_, which surely ought to be allowed everywhere; leastways it ought to be allowed to a poor soldier.'

"The world is ruled by opinion: we should therefore try to set this governing power right, where we can, and where that may not be one, we should at least make the best use we can of it in the state in which we find it. Russia affords one striking exemplification of this wise system of compromise with reference to the subject we have been discussing. It is a received opinion among the populace, as I have said, that a man may filch a little from a stranger without being guilty of downright dishonesty, but to rob one's own master, is a grievous and unpardonable sin. Hence, the surest way of protecting yourself against a house-thief, when you once know him, is to take him into your service. From that moment you are not only safe from any larceny on his part, but you have secured besides the best watch against all other thieves, since it is a point of honour with him to prevent all acts of peculation that might entail suspicion on himself; and he knows practically all the tricks and stratagems against which he must be on his guard. An officer of high rank in the Russian army, a German by birth, told me, that once when his battalion had to encamp for several weeks together along with a Cossack pult, he and his men had like to be stripped of all they had by a continual course of thieving. Every morning brought a disastrous list of clothes missing, horse trappings carried off, &c. &c. More sentinels were placed, strict vigilance was observed, but every precaution failed.

Almost at his wit's end, the officer complained to the hetman of the pult, and was advised by him to withdraw all his own sentries, and to make one of the Cossacks mount guard in his own quarters, and in every division of those occupied by his men. The German could not help thinking the proposed measure very like committing the fold to the custody of the wolf, but as he knew nothing better he could do, he adopted it, and from that moment all the thieving was at an end. The Cossacks always laid themselves down at nightfall right before the doors of the quarters and stables, and the officer never again heard even of any attempt to annoy him or his men. Such is the force of opinion, and of the manner in which these people (and all of us, too, if we will but own it) are in the habit of seeing things."--_Von Littrow._

Von Littrow remarks that we ought not to be too hasty in laying to the account of moral depravity the nimbleness of finger of the Russian peasant, but consider whether even among the most civilised people there are not some relics of the olden barbarism, some striking deviations from moral propriety, which OPINION is pleased to look on with indulgence. Books change owners in the German universities by a surrept.i.tious process, for which a slang word has been adopted. This kind of _vorovat_ is called "shooting" (_schiessen_) and some very learned professors we are told, plume themselves on the skill with which they contrive to "shoot" rare specimens of natural history, &c. There are men otherwise of great probity and worth, who we fear are not always scrupulously careful to return a borrowed umbrella.

_Russian Servants._--"Where a German would think himself very well off with the attendance of one woman servant, a Russian tradesman, in like pecuniary circ.u.mstances, keeps at least four; but the German's one servant does quite as much as the Russian's four put together. In the houses of the wealthy, the number of menservants amounts to fifty, sixty, and even a hundred or more. There is an intendant and a _maitre-d'hotel_, a couple of dozen of pages and footmen, the master of the house's own men, the lady's own men, and again own men for the young gentlemen and for the young ladies; then come the butlers, caterers, hunters, doorkeepers, porters, couriers, coachmen, and stable-boys, grooms and outriders, cooks and under-cooks, confectioners, stove-lighters, and chamber-cleaners, &c. &c., not to mention the female servants of all sorts. But the worst of the thing is the continual increase of this numerous body; for it is a matter of course in Russia that every married man who enters service takes his wife with him; his children, too, belong to the house and remain in it; nay, his kith and kin, if not actually domesticated in the establishment, take up their abode in it for days and weeks together, without demur; besides which, the friends and acquaintances of the servants may drop in when they please, and partake of bed and board. 'When I married,' said a wealthy Russian to me, 'I made up my mind to have no more of these good-for-nothing people in my house than were unavoidably necessary for myself and my wife, and I therefore restricted myself to forty, but after the lapse of three or four years, I remarked, to my great astonishment, that this number was already almost doubled.' In any other country, some three or four of these fellows would be thought enough to wait at table even in the best appointed houses; but in Russia, where dinner parties often consist of forty or fifty persons, there must be a servant behind every chair, or the whole set out would be considered extremely shabby. It was formerly the custom generally, and it is so still in the country-houses of the great, to have a footman constantly stationed in each of the rooms of the numerous suite of apartments, and one or two lads outside, their business being to do the office now performed by bells. An order given by the lord of the mansion in the innermost apartment, was transmitted from room to room, and from door to door, until it reached the last of the train, who fetched the article called for, and so it was pa.s.sed from hand to hand until it reached the _gosudar_ (the lord).

"A Polish countess told me, that she once called on Count Orloff on business, and while they were conversing, the count desired the servant who stood by the door, to call for a gla.s.s of water. The man disappeared for a moment to speak to his next neighbour, and immediately returned to his post; half-an-hour elapsed, and no water came. The thirsty count had to repeat the order, and turning to the countess, he said, 'See what a poor man I am; I have more than a hundred and twenty servants in this house alone, and if I want a gla.s.s of water, I cannot have it.' The countess smiled at the poor man, and told him that if he was a good deal poorer, and had but one servant, he would be better attended on. The Countess Orloff, his daughter, who inherited his whole fortune, is said to have upwards of 800 servants of both s.e.xes in her palace at Moscow, and to maintain a special hospital for them."--_Von Littrow._

CHAPTER X.

DEPARTURE FOR THE CASPIAN--IEKATERINOSLAV--POTEMKIN'S RUINED PALACE--PASKEVITCH'S CAUCASIAN GUARD--SHAM FIGHT--INTOLERABLE HEAT--CATARACTS OF THE DNIEPR--GERMAN COLONIES--THE SETCHA OF THE ZAPOROGUES--A FRENCH STEWARD--NIGHT ADVENTURE--COLONIES OF THE MOLOSHNIA VODI--MR. CORNIES--THE DOUKOBOREN, A RELIGIOUS SECT.

About the middle of May, 1839, we left the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea, accompanied by a Cossack and an excellent dragoman, who spoke all the dialects current in Southern Russia. After we had travelled more than 100 leagues upwards along the banks of the Dniepr, we reached Iekaterinoslav, a new town, which about fifty years ago consisted only of some wretched fishermen's cabins, scattered along the margin of the river.

Iekaterinoslav, founded in 1784 by the great Catherine, who laid the first stone in the presence of the Emperor Joseph II., is built on such a gigantic plan as makes it a perfect wilderness, in which the spa.r.s.e houses and scanty population seem lost, as it were. Its wide and regular streets, marked out only by a few dwellings at long intervals, seem to have been planned for a million of souls; a whole government would have to be unpeopled to fill them, and give them that life and movement so necessary to a capital. But there seems no likelihood that time will fill up the void s.p.a.ces of this desert, for the number of its inhabitants has not much increased within forty years; it is a stationary town, which will probably never realise the expectations formed by the empress when she gave it her name. It contains, however, some large buildings, numerous churches, bazaars, and charming gardens.

But for the absurd mania of the Russians for planning their towns on an enormous scale, it would be a delightful abode, rich in its beautiful Dniepr and the fertile hills around it.

But Iekaterinoslav possesses one thing that distinguishes it from all the towns with which Russian civilisation is beginning to cover the south of the empire; and that is Potemkin's palace and garden. The palace is in ruins though it was built for Catherine II., barely sixty years ago. The indifference of the Russians for their historical monuments is so great, that they hasten to destroy them, merely to clear the ground of things that have ceased to be of use.

The government, despotic as it is, unfortunately has not the power to stay the instinctive vandalism of its people. We will give melancholy proofs of this by and by, when we come to speak of the ancient tombs of the Crimea, so rich in objects of art, and so precious for their antiquity, yet which, in spite of the pretended care of the police, are day by day disappearing before the barbarous cupidity of the peasants, and still more of the _employes_.

To judge from its remains, Potemkin's palace appears to have been one of truly royal magnificence; on each side are still standing wings which must have contained a great number of apartments. There is a profusion of colonnades, porticoes, capitals, and beautiful cornices in the Italian style of the period; but all is at the mercy of the first peasant who wants stones or wood to repair his cabin. The ground is all strewed over with shapeless fragments, blocks of stone, and broken shafts. Nothing can look more sad than such skeletons of monuments which no acc.u.mulated ages have hallowed, and which have not even a veil of ivy to hide their decrepitude, nor any thing to throw a cast of dignity over their blank disorder. The feeling they impart is like that produced by the effects of an earthquake: no lesson given by the past, nothing for the imagination to feed on: no chronicles, no poetry.

The haughty Catherine little suspected that one day the serfs would carry away piecemeal that magnificent edifice planned by the inventive genius of her favourite, at the most brilliant period of her life. It was there she rested from the fatigues of her fantastic journey, and prepared herself for the new wonders that awaited her in the Crimea.

The amorous sovereign of the largest empire in the world, left the ices of St. Petersburg, and performed a journey of 1800 versts, to visit the richest jewel added to her imperial crown, that enchanting Tauris which Potemkin laid at her feet.

At intervals all along the route from Iekaterinoslav to Kherson, stand little pyramids surrounded by a bal.u.s.trade, to mark the spots where the empress halted, changed horses, &c. In many places are still to be seen palaces that suddenly sprang up on her way, as if at the touch of an enchanter's wand. The whole tract of country is stamped with reminiscences of her grandeur, though she but pa.s.sed rapidly through these deserts, which were metamorphosed beneath her glance into smiling and populous plains.

Of all these ephemeral palaces, that of Iekaterinoslav was the most worthy to harbour the imperial beauty. It stands on a gentle slope descending to the Dniepr, and is still surrounded with a magnificent park, presenting an admirable variety of sites and views: forests, labyrinths, and granite rocks, clothed with rich vegetation, with paths so capricious, thickets so dense, and resting-places so mysterious, that every step reveals some token of the genius of a courtier, and the power of an empress.

Opposite the palace a little granite island lifts itself above the waters of the Dniepr like a Nereid. Its sole inhabitants are some white albatrosses and an old forest-keeper, whose cabin is hidden among trees.

He leads a true hermit life. His gun and his fis.h.i.+ng-tackle supply his food; the bushes and briars yield him firing, and thus he finds every thing requisite for his wants within the limits of his retreat. He has a nutsh.e.l.l of a boat, in which he can visit every nook of the island sh.o.r.e, which he shares with the fowls of the air. Except a few fishermen, no one ventures to thread that labyrinth of rocks and whirlpools that render the Dniepr so dangerous hereabouts.

Besides Potemkin's Park, the town has another of great beauty, which serves as a public promenade. It is crowded twice a week, when a military band performs. Its extent, its broad sheets of water, its shady alleys and fine expanse of lawn, make it one of the handsomest gardens I have seen in Russia.

We spent a week in Iekaterinoslav under the roof of an excellent French family long settled in the country. The cloth factory of Messrs. Neumann is the only industrial establishment in the town. Their machines, imported from France and England, and their thorough knowledge of their business, enable them to give the utmost perfection to their goods, notwithstanding which M. Neumann a.s.sured us that he should certainly be obliged to shut up his establishment before the lapse of two years. We have already set forth the causes that obstruct the progress of manufactures in Russia, and completely paralyse the industrial efforts of the ablest men.

During our stay in Iekaterinoslav, we had all the pleasure of an excursion into the mountains of Asia, without the trouble of changing our place. It is only in Russia one can encounter such lucky chances.

Three hundred mountaineers of the Caucasus arrived in the town, and by the governor's desire entertained the inhabitants with a display of their warlike games and exercises. They were on their way to Warsaw, to serve as a guard of honour for Paskevitch, the hero of the day. This whim of a man spoiled by fortune and the emperor, is tolerably characteristic of the Russians: merely to satisfy it, some hundreds of mountaineers had to quit their families, and traverse vast distances to go and parade on the great square of a capital.

The sight of those half-barbarians arriving like a torrent, and taking possession of the town as of a conquered place, was well calculated to excite our curiosity. We forgot time and place as we gazed on this unwonted spectacle, and seemed carried back among the gigantic invasions of Tamerlane, and his exterminating hordes of Asia, with their wild cries and picturesque costumes, swooping down with long lances and fiery steeds on old Europe, just as they appeared some centuries before, when they subjected all the wide domains of Russia to their sway.

These mountaineers are small, agile, and muscular. There is no saying how they walk, for their life is pa.s.sed on horseback. There is in the expression of their countenances, an inconceivable mixture of boldness, frankness, and fierce rapacity. Their bronzed complexion, dazzlingly white teeth, black eyes, every glance of which is a flash of lightning, and regular features, compose a physiognomy that terrifies more than great ugliness.

Their manoeuvres surpa.s.s every thing an European can imagine. How cold, prim, and faded seem our civilised ways compared with those impa.s.sioned countenances, those picturesque costumes, those furious gallops, that grace and impetuosity of movement, that belong only to them. They discharge their carbines on horseback at full speed, and display inimitable address in the exercise of the djereed. Every rider decks his steed with a care he does not always bestow on his own adornment, covering it with carpets, strips of purple stuffs, cashmere shawls, and all the costly things with which the plunder of the caravans can supply him.

The manoeuvres lasted more than two hours, and afforded us an exact image of Asiatic warfare. They concluded with a general _melee_, which really terrified not a few spectators, so much did the smoke, the shouts, the ardour of the combatants, the discharges of musketry, and the neighings of the horses complete the vivid illusion of the scene. It was at last impossible to distinguish any thing through the clouds of dust and smoke that whirled round the impetuous riders.

Paskevitch will perhaps be more embarra.s.sed with them than he expects.

From the moment these lions of the desert arrived, the town was in a state of revolution. The shopkeepers complained of their numerous thefts, and husbands and fathers were shocked at their cavalier manners towards the fair s.e.x.

Though it was but the beginning of June, the heat had attained an intensity that made it literally a public calamity. The hospitals were crowded with patients, most of them labouring under cerebral fevers, a cla.s.s of affections exceedingly dangerous in this country. The dust lay so thick in the street, that the foot sank in it as in snow, and for more than a fortnight the thermometer had remained invariably at 84 R.

You have but to visit Russia to know what is the heat of the tropics. We nevertheless carried away not a few agreeable recollections of Iekaterinoslav, thanks to its charming position, and some distinguished _salons_ of which it has reason to be proud.

On leaving Iekaterinoslav we proceeded to the famous cataracts of the Dniepr, on which attempts have been ineffectually made for more than a hundred years to render them navigable, and in the vicinity of which there are several German colonies.

My husband having in the preceding year discovered a rich iron mine in this locality, we had to stop some time to make fresh investigations. I have already spoken so much of the Dniepr, that I am almost afraid to return to the subject. In this part of its course, however, there is nothing like the maritime views of Kherson, the plavnicks of the Doutchina, or the cheerful bold aspect of the vicinity of Iekaterinoslav. Near the cataracts, the river has all the depth and calmness of a beautiful lake; not a ripple breaks its dark azure surface. Its bed is flanked by huge blocks of granite, that seem as though they had been piled up at random by the hands of giants. Every thing is grand and majestic in these scenes of primeval nature; nothing in them reminds us of the flight and the ravages of time. There are no trees shedding their leaves on the river's margin, no turf that withers, no soil worn away by the flood: the scene is an image of eternal changelessness.

The Dniepr has deeps here which no plummet has ever fathomed, and the inhabitants allege that it harbours real marine monsters in its abysses.

All the fishermen have seen the silurus, a sort of fresh water shark, capable of swallowing a man or a horse at a mouthful, and they relate anecdotes on this head, that transport you to the Nile or the Ganges, the peculiar homes of the voracious crocodile and alligator. One of these stories is of very recent date, and there are many boatmen who pretend to speak of the fact from personal knowledge. They positively aver, that a young girl, who was was.h.i.+ng linen on the margin of the water, was carried down to the bottom of the Dniepr, and that her body never again rose to the surface.

A German village is visible on the other side of the river, at some distance from the house of Mr. Masure, the proprietor of the mine. Its pretty red factories with their green window-shutters, the surrounding forest, and a neighbouring island with cliffs glistening in the sun, fill the mind with thoughts of tranquil happiness. On the distant horizon the eye discerns the rent and pointed rocks, and the fleecy spray of the cataracts. Here and there some rocks just rising above the water, one of which, surnamed the Brigand, is the terror of boatmen, are the haunts of countless water-fowl, whose riotous screams long pursue the traveller as he ferries across from bank to bank. All this scene is cheerful and pastoral, like one of Greuze's landscapes; but the bare hills that follow the undulations of the left bank show only dreariness and aridity.

The Germans settled below the cataracts of the Dniepr are the oldest colonists of Southern Russia: their colony was founded by Catherine II., in 1784, after the expulsion of the Zaporogue Cossacks, who were removed to the banks of the Kouban. It is composed solely of Prussian Mennonites, and comprises sixteen villages, numbering 4251 inhabitants, very industrious people, generally in the enjoyment of an ample competence. Corn and cattle form the staple of their wealth, but they are also manufacturers, and have two establishments for making cotton goods, and one for cloth. These Mennonites, however, have remained stationary since their arrival in Russia: full of prejudices, and intensely self-willed, they have set their faces against all innovation and all intellectual development. One of their villages stands on the island of Cortetz, in the Dniepr, once the seat of the celebrated Setcha of the Zaporogue Cossacks. The Setcha, as the reader is perhaps aware, was at first only a fortified spot, where the young men were trained to arms, and where the public deliberations and the elections of the chiefs were held. Afterwards it became the fixed abode of warriors who lived in celibacy; and all who aspired to a reputation for valour were bound to pa.s.s at least three years there. I went over the island of Cortetz, and saw everywhere numerous traces of fortifications and entrenched camps.

It would not have been easy to select a position more suited to the purpose the Cossacks had in view. The island is a natural fortress, rising more than 150 feet above the water, and defended on all sides by ma.s.ses of granite, that leave scarcely any thing for art to do to render it impregnable.

We made our first halt, after our departure from the cataracts, at the house of a village superintendent, in whom we discovered, with surprise, a young Frenchman, with the most Parisian accent I ever heard. He is married to a woman of the country, and has been two years _prigatchik_ (superintendent) in one of General Markof's villages. He placed his whole cabin at our disposal, with an alacrity that proved how delighted he was to entertain people from his native land. We had excellent honey, cream, and water-melons, set before us in profusion; but in spite of all our urgent entreaties, we could not prevail on him to partake with us.

This made a painful impression on us. Is the air of slavery so contagious that no one can breathe it without losing his personal dignity? This man, born in a land where social distinctions are almost effaced, voluntarily degraded himself in our eyes, by esteeming himself unworthy to sit by our side, just as though he were a born serf, and had been used from his childhood to servility.