THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/throughrussiaonmOOstev_0 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG BY • THOMAS STEVENS AUTHOR OF "AROUND THE WORLD OX A IHCYCLE," "SCOUTING FOR STANLEY IN EAST AFRICA," ETC. With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author NEW YORK CASSELE PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE Copyright, 1891, by CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY All rights reserved. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J. The story of a ride from Moscow to the Black Sea, made by the author last summer (1890) for the New York World, to report on the condition, manners, customs, etc., of the people of European Russia. The ride (about 1100 English miles through the heart of Russia) was made on a "Wild America" mustang, bought from the Carver-Whitney show (like Buffalo Bill's), that happened to be exhibiting in Moscow at the time. T. STEVENS. PREFACE. IN the following pages the author has endeavored to give an unbiased picture of the Russians and their country : as seen by him from the saddle, on a horse- back ride of more than one thousand miles through the heart of the country, from Moscow to Sevastopol; thence up the Don and the Volga to Nijni Novgorod. When in Moscow, preparing for the horseback journey, I was fortunate enough to enlist the enthu- siasm of Sascha Kritsch, a young Russian who had just completed his studies, and was eager to distin- guish himself by a noteworthy achievement in the saddle before joining the cavalry. He could speak English, and both as an interpreter and a companion I found him of much value. He accompanied me as far as Ekaterinoslav, about two thirds of the distance to the Black Sea, when the heat and fatigue of the southern steppes, together with the suspicions and vexatious interference of the police, caused him to dis- pose of his horse and return to Moscow by rail. I may say that, in so far as I permitted myself the indulgence of preconceived ideas, my wish was to exploit the better, rather than the more objectionable, features of the government, and the economic and political conditions of the country. Before the ride vii viii PREFACE. was half finished, however, I found myself compelled to admit that matters were very bad, indeed. The harshest feature of the many harsh sides of life in Russia, to an American, is the utter absence of con- stitutional rights. Individuals have no rights in Russia. They exist in peace and breathe the air outside a prison cell solely on the sufferance of the police, whose authority over them is practically that of deputy despots in their capacity as representatives of the Czar. When I first reached St. Petersburg, I wrote home of the agreeable impression that was made on me by see- ing the Czar driving freely about the streets, with scarcely any escort. Before leaving Russia, however, I discovered that, in order to make this sort of thing possible, the Czar's Chief of Police summarily expels from the capital no less than fifteen thousand persons every year, or an average of over forty a day. Tourists and casual visitors from America and Europe see the Czar driving about in this manner, but they know nothing of the other side of the picture — of the steady streams of " suspects " and others driven from the city, three fourths of whom are probably innocent of evil intent, and so they come away with rosy and erroneous impressions, thinking they have seen Russia. Those who have seen merely St. Petersburg and Moscow, have seen little or nothing of real Russia, nor even if they have made the grand tour across the country by rail, and up or down the Volga. These tourists have glided over the surface of Russia, their path made smooth and agreeable by the imported polish of the West ; but they have not been in it. PREFACE. ix Russia has within its vast area resources that should make its future as promising as the future of the United States. The development of the country from this time forward offers a field of profound speculation for prophetic statesmen and political seers. That a nation of 120,000,000 people, chiefly Caucasians, are to be kept in bondage forever is out of the question. Hopeless as the outlook seems at present for the masses of the Russian people, all history teaches that the day of their emancipation will, sooner or later, come. The best solution of the situation that could be hoped for, would, perhaps, be a progressive and liberal Czar, who would have sufficient courage and energy to give the country a constitutional govern- ment, a free press, and religious liberty. If this be too long delayed, and the autocracy should survive the fall of European militarism, which is inevitable, civili- zation will develop an "age of humanitarianism " when the American, the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Teuton, will recognize the Russian as a brother, and see to it that he is relieved of his shackles. The Author. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. St. Petersburg, . I II. TCHUDOVO* AND THE PRISTAV, 23 III. Planning the Ride • 37 IV. The Start from Moscow, . 56 V. On the Czar's Highway, • 7i VI. With Count TolstoI, . • 92 VII. Among the Moujiks, . 116 VIII. Scenes on the Road, . 126 IX. Into Malo Russia, . X. Susricious Peasants, 153 XI. Nuns and Convents, . 170 XII. Stopped by the Police, 182 XIII. A Searching Cross-Examination, • 199 XIV. My Interpreter Returns, . 216 XV. On the Crimean Steppes, • 237 XVI. Up the Don and Volga, 251 XVII. At Nijni Novgorod, . 270 XVIII. 281 XIX. Orthodox Church and Priests, 297 XX. Russian Women, .... 313 XXI. A National Characteristic, . 324 xi LIST. OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FACING PAGE THOMAS STEVENS, ------ Title ROADSIDE VODKA-SHOP, - 2\ POST STATION ON STEPPE, ----- 50 RESTING AT WAYSIDE INN, ----- 70 HARVEST TIME, - 84 FEMALE PILGRIMS, - - 104 GIRL HOSTLER, - - - - - - - I 20 STEPPE CATTLE-WELL, ------ 140 COSSACK CEMETERY, , 160 STEPPE FLOUR MILL, l8o CRIMEAN SHEPHERDS, -.---«- 200 TARTARS OF THE CRIMEA, ----- 220 ORTHODOX VILLAGE PRIEST, ----- 240 WATER-MELON VENDERS, ------ 260 TARTAR FURRIERS AT NIJNI NOVGOROD, - - 280 MOUJIKS AT THE NIJNI FAIR, - .... 30O xiii THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. OR the second time I w as bound for the Land of 1 the Czar. But this time I was to enter it by a different door, in a different manner, and for a differ- ent purpose. My previous entrance had been inci- dental ; this was to be special. In 1886, when on my bicycle ride across Asia, Russian suspicion had barred my road through Turkestan, and the Afghans had ar- rested me and turned me back into Persia, after I had pierced into their forbidden country to within three hundred miles of Quctta. So, in June of that year, when, in order to overcome this hundred-league bar- rier it became necessary to reach the free roads of India by a roundabout journey of six thousand miles, I saw something of Russia in the Caucasus and on the shores of the Caspian Sea. My impressions were not favorable to the Russian rule. At the wharves of Baku, I, for the first time in my life, had seen smart, uniformed policemen strike people smashing blows in the face with clenched fist, and kick them most brutally in the stomach, for what in England or America would have called forth a mere gruff order to " move on," or at most a threatening push. From page 257, vol. 2, " Around the World on CHAPTER I. ST. PETERSBURG. 1 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. a Bicycle," I quote, writing of my impressions of Baku: " Everywhere, everywhere, hovers the shadow of the police. One seems to breathe dark suspicion and mis- trust in the very air. The people in the civil walks of life all look like whipped curs. They wear the expres- sion of people brooding over some deep sorrow. The crape of dead liberty seems to hang on every door-knob. Nobody seems capable of smiling; one would think the shadow of some great calamity is hanging gloomily over the city. Nihilism and discontent run riot in the cities of the Caucasus ; government spies and secret police are everywhere, and the people on the streets betray their knowledge of the fact by talking little, and always in guarded tones." Such was the impression made on the author by his first visit to Russian soil. Was this impression in any degree the result of disgust at having been humbugged by the Russian Minister, at Teheran, about permission to ride through Merve, Samarkand, and Tashkend ? That gentleman had promised me, with Oriental polite- ness of tongue, that " all obstacles should be removed from my road through Turkestan." With the inno- cence of one whose experience of Russian officialdom was yet of the future, I had believed that the tongue of a Russian diplomat, like the tongue of any other person, was given him to express his thoughts and in- tentions, and not to conceal them ; and so, on the strength of the promise, I rode three hundred miles across the Persian deserts, there to find that orders had been telegraphed to stop me at the frontier. Commenting on this, a reviewer of my book in the ST. PETERSBURG. 3 New York Times, himself a distinguished traveler, observed : " Possibly this reverse may have been still fuddling the clear spirit of our author when he reached Baku Mr. Stevens was probably of the same way of thinking (just then) as that energetic traveler who wished that the last Russian would murder the last Turk, and be hanged for doing it." Nearly four years, mainly devoted to travel and ad- venturous undertakings, had mellowed this gloomy reminiscence of the Russians, and had broadened my experience of mankind in general. Perhaps, after all, there might have been something in the book reviewer's suggestions, that I was not then in a sufficiently amia- ble frame of mind to do Muscovy justice. However this may have been, such was not the case as the author stepped aboard an Atlantic liner, May I, 1890, bound for Russia, on a special mission for the New York World. For many years the people of America had taken a friendly interest in Russia. We had been, in trying times, the recipient of courtesies from its government, and our sympathies had gone out to it as -a great nation of people groaning under the oppressive rule of an autocracy, which is the extreme antithesis of our own institutions. Our position in regard to its gov- ernment had been peculiar. From our own point of view the Czar's government cannot appear otherwise than as a monstrous enemy to the very principles that are the life-blood of all that we hold dear and precious in the name of liberty, fraternity, and justice ; yet we have accepted courtesies at its hands as from the hands of a bosom friend. Now and then our sentiments in 4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. regard to it have been rudely shocked by revelations of a more or less revolting nature as to its methods of dealing with the people in its power. Our interest in it became painfully intensified as the Siberian revela- tions of Mr. Kennan were unfolded in the Century Magazine. So revolting was this picture of barbarity and admin- istrative corruption that many of our people, whose kindly remembrance of Russian courtesies influenced their prejudices and biased their better feelings in its favor, could not but receive them with a spirit of won- dering skepticism. The Russians were keenly sensitive to the criticisms of the people of America concerning them, more so than to the opinions of any other nation. A rebuke from us seemed to them like a rebuke from a friend. They are thicker-skinned in regard to England. Abuse and bias from the press and people of England, many Russians have come to regard as a foregone conclu- sion. They think the great dailies of England will publish eagerly anything and everything of a disrepu- table and abusive nature about Russia, and refuse, like the Jews in regard to Nazareth, to believe that anything good can come out of it. This is the inev- itable consequence of the political tension between the two empires. But they expected from us, at least, an impartial judgment equally as to their good quali- ties and their imperfections. It was because they re- garded America as a country with which they have ever been on the friendliest terms, that made the Rus- sians feel apprehensive lest the Kennan articles should cause them to be wholly misunderstood, and blind us ST. PETERSBURG. 5 to the better side of their nature. One cannot, of course, say anything in this connection of the 119,- 900,000, out of Russia's 120,000,000, who never heard of the Century nor Mr. Kennan, and who have as vague ideas of the world beyond the limited horizon of their village communes (mirs) as the Persian ryot in Khor- assan, who once asked me if America was in London. There was little to be learned of the true Russia in St. Petersburg. In Russia the investigator very soon discovers that he is sojourning in what may fairly be termed a dual country. There is the Russia of St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Czar, the army, politics, exiles, Siberia, — of which we read and hear from day to day, — and there is the Russia of the peasants, the villages, the country-side, " domestic Russia," of which we hear, and many of us know, next to nothing. By writing too confidently at the beginning, one may easily lay himself open to the sort of criticism bestowed on the English tourist, who rides in a parlor-car from New York to San Francisco and then goes home and writes a book about America. Though St. Petersburg is deceptive as a glimpse of Russia, it is an Imperial city, magnificent as to churches and public edifices, statuary and monuments, and interesting in the life that ebbs and flows in its streets. St. Petersburg is the rouge and enamel that the sallow, ill-looking tragedienne of the mediaeval part that Russia is playing in the drama of nations, wears, beautifying herself, and coquetting successfully with many who see her and fancy she is Russia. St. Petersburg itself is charming. I sat for an hour one day in the window of a cafe 6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. on the famous Nevski Prospekt. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and a fine, sunny day. All the Russian world and his wife seemed to be driving, walking, hurrying, idling past the window on this Broadway of the Russian capital. The most numerous passers-by, and to the new- comer the most Russian and interesting, were the drosky-drivers, the isvoshchics and their " fares." Like Washington, St. Petersburg is a city of magnificent distances. Everybody rides ; fares are cheap ; and there are twenty-five thousand public drosky-drivers in the city plying for hire. The isvoshchic and his costume are peculiarly Russian. The latter has not changed for ages, and apart from youth and age, whiskers and no whiskers, there is not the splitting of a hair between any of the five-and-twenty thousand public " kebbies " in the Czar's capital. There are isvoshchics at fourteen, young in face but old in iniquity, and isvoshchics of seventy-five, bearded like pards and supremely artful, in bargaining with the foreigner about the priGe of a drive. The summer costume of the isvoshchic is an ideal garb for winter from the point of view of anybody but a Russian. He is enveloped in an enormous overcoat of heavy dark-blue cloth that descends to his heels and is gathered about his waist by a gay-colored band. Top boots, heavy and prodigal of leather, incase his feet and legs ; and even on this warm June day a dis- arrangement of the big blue over-garment revealed a sheepskin coat, of similar dimensions, underneath. But the crowning glory of the drosky-driver is his Sr. PETERSBURG. 7 hat. Imagine a " stove-pipe " hat, six inches tall, with a very rakish brim and a very expansive crown, some- thing like the hats of the ancient and honorable beef-eaters at the Tower of London, and you see any one of the 30,000 coachmen's hats of St. Peters- burg. I say 30,000, because there are, beside the public isvoshchics, about five thousand private coachies, similarly dressed. The only difference between the public and private isvoshchics is that the latter look about three times larger than the former. All the private isvoshchics are men of Falstaffian girth. Some are of a truly startling circumference ; their stomachs bulging out like barrels, and the breadth of their figure more than fills the seat of the drosky. The thinness of the face often contrasts ludicrously with the vast proportions of the body, for the amplitude of the latter is not flesh but padding. The impression that the private coach- man desires to make upon the world at large is that he is the "well-fed servant of a generous man." To this end, huge pads, like pillows, are fastened about the body, and over them is wrapped the all-concealing overcoat. To complete the deception, the colored waistband pinches into the padding, as if the chief concern of the owner of this vast wealth of fat were to reduce his girth, if such an impossible thing were possible. Whilst every private isvoshchic in Russia is thus a living lie in his figure, every public one is likewise a perambulating Ananias in a way that more directly concerns the pockets of the public. Every drive you take in St. Petersburg has to be bargained for in ad- 8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. vance. The "rates are cheaper than in any other European capital, being only fifty kopecks, or about thirty cents an hour. The St. Petersburg isvoshchic is known as the most reasonable of the fraternity in Russia ; he rarely demands more than three times his proper fare, and as a general thing not even twice as much as he is willing to accept. He is good-natured and remarkably patient about finding an address. He is polite — of the Orient, Ori- ental. He rarely gives you a decided negative if he doesn't wish to drive where you desire to go, but takes refuge in his horse, telling you that it is weary, lazy, or ailing, and does not want to work. The isvoshchic is superstitious and fearful. Every little way, as he drives you along, he passes an ikon or shrine, at each of which he removes his abbreviated cylinder and crosses himself at the forehead, mouth and breast. His fear is centered on the Chief of Police of St. Petersburg. The isvoshchic is rarely obstreper- ous, but if he is, "I'll tell Gresser " (or whoever hap- pens to be chief), brings matters to a speedy conclusion by immediately reducing him to a humble and appre- hensive frame of mind. His horse is small and his vehicle little larger than the old-fashioned invalid chairs one sometimes meets, with gouty old gentlemen in them, in the parks at home. A peculiarity o f the " fares," if a lady and gentle- man, is that the latter usually has his arm about his companion's waist. The Russian explanation is that without this precaution the lady might tumble out. The levity and penetration of the American mind, ST. PETERSBURG. 9 however, refuses to accept this practical view of the matter in all cases. And there certainly passed by the cafe window many a couple who, oblivious of the public eye, betrayed a decidedly sentimental interpretation of the relations between waist and arm. So prevalent is this custom that an exception excites attention. About five per cent, of the ladies, old or young-, who passed by the cafe window were victims of the tooth- ache and had a swollen and bandaged jaw. Tooth- ache is the commonest malady of the St. Petersburg fair sex. The St. Petersburg girl of the period stays up late, lies abed till noon, takes no exercise, and lives on sweets and pickles. Her punishment is the tooth- ache, dentist's bills, a toothless old age, and a very bad complexion. Good teeth are rare with city ladies, and a fresh complexion is seldom seen on the streets. Half the men who passed were in uniform and, warm as it was, like the isvoshchics, wore big overcoats. The wearing of overcoats in summer is a Russian peculiarity. One of our popular impressions of the Russian is that he can stand more cold than a polar bear. Such, however, is not the case, at all events with the city Russian. An American or European who visits St. Petersburg or Moscow in the winter can stand the cold better than a resident. He can stand it out- doors with thinner clothes on, and is altogether less sensitive to the nose-nipping Russian frost. The Rus- sian becomes a polar bear in winter, not because he can stand the cold, but because he cannot. All the people in military uniforms who passed by, however, were not soldiers. You see little shavers of ten or twelve years old trudging along in military over- IO THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. coat and trappings. These are young students, who are required to wear uniforms, conspicuous colors and trimmings for the different schools for purposes of iden- tification. The newsboys also wear uniforms. A troop of Cossacks passed by, all big, fine fellows, belonging to one of the crack regiments, all riding splendid black stallions, sixteen hands high, spirited and glossy. A private carriage, an English-built brougham, with a magnificent team, and gold-laced lackeys on the box, dashed by. It belonged to one of the legations, and lolling in the seat, in a studiedly negligent attitude, was Madame, the Ambassador's wife, alone in her glory, en route to the Islands — Vasili Ostrof — for her regular evening drive. A string of twelve droskies filed past, each one con- taining a big Russian greyhound and a keeper in a red shirt. They belonged to some sporting nobleman, and were bound for the railway station to be taken some- where out in the country to an estate for a day's coursing for hares. A man in a suit of white coarse canvas, and with a brand on the back, tramped along between two police- men with drawn swords. He was a prisoner. His face was pale, showing that he had been in confine- ment some time. Otherwise, he looked no different from his keepers, with whom he chatted freely as they walked past. An aged couple tried to halt a tram, which, like the street car of London, carried passengers both inside and on the roof. The conductor shook them a nega- tive. His car was carrying the number permitted by ST. PETERSBURG. 1 1 law, and no such confusion and overcrowding are allowed as in New York. Another one came along. The old couple tried it again and were again refused. Finally they hailed a passing isvoshchic, and, bargain- ing with him awhile, drove off. An economical party of four from the country drove past, all piled in one small drosky, two women sitting in two men's laps. Workmen strolled along, nine out often in top boots and red shirts. The red shirts were outside the trousers. A waistcoat was worn, but no coat, and the trousers were slouchily tucked inside the boots. Mingled with the throng were moujiks from the country, visiting " Pater-boorg," perhaps, for the first time in their lives. They wore dirty sheepskin coats, shockingly bad caps, home-made foot-gear of the rudest pattern and material, and their shock heads seemed to have been trimmed for the visit to the city by placing a bowl on the top, upside down, and clip- ping around it. They looked like savages — as incon- gruous and out of place on the Nevski as Indians would on Fifth Avenue, New York. Nurse-maids from Finland, or from Little Russia, rode by in the family carriage with their charges. They wore a wonderful dress of gorgeous colors and gold embroidery, and a sort of beaded brass, silver or gold crown on the head. Young lady students passed in little troops or alone, carrying portfolios bearing the word " Musique." Music was the fad of the day in St. Petersburg. All the young ladies were raving over " musique." Next season the craze would be — who can say? I was told that one of the latest fads with them was the study of 12 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. midwifery. Everything in the student life, especially the girl student life, is faddy and eccentric. It is the spasmodic attempt of the intellectual Russian youth to find some employment, some scope for their energy and ambition, in a field where there is next to no intellectual employment at all. A small crowd was gathering on the street corner, as I left my window in the cafe. The Czar was coming in from Peterhoff and would drive this way, I did not wait, for I had seen him and the Empress before. The Emperor and Empress were almost as much in evi- dence as the President in Washington. When the Czar and the Italian heir-apparent, who was visiting St. Petersburg, drove down the Nevski, it was down a lane through the assembled and applauding populace, on which scarcely a soldier or a policeman was to be seen. The people were under less restraint than a New York crowd is at any popular gathering. All this impressed me, a new arrival, with a sense of agreeable surprise. Yes ; St. Petersburg, consummate actress and gay deceiver that she is, was bewitching, disporting herself, arrayed in the focused glories of an empire, to the ad- miration of an audience of pleasure-seeking tourists from everywhere. The pageantry of the Czar's capital was ever on the move across the stage. To- day the christening and launching of an ironclad ; to- morrow a priestly procession along the Nevski, a glittering cavalcade of monks in golden vestments, in honor of the Emperor's name-day ; the next day, a military review. One day I resolved to leave this pomp and Imperial ST. PETERSBURG. 13 greatness, and experience the contrast of a sudden change from the Elysian glories of Peterhoff to the huts of a typical village seventy miles away. Peter- hoff is an Imperial summer residence on the gulf of Finland ; grounds peopled with gilded statuary, amid a magnificent system of fountains. Mr. Steveni of the London Daily Chronicle, a resi- dent correspondent, went with me toTchudovo. Tchudovo is about one hundred versts (seventy miles) from St. Petersburg, in the direction of Moscow, a village in the district government of Novgorod. A Russian village is in appearance the counterpart of many small towns in the Western States. The first impression of the writer, who knows the West very well, was that he had stumbled into one of those slowly decaying backwood villages in Missouri or Illinois that have fallen out of joint and behind the times because the railway didn't come through their section of the country. Tchudovo is situated in a country as level and dreary as the dreariest part of any of the prairie States. The land belonging to the village was a big clearing in a level forest country that presented to the eye no single point of interest be- yond the people and their mode of life. The village was like all Russian villages, except that many of the houses were two-storied. It consisted of two rows of houses, between which ran Peter the Great's broad military road to Novgorod. A few of the houses were of brick, but most were of wood. Here as everywhere, though the uniformity of architecture was striking, evidences of wealth and poverty came within the orbit of a glance. Some of the houses were fairly toppling 1 4 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA JVC about their occupant's heads, and in no country of the world (and I had been in twenty-four), had I seen peo- ple so wretchedly lodged as part of the population of Tchudovo. Many, however, were good, comfortable board or log houses, comparable to the houses of eighty-acre farmers in the West. Half the houses might, perhaps, come under this description ; one fourth of them would be considered by us as wholly unfit for human habitation, and the remainder were superior dwellings, from the American farmer's stand- point, including one which might fairly be termed a mansion. There was a bakery, in front of which, on a rude bench, a row of huge rye loaves were exposed for sale. There were three or four general stores, the counter- parts of the American corner grocery, and as many vodka and mead and kwass shops. There was the inev- itable village smithy and a school ; towering over all was a large white church, surmounted by four blue domes and a blue spire. Both church and mansion were of Graeco-Corinthian architecture, a fact that led one to suspect that the founder of the church and the former occupant of the mansion, before the emancipa- tion of the serfs in 1861, was the nobleman who owned the land and peasantry of the district. We made our way to the blacksmith shop, here, as in the West, often the gossiping place of the village, and entered into conversation with the blacksmith, a man of fifty, his son and assistant, a young man of twenty- five, and a ragged moujik, all of whom took off their hats as we entered and sat down. As many of my readers already know, the Russian villages are communes of ST. PETERSBURG. "J peasants who own their land in common. Except for the disturbing influences of insolvent peasants who have recklessly got over their heads in debt, or from other causes, have become landless, the Russian village commune or mir is a collection of families and kins- folk who own the right of tillage each to a certain portion of their common land. This is the ideal mir. But with the mir as with everything else, in Russia as elsewhere, the real and the ideal seldom agree. The mir of Tchudovo, the blacksmith said, contained 2000 people, of which something over 500 were " souls," that is to say, sharers in the land. The rest were the children, small shopkeepers and vodka-sellers, the ''pope" or priest, the grain merchant who lived in the mansion of the former nobleman, and landless " bat- raks," who worked for wages at anything they could find to do. The blacksmith's son was the most intel- ligent of the three. We asked him about the mir and the various things that make up the sum and sub- stance of the Russian peasant's life. The people of Tchudovo, he said, had been wiser than many of their neighbors. The mirs had a right to borrow money from the banks or from private capitalists, giving the land as security. Many had done this, and by pledging themselves to ruinous terms were in sorry straits, having hard work to keep their heads above water and pay their taxes. "We have had better sense, though," said he, smil- ing with the peculiar grin of a simple rustic soul who is not to be easily taken in, " and have never borrowed money, and so our mir is very well off." " If your mir is well off, why, then, are there so many i 6 THRO UGH R US SI A OJV A MUS TA NG. batraks (men without land who work for wages) here ? " " Men and mirs are very much alike," he returned ; "some are wise and some foolish. Most men become batraks because they have foolishly borrowed money, and, being unable to repay, their horses and cows have been sold, and they have lost their power to cultivate any of the mir's land. Every member of the mir has the right to work a share of the land for the support of his family and the payment of his taxes, a large or small portion according to the number of persons capable of field-work and tax-payment in the family ; but with the loss of his horses and the means of work- ing land he is no longer a moujik, but a batrak, a man who would starve but for charity or work given him by others. " " What is the hardest thing about the way you are governed ? " " The taxes," sang out our hearers in one voice, and the countenances of all lit up, and tongues wagged vol- ubly in eager rivalry to tell their tale of woe. " So the government taxes you pretty heavily, does it?" " No, no; the government gets but very little of it. If the government knew all that happens to the moujik, it would pity him. The government taxes the mir and the mir taxes the individual. The elders collect the taxes and go off to Novgorod and drink vodka and eat caviar with the Novgorod officials, then come back and demand more taxes. It would be much better for us all if the Czar could sweep away everybody that stands between the Imperial Government and the ST. PETERSBURG. people, and have no elders, no officers of any kind. The more officials who have the handling of our taxes and the management of our affairs, the worse for us." " But the mir has the election of its own officers. If the present starosta (mayor) and the elders are dis- honest and grasping, why don't you elect honest men, like the blacksmith there, in their places? " " The blacksmith doesn't know how to read and write," they laughed; " how could he be starosta? We have tried to remedy matters, but the educated people are too sharp for us ; they always manage to keep in office whomever they choose, and the wisest moujik keeps his mouth shut closest. The elders assess each one of us the amount of taxes he has to pay, the amount of work to be done on the roads with- out pay, and have the regulation of everything in the mir. If I am their friend, they take care that my share of the taxes shall be light and my work on the roads easy, and when the Czar demands soldiers they will pass by my son and pick out the son of a moujik who has made himself objectionable to them by grumbling at them and voting against them at the elections. There are moujiks in the mir who pay next to no taxes at all, and moujiks who have to work away from home like batraks, besides tilling their land, to get money enough to pay their taxes. It is the same in nearly every mir. If every man had a good heart the mirs would be happy and prosperous, the moujiks well fed and clad, and our taxes would be light and easily paid. But every mir is a house of intrigue, in which the moujik is, in one way or another, cheated out of most of his earnings." i8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. " Then you have nothing to complain of about the St. Petersburg government ? " The group in the smithy had increased by this time to a half-dozen. The eagerness and intelligence which they all displayed in discussing their own affairs, in striking contrast to their ignorance of the outer world, was something remarkable. It was easy to imagine that if these peasants were only decently educated they would be a different people. They are born village politicians. Their faces were animated and bright, and from their eyes shone a light which was the lamp of an uncultured intelligence, which enabled them to understand, if not to remedy, their grievances. They were extremely good-natured about it all, how- ever. A reform that they were looking forward to, and expecting great things of, was a distinct reaction- ary move in the direction of local autocracy. The peri- odical peasant courts were to be done away with, they said, and in their stead were to be individual officers, a species of cadi, appointed from St. Petersburg. The fact that they preferred to have their cases tried by a single judge, rather than in an organized court, was a significant straw showing the bent of the uncultured Russian mind. All the lesser cases among the Russian peasantry, both civil and criminal, are decided by the mir on the basis of custom and common sense, though it is very certain that the justice meted out by the elders and starostas of the mirs is, like the collection of the taxes, too often a warped and unjust thing, manipulated by the intriguers and wire-pullers of the commune. It was plainly evident that the group of poor ragamuffin ST. PETERSBURG. 19 moujiks in the blacksmith shop of Tchudovo would pre- fer to place all their affairs in the hands of one reason- ably honest stranger than to submit them to even their own rural assembly. Yet theirs was a comparatively prosperous community. They stated with pride that their mir was free from debt, and with still greater pride they pointed to their church and told us that it was richer than even the churches in Novgorod. "No," they replied, to our last question. "St. Petersburg doesn't bother us much. The Czar takes only five young men each year for soldiers. They have to be twenty-one years of age, and they are chosen by the starosta and elders of the mir." They then went on, in reply to other questions, to talk about the Czar. The Czar Alexander III, they said, was a good man, who introduced many reforms (the peasants use a number of English words, such as reform, bank, per cent.), and if some of them didn't work very well for the moujik it was not his fault, but the fault of the local officials, or circumstances over which he had no control. They spoke affectionately of the late Emperor Alexander II, who, they said, freed " the Christians." The Russian peasants never called themselves serfs, but Christians, and so consider themselves. The term as applied to them originated with the Mongols, of Ghcngis Khan. When the Mon- gols conquered and enslaved them, they called them Christians as a term of contempt. The moujiks accep- ted the appellation as a compliment and an honor, and have stuck to it ever since. To the moujik everything Russian is sacred. Russia is Holy Russia, the Czar is God's elected, the Russian army is the Orthodox army, THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. the Church the Orthodox and only true church, and the Russians are Christians, as distinct from foreigners, who are heretics. We asked them about America. They had heard of it, but knew nothing about where it was. They asked if it was a good country to live in. " In America," I replied, " every man is his own Czar, and nobody has to be a soldier unless he wants to." "That may be good for America," they said, shaking their shock heads, " but not for us. For us, our Czar is much better." " Here you have to work for five rubles a month," I pursued ; " in America a workman earns as much in one day. Why don't you go to America, like the Germans? " " It is true that we work hard and get small pay, but it is better to remain in Russia and be poor than to live elsewhere and grow rich. It is all very well for the Germans, but we like Mother Russia best of all." How devoted they seemed, these rag-bedecked, soft-spoken, polite peasants — how loyal to Mother Russia and the Czar! The only grievances you could wring from them by questioning on all points was against their own local and nominally self-elected officials. We passed the night in the house of a moujik, who, from the peasant's standpoint, would be neither rich nor poor. His house was leaning sadly to one side and the back wall of it had disappeared, leaving the rear rooms exposed ; but he owned a horse and rattletrap telega and cultivated land for two souls, — himself and ST. PETERSBURG. 21 wife, — and was assessed taxes proportionately. His taxes amounted to about fifteen rubles a year and whatever share of public work the assembly of the mir assessed him. When all the family were at home they numbered nine persons. The good wife prided herself immensely on having been a domestic in the family of " noble-born " people before her marriage. She and her husband ; their eldest daughter and her husband ; the mother, an ancient dame ; two sons ; a younger daughter, and a two-year-old embryo moujik, who took a tremendous fancy to the author, owing to the bestowal of a lump of sugar on our first acquaint- ance, all occupied two stuffy little rooms up-stairs. The greater part of the space was taken up by a monster tiled stove, on the top of which, our hostess informed us, the entire family slept in the winter. It was difficult to see how so many people could manage it, unless some of them slept two deep ; but the woman said there was plenty of room. The chief room was about ten feet square. In it was a bed, an old lounge, a table, three chairs, a chest of drawers, two large brass samovars, four ikons or holy pictures, before one of which was a cup with oil and taper. The ikons are heirlooms in the families of the Russian peasantry, as also are the samovars. These are the most precious of the moujiks' household gods. There is a saying among them, " If your house is on fire, save the ikon and samovar first, then the children." More children will come, they say, but if the ikon and the samovar are lost, the saints will be angry about the ikon, and a samovar costs many rubles. The household cradle was a curiosity. The roof of 22 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. the room was low. A ring and staple were in the cen- ter. Through the ring was thrust a pole. At one end was suspended a cage-like cot for the baby, and the other end was above the mother's pillow. By reaching up and working the lever, the latest arrival in his cot could be danced up and down, or swung about, pendu- lum-fashion, by his mother. CHAPTER II. TCHUDOVO AND THE PRIST AV. THE day was a holiday in Tchudovo. We were seated on a rude bench, talking to the starosta, on the afternoon of May 28. Although it was neither saint's day nor Sunday, the peasants were arrayed in every bit of cheap finery they possessed. The holiday was special. Sotniac Paishkoff, cen- turion, or captain, of 100 Cossacks, started May 7, 1889, on one of the most remarkable horseback rides that had ever been made. The greatest feat of this kind heretofore known to the Russians was that of a military officer a few years before, from Moscow to Paris, on which ride, however, two horses were used. Paishkoff's ride was from Albazinski, a station of the Cossacks of the Amoor, a day's ride from the Pacific coast at the mouth of the Amoor, to St. Petersburg. The distance is over seven thousand vcrsts, or about five thousand miles, and the trip was made on one horse. Orders had therefore been sent from St. Petersburg, during the latter part of Paishkoff's journey, to have every attention shown him, and police escort provided from day to day. A small convoy of Cossacks, from the " Czarevitch's Own " Cossack regiment, were dis- patched to Novgorod to escort him in to St. Peters- burg, a four days' ride, and a whole regiment was to 23 2 4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. meet him outside the capital. He was to be promoted and receive an order and a pension. Paishkoff was expected to pass through Tchudovo that evening. The street was gay with colors, in which the red shirts of the moujiks predominated. A red calico shirt, black velvet trousers, and knee-boots, con- stitute the moujik's ideal costume. The whole popu- lation of the village was streaming leisurely in one direction. Fifty or more small boys were marshaled in a troop and, under the direction of the school-master, marched in very good step, singing lustily as they tramped, after the manner of Russian soldiers. A deputation of old men came up where we were sitting and proposed to the starosta that, for the honor of the mir, he should proceed along the road at the head of the people to meet and welcome Paishkoff. " Nay, nay, brothers," demurred the starosta, " when the Cossack comes I will have the samovar ready with tea ; but from Novgorod is a long ride, and perhaps he will not arrive before morning." The starosta was right in his surmises. The Cossack rider didn't appear that evening. We passed the night in the moujik's house, and early next morning hired our host to drive us out on the Novgorod road to meet him. We met the popular hero a few miles out, and, turn- ing, kept pace with him back to Tchudovo. With him were the escort from the Czarevitch's regiment, an infantry officer from Vladimir, a rural mounted police- man, and a couple of Russian newspaper correspond- ents. Paishkoff turned out to be a small, wiry man, twenty- TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 25 seven years old, with a pleasant face of almost mahog- any darkness from the long exposure to the dry, wintry winds of Siberia. He wore the Cossack lamb's-wool hat, leather jacket and trousers, with a broad yellow stripe down the latter, and heavy jack-boots. He was armed with a British bull-dog revolver and a small sword. His horse was a big-barreled, stocky gray pony, about fourteen hands high, the exact counterpart of horses one sees by the score in the broncho herds of Wyoming and Colorado. He was well chosen for his task. He was all barrel, hams, and shoul- ders. His neck and head seemed scarcely to be parts of the same horse. His pace was a fast, ambling walk that carried him over the ground at five miles an hour and left the big chargers of the Czarevitch's Cos- sacks far to the rear. The escort had to trot occa. sionally to catch up. The gallant little gray was as sleek and well-conditioned as if he had just come out of a clover pasture. Paishkoff raised his cap in reply to our salutation, and when my companion said that 1 was from America, lifted it again. " We belong almost to the same part of the world," said he, smilingly, " only the sea is between us. We have both traveled a long way, you by ship and train, I on horseback." The Cossack officer, though pleasant, was inclined to be rather taci- turn, and we talked more with the newspaper men than with him, calling upon him occasionally for con- firmation. One of the reporters was Sergie Riskin, from the Moscow Listok ; the other was the Novgorod correspondent of the St. Petersburg Novosti. The 26 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. latter gentleman handed me a card, on which his name and profession were set forth modestly as follows: " Neil Ivanovitch Bogdanoffsky, correspondent Nor- thern Telegraph Agency, of the gazette Novosti, and of the Society of Russian Dramatic Authors and Operatic Composers, Novgorod. Own house and own horse." The last item of Mr. Bogdanoffsky's identity meant that he lived in his own house and rode his own horse ; that is to say, he was a free-lance as distinct from Mr. Sergie Riskin and kindred members of the profession, who are employees at a few rubles a month and a house to live in, and who, when called upon to under- take a horseback journey, have to ride a hired animal or one belonging to the newspaper. Mr. Riskin did most of the talking. Alluding to the Cossack's taciturnity : " Paishkoff is a man of deeds," said he, " rather than words. He is small in stature, yet bigger than all the Cossacks of his escort put together." Riskin had accompanied the Cossack from Nijni- Novgorod, sending daily reports of his progress to the Listok. Whether a man of deeds himself, he was most decidedly a man of words. He was jolly, yet in de- spair. His paper, he said, had given him 1500 rubles to cover expenses from Nijni-Novgorod td St. Peters- burg, and, " posheevnoi ! " he had but eighty left. All the money had gone drinking vodka and having good times with police officers and others along the route ; and now what would he be able to do at St. Peters- burg, where, for the honor and glory of his paper, he was expected to drive out in grand style to meet rCUUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 27 Paishkoff as he neared the end of his ride, and make a lavish display of the Listolzs wealth and enthusiasm? Sergie rattled on, pausing very reluctantly and only for an instant now and then, to enable my companion and interpreter to ask a question. His nervous ten- sion, and his effort to talk faster than the movements of his lips could frame his words and sentences, was almost painful. Paishkoff, he informed us, was a re- markable man in many ways. While he, his comrade of the Novosti, and almost everybody else he had ever met, drank vodka, the Cossack officer refused to drink anything stronger than kwass, a kind of weak beer made from rye bread. " At Novgorod," said Mr. Riskin, " there was a grand service of prayer before a celebrated ikon in honor of Paishkoff's safe arrival, and after the prayers came a jollification, when the officers, the priests, and all of- us got drunk and happy — all but Paishkoff. Paishkoff would drink nothing but kwass and tea; he's a wonderful man. He eats what he likes, just like other people. He wears undergarments of mineral wool; over that a linen shirt, which he gets washed every two weeks. During the winter he wore a cholera-belt to protect his stomach from the cold, and overall a leathern suit. He rises at five in the morn- ing, pops a lump of sugar in his mouth, and drinks tea with lemon in it before starting. " A few days after starting he was caught in a bliz- zard and got lost. He was nearly frozen to death, and would never have pulled through but for his horse's intelligence. He gave his horse the rein, and although it was pitch dark and the air full of blinding snow, the 28 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. animal found his way back to the last station. He rode alone as far as Tomsk, from which point he has been assisted by the police. His only sickness has been a touch of influenza. He had experienced forty degrees of frost (about fifty degrees below zero, Fahr.) but thinks winter the best time to travel in Siberia ; the roads are then hard and good, and the cold stimu- lates the horse to travel. He has met with no adven- tures beyond the blizzard. Wolves ? — he hasn't seen a wolf, and he has never fired his revolver. He has promised to give me his notes and I'm going to write a book about his journey." We turned from the versatile representative of the Moscow Listok to the hero of the ride. "Sotniac," said my companion, "Mr. Stevens wants to send word about you to America. Tell us the motive of your great journey. Is it to decide a bet ?" " No, no," replied Paishkoff, " only an Englishman or an American would do such a thing for a bet. My object is to prove the great powers of endurance possessed by the horses of the Amoor." " How much will you take for your horse when you get to St. Petersburg ? " " Money again," returned the Cossack, reproachfully ; " it would be a sin to exchange this horse for money, after what he has done. All the money in America wouldn't induce me to sell him. He will be taken great care of for the rest of his life — pensioned off." " And you ? — you, too, will be pensioned, I sup- pose." " We shall know better about that at St. Peters- burg." TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 29 As we neared Tchudovo, the whole population of the commune was assembled at the entrance to the broad, long street. A beggar rushed up to the Cossack's horse and flung himself on the ground before it, as if begging its rider to trample him under its hoofs. Paishkoff tossed him a coin without halting, and the pony swerved meekly to avoid stepping on the man. The women crossed themselves and the men and boys removed their hats. The old moujiks gave the cue and three hearty cheers went up for the bold " Kazak " as he rode past. He acknowledged the honor by holding his hand to his forehead. The eyes of the Cossack escort from the Czarevitch's regiment roamed wolfishly over the picturesque gathering of village damsels, turning in their saddles to prolong their scrutiny as the crowd followed behind. The school-master and his brigade of small urchins tramped solidly in ranks, four deep, singing noisily. The starosta, true to his idea of remaining at his post and extending the hospitality of his samovar, in- vited Paishkoff and his escort to dismount at his house. They refused to halt, however, and the officer of the Cossacks paid him scant courtesy, as though rebuking him for not coming out to welcome them as the others had done. The reporters sent word to their newspapers that an American had met Paishkoff and offered him 30,000 rubles for his pony, for the purpose of taking it to America to exhibit ! That truthful item went all over Russia. Before leaving Tchudovo, we made the acquaintance of the pristav, or chief of police, of the district. The THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. pristav invited us to spend the evening at his house. Vodka, raw salt fish, salted cucumbers, cheese, tea, and cigarettes were provided by our host, who turned out to be a man of considerable education and of no mean order of intelligence. He had been a school-master, manager of an estate, principal of a reformatory for boys, and was now chief of police of a district about forty miles square, containing a population of 50,000 people. I had, of course, designs on the pristav's knowledge of his country and its institutions, and led the conversation into that channel. He was a genial and communicative soul; a thorough Russian in that absence of reserve, when the hand of good fellowship had been given, that is one of the national traits. A Russian police officer is compelled, nolens volens, to suspect the stranger on principle ; but approach him genially, drink tea or vodka with him, the social heart that beats universal in the Russian breast is touched, and he is yours, believing in you, confiding in you for the time, though he may grow suspicious again after you are gone. In talking of international politics, the pristav of Tchudovo was as epigrammatic as interesting. " The only enemy we have," said he, " is Germany. Austria is an ingrate. Several times have we stepped into the breach and saved her ; and our reward is that she arrays herself against us. England doesn't under- stand us, and so she hates us. The Hebrew is our greatest economic question. The countries of the future are America and Russia. Our people have more good qualities than bad. Our faults are great, but our virtues are greater. Our prisons are good, and TCHUDOVO AND THE PRIST A V. 31 will, in time, be better than the prisons of any country in the world."- These were some of the poignant shots directed at the writer by the pristav, in reply to questions. Like all Russians whom I afterward met, he was enthusiastic and loyal to his country. " People at a distance," said he, " remember our faults and forget our virtues. We have plenty of both. Our intentions are good, but our methods are faulty. As a people we have no talent for detail, and for that reason our administration is defective. We are the kindest-hearted people in the world, but a Russian is too easily contented with things as they are. We are not thrifty like the French, nor economical and plodding like the Germans, nor progressive and energetic like the Americans. You will see, if you travel through Russia, colonies of Germans scattered here and there, and you will be astonished at the con- trast between them and our own people. The Russian peasant will be living in a tumble-down house, and his daily fare will be black bread and cabbage soup. The Germans will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, their fences will be neat, their gardens will be full of vegetables, and they will be rapidly growing rich. You would think that the Russian moujik would envy his. prosperous neighbor and follow his example, but he seldom does. He even considers himself superior, and laughs in a good-natured way, saying, with pride, as he thinks of his hard fare, 'What is death to the foreigner is life to the Russian.' With plenty of rich land in his back yard, he doesn't even take the trouble to grow vegetables, as you have seen for yourself in 32 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. Tchudovo. You may admire the German colonist and call him wise, but the moujik would win your heart for his good nature and generous impulses. If you were to fall into the river the German would think twice before jumping in after you ; but the Russian wouldn't even stop to consider whether he knew how to swim before plunging in." I felt very much like summing up all that the pristav had said about the moujik, except his generosity, in the one cynical comment "laziness," yet that same morn- ing I had seen laborers at work at 2.30, and had been assured that in the summer season, the "white nights," when you can see to read a newspaper in the streets of St. Petersburg at midnight, the moujik is astir twenty hours out of the twenty-four. On the subject of official Russia the pristav was on his own ground, and spoke at length. He referred to himself as an unit of the system. In him and his posi- tion, he said, we had before us a fair sample of the en- tire official system of Russia. He was Chief of Police over a district as large as two American counties, and was held responsible for the acts of 50,000 people. Half the time he was on horseback or in a troika, and he had been without sleep for three nights at a stretch. He had more than a thousand documents pigeon-holed in his office that needed his attention, yet the author- ities at St. Petersburg thought nothing of taking up his time in the most trivial things. With hundreds of important grievances, criminal cases, and what not on hand, one half of which he would not be able to at- tend to if he never slept nor rested, he had just re- ceived orders from St. Petersburg to personally super- TCHUDOVO AND THE PRISTAV. 33 intend the safe conduct of the Cossack rider, Paishkoff, through his district. For two days his precious time had been taken up riding ahead of Paishkoff, from vil- lage to village, arranging for his food, even cooking it himself, and seeing that everything was done for his comfort. Such things as these were more important in the eyes of some one in St. Petersburg than the affairs of his district, and it would be as much as the pristav's official head was worth to neglect them. While he believed paternal government was the best for the Russians, he cited his own case as an instance of its faults. The people of his district came to him like children to a father, and for a father to listen to the grievances and adjust the differences of 50,000 children was a physical impossibility. They came to him about everything. The peasants are required by law to in- sure their houses. If a peasant neglected or refused to do this the starosta of the mir would send him a complaint. If there was trouble about the taxes it was the same. Forest fires were a stock nuisance that kept him riding like a Cossack from one part of the district to another. Murders were one of the common crimes among the moujiks. These he had to investigate and report on. Domestic troubles were common. The young men, who married at eighteen or nineteen, would be taken away for soldiers at twenty-one. The young grass- widows left behind would behave scandalously, and the parents of the absent husbands would complain to him, expecting him to set matters right by putting them in prison. Ten men couldn't do the work he 34 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. had to and attend to it properly, yet his salary was but seventy rubles a month. The pristav scouted the idea that Russian officers were naturally any more dishonest than others. The trouble with most of them is, he said, that their salaries are simply not sufficient to keep them from starving. They are obliged to take bribes in order to live. Yet if they are found out, they are punished and disgraced. Of all the overworked and underpaid people in the world, the pristav thought, Russian officials walked off with the honors. It was the same in every district in the empire — thousands of cases pigeon-holed be- cause there were not officers enough to dispose of them. We spoke of prisons and Siberia. The pristav had never heard of Mr. Kennan or the Century Magazine. This was not surprising, as his information of the outer world was all obtained through the medium of the Russian press. Yet it seemed curious in a man of exceptional intelligence and good education, living but seventy miles from St. Petersburg. During the past year five people had been exiled to Siberia from his district. That was about the average number per annum. All of them were either criminals or rogues, sent away by the mirs for persistent worthlessness. Not one was a " political." About the prisons in Siberia the pristav didn't know. He had never been there, he said, and so could not speak from personal knowledge. He had heard that some of them were not in good order. But the pris- ons of European Russia he knew, having been pristav in two districts and visited many others. He begged TCHUDOVO AMD THE PRISTAV. 35 me to believe nothing that I might hear in condemna- tion of the Russian prisons proper, for he knew them to be as good as the prisons of any country in Europe. The authorities were continually devising ways and means of improving prisons and the treatment of pris- oners, and he would be glad to show me the prisons in his district any time I wished to see them. The next day I met him at the railway station, when the subject of prisons came up again. The pristav, afraid lest I might leave with erroneous ideas, invited me to inspect his Tchudovo prison before going. I was afraid of missing the train, however, and declined. I had no reason to doubt his word, nor was the condi- tion of a provincial prison a hundred versts from St. Peterburg of much importance. The pristav laughed at the idea of Russia wanting India. " That was Skobeloff's idea," he said. " Skobeloff was a soldier, not a statesman. He found it a good thing to juggle with in our negotiations with England, but the idea has never been seriously entertained by sen- sible Russians. We hate England because she persists in hating us; but if we go to war it will be with Ger- many. She is our only natural enemy." It is always interesting and instructive to hear the ideas of people about themselves and their country. It is a lesson one should always take, if possible, in a new field, before beginning the serious work of investi- gation on one's own behalf. My brief visit to Tchu- dovo, and the talks with the moujiks and the police of- ficer were the preliminary steps to an extensive tour of investigation. I had determined to ride on horseback 3* THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. from Moscow to the Black Sea ; then return by way of the Don and the Volga. It was deemed that the best plan of getting into genuine contact with the Russian people, and of study- ing them and the way in which they are governed, at close range, would be to take a long horseback journey through the country. This being an extraordinary proposition, and everything out of the ordinary being always regarded with suspicion in Russia, difficulties, of course, presented themselves at the outset. Ken- nan's exposures had prejudiced the Minister of the In- terior against American correspondents in particular, and to approach him for permission to undertake an extraordinary ride on horseback, through the heart of Russia, would probably be equivalent to putting one's head in the lion's mouth. Permission would be re- fused ; or, if granted, care would be taken that every- thing should be prepared along the route, in advance, to prevent one doing anything in the nature of honest investigation. It was resolved to ignore the authorities entirely, and — well, simply go ahead. This plan had proved successful in other parts of the world, why not in Russia also ? CHAPTER III. PLANNING THE RIDE. MOSCOW, then, was the first objective point, and along the length of Czar Nicholas's famous " ruler- railway," between St. Petersburg and Moscow, a few " impressions by the way " of Russian railway travel- ing may not be out of place. Every reader knows the story of how the St. Petersburg-Moscow Railway was surveyed in one minute by the Emperor, with a ruler, a pencil, and a map. A traveler once compared this road to the pyramids of Egypt as a monument of Im- perial will. Times have improved, however, in the past five thousand years. It is still possible for a Czar of Russia to draw a straight line across a map and order a railway to be built along it, but these days not even the Russians would stand a pyramid. To the American popular mind this railway is a gigantic freak of autocratic power, toying recklessly with the resources of a great nation. Those informed of Russian affairs are aware that the rulcr-and-pencil survey was the result of the Czar's disgust at the efforts of the officials, intrusted to draw up the plans, to serve their own personal ends. A gentleman in St. Petersburg told the author that the preliminary sur- vey, as laid before the Czar, twisted about the country like a serpent's trail, for no other reason than to en- 37 38 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. hance the value of the estates of the survey officers, and made the distance from St. Petersburg to Mos- cow nearer 1500 miles than 400. Like many other things, moreover, which from a distance assume fan- tastic proportions, the " ruler-railway" turns out to be less of a freak than one would imagine, upon a closer acquaintance. It runs through a country almost as level as a floor, and with a population of but twenty five to the square verst. Railways wind about to avoid engineering dif- ficulties and to accommodate cities and towns. As there were none of the former, and next to none of the latter to consider, and as the termini were the two greatest cities of the empire, the Czar was at least as much of an economist as an autocrat in making his famous survey. For an hour prior to the departure of the train the crowd at the station was enormous. There is as much leave-taking, kissing, and shedding of tears at the de- parture of a Russian train as there is at the sailing of an Atlantic liner. To nine tenths of the Russians a journey of a hundred miles by rail is a tremendous event, and each passenger has probably a dozen friends who have come to see them off. The hum, bustle, and buzz as the time for the train to leave draws near is astonishing to an American. Rough men and stout old women hug one another with the fervor of bears, and half the people are either kissing each other or shedding tears. The average Russian face of the middle and lower classes is singu- larly vacant and devoid of sentiment. But at the departure of the train the overflow of emotion is a PLANNING THE RIDE. 3' 9 revelation to the foreigner, One is bewildered and yet amused at the many ways the people have of dis- playing their affection, one toward another, and the utter absence of restraint. Not the least amusing thing to the beholder are the ludicrous mistakes of the uninitiated. Several warn- ings are given before the train leaves, and half the peo- ple think each warning the last. I remember one wo- man who was saying the parting words to her husband through the # open window of her car. The bell rung. The lady passenger leaned out ; the husband's arms twined lovingly around her neck ; their lips met — one ! two ! ! three ! ! ! — ah ! Between the first kiss and the third the woman's mouth had expanded from a tempt- ing smile to a grin so broad that a fourth was impossi- ble. So, drawing back into the car, both expected the train to move off. The train didn't move, however, and an officer told the man they had fifteen minutes to wait yet and that there would be another signal. Instead of one, it turned out that there were two. And so this loving couple treated the subscriber, and an Englishman who was seeing me off, to the above delightful little tab- leaux no less than three times, two of which were the result of false alarms. The Russian passenger coaches are a compromise between the English and American. You can pass from one end of the train to the other as with us, but by closing a door you can shut yourself up in a little apartment, as in England. Only forty pounds of bag- gage is carried free, but bundles are allowed to be taken in the passenger cars. The consequence is that 40 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. every nook of the car is stuffed with bundles, band- boxes, baskets, and valises. Economical old peasants, who have been to the capital, perhaps, for the only visit of their lives, struggle into the car with a dozen bundles and boxes to avoid paying anything for bag- gage. The train is miles away ere the people get comfortably settled down. Three fourths of the people travel third class. Second class is as comfortable as first, and your fellow- passengers here are military officers who. live on their salaries, well-to-do merchants, and the better class of citizens generally. First-class passengers are foreign travelers or natives of wealth, ostentation, or distinc- tion. In a seat near me were a couple of students going to spend their summer vacation in the Valdai Hills. Both could speak English. They talked freely. One of them gave me a new version of a late trouble with the students — an outbreak in St. Petersburg and Mos- cow. One of the students, he said, had received a letter from a lady convict in Siberia, telling of the miseries she and others endured. The students there- upon drew up a memorial to the Emperor and pre- sented it to one of the professors to be delivered. The professor advised them to trouble their heads with their own business, and tore it up. A row ensued, the police and Cossacks were ordered out, and " two thousand students were sent to Siberia." Fortunately my experience of the East had familiar- ized me with the recklessness and unreliability of its people's tongues in regard to figures, distances, and time. The Russian seems as much an Oriental as the PLANNING THE RIDE. 41 Persian in this respect. The rest of the story was, not unlikely, true enough, but the " two thousand stu- dents sent to Siberia" was worthy of the Persian who, within a stone's throw of the mud walls of Teheran, told me that they were of marble. Many of the exaggerated stories that reach us from Russia and the East are the result of the European correspondent taking the statements of the natives too literally. If you are traveling in Turkey or Persia, the native, believing you to be anxious to get to your destination, will assure you that it is but an hour away, even though it be several days. In like manner, these Rus- sian students, knowing that, as an American, I was probably interested in the question of students being sent to Siberia, evolved from their inner consciousness the story of the two thousand. Neither Turks nor Russians expect you to accept their statements literally. A polite desire to please, to say something that they imagine will fall pleasantly an your ear, is the motif, in so far as there is one ; but with them both, the tongue is more often but the vehi- cle for the ventilation of the vaguest imaginings. In- tellectual apathy is the explanation. Ask six different officials, about a railway station, as to the time of de- parture of a certain train, and, whether in Turkey or Russia, you will be very sure to get a half-dozen con- flicting replies. Too careless to remember and too lazy of brain to reflect, the answer will be the time they happen to think of first. In our conception of the Russians we are, I think, too apt to neglect this trait of their character. 42 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. If the Russian is lazy, however, he is far from being dull. The number of people one meets who under- stand several languages is astonishing. Across the aisle from us sat an officer and a young lady com- panion. My attention was attracted to the latter, be- fore our train had gone far, by reason of the number of cigarettes she smoked. She was almost a chain-smoker, lighting one cigarette after another from the stump of the one just consumed. The students, seeing that I was interested, made some remark about the custom of smoking as indulged in by the ladies of Russia. We talked on a while, and all agreed that the habit was more likely to grow on a woman than a man, and that for a young lady to permit herself to become a ciga- rette devotee was a mistake. At this juncture, the fair smoker could keep her countenance no longer. She had understood all that we had said ! Before reaching Moscow I discovered that fully one half the passengers in my car knew English ! Now, a Russian might knock about the United States for six months without falling in with anybody who could talk with him in his own tongue. The idea these students had of Russia's international politics was that everybody hated her except France and the United States. It sounded queer that des- potic Russia should find friends only in these two governmental antitheses to herself. I asked them which they considered the better government of the two, that of the United States or Russia. " Russia," they said. " Why?" PLANNING THE RIDE. 43 " Because if one man kills another, you hang him. If a Russian commits murder, we only put him in prison and we don't care much if he escapes alto- gether ! " " But you send political offenders to Siberia." " It is true, for to plot against the Czar is treason, and treason in other countries is punishable with death." Strange to say, I had heard this same view of the case several times since my arrival in Russia. It is curious logic from our point of view that a govern- ment is good because it lays a light hand on the mur- derer and a heavy one on a political offender. But I am wandering away from the railway. The result of the Emperor Nicholas's arbitrary survey is that many of the stopping places are nothing but platforms for the taking on and putting off of pas- sengers and freight for distant points. Such stations as there are, are of wood, comfortable and artistic structures, where painters with yellow paint seem to be always painting the sides, and painters with red paint always painting the roofs. Small parks and gardens, and even fountains, embellish the two or three more pretentious stations along the route. At all the stations the buffets are excellent, and the service reasonable. The railway buffets are one of the best things in Russia. In the larger cities, a great many people go there to eat instead of to restaurants. The privileges of the buffets are let out to large caterers, like the Spiers & Pond railway buffets in England. The results in Russia are excellent. The waiters are chiefly Tartars, — bright, attentive young men, — who, I believe, receive no salary, but 44 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. depend on tips for their remuneration. The Tartars, who three or four centuries ago were dominating the country, and at one time enslaved and persecuted the Russians, have now become table waiters in the country. Nearly all the large hotels, as well as the railway restaurants, have Tartar waiters. They form a guild, or artel, and their numbers are regularly recruited by young boys, who are brought from the Tartar villages of the Volga provinces. Making them- selves useful among the young men, at a big railway restaurant or hotel dining-room, you see two or three small boys, yellow-cheeked, oblique-eyed, and black- haired. They are young Tartars, learning to be waiters, under the watchful eyes of their elder brothers. All the tips are pooled and the various sources of income go into a common purse, and the proceeds are periodically apportioned. An artel is a species of workmen's commune, by means of which the welfare, honesty, and earnings of each is the concern of all. Some of the artels, as the artel of bank porters and hotel employees, among other functions insures the honesty of its members. If one of its members steals money or property, the artel makes good the loss. Notices in the bedrooms of the hotels advise guests to deposit their valuables, not with the hotel clerk, as with us, but with the agent of the artel, who has an office and a safe in the hotel, and is responsible for any losses. The grade of accommodation, to suit the length or shortness of the passengers' purses, is admirable. You can spend twenty rubles on a dinner, or you can carry PLANNING THE RIDE. 45 your own provisions, tea and sugar, and buy a pot of boiling water, holding enough for six glasses of tea, for one kopeck. A gourmet's feast for a moujik is a glass of vodka, a big salted cucumber, a slice of smoked sturgeon, rye bread, a glass of tea, with a slice of lemon in it, and a cigarette. At every station is a gendarme, with long sword and revolver, blue uniform with red trimmings, lamb's-wool hat with tall red plume — as gorgeous an individual as the rural carbineers one sees at the stations in Italy. At every station, also, are peasant girls selling beer- bottles of milk, and members of the M Orthodox," in rags and tatters, humbly begging, " for Christ's sake," a kopeck. All true Russians are Orthodox, but the wan- faced wretch, with unkempt hair and bleary eyes, who wails for alms as the train glides slowly into the station, is peculiarly so. We toss him a coin, he crosses him- self a half-dozen times, calling down on you the bless- ings of many saints, then moves on to the next win- dow. " For Christ's sake, a kopeck for the Orthodox," he repeats. The scene wafted me to similar scenes in other countries and alien religions. On the great pil- grim roads of Persia the half-starved devotee, footing his weary way a thousand miles without means to pay his expenses, begs for alms in the name of Mahomet. " I am a good Moslem on a pilgrimage to Meshed," says he; " therefore give me alms." " Give me alms," says the Russian peasant, " for I am a Christian." In the north the Russian locomotives burn wood, in the south - refuse petroleum. Pine forests cover about 46 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. all the land between Moscow and St. Petersburg that has not been cleared for cultivation or burned off. Tremendous quantities of wood are piled up at the stations for the railway company and for shipment to cities. The piles are built up like cord-wood and at some stations cover fifty acres of ground. St. Peters- burg and Moscow burn wood almost exclusively, and the provincial towns and villages know no other fuel. The quantity of pine wood consumed in the long, cold Russian winter by two cities, the size of Brooklyn, is enormous, and the cutting and transportation of the same give occupation to a large share of the surround- ing peasantry. At nearly every station was seen the inevitable drunken moujik, stupid and happy. One of them at- tempted to pass through our car. He stumbled over a bundle. " Nitchevo ! " he said in a maudlin voice, as he scrambled up. " Nitchevo ! " said two or three sympathetic souls ; " never mind." Nitchevo is the most frequent exclamation one hears in Russia. It means anything of a negative degree. Nitchevo ! — never mind. Nitchevo ] — pray don't men- tion it. Nitchevo ! — everything will come all right, Nitchevo ! — the horse is dead, but God will provide another. Our train plodded along, slowly but surely, like the tortoise in the race. It took twenty-three hours to carry us something over four hundred miles. We grew impatient as the day waned and mentally wished we had taken the " Courier train," which does it in twelve. But the noise of the engine, which in other countries seems to pant and puff with exertion, here PLANNING THE RIDE. 47 bade us " Nitchevo ! " and seemed to remind us re- proachfully that time was made for man, not man for time. Mackenzie Wallace, in his excellent work on Russia, tells us that the Russian merchant has reached the same level of commercial morality, on the road toward honest dealing, that is occupied in England by the horse dealer. It may be that the English horse dealer is grossly libeled by the comparison ; but, however that may be, there can be no two opinions about the character of the gentlemen who gain their livelihood by buying, selling, and swapping horses in Russia. A man may be a knave in any country without being a horse dealer, but the country has yet to be discovered where a man can make a success as a trader in horse- flesh without an occasional breach of faith with his conscience. Certainly, an inquirer after an honest horse dealer for a museum of ethnographical curiosi- ties would not turn to Russia. Least of all would he go to Moscow. Moscow is the commercial Mecca of the empire, as well as the Mecca of its imperial and, next to Kiev, its religious traditions. The merchants of Moscow are understood to be the shrewdest and the wealthiest in Russia; and the " Moskovsky " horse dealer has at- tained such a tremendous height in the scale of roguery, that he is regarded by provincial members of the fra- ternity with a degree of admiration amounting to awe. When, therefore, the author turned his footsteps, one fine day in June, 1890, in the direction of a large open space in the ancient capital of the Czars, where these crafty gentlemen exhibit, for the benefit of pos- 48 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. sible customers, the accumulated results of life-long and hereditary trickery in selling spavined and broken- winded horses to credulous humans, with a view to buying a horse, a sensation as of venturing on exceed- ingly slippery ground may well be excused. A slight knowledge of horse-flesh would be sufficient to prevent me being taken in much on the score of age, or other " points " visible to the eye ; but, on the other hand, a stranger, knowing nothing of the language, nothing of the idiosyncrasies of Russian horse dealing, and very little about the prices of horses in Moscow, would be sure to be looked upon as a veritable wind- fall by every dealer who had on hand a " touched up " animal. For the purpose of seeing Russia and the Russians to better advantage than from viewing them from the windows of a railway train, or on the streets of the cities, I had determined on taking a horseback ride of more than a thousand miles ; a trying journey for a horse in the middle of summer. It was, therefore, very necessary that I should secure a sound, strong animal. The probability of my doing so, within the few days that I intended to stay in Moscow, vanished like a shadow as I reached the horse-market and approached a group of dealers. The apparition of a stranger, and apparently a foreigner to boot, coming their way, pro- duced on these worthies a truly magical effect. I became the cynosure of a dozen pairs of the craftiest- looking eyes that ever attempted to look through and through, discover the inmost thoughts, size up the mental caliber, the horse knowledge, and the purse of a likely-looking victim. PLANNING THE RIDE. 49 The typical Russian horse dealer is a whiskered in- dividual in wrinkled top-boots, loose black trousers, a black frock coat, and a black cap with a patent- leather peak. He is much given to wearing the shiny peak of his cap well down on the bridge of his nose, in order that he may furtively examine the horse-buy- ing section of humanity from beneath it. If the sub- ject of his scrutiny happens to be a person not given to close observation, the glint of the horse dealer's peering eyes will be confounded with the glint of his patent-leather peak, and he might easily be taken for a man engaged in the pious examination of his own conscience. After looking at a dozen horses, I gave it up, and returned home to think up some other plan of getting what I wanted. Though I had not bought a horse, my ideas of the Russian horse dealer had undergone a decided change. As arrant a knave as ever preyed on the ignorance and credulity of others, his roguery is yet of an order so crude and palpable as to seem ridic- ulous in the eyes of one who has had dealings with the same fraternity in America. I approached the Moscow horse-market in fear and trembling, and came away horseless, but very much amused. There is one method of arriving at the price of any- thing, that seems to be applicable all over Russia. The seller asks twice as much as he is willing to take, and the buyer offers half as much as he is willing to give. Commencing on this basis, the vendor gradu- ally comes down in his prices, and the customer warily advances, until a bargain is made. The Moscow horse THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. dealers not only asked me five hundred rubles for horses worth two hundred, but they seemed to think the above method to be an equally fair way of arriving at a horse's age. They showed me a horse which they stated to be five years old, but which was in reality fifteen. I had already obtained a hint as to their methods, and by yielding at the fifteen year end, in- duced them to give way at the five-year end, a year at a time, until they reluctantly admitted that he might be nine years old. The roguery of the Russian horse dealers consists largely in brazen mendacity, and in his reluctance to deal with you at all unless he can swindle you. You may know more about the horse you are trying to buy from him than he does, and prove it to him in a dozen ways, but he will haggle and dicker, argue and drink tea with you for a week, rather than let you take him at a reasonable price. As I had no inclination to waste a week on nothing, I looked elsewhere. Dr. Carver, the celebrated champion shot, together with a troupe of cowboys and Indians, called " Wild America," happened to be exhibiting in Moscow at the time. I applied to them, and was thus fortunate enough to obtain a horse that carried me bravely through the trying heat of a Russian summer, in six weeks, to Sevastopol. Texas was a Hungarian mustang, which the manager of " Wild America " had bought in Budapest, with a view to breaking him in to the wild work of the arena. Texas, however, turned out to be afraid of the shooting ; afraid of the Indians; afraid of the cowboys; afraid of the band ; afraid of the Deadwood stage ; afraid of PLANNING THE RIDE. 5* the wild steers ; afraid of the crowd ; afraid of almost everything under the sun. That he was afraid of the shooting, I knew before buying him. All the other evidences of his constitutional timidity enumerated, gradually dawned upon -me during the first few days on the road. I never ceased to be thankful that they didn't dawn upon me in advance, however, rather than as the result of experience, for had they done so he would have been passed over and probably a much worse animal secured. It took me half an hour to get Texas over the first tiny rivulet, and, after crossing hundreds, he flinched at stepping into the well-nigh dry bed of the historic Alma, at the end of our long journey. With bridges it was the same. Between Moscow and the battle- fields of the Crimean war are hundreds of bridges, small and great, all of which Texas was forced to cross, always against his will, often under the lash ; yet he attempted to turn tail at the last one, exactly as he had done at the first. He shied at houses, people, cattle, dogs, sheep, hil- locks, and sometimes at his own shadow. Left a moment to himself, his first idea was to get rid of his saddle, either by rolling, or by rubbing against tree, post, or railing. He objected to being led, unless an- other horse was ahead of him. When tired he was a stumbler. Five times on the journey he went down all of a heap from stumbling against some scarcely visible stone or other inequality, and sent me sprawling over his head. And nothing but unceasing vigilance on my part prevented the recurrence of this undignified, 52 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. to say nothing of dangerous, performance fifty times instead of five. Yet, with all this, Texas was a good sort of a horse. The only grudge born in memory against him is for blundering down on a piece of rough macadam road, and peeling his knees and nose, when but two days march from Sevastopol, where I intended offering him to a horse dealer as an exceptionably fine animal. As such he would, undoubtedly, be passed on to the next customer by the dealer ; for he was as handsome a horse as ever wore a shoe. With all his faults he was parted from with a pang of regret. Before we reached the shores of the Black Sea he would follow me about like a dog, so long as one didn't lead the way across a bridge, or near anything that excited his suspicion. From " Wild America " was also obtained a good cowboy saddle, made at Houston, Texas. It was the easiest saddle the writer ever rode in. At an early stage on the road, however, I decided that it was too heavy for the hot weather and the long journey, and exchanged it for a light Circassian seat. The Circas- sian saddle consists of a naked wood m ;rame, and a pillow-like cushion of soft Russian leather, stuffed with goat hair. The light frame rests on a thick pad on the horse's back, and the soft leather cushion is pinched tightly in the middle by a surcingle, that passes round it and under the horse, as a third girth. The natives ride with a stirrup so short that the leg is bent as in kneeling, and the foot plays no part in re- lieving the weight in the saddle. The position is at first extremely uncomfortable, and I preferred to lengthen the stirrups to getting accustomed to it. PLANNING THE RIDE. 53 The merit of the Circassian saddle is its lightness. It weighed less than half as much as the Texan. The cushion seat, too, is handy on a ride through a country where travelers are expected to provide their own bed- ding, for it makes a capital pillow. Whether it makes a better seat for a long ride than a hard saddle the writer is not prepared to say, never having given the latter a long trial. It is the saddle of Asia,— the home of the horse, and the nursery of equestrianism. Cos- sacks, Circassians, Kirghis, Persians, Tartars, Arabs — these are, and have always been, the finest horsemen in the world; they all ride, with slight modifications, this form of saddle. The arrival of an American in Moscow, who intended riding on horseback from that city to the Crimea, was no sooner known than a candidate presented himself as a companion on the journey. The ambitious young man who made this proposition was a student in one of the Moscow universities, who had just completed his studies. As he could speak very good English I readily agreed to the arrangement. His brother would provide him with a horse and I was to bear all ex- penses of the trip. Sascha turned out to be a typical Russian. As an interpreter on the road, and an explainer of the man- ners and customs of his countrymen, he was invaluable. But it was as an ever-present mirror and reflection of Russian character in his own person that he did me the greatest service. He was singularly warm and impulsive, and strangely unreliable, contradictory, quixotic, and inconsistent. Never did a young man start on an undertaking 54 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. with greater enthusiasm, or brighter visions of advan- tages to be reaped from success. In the autumn he was to enter upon his military duties by joining a regi- ment of cavalry. The ride would win him fame and prestige among his comrades, and bring him to the no- tice of his superior officers. He would gain a knowledge of his country, and, by having some one to talk to in that language, improve his English. He would keep a diary, and upon his return write a book. In the eyes of his relatives and his fiancee, the daughter of a mer- chant of Tula, he would be a "hero. The keeping of a diary proved too irksome at the end of three days, so he gave it up and decided that it would be easier and better to wait until I had pub- lished a book in America, when he would translate it into Russian. A week's journey on our road we called on his fiancee. The young lady was delighted with him, for what he was doing was, in her eyes, an heroic performance. She presented him with a bouquet, and stuck rose-buds in his hat-band when we rode away. Scarcely had the roses faded, and the vis- ion of his sweetheart's approving smiles grown dim, than he began to dwell on the contrast between the fatigue and discomforts of the road and the ease and pleasure of life in Moscow. And he eventually threw up the sponge and returned, when but twelve days' ride from the end of our journey. In intellect, he was as bright as he was incapable of logical reasoning. He knew four languages and could quote Shakespeare by the page ; but could never be brought to understand why the Czar couldn't make Russia as rich as he chose, by simply ordering the PLANNING THE RIDE. 55 mint to manufacture mountains of paper rubles. In money matters he was an understudy of the old race of Russian nobles, who used to tuin their serfs and estates at home in order that they might squander* thousands of pounds ostentatiously on the green cloth tables at Monaco, and fling handfuls of Napoleons at waiters' heads in Paris. From all this, it will be seen that though fortunate in my horse, I was a great deal more fortunate in my companion. CHAPTER IV. THE START FROM MOSCOW. IT was a warm, moist morning in the middle of June, when Sascha, the young student of Moscow, and the writer rode out of Moscow. The eminently re- spectable section of old Moscow's conservative citi- zens, the representatives of her wealth and beauty as well as of her mercantile pre-eminence, were still asleep. At the doors of the big mansions, and the fashionable apartment-houses, the dvorniks, curled up in their huge overcoats, were imitating the admirable example of the inmates. A few of these watchmen, who had proved their fit- ness for their position by sleeping, through the night, the untroubled sleep of the righteous, craned their necks above the all-enveloping sheepskins, at the sound of our horses' feet, as a setting hen peers over the edge of her nest when apprehensive of intruders. And having satisfied their curiosity by a sleepy scru- tiny of my American cow-boy saddle, drew their heads down again, once more in unreflective imitation of the hen. We rode along a narrow street in the old Moscovite quarter, where the houses were painted in many bright colors and ornamented with woodwork, curiously carved. Balconies, where, a few hours earlier, the 56 THE START FROM MOSCOW. 57 young bloods of Moscow, military officers, and visiting merchants from country towns, drank champagne, listened to the balalaika and the accordion, believing, in the intoxication of the hour, the place, and the occasion, that they were having a capital time, were now closely curtained. In deference to the ignorance that still prevails in Russia, the shopkeepers of the cities are obliged to decorate their signs with pictures of what they have to sell, in addition to setting forth the nature of their business in words. The narrow street we were now traversing, being a part of the older section of the town, was curiously realistic in this matter. Painters and sculptors had lent their art, that there might be no mistakes by rich country merchants unable to read, and the curtained balconies were supported by statuary never intended to represent the saints. To this part of old Moscow, though it was six o'clock in the morn- ing, night had only just begun. We came to a quarter where there seemed to be nothing but boulevards, with avenues of young trees, big barracks, and equally big and gloomy-looking in- stitutions of learning. Under the windows of the big commercial college, where my companion had lately graduated in the theoretical part of a profession that would enable him to hold his own against his mercan- tile countrymen, we halted a moment. Sascha was in high glee. Here also, he informed me, was learned the language that had been instrumental in bringing him my acquaintance, and had recommended him as a companion for the ride on which we were now starting. His old tutors, as well as his comrades, came in for 58 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. a share of his attentions. Though absent in the flesh, Sascha declared he could still see them through the gray stone walls, and, stretching out his hand toward his old dormitory, he apostrophized the tutors in a most theatrical manner, declaring his keen satisfaction at the mighty change in his fortunes, that had trans- ferred him from the world of stools and studies, to the saddle and the freedom of a horse's back. Beyond the universities, we plunged into plebeian Moscow, the world of red-shirted workmen and cheap frocked women ; low vodka shops and bare, roomy traktirs, where the red-shirted workmen assemble each evening to gossip and swallow astonishing quantities of tea, inferior in quality and very, very weak. Here was Moscow's social and material contrast to the big houses, with the sleeping dvorniks, and of the silent street of painted house fronts, curtained bal- conies and all the rest. Though day had not yet dawned for other sections of Moscow, it had long since dawned for the inhabitants of this. Employers of labor in Moscow know nothing of the vexed questions as to eight-hour laws, ten-hour laws, or even laws of twelve. Thousands of red shirts, issuing from the crowded hovels of this quarter, like rats from their hiding places, had scattered over the city long before our arrival on the scene ; other thousands were still issuing forth, and streaming along the badly cobbled streets. Under their arms, or in tin pails, were loaves of black rye bread, their food for the day, which would be supplemented at meal times by a salted cucumber, or a slice of melon, from the nearest grocery. For five versts, according to Sascha, who, Russian- THE START FROM MOSCOW. 59 like, had no idea, however, of the population and size of the city, though he had been born and educated in it, we rode over Moscow's execrable pavements, then emerged on to a macadam road. Workmen from the quarter we had just passed through had preceded us in this direction hours before, and were now met in the character of teamsters, bringing in petroleum from the big iron tanks that loomed up in the distance ahead. Though Moscow can boast of its electric light as well as of gas, it is yet a city of petroleum. Coal is dear, and, in the matter of electric lights and similar innovations from the wide-awake Western world, Moscow is, as ever, doggedly conservative. So repug- nant, indeed, to this stronghold of ancient and honor- able Muscovite sluggishness, is the necessity of keeping abreast with the spirit of modern improvement, that the houses are not yet even numbered. There are no numbers to the houses in Moscow ; only the streets are officially known by name. To find anybody's address, you must repair* to the street, and inquire of the policeman or drosky driver, who are the most likely persons to know, for the house belonging to Mr. So-and-so, or in which that gentleman lives. It seems odd that in a country where the authorities deem it necessary to know where to put their hand on any person at a moment's notice, the second city of the empire should be, in 1890, without numbers to its houses. The macadam road, though just without the city, and thronged with produce and petroleum wagons, was but a slight improvement on the cobbled streets. We were glad when we eventually found ourselves 6o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. fairly in the country. Our way led through the estates of Prince Galitzin, a wealthy land owner in this part of Russia. Villages dotted the level landscape thickly, their positions being indicated by big churches painted white, with green spires and domes. Russia is a hedgeless country, and fences are confined to gardens and house grounds, or to special bits near the country mansions of wealthy landlords, such as Prince Galitzin. This nobleman's country residence was a fine, large mansion, on the edge of a lake, several hundred acres in extent, which had been artificially created in the good old day of serfdom, princely squanderings in Paris, and a steady diet of champagne and sterlet at home. The serfs are " freed " ; we hear nothing nowa- days of Russian spendthrifts in Paris, and the land owners who can afford to entertain largely on the above named costly articles of consumption, have dwindled to a very small company indeed. Who has profited by the mighty change? Popular supposition opens wide its eyes, in astonishment at the ignorance implied in such a question, and conde- scendingly replies, " The peasants, of course. Were they not formerly serfs, and are now free from the hardships of having to work without pay? " The peasants — we rode through their villages ; and, bearing in mind this popular conception, one could but marvel at their condition, and wonder if, like so many other changes brought about under the direc- tions of a too paternal government, their improvement was not theoretic rather than material. But it is early on the journey to begin moralizing on the condition of the people whose acquaintance THE START FROM MOSCOW. 6 1 we were only beginning to make, and whose appear- ance and manner of life were, as yet, matters of curiosity. The forests through which our road led were in their happiest midsummer mood as to vegetation, and the day being sultry, threatening thunder-storms, their savagest as to flies. My companion's horse, who was a tough old charger, obtained from a Cossack officer, held his own stolidly among the myriads of hungry flies, of many sizes and varieties, that assailed us in the patches of primeval forest. But I early learned that, among his other eccentrici- ties of character, Texas considered the attack of even a single fly so gross an insult, as to justify a combined assault on the offender with mouth, feet, and tail. In other words, Texas was remarkably tender-skinned, and sensitive to a degree in the particular matter of flies and mosquitoes. At this early stage of the journey, also, he promptly asserted the authority of a horse to have the first voice in the matter of his own comfort by rolling with the saddle, when we halted for refresh- ments at a village. He was a persistent advocate of horses' rights ; and all the way to the Crimea never neglected to remind his rider that horses as well as women's rights women, had abstract rights that men were bound to respect, regardless of their own judg- ment in the matter. The villages about Moscow echo something of the venerable atmosphere of legendary lore that hangs about the ancient capital itself. Sascha pointed out one village church where, at the approach of a proces- sion of priests carrying a miracle-working ikon, the 62 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. big iron bell had suddenly disappeared from the bel- fry. Nobody saw where it vanished to, but it was supposed to have flown into a near-by lake; for on cer- tain nights a sound, as of a bell ringing, may be heard issuing from the depths. The flowers, the ferns, the grasses that carpeted the forest, all served to conjure up in my companion's mind scraps of peasant-lore, so keen and enthusiastic was his enjoyment of these, our first few hours in the saddle. Rye and potatoes were the crops that lined the road, in the big open fields, which were clearings in the vast forest that covers the whole of northern Russia. For- est lands play a conspicuous and important part in the economic affairs of the Russian country and people. Russia is primarily a country of "land and timber." The wealthiest Russians are those who own the broad- est tracts of the one, and the most valuable and acces- sible patches of the other. The most desirable pos- session in Russia, setting aside choice mining or city property, is a tract of heavy pine forest, accessible to one of the large cities by rail or river. Facility of transportation, however, is everything. A tree five hundred miles inland from where a purchaser could be found for it, becomes a mere encumbrance to the ground, and an obstacle to cultivation ; whereas, in the part of Russia traversed by our first week's ride, it is one of the chief sources of wealth. In remote districts the peasants clear the ground by burning up all but the choicest sticks of timber in a patch of forest, and, by the aid of the ashes, produce crops on soil that would otherwise be too poor for cul- THE START FROM MOSCOW. 63 tivation. But on this first day's ride, and after, we passed many tracts of pine forest that had been set out, and carefully preserved from harm. Fir trees seem to grow best on barren soil, that would grow nothing else. It is customary for Russian landowners, with an eye to the future, to plant tracts of forest, for the benefit of their posterity. Many of these artificial tracts are beautiful to the eye, the young trees stand- ing in straight, long rows, whichever way you look through the forest, like fields of maize in the West. These tracts of forest are often given by Russian land owners as dowry with a daughter.. An heiress, in Russia, often means a young lady whose father will fit her out with a blooming trousseau and a " tract of forest." Sascha spoke to me of Russian heiresses with "dowries of 300,000 rubles in forest." The important part played by these forests, in Russia, is continually thrust upon the notice of the traveler, whose business is to take cognizance of his sur- roundings. It is the fuel of St. Petersburg and Moscow and all the villages, towns, and cities of the northern half of the country. All summer long the canals of St. Petersburg are filled with monster barges, containing as much as four hundred tons apiece of neatly cut fire- wood. They are moored in the Neva ; they crawl along the canals and smaller streams, and are towed in long strings by stout tugs across the Gulf of Finland, Lakes Ladoga and Onega, and the smaller lakes of the adjacent provinces, all streaming toward the great northern capital. For eight months of the year, six of which are very cold, St. Petersburg has to be heated, and the fuel is wood. With Moscow it is the same, only 6 4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. the supply has to reach the old capital by rail and road. The Russian peasants of these great northern forest regions are the most skillful axmen in the world, begging the pardon of the lumbermen of Maine and Minnesota ; and the forest is their good foster-mother, without whom they would have a sorry enough time of it, dodging the tax-collector's knout. The land is poor, and the amount allotted to them by the govern- ment when they were emancipated is often insufficient for their bare support, saying nothing of taxes. Since there is no escaping the latter, great numbers of these northern moujiks literally " take to the woods " for the greater part of the year. All winter the ring of ax, and the buzzing music of the sawmills resound through the forests ; and men and teams transport fire-wood, railway ties, telegraph poles, lumber, and blocks for paving city streets, to the rail- ways and river banks. With the thawing of rivers and canals in spring, a great movement begins in building huge rafts of timber, and starting off big barges of fire-wood. The barges are generally frail affairs, that are broken up at the journey's end. Much of the forest is owned by the government, even about St. Petersburg and Moscow. " Government property" in Russia means something very different from the American idea of the same. No such liberty is permitted as with the unsettled domains of Uncle Sam. Everything available on government land is expected to yield a revenue, as on the property of an individual. It " belongs to the Czar." Why should the Czar permit liberties with his patch of forest THE START FROM MOSCOW. 65 on the right hand side of the road any more than Count Trotoff, on the left ? Whether you put up at a hotel traktir, or with a rnoujik on the Russian roads, all feed is supplied by weight or measurement. A primitive form of beam scales, with brass dots to accommodate the mathemati- cal incapacity of the unlettered moujik, instead of fig- ures, is produced to weigh your pood or half-pood of hay or cut grass, and measures are filled with oats and leveled off. Hay and oats are almost always to be procu red. The accommodation for man is not particularly in- viting. The village traktir is a little better than a Chinese wayside inn, but not much. Doughy black bread, eggs, and tea are the refreshments, and in sum- mer your rights to what you purchase are disputed by myriads of persistent flies. The Russian fly worries you all night as well as all day. The brief summer of his activity commences late and ends early, and he evi- dently believes his short life should always be a merry one. The windows of the room to which you are shown are probably nailed up and were never intended to be opened. It is no joke to be thrust into an evil-smelling room, ten feet square, with a myriad of hungry flies, and the air of which has been boxed up since winter. The Russians thrive on this sort of thing, however, and one soon ceases to regard an over-crowded prison as a pun- ishment to the lower-class Russian. For travelers of sufficient importance, from a finan- cial point of view, however, the landlord readily vacates his private room and arranges a comfortable shake- 66 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. down with hay and quilts. The rooms of the traktirs all contain from three to thirty ikons, and at the hotels a small ikon sometimes hangs on the head of the bed, to insure sound and peaceful repose to the occupant. The tipping nuisance is worse in Russian hotels than in any other country, not excepting even Egypt, the land of backsheesh. With few exceptions the hotel employees receive no compensation for their services beyond the offerings of the guests, and all tips are pooled and divided pro rata. Wealthy and open- handed Russians, dining at the big traktirs of St. Petersburg and Moscow, usually reckon to give the waiters one ruble for every five spent on a dinner. At the Hermitage Traktir, the finest restaurant in Mos- cow, wealthy and ostentatious merchants have been known to spend two hundred rubles on a dinner for two persons, and to tip the waiter with a couple of twenty-ruble notes. At the country hotels the em- ployees swarm about you like hungry rats as the time arrives for your departure. People whom you have never set eyes on before, now present themselves with an awkward bow and with a look of eager expectancy that is positively embarrassing. Few things on earth are more delusive than a Russian country hotel. In the two capitals the influ- ence of Western European contact has brought about a better state of affairs; but the bill of a Russian pro- vincial hostelry is a curiosity. We stayed over night at the Hotel London in the provincial capital of Tula. On calling for the bill in the morning, I learned for the first time that in engaging a room at the leading hotel in a Russian city you do not thereby always engage a THE START FROM MOSCOW. 67 bed to sleep in. The bedstead is reckoned as part of the room, and is always there for you to look at and wonder why it contains no bed beyond a naked mat- tress. After thinking it will be all right, till you are ready to retire, you ring for the chambermaid and mildly chide her for her forgetfulness. Sheets and pillows are brought at your command, and next morning, on looking over the items of your bill, you perceive with astonishment that "two sheets, two pillow-cases, one counterpane," etc., have been added to candles, matches, and other " extras " charged up to you. It is the custom in Russia for the traveler to carry with him his own bed-linen, pillows, towels, etc. Only Russians who have taken to the ways of Western travelers ever think of traveling without all these things. All that the hotel is expected to provide, and all that the hotel-keeper feels called upon to include with the room, is bedstead and mattress. The better-class Rus- sian is very much opposed to sleeping between sheets that have been used over and over again by the Lord knows who and how many passing travelers. The fact that they have been washed before being passed on to him makes no difference. His custom and the custom of his ancestors has been to carry his own bedclothes with him on his travels, and when some unforeseen cir- cumstances brings him to a hotel without them, his idea is to borrow a set for the night from the proprietor and pay whatever is charged for their use. In the court-yard of the hotel or traktir are always from one to three or four savage dogs. They are of a shaggy, wolfish breed, and seem but half domesticated. Usually they are chained up with a long, heavy chain. 68 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. Why the chain is always long the owners of the dogs are unable to explain, beyond the fact that chains and custom are alike hereditary ; but the stranger who unwarily saunters into the yard and manages to hop beyond the danger circle by a few spasmodic jumps, as the dog springs at him, not unfrequently makes the mistake of jumping too far. A second wolf-fanged brute rushes at him from the other side, and, as he momentarily speculates on the chance of being torn down, a third tries to reach him from the body of the old sleigh toward which he has begun retreating. All three tug and struggle violently to break their tethers, and to menace them with stick or stone only serves to redouble their rage. The writer had a pair of trousers converted into material for the ragman by these sav- age sentinels, before we had been on the road a week, but no blood was spilled. After a couple of narrow escapes one becomes wary by instinct, and never enters a Russian court-yard without due precaution. Away from the railways, the traffic one sees on the Russian highways is a far better index to the state of the country and the condition of its people and insti- tutions than the mere tourist ever comes in contact with. Our route was along the main road between Moscow, Kharkoff, Kief, and other Southern cities. As far as Kharkoff and Kief it is a very fair macadam road. The vehicles are peculiarly Russian, and a pic- turesque feature are the troikas, with three, and the tchetvarkas with four horses abreast ; the horses and the duga (the bow that connects the shafts) are hung with bells that jingle-jangle merrily as the teams sweep by at a smart gallop. THE START FROM MOSCOW. 69 There is also the linega, an affair like the Irish jaunting car. The people sit back to back between, instead of over, the wheels, and the foot-board- almost touches the ground. A large family or public linega carries as many as fourteen persons. A primitive drosky is also commonly met, a four- wheeled low vehicle, with driver and passengers be- striding a long cushioned plank, which connects the fore and hind wheels. The telegas, or common country wagons, are met in long strings, taking produce from remote parts of the country. Goods of certain kinds are still hauled into Moscow several hundred miles by the lumbering telegas from districts that are far from a railway. The Moscow-Kharkoff highway is a well-kept mac- adam with a reservation of greensward, forty feet wide on either side. On some of the communes through which the road passes the side reservations are rented from the government and preserved for hay ; on others are herds of hobbled horses, tended by men and boys, with dogs, and whips that are one of the curiosities of the road. These enormous lashes are twice as large as the largest bull-whacking whips of the old overland days in the West. It seemed to the writer rather picayunish, in a coun- try so prodigal of land as Russia, for the authorities to " rent " the grass on these two narrow strips of side-road. Our horses, which we usually rode over the sward, might fairly be said to have walked through clover the whole distance from Moscow ; yet we could not con- scientiously permit them to dip down and take a mouthful, for where the grass was fit for anything, 70 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. every blade had been paid for by villagers, who could ill afford to giveaway even a bite of grass. The Imperial Russian Government considers it beneath its dignity to sell its superfluous parks' and palaces, but be- fore the moujik may thrust his scythe into a bunch of grass growing on the big military road, which his taxes and his labor built and keep in repair, he has to pur- chase the privilege. This seems rather overdoing the thing, in a govern- ment that considers itself, first of all, " paternal." That it fully deserves the name, however, in gen- eral, evidences were not wanting every hour of the day, as we rode along. On every house in the village is painted a rude picture of one or another household implement. On one is a bucket, a second a spade, a third an ax. These primitive hieroglyphics are the outward and visible signs of paternal forethought in the matter of fires. Every peasant is obliged by law to insure his house to the amount of seventy-five rubles. This costs two rubles a year. Beyond this he can insure to any amount. As a further safeguard, every village community is organized into a primitive fire-brigade, and the pictures on the houses indicate to the occupant what he is required to do in case of a fire breaking out in the village. The man on whose house is pictured an ax, is required to bring one of those tools ; a householder whose property is decorated with the sign of a bucket is to hurry to the scene of the conflagration prepared to carry water, etc. This is a primitive form of fire- brigade, suitable to the little clusters of log houses that pass for villages in Russia. CHAPTER V. ON THE czar's highway. ON Sunday, June 29, we crossed the River Moskwa, where it runs through the broad, fat lands of the Nicolai Oograshinsky Monastery, over a rickety pon- toon bridge, half-submerged. Bridges have, in Russia, an evil reputation among native travelers. The foreigner sees in them merely the possibility of broken bones, but to the native they are also the lurking- places of highway robbers. In troublous times and lawless districts, it is under the archways of the bridges that marauders hide, to pounce out upon pass- ing travelers. Many Russian travelers make a practice of crossing themselves at bridges, by way of commend- ing themselves to the special protection of Providence. This, I was told, is a relic of the old Tartar days, when the peasantry approached a bridge with fear and trem- bling, making signs of the Cross, lest it be the hiding- place of a band of marauding nomads. No danger of robbers at the bridge across the Mos- kwa, however, unless they might also be amphibians, capable of keeping their heads under water an indef- inite length of time. Texas, as before mentioned, had a truly Russian horror of bridges. Among his notions of a horse's rights, was the privilege of turning tail at all sorts and 71 72 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. conditions of bridges, whether safe or unsafe, large or small, wood, stone, or iron. The Nicolai Oograshinsky bridge consisted of planks that had once been spiked to a set of rafts, but which were now mostly loose. By dint of many cuts of the whip, and the assumption of a truly portentous attitude by his rider, Texas suf- fered himself to be urged a fourth of the way across, though starting with spasmodic fear at every step. Here, a viler spot than any brought him to a halt ; and when, prancing about under the goad of additional threats and coaxings, water squashed up between the loose planks and smote him under the belly, he gave way to an impulse of terror, and, whirling round, bolted for terra fir ma. Then ensued a comical battle between his fear of the bridge and his love of society. The other horses crossed and drew away in the distance. Texas neighed at them to come back, emphasizing the sum- mons by vigorously pawing the ground ; and at length, finding that no attention was paid to him, ventured across the bridge, and, demanding the rein, overtook them at a gallop. The Moskwa is a sluggish, meandering stream, and like all Russian rivers, save the Neva, several times larger in the spring and early summer than from June to winter. Wood, hay, and all manner of country pro- duce is towed along it in big barges to Moscow. The government attempts, in a desultory way, to improve its navigation by digging canals across its innumer- able horse-shoe bends, levying tolls on the barges to pay for the outlay. It is one of the minor streams of Russia, a tributary of the Oka, and is the cradle of ON THE CZAR'S HIGH IV AY. 73 the Muscovite Empire, and of the traditions that cen- ter around Moscow, which it gave birth to and nour- ished into a capital city. From the bluffs beyond the bridge could be obtained a splendid view of Moscow. Its many golden spires and domes glittered and twinkled in the sun like yellow stars, and the scene was as Oriental, on the whole, as anything the writer had seen anywhere in Asia. Even more than the tall minarets of the Stam- boul mosques, or the beautiful temples of the Hindoo gods at Benares, the twinkling beacons of the golden domes of Moscow the Holy, impressed one as the metropolis of a people's religion. Surely, those beacons indicated a harbor where all who wished might find comfort and repose of soul in the calm waters of the " Orthodox Church." If anything were wanting to complete the Eastern character of the scene, it was provided by a band of pilgrims, who were gathered on the bluff, touching their foreheads to the ground toward Moscow, and making the sign of the Cross. These were people, who had come on foot, in rags and begging their way, from the distant confines of the Empire, making a pilgrimage to the shrines of the Saints at Moscow. Four years before I had seen Persian devotees, on the hills near Meshed, bowing to the earth at their first glimpse of the golden dome of Imam Riza's Mosque ; vividly alike these two occasions seemed, — the yellow, twinkling domes and the bowing rapturous figures on the hills, — though one was a Christian, the other a Moslem scene. We rode through many small villages, devoted to the cultivation of cherries, currants, and other small fruits; 74 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. and traversed for a few versts the road that Napoleon's army passed along after the evacuation of Moscow- Sascha and his brother, who rode with us that day, joked about Napoleon's discomfiture, and the devotion of the moujiks, who burned their produce rather than sell it to the French, much as though the whole affair were an occurrence of yesterday. The talk was of wolves and bears, as our road led us through tracts of wild forest. Some of the tracts are several thousand dessiatines in extent, and in the depths of these both wolves and bears remain all sum- mer. The wolves prey on the smaller animals ; the bears live on roots and berries. During the summer they are invisible, but in the winter hunger drives the wolves to come out and commit depredations on the sheep and cattle of the surrounding villages. Three or four pairs of wolves, that have managed to rear their young without molestation in the depths of the forest during the summer, muster a fair-sized hunting-pack by the following winter. Bear-hunting is the most ambitious sport in Russia. Winter is the season of bruin's undoing, for, though he hibernates, the art of discovering his lurking-place has been reduced to a reasonable certainty by a num- ber of sturdy peasants, who devote their winters to finding bears and selling them to the sportsmen. When the ground is covered with several feet of snow, the village bear-finders scatter through the forests. The sleeping place of a bear is revealed by a hole in the snow made by his breath. The finder of a bear, taking sundry precautions to " prove his claim " should others come to the same spot after his depar. ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 75 ture, hastens to notify a sportsman of his discovery. He offers to sell the bear, much as if he had it in a sack, safely secured ; with the understanding, however, that if bruin should have sniffed danger, and made off before he takes the sportsman to the spot, the bargain be- comes null and void. The usual price demanded for a bear is a hundred rubles. He is actually sold in his lair, and the peas- ant's services consist in guiding the sportsman to the spot and pointing out the breath-hole in the snow. Whether the sportsman succeeds in bagging the bear or not, — that, of course, being no fault of the peas- ant's, — he pays the price agreed upon. Many sports- men have a standing agreement with the bear-finders of the surrounding district, that he is to have the option on any finds they make. And when a sports- man has earned a reputation among the peasants as a dead shot, they often prefer to sell the bears to him by weight, bargaining for so much per pound instead of a lump sum. This is, in fact, the method preferred by old bear- finders, who have by long experience learned to judge of the bear's size by the dimensions of the hole in the snow. They shrewdly take advantage of their superior bear-craft to drive a sharp bargain at the expense of the city sportsman, selling the bear for a specific sum of money if they think the find a small animal, and by the pound if the hole indicates a big one. When the writer was at Count Tolstoi's, the famous author showed me the scars of an old scalp-wound that had been inflicted by a bear. In his ante-literary days the Count was very fond of bear-hunting, and, on 76 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. the occasion to which the scars bear reference, a wounded bear came perilously near cheating the world out of "War and Peace," " My Religion," and other of the Count's productions that we could ill afford to be without. He owed his life to the presence of mind of his brother, who was hunting with him. Tolstoi had shot at bruin twice, wounding him both times without disabling him ; and in return the bear had knocked him down in the snow and was standing over him, when the brother rushed up and put a bullet in its brain. From bruin to Briton may, or may not be much of a digression, depending, of course, on the nature of the Briton in the case. For the sake of continuity, moreover, even more startling associations than these two may be permitted to the chronicler of a journey. It is well, however, when abrupt transitions of this nature occur, if one is able to disarm English suscep- tibility by introducing, after treating of bears, a gentle- man as unlike one of those animals as it is possible for a human being to be. We spent the heat of the day at the hospitable datscha of Mr. Hamson, a cotton mill-owner of Tzaritza. Mr. Hamson is a fair specimen of a type of English- men one occasionally comes upon in Russia. He was born in the country, of parents who had gone to Russia and started cotton mills fifty years before. Others went as managers in Russian mills, and in the course of time became partners and proprietors. You see unmistakable English and Scotch faces among officers of the army and navy, and in centers of mining, manufacturing, and shipping industries. These are the descendants of Englishmen who flocked ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 77 to Russia during the reign of Peter the Great to take service under him, and for various enterprises since. They take pride in being of Engh Ii origin, though it may be but a family tradition among them. You can offer no more acceptable piece of flattery to the lady members of one of these Anglo-Russian families than to compliment them with having the English type of face. On one occasion I overlooked this delicate point, until reminded of the negligence by one of the ladies, who affected surprise that I hadn't mistaken her for an Englishwoman, on account of her face. Her father's grandfather or great-grandfather had come from England some time in the eighteenth century. In St. Petersburg, army officers with English blood in their veins affect dinners at the Hotel d'Angleterre, where you may see typical English faces under the Russian military visors, or even in the incongruous setting of a Circassian officer's costume. Nearly every day, when the writer was at this hotel, a guardsman and a Circassian, both officers, used to come to lunch together at noon ; as typical a pair of English faces as could be found in all Britain. Many will be astonished, as I was, to learn that in St. Petersburg, alone, are more than ten thousand English, nearly all of whom are British subjects. The majority of them are connected with the shipping and manufacturing interests in and about Petersburg. Englishmen who become, as it were, isolated in the provinces, soon lose interest in the doings of the outer world, and surprise a passing countryman, who drops in on them, by their ignorance of current events be- yond the Russian border. In this respect, the disrepu- 7$ THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. table press censorship tends to drag them rapidly down to the level of the people among whom they have cast their lot. From the Russian newspapers they learn nothing but what a suspicious and tyrannical govern- ment permits the people to know, and in order to keep on good terms with the authorities it is advisable to receive no foreign publications whatever. It seemed curious to meet intelligent and well-educated English- men, like Mr. Hamson, who had never heard of what the foreign press was full of at the time of my visit, the Century s exposition of the evils of the exile sys- tem of Siberia. And it sounded even comical to hear him ask if it were true that " at the Penjdeh affair the English officers had run away ! " Such, it seems, is the story as it had been permitted to circulate in Russia ; where the truth in regard to such matters is never allowed to be published. On the subject of cotton-spinning our host was more at home. Tariffs were high, he said, yet they couldn't compete with English manufacturers, owing to the incompetence of Russian workmen and the higher rate of interest on capital in Russia. In Russia, capital was worth eight per cent., in England, three ; and a Lancashire weaver was as far ahead of a Russian factory hand " as a race horse was ahead of a donkey." The Manchester man, he reckoned, would do the work of six to eight moujiks. A great future was looked forward to, however, in cotton production and spinning. Everything possible is being done to promote the cotton growing industry of Russia's Central Asian possessions. American cotton- gins were being shipped to Samarkand by the dozen, ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 79 and Americans had been employed by the government to proceed thither and instruct the people in improved methods of cultivation. The dream of Russian states- men is to see the Trans-Caspian and Lower Volga regions develop into manufacturing districts that shall eventually supply all Russia with cotton goods. The idea is, that when Russia is able to manufacture suffi- cient for her own people, to keep foreign goods out of the market altogether by means of a prohibitory tariff. Cheap clothing, for the welfare of the masses, is of course, not for a moment to be considered in a country where the interests of the people are always made subservient to that of the state. We spent Sunday night at a dirty traktir in Podolsk. Wayfarers, other than tramps and pilgrims, were mostly moujik teamsters, whose idea of cleanliness and comfort are on a par with those of the American Indian. The Podolsk traktir contained no bed for transient guests but the bare floor, which, however, the proprietor did something to improve by means of an armful of spiky hay. Sascha had his Cossack bourka, an ample cloak of goat-hair, and the writer had an English rug. With these spread over the hay, and the cushions of our Circassian saddles for pillows, our beds were at least as good as our supper of milk, black bread, and tiny raw salt fishes. A dozen drunken moujiks, in an adjoining room, added to the sum of our appreciation by howling bacchanalian songs and arguing with each other violently till past midnight. Drunken peasants were an every-day feature of the road, as we pursued our way along the great military cJiaussc'c. Whether we 8o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. halted for refreshments at a traktir, morning, noon, or night, maudlin moujiks drinking vodka, or having drunk all they could get, quarreling with the landlord because he wouldn't trust them for yet more, were sure to figure in the by no means attractive picture of Russian village life. In other countries, where drunkenness prevails among the lower orders, it is in the evening when most of the drinking is done, and a drunken man is rarely seen in the morning. Morning drunkenness impressed me, early on the ride, as being one of the national peculiarities of the Russians, though it would, doubtless, be more correct to say that it is one of the characteristics of the uncivilized boozer, that distinguishes him from his brother inebriates of more civilized, and consequently more regular habits. The lot of the Russian peasant is hard in many respects,, but much of his burden of woe comes from his inability to resist the doubtful allurements of King Vodka. Without any brains to spare from his scanty equip- ment for the battle of life, his daily concern is to obtain the wherewithal to pour down his throat and steal away what little he has. Whether he is to be pitied more than blamed is a question that is appli- cable to individuals rather than to the moujiks as a class. The hopelessness of the outlook ahead of them, and what must seem, to the vast majority of them, the uselessness of attempting to better their condition in life, is, no doubt, largely responsible for the moral degradation of the Russian peasantry. Indeed, it is hardly necessary to go to Russia for examples of men " driven to drink " for the want of opportunities to better their condition, though there ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. is a limpness and a streak of recklessness in the Russian character that makes for moral surrender in the face of difficulties that the Teuton or the Anglo- Saxon would stand up to and attempt to overcome. Undoubtedly the lower strata of the Russian popu- lation are the drunkenest people under the sun. Look- ing back over our road, as the thought occurs to me, I remember no village in which drunken people were not very much in evidence. At every wayside traktir where we stayed over night, the forepart of the night would be more or less of a pandemonium from the shouting and singing of roystering moujiks filled with vodka. I have seen gangs of gray-haired old men, see- sawing, flinging their arms about, and making fools of themselves generally, in the sight of the whole village, yet not attracting to themselves so much as the curious or reproachful gaze of a single woman. On Sunday all the men seemed to be drinking and carousing, and all the women were sitting in little cir- cles in front of the houses gossiping. The one sex seemed to be absolutely oblivious of the proceedings or even the presence of the other. The drunkenness was sad enough, but the indifference of the women to it was the saddest of all. Sometimes, but not often, were drunken women. Near one village we met a crowd of drunken men and women, as merry and picturesque a set of subjects as Bacchus himself could wish. Hand in hand they reeled along and sang ; now and then they stopped to dance and to express their joy in wild laughter. They halted and sung for us a melodious bacchanalian song, well worth listening to, as we rode past. The men were in THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. red shirts, black velvet trousers, and top boots. The women were in all the colors of the rainbow, with red well in the ascendency. Arriving at a little old, dilapi- dated ikon by the wayside, the merry-makers, one and all, removed their caps and crossed themselves de- voutly, then, proceeding on their way, struck up another bacchanalian refrain. Soon we reached the groggery. It was a cheap log house, roofed with tin, and with a little porch at the door. On the porch stood an old moujik with a gal- lon demijohn of vodka, from which he was filling glasses holding about a third of a pint. He seemed to be treating the crowd. One of these portions costs fif- teen kopecks, or about eight cents. The best vodka is made from rye, the worst from potatoes. A moujik can get howling drunk for fifteen cents. On Sundays and holy days the vodka shop is the rallying point of the male population. His rags may be insufficient to cover his nakedness, his house may be tumbling about his head, his family may be upon the verge of starvation, but the improvident moujik hands out his last kopeck for vodka, then runs in debt. He pledges his growing crops, his horse, his only cow, engages his labor in advance at a ruinous discount. He becomes insolvent, and is unable to pay his share of the mir's taxes. But the moujik is not the only member of Russian society who contributes to the enormous revenue de- rived from the sale and consumption of vodka. Curious as it may seem to American readers, the Rus- sian priests are notorious boozers. A village priest may get drunk as often as he pleases, and by so doing ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. does not forfeit the respect of his parishioners. It is no uncommon thing, so I was told, for a priest to drink himself into a state of beastly intoxication. And the " black clergy," the monks who spin out an indolent existence in the five hundred monasteries of the Em- pire, drink brandy out of beer glasses. But do not imagine that all Russia is shocked at this consumption of spirits by its priesthood — these " carryings on," as we should call it. Nothing of the kind. The relations of priest and people in Russia are curious to the Protestant mind. The Russian is devoted to the Church, and demands of his priest that he be able to perform the rituals. Whether the priest is of a good moral character or the reverse has little weight with the worshipers. To them he is merely the automatic human machine, a necessary ad- junct to the Church, to swing the censer and marry them, and say masses for them and bury them. He seldom attempts to influence their moral character, and they hold him in no sort of respect. As to vodka, if they trouble themselves about it at all it is to envy him his ability to purchase enough to get drunk on oftener than they themselves can afford to. That vodka drinking is at the root of half the misery one sees in Russia, I was quickly persuaded. The evil is enormous, but the remedy is not so easily found. The revenues are correspondingly enormous, and the universal adoption of temperance by the peasantry would probably bankrupt the government. The reve- nues from vodka are said to pay the expenses of both army and navy. A drunken moujik is a maudlin, funny creature. 84 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. He is recognized by all classes as primarily a lover of vodka and the music of the accordion. The toy moujik in the shops of Moscow and St. Petersburg always represents a drunken man with a bottle or an accordion. In groups, his wife is trying to pick him up from the ground. On Tuesday night we put up at the house of a thrifty moujik in the mir of Volosovo. His was an ideal peasant family household, and Volosovo came near being an ideal mir. The ideal mir is one of the happiest arrangements imaginable for the people of the mental attainments and social disposition of the Rus- sian moujik. Unfortunately, the real state of affairs comes far short, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, of the ideal, even as we found it in Volosovo. The household I speak of consisted of an ancient moujik, more than eighty years old, — who remembered Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, — and three robust sons with their families. The house sheltered about eighteen persons. All three of the sons could read and write. I had noticed, when riding through Volo- sovo, that the houses were neater and better, and that the whole appearance of the place seemed more pros- perous than other villages we had passed through. We inquired the reason. " It is because there is no vodka shop in the mir," was the answer. We entered into conversation on the subject of the moujiks and their condition. Our hosts vied with each other in giving information. Were the moujiks better off since the emancipation than before ? " Some of them are, and others are not," was the reply. " Everything depends on the man himself. ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 85 There is no reason why all should not be much better off. Vodka was the only trouble. A moujik who kept away from the vodka shop and tended to his land and his work was infinitely better off than when he was a serf. For the man who cared for nothing but drink and neglected his family, serfage and the mas- ter's stick were better than freedom. " The secret of the prosperity of Volosovo is that we voted to have no vodka shop in the mir — that, and nothing else. Every mir has the privilege of local option. (Since this was written, local option has been taken away.) It remains with the people themselves whether they shall admit a vodka seller to their midst or not. Vodka sellers get into the mirs by bribery, and by paying a good share of the taxes. A vodka seller will, perhaps, engage to pay five hundred rubles of the mir's taxes, which, let us say, amounts to one tenth of the whole. This being agreed to, the liquor shop is opened, the moujiks spend everything in drink, and the entire mir is demoralized. The vodka seller takes twenty rubles out of every moujik's pocket ; in return for which he pays twenty kopecks back in the guise of taxes. Now, in Volosovo we decided to keep our twenty rubles and pay our twenty kopeck's taxes ourselves, and so, at the end of the year, we find our- selves nineteen rubles and eighty kopecks in pocket." Thus far, my informant said, the government had been inclined to deal leniently with the moujik. If unable to pay his direct taxes, it was because he had drank vodka, and had thereby paid them, several times over, indirectly. So reasoned a paternal government that had delivered him from serfdom — a weakling to 86 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. be nursed and borne with patiently. So had it borne with him for twenty-nine years, wavering between the duty of teaching him the lesson of a little self-reliance, by hard experience, and a reluctance to resort to ex- tremes. Beginning with that year (1890), however, the moujik who failed to pay his taxes was to be flogged. From twenty to thirty stripes might be administered, and a fine of five kopecks added with every stroke. Every mile of the way from Moscow the baleful effects of vodka drinking had thrust itself into our notice, and we asked our hosts why the Russian priests, like the priests of other countries, didn't exert them- selves in the cause of temperance. The mass of the Russian population are swayed by the sentiments of devotion to the Church and its precepts. Two days out of every week, the whole of the seven weeks of Lent, three weeks in June, from the beginning of November till Christmas, or about seven months out of the twelve, the ignorant and reverential moujik starves his long-suffering stomach at the bidding of the Church. During all that time he denies himself even eggs and milk, nor deems the condition of his spiritual well-being hard. But though the Church would re- buke him for swallowing a glass of milk in fast time, it says not a word against, but rather encourages, the swallowing of an inordinate quantity of the fiery and biting vodka. " Why this state of affairs ? " we asked. The devotion of the answer was almost pathetic. " It is bad for the people to drink vodka ; but what would the Czar do without the taxes on its consump- tion?" they replied. ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. It was bad for the moujiks to ruin themselves, but for the sake of the Czar all things must be en- dured ! On Thursday we arrived at Tula. Tula is a city of about 90,000 inhabitants, two hundred versts south of Moscow. It is the capital of the province of the same name, and has been famous since the time of Peter the Great for the manufacture of small arms. Its chief reputation, however, rests on the manufacture of samovars and accordions. In every house and palace, and in every peasant's hut throughout the vast extent of the Russian Empire, is found a brass samovar, or tea-urn. These are largely made at Tula. Like caviare and vodka, the samovar is peculiarly Russian. So excellent a household god, however, will not always be confined to one country and people, however large the one or numerous the other. Its use is spreading to all tea-drinking countries. To every post-station, and to the house of every well-to-do Khan in Persia, the Russian samovar has already made its way, and not a few of the readers of these pages have become familiar with its appearance. But Tula and its output of samovars, accordions, swords, rifles, and revolvers was interesting to the writer chiefly as the first stage of the equestrian journey from Moscow to the Crimea. After a five day ride we arrived here, men and horses in good trim. I had no intention of riding against time, but to jog along twenty-five to thirty miles a day, keeping well within the capacity of our horses. As before stated, while the ride would be interest- ing as a performance on horseback, the principal mo- 88 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. tive of the journey was to study the country and people. It was in order to do this to the best advan- tage that I took Sascha Kritsch, the young Moscow student, to interpret and explain as we rode along from day to day. In the writer's opinion there is no better way to study a country than to make a tour on horseback or bicycle, with an educated and communi- cative youth, from among its inhabitants, for a com- panion. Thus far our ride had been chiefly, like the famous maneuvers of the Duke of York, up hill and down. Had that old martinet been in this part of Russia with his 10,000 men, he might have " marched them up the hill, then down again," all day long, by simply follow- ing the military road between Moscow and Tula. The country resembles the rolling prairies of southwestern Iowa, but the land is poor. Fields of rye, oats, and potatoes alternate with primeval or artificial forests. We saw not a field of wheat between Moscow and Tula; the soil is not rich enough to produce it to ad- vantage. The system of agriculture followed is known as the " three-field system," by which every field gets three years' rest after six of cultivation. We talked of the celebrated black earth country, where there would be wheat, wheat, wheat — nothing but wheat. The change would not be agreeable, I imagined, except for the interesting characteristics of the Little Russians, its inhabitants. An ocean of wav- ing wheat fields is an interesting sight to gaze upon, but soon grows monotonous. Here the monotonous character of the country was relieved by the alternate lights and shadows of field and forest. Imagine a ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 89 rolling country, half forest and half fields of tall, ripen- ing rye, from the ridges of which are alw ays visible from three to a dozen little clusters of peasants' houses, and through which the broad government road cuts a wide swath, and you have the landscape of central Russia, in June, before you. You have seen it at its best. What it is like in winter, when the forests are bare, the fields a waste of snow, and the red-shifted moujiks asleep on their stoves, can be readily imagined. Even in the holiday garb of June there is a tamcness and a sameness in the beauty of the landscape that rob it of half its charms. One longs for a valley or a mountain, and I was con- stantly reminded by the observations of my companion, that for thousands of square versts, in any direction from Moscow, there is the same dearth of variety. A gully a hundred feet deep, or a ridge a couple of hundred feet high, stirred the adventurous soul of Sascha into an expression of wondering delight. Nor could he quite understand why it w as that I viewed these trifling variations of the earth's surface without emotion. The country passed through sustains a population of forty-five to the square verst. Villages were small, but numerous. We rode through no less than fifty-seven villages, a village for every three and a half versts. They seemed about as thick off the main road as on it. A village usually consists of two rows of log houses, straggling disjointedly along either side of the road. Nine tenths of the houses are unpainted log cabins, thatched with straw ; the tenth would be roofed with tin, and with the house painted red and the roof green, 9 o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. Some of my readers, though not all, will be surprised to learn that each of these villages is a tiny republic, and that the real Russia, the Russia that I am endeav- oring to investigate and explain, consists of hundreds of thousands of these miniature peasant republics, to the members of which St. Petersburg is as remote as the heavens, and the Czar a demi-god, as infallible as Jove. These village communities are known as mirs (meers), and their number in all Russia is somewhere near a half million. A mir consists of a cluster of peasant families, and the land allotted by the government for their support. In Russia are no separate farmsteads, as the term is understood in America. Sometimes, on the outskirts of a village, in the most picturesque situation round about, we saw pretty villas, as superior to the dwellings of the moujiks as heaven is superior to the earth. They were not the dwellings of peasants, however, but the "datschas," or country residences, of rich city merchants, or the owners of large estates. The moi- jik never isolates his house after the manner of the United States farmer. The inhabitants of the mirs are all clustered together in villages. Usually a dwelling consists of a four-square building, inclosing a court- yard. One side of the square is the house and the other three sheds. In 1861, when the serfs were emancipated by Alex- ander II., three and a half dessiatines, in certain dis- tricts more in others less (two and a half acres to a dessiatine), of land were allotted to each liberated "soul," or head of a family. At the entrance to a village may be seen a sign-post, stating the number ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 9 1 of souls and the number of houses in the com- munity. To the St. Petersburg government the mir is an ad- ministrative and financial unit. Instead of collecting taxes directly from the individual, the government collects them from the mir. The mir, not the indi- vidual, is assessed ; and if the community contains one or fifty " souls," incapable of meeting their obligation, the burden of their delinquency has to be borne by their neighbors. The taxes are collected by the sta- rosta, or mayor, of the mir, and paid over by him to an agent of the provincial government. CHAPTER VI. WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. ON Friday, July 4, our road from Tula led through Yasnia Polyana, the ancestral estate of Count Leo N. Tolstoi, the novelist. We had ridden out to Tula that morning, and striking the great Moscow-Kharkoff highway, turned our horses' heads toward the south. For some distance our road cut a swath through a magnificent forest. A stone pillar, surmounted by the imperial arms of Russia, told us that it was govern- ment property. We turned to the left, and a short distance from the road we came to a pair of circular pillars at the end of an avenue. It was the entrance to the Tolstoi' estate. Both pillars and avenue seemed sadly neglected, to one accustomed to the neatness of England and America. The former Avere in decay, and the latter was overgrown with weeds and vagabond tree shoots. We seemed to be entering the domain of fallen grandeur rather than the abode of Russia's greatest and best known novelist. On the plastered wall of a tumble-down little lodge, near the pillars, was chalked, in Russian, "Come to the house." We rode up the avenue to the house. It is a white two-story structure of stone and wood — a roomy, though unpretentious abode. The only striking feature about it was a very broad veranda, with rude carvings of horses and birds on the railings. It was 9 2 WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 93 six o'clock in the evening, and on the portico sat the Countess and several young ladies. The Countess was doing the honors behind the samovar, and the party were regaling themselves with tea and strawberries. The author sent in his card. Our horses were taken to the stables, and in five minutes we were of the interesting party about the samovar. Beside the Countess were the eldest daughter, the Countess's sister, two nieces from St. Petersburg, and two or three others. " The Count has been mowing hay this after- noon," said the Countess, " and has not yet come in. I have sent him your card. He will be here in a minute." Every person at the table could speak English, some of the young ladies so fluently that it was difficult to believe they had not been born and brought up in an English-speaking community. Presently there appeared on the steps of the portico a thin, sun-browned man of medium height, clad in a coarse linen suit. His bushy eyebrows thatched a pair of kindly yet shrewd blue eyes, and his gray beard and long gray hair looked like a peasant's. A cheap home- made cap, of the same material as his suit, adorned the head to which the world is indebted for " War and Peace," " Anna Karenina," and other masterpieces of the Russian realistic school. Rude boots, as ungainly as the wooden shoes of Germany, attested mutely to the eminent novelist's skill — or lack of it — as a cobbler. Both cap and boots were the Count's own handiwork. The linen trousers were loose and the shirt looser. The latter was worn, moujik fashion, outside the 94 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. trousers, and was gathered about the waist with a belt of russet leather. " I am very happy to see you," said Count Tolstoi, cheerily. " I hope you will stay some days. We have had American visitors occasionally ; you are, I see, from New York." " We are riding from Moscow to the Crimea," I said, " and, of course, couldn't think of passing without calling to pay our respects." The Count looked thin and worn from a recent ill- ness, but said he was now in good health. He was taking a season of " koumiss cure." At Samara, on the Volga, is an establishment for the manufacture of koumiss, to which the invalids of Russia resort. Count Tolstoi did not care to spend the summer at Samara, so he had set up a little koumiss establishment of his own. " Come and see it," he said, " and take my koumiss. I have been mowing hay. I must now drink koumiss. I drink it six times a day, and take nothing else but a little soup or tea." At the end of another short avenue, we came to a round wattle hut with a conical roof. It was a nomad aoul, or tent, of the steppes, improvised out of the best material at hand instead of the felt matting of the tribes in their own homes. Three yourg colts were tethered to a rope outside, and three big, fine brood- mares, their dams, were grazing in the orchard. A family of Bashkirs occupied the aoul — husband, wife, and two small children. They had been obtained from the koumiss establishments of Samara and brought to Yasnia Polyana. The three mares each gave about WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 95 a gallon of milk a day, the Count explained, and the foals were allowed to run with them at night. They were milked several times a day, and gave a pint at each milking. Inside the aoul the Bashkir woman was plying a dasher in a horse-hide churn of milk. A big jar of kou- miss stood on a table. The Count poured some into a wooden bowl. " See how you like it," he said. It tasted very much like buttermilk, and betrayed to the palate no suggestion of alcohol. " I thought it had to be fermented," I said. " It is fermented," returned the Count, " and if a man were to drink enough of it he would feel it £0 to the head." "And so you have been mowing hay. You do not, then, like Mr. Gladstone, confine yourself to one form of manual exertion ?" Tolstoi is an admirer of Mr. Gladstone, but freely criticised the motive of that statesman in chopping down trees as compared with his own ideas of why everybody should work. He had nothing to say against Mr. Gladstone felling trees, but thought it would be better were he to ply his ax for less selfish reasons than to exercise his body and maintain his health. Mr. Gladstone should wield his ax, if he pre- fers to chop down trees rather than to dig potatoes or mow hay, not merely for the same reason that an athlete goes to the gymnasium, but to earn his living. " Every man," said the novelist, " ought to do enough work each day to pay for the food he eats and the clothes he wears. Unless he does that he is 9 6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. sponging his living off the labor of other people, and is doing an injustice to his fellow-men. Some days I mow, others I sow grain, plow, dig in the garden, pick berries or apples, or, like Mr. Gladstone, fell a tree. I live very simply. I make my own boots, and if my women would let me, would also make all my own clothes. I do not have to work very long hours to pay for what I consume, and so I find plenty of time to write and study. I am only sixty-two years old, and intend to write a great deal. My only con- cern is that life may prove too short to enable me to finish all I wish to do." " What particular literary work have you in con- templatation ? " " Oh, I have many things ! My future works will be on educational rather than on purely social matters." " Will you advocate a new system of education, or only suggest improvements in the present methods?" " The present system is all wrong," replied the Count. "The foundation of the system which I shall advocate will be the purity and perfection of the parents. In the shadow of paternal perfection the boys will attain perfection, and the purity and good- ness of the mothers will be transmitted to the girls. This will be the foundation of a better system of rear- ing and educating children than the world has yet seen. The present system is full of evils. People have be- come so used to evils that they are no longer capable of distinguishing the evil from the good. Or, if they recognize an evil, they have been used to it so long that they have lost the sense of proportion, and it seems to them less real and grievous than it is. I hope WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 97 to expose the evils of the present system and to point out the way to a better order of things all round." I asked the Count when he expected to bring out his first work on education. He could not say, he re- plied. Possibly it would not appear during his life- time. All would depend on circumstances. Tolstoi thinks it would be a good thing if every author would pigeon-hole his manuscripts and publish nothing during his life. " Then," said he, " there would be less printed paper in the world, and people would find time for reading what was really good." No author, he argued, ought to receive any compen- sation for his work, either in money or fame. His reward should be the satisfaction of having done, or having tried to do, something for the improvement of his fellows. He has never willingly seen any of his work go to the publishers, but has always yielded to the importunities and wishes of his friends. His"Kreut- zer Sonata," he said, was an unfinished work, and was not intended by him to be published in its present form. But his friends took it, and against his better judgment it was given to the world. He was then preparing the epilogue to it that shortly afterward appeared. He was also writing a treatise on intem- perance, setting forth his ideas regarding tobacco, alcohol, opium, hasheesh, rich food, romantic love, and various other indulgences that come under the ban of his creed. We talked of Siberia, and of the methods of the Russian government. Tolstoi said, " The government is altogether bad. It is a monument of superstition and 9 8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. injustice. As for himself, he went on in the even tenor of his way, doing whatever his conscience approved of, regardless of laws and governments. They usually let him alone, but collisions sometimes occur. The previous winter his eldest daughter had opened a school for the children on the estate. The village pope (priest) sent a memorial to the government asserting that the instruction given in the school was not orthodox. The Governor of Tula, Tolstoi's per- sonal friend, was obliged to come down to Yasnia Po- lyana and order the school closed. The winter was then about over, and the children had to go to work in the fields anyhow, so not much harm was done. His daughter intended to open the school again, however, the following winter, and to reopen it as often as the authorities might close it up. So, unless they tore it down, stationed a policeman at the door, or exiled the daughter, the school would be carried on. " The government sins most against the people in the matter of education. None of the concessions it makes are of any value. They are only makeshifts. Schools are in every village, but nothing is taught but ' non- sensical catechism ' and the ' three R's.' Yet, with the government restrictions dragging on the heels of the people, a great improvement had taken place since the emancipation of the serfs. It is now possible for every peasant to learn to read and write. All the people need, to make themselves heard, is a free rein to learn what they choose," continued Tolstoi. The Count called to him a bright little peasant girl, in a blaze of red clothes. " Look here," he said, "how intelligent these children are. The moujik children are WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 99 always brighter than ours, brighter than the children of the rich and noble, up to a certain age. My daughter proved that last winter, and it is a fact well known to all of us. But after ten or twelve years they begin to get dull and fall behind. It's the hard life and the drudgery of toiling in the fields." We talked of Africa and its people, the Count hav- ing heard of my adventures there the year before. He listened with intense interest as I told him that among the uncivilized Africans, as well as the moujiks of Rus- sia, the children were brighter than the grown people. I intended to send the Count a copy of 44 Looking Backward " that I had in Moscow. He had already read it. He didn't know whether the government per- mitted it to circulate in Russia, but he had received a copy through a friend. The story was very well told, he said, but that was all he could say for it. " To be of value, the book should have shown how the results which are portrayed were to be arrived at. Without that 4 Looking Backward ' was nothing but a fairy talc. Then, men should live a life as happy and perfect as that which Mr. Bellamy describes, of their own free will and spontaneous goodness, and not re- quire government regulation for all their actions." Of the governments of the present day Tolstoi' thinks the United States government a long way ahead. It is almost a mistake, he said, to call it a " government " at all in the general acceptation of the term. Certainly, it was not to be thought of as a " republic " in the sense that France is a republic. The French govern- ment is a 44 republican form of government " : the peo- ple of the United States have a " natural govern- ioo THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. ment "—they govern themselves. A people who are simply living under a " republican form of government," because they think it better than any other, may pos- sibly change their minds in time of some great public excitement and think that a king or an emperor would be better after all, but no such change is possible where the government is really and truly a government of the people — " natural government." We stayed all night, and the next morning the Count and the writer took a long stroll about the estate. On our return three pilgrims were standing outside the house waiting for alms. On the roads of Russia one meets every hour of the summer day little bands of ragged, sunburned men or women, toiling wearily along or sitting down resting by the way. These are people making pilgrimages to Moscow or Kief, as good Mus- sulmans make pilgrimages to Mecca or Medina. The three specimens who appeared at Tolstoi's were uncouth members of the species ; their faces were a dirty yellow, their hair and beards were all over their faces and shoulders, and their garments were a mass of rags and dirt. We came up to them, and the Count stood looking at them for a minute with a smile of ad- miration. Then, with a sweep of the hand, such as an artist might make toward some long-worshiped master- piece of art, " I like very much these people," he said. He ordered a servant to give each of them a coin, and then questioned them. One of the men, he ex- plained, was very well off and owned a large farm near Kief. The life the pilgrims lead was his ideal of a per- fectly happy, peaceful existence. The only lamentable WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 101 thing about them was their superstition. They were not influenced by correct motives. They believed that there was virtue in visiting the ikons at Moscow or Kief ; whereas the real virtue of their condition was that, in imitation of the Saviour, they were not afraid to start out on their long pilgrimages without so much as a single kopeck in their purses. This man, who owned a farm, had actually started out without a piece of money. The Count said he could, with the greatest pleasure, sever all the ties that bound him to his pres- ent mode of life and become a pilgrim. " It is less of a tumble than most people think," he continued, "to descend from wealth to the bottom of the scale. In Switzerland, a boy who was running in the dark, fell into a hole. He clutched frantically at the edge with his hands and managed to hang on. For a long time he shouted for help, and bruised and lacerated his hands struggling to keep from falling to the bottom, which he supposed was a terrible distance below. At length a man came and told him to let go. He did as he was bid, and to his astonishment found that the firm, safe bottom of the hole was but a few inches below his feet. It is the same with a rich man. He struggles frantically to keep himself up, thinking the bottom means death or worse. Finally, he is com- pelled to let go, and, like the Swiss boy, is agreeably surprised to find the change a very small one." The Count told a story of a young man of good family, whom he had known in the Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, who once turned up at his house as a pilgrim, as road-worn a specimen as any of the three before us. He had been a pilgrim for a year. After 102 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. staying with Tolstoi awhile, and tasting the sweets of a comfortable life, he one morning suddenly disap- peared, without a kopeck in his pocket, and again be- came a pilgrim. In a sense, the Count thinks all travelers are pil- grims ; and while the person who travels for pleasure or on business is not to be compared for righteousness to the pilgrim who sets out without purse or scrip, yet all travelers are worthier than stay-at-home people. Their virtues consist in their contempt for a life of ease. With delicate flattery he complimented the writer on being " almost a real pilgrim." It was hot, sultry weather at Yasnia Polyana, and rain and thunder and mud among the untrimmed veg- etation about the house made a somewhat gloomy framework for the setting of Tolstoi at home. There were snatches of sunshine, however, in the morning prior to our departure, when the avenues and neglected grounds seemed a trifle more cheerful. From the Russian point of view, the Count's estate, probably, was in very good trim. We sat on the portico talking until eleven o'clock on the day of our arrival, and we wandered about the estate and chatted next morning. Many subjects were touched upon. The Count likes to talk and to draw out the ideas of his visitors and compare them with his own. I found him predisposed in favor of America, and the fact that I had just come from New York, and rep- resented an American newspaper, was an open sesame to his sympathies and good will. It requires but a few minutes' social intercourse WITH COUNT lOLSlVI. with him to discover that, like the rest of us, he has his weak points. The Count does not altogether dis- dain notoriety, though he may not be conscious of it. He seemed to me to possess a fair share of " author's vanity." In spite of the humiliation Of the spirit and suppression of human exaltation, which is the chief foundation of his creed, Tolstoi likes Americans, be- cause of the English-speaking world, vve were the first to translate, read, and appreciate his productions. The taste for Russian literature was acquired in the United States before it spread to England. There have been visitors to Yasnia Polyana who have carried away the uncharitable conviction that the peculiarities of the Count's daily life are theatri- cal; that he acts an eccentric part. Sometimes, during our conversations, I, too, thought him knowingly affected, but eventually decided that all his peculiari- ties come from sincere convictions and honest eccen- tricity of character. At times, when talking, Tolstoi' leaves the visitor momentarily in doubt whether he is not imposing on your credulity and trying to fathom your understand- ing ; but the final impression is that he is sincere. There is a curious mixture in him of a deep knowledge of the world and the innocence and confidence of a child. Nobody would try to practice a deception on him as a man of the world, because he would feel in advance that Tolstoi would be sure to see through it. But by appealing to the benevolent side of his charac- ter, it required little penetration to see that the appli- cant would have him at a great disadvantage. The young man who acted as a butler at the house, 104 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. and whom I questioned about his master's habits, told me that the moujiks often imposed on his benevolence and shamefully abused his charity. From all the country round the peasants came to Tolstoi with their woes and grievances, much as the freed negroes of the South used to appeal to the St. Clairs among the for- mer slave owners, after the war. A short time before our visit a moujik come to Tolstoi with a very long face and asserted that his horse had died and that he was unable to cultivate his land. The Count gave him a horse out of his own stables to plow his ground and get in his crops. The moujik, who was a worthless fellow, took the horse away, sold it, and spent the money on vodka. Only recently, too, the overseer of the estate had caught a moujik in the act of cutting down and carting off trees from the Count's forest. He brought the thief to Tolstoi and proposed to take him before the court. " Let him go, poor fellow," said the author of ' Christ's Christianity.' " The trees are as much his as mine. I neither planted them nor cut them down." Neither the timber thief nor the man who swindled him out of the horse was punished. The wonder is that Yasnia Polyana does not become a nest of worth- less vagabonds and that the Tolstoi estate is not stripped as bare as a desert. The latter possibility would disturb the Count's equanimity little. He would, in fact, utter no word of protest at the spoliation of his property, and only the stand taken by the Countess and the children prevents the family possessions from melting entirely away. The estate consists of iooo dessiatines, or 2500 WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. acres of arable land and forest. Part of it is the old family estate, given to t lie Count's grandfather, General Tolstoi, by Catherine II., as a reward for military ser- vices. The remainder has been acquired chiefly from the literary earnings of the Count. All economic affairs he leaves entirely in the hands of his wife. He seems scarcely a member of his own family. By re- siding in a good house and retaining land and property more than sufficient for his bare support, Tolstoi lives in perpetual violation of his own conscience. This state of affairs he submits to for the sake of his family, who are only partially in sympathy with his creed. He believes not only that he has no right to the estate, but that it would be an act of pride and pre- sumption to take upon himself even the right to divide it up and give it away. " How can one have the pre- sumption to give away what doesn't belong to him?" In the matter of land-ownership, Tolstoi declared him- self a great admirer of the theories of Henry George. He declared George the greatest American citizen of the present time. He believed, however, in a system of communal, rather than a national, ownership of the land. The ideal state of society would be, to him, the simple, rural communes, in which every family would have the right to till soil enough for its own support. There would be no taxes and no government. The Count believed that all forms of government are hum- bugs, and that the whole machinery of law and law- yers, courts and judges, is a barbarity, and an excuse for setting one man above another, and enabling the privileged few to rob the many. Governments he regards as the root of nearly all evils. I o 6 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. Tax collectors he considers highwaymen, who are able to rob people without bloodshed, simply because the tax-payers know that it would be useless to resist the powerful organization of which they are members. He was looking forward to a day when men would see through the fiction of government and would no longer consent to be robbed of money, nor to be instructed in the art of murdering one another in war. He admires America because we have only a hand- ful of soldiers, and the bitterness of his soul went out to the armed camps of which Berlin and Paris are the centers. In his younger days the Count was an officer and saw service in the Crimean war ; but since his conversion the earth contains for him no more mon- strous thing than a body of men drilling and practicing every day to perfect themselves in the art of killing the largest number of their brothers in the shortest pos- sible time. The accumulation of vast possessions by individuals the Count regards as one of the great evils that people have become so accustomed to seeing that they deem the wrong far less than it really is. He believed, how- ever, that the mission of the large American million- aires would be to hasten the climax, when the eyes of the people will be opened by the display of tremendous contrasts. The moral consciousness of the people needs a rude awakening, he thought, and only the de- velopment of abnormal contrasts in wealth and poverty is likely to bring the people to consider seriously the equal rights of all. Just as the undue development of the military will one day result in general disarma- ment, so, he believes, will the vast accumulations of WITH COUNT TO LSI 01. the few and the poverty of the many open the people's eyes to the fact that banks and government treasuries are robber's caves, in which is hoarded the money that has been taken from the people. The Count, however, didn't think the equalization of property will be brought about by violence, but by a general moral awakening. Millionaires will become convinced that they have no right to the property that they now regard as their own, and will give it up ; just as he would be willing to move off the family estate at Yasnia Polyana. America, he thought, will one day set the example. England will follow ; then Russia. The thinkers of Russia, he said, are already seriously studying the problem of doing away with the private ownership of land. One could not talk with Tolstoi for any length of time without the subject of religion- coming to the fore. Only foolish people, he said, trouble their heads about whether there is or is not a personal God ; or whether Christ was or was not more than human. We have our conscience for our guidance, and the only thing is to do right. People are mistaken in doing good here in the hope of future reward. This is the essence of selfishness. It prostitutes the best in hu- manity to the level of commerce. There is no merit in making a bargain by which .you are to receive a ruble some time in the future in return for giving a poorer brother a kopeck or a crust of bread to-day. This is not charity, but usury pure and simple. In Russia the best Christians are those who never go to church. Priests, ministers, and churches the Count holds in scant esteem. The priests he considered as lo8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. part and parcel of the governmental machinery for grinding the faces of the poor and living without work. To swing a censer and chant senseless masses is, in his opinion, stage-acting. The time wasted on this buffoonery, if devoted to planting and digging pota- toes, would suffice them to earn their bread, and then there would be no need of preying on the ignorant and the superstitious. Preachers should talk less about the future state and devote themselves, firstly, to earning their own liveli- hood by growing grain and vegetables, and, secondly, to bringing about the kingdom of heaven on earth. The Count had no patience with sectarianism, nor with preachers who are sticklers for certain forms of administering baptism or the sacrament. The spirit of hostility that brings ministers of the gospel on to the debating platform, he said, is not the spirit of Christ, but of Satan. Preachers and religious teachers should devote their energies to the work of compro- mising and the bridging of differences rather than disputing. The world has more need of living examples than of weekly sermons. If all the preachers in the world would quit their fine houses, refuse their salaries, and take to sowing and reaping, and preaching every-day sermons of Christ-like lives, they would do more good in a week than they do now in a lifetime. According to the Count, a minister of the gospel who accepts a salary and lives off it, is a robber. The only difference between him and a footpad is that, whereas the latter knocks you down and rifles your pockets, the minister gets at the pockets of honest people by a more inge- WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. nious, if less violent, process. In both cases the re- sults are the same: botli minister and footpad eat food that they never produced and which, conse- quently, cannot possibly be theirs by right. Such is the Count's creed. I found Tolstoi a vegetarian, and convinced that the ideal physical life is that of the Brahmins of India. He believed in reducing one's wants to a minimum, and in producing, so far as possible, with one's ow n hands the wherewithal both to feed and clothe the body. A state of society in which the condition of one would never be such as to excite envy in another is the secret of true social happiness. In Russia, the pilgrims who roam the country over, depending for their support from day to day on the alms of the people, approach this ideal, and Tolstoi would, so I inferred from his remarks, become a pilgrim himself were it not for the restraints of family ties and con- siderations. When he took me into his little koumiss establish- ment to give me a drink of the beverage, he said with enthusiasm, that with an acre of grass land and a couple of milch mares, a man would possess ample property for his support. The mares would live off the grass and the man could milk them and live off koumiss. Temperance finds in the great novelist an enthusiastic supporter. He neither drinks intoxicating beverages nor smokes, and he includes in the term many other indulgences that the ordinary advocates of temperance consider apart from their creed. In his creed romantic love is also intemperance. 1 1 o THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA IV G. The tender passion that has from all time been the theme of the poet and the novelist, Tolstoi' deems a species of moral depravity, on a par with gluttony, the smoking of opium, or indulgence in strong drink. A person finding himself, or herself, in love, particularly before marriage, should fight against it as against the opium habit or any other pernicious thing. Theater-going, dancing, romantic literature of all kinds, anything, in short, that excites the imagination to thoughts of love, is intemperance. Cupid is the devil in his most artful guise. In speaking of the relations of the sexes, Tolstoi talked with the same freedom from restraint as if he talked of digging potatoes or mowing hay. The Countess and her sister from St. Petersburg sat at the other end of the table on one occasion, when the Count was particularly inquisitive about the natives of East Africa. To an ordinary mortal the situation would have been embarrassing in the extreme. The ladies, however, were busy chatting together, and their ears, of course, were closed to anything the Count or I might have said. Tolstoi was deeply interested in the social life of the Masai and requested that a copy of " Scouting for Stanley in East Africa " might be sent him. His interest in the relations of the sexes seemed to me to be abnormal, almost morbid. Men and women, he insists, should love one another only as friends or as brothers and sisters. Matrimony brought about by romantic love is an unholy and unnatural alliance, that in nine cases out of ten resulted in unhappiness for both parties to the contract. With count tolstoi. lit The keynote of the Count's peculiar creed is 14 no violence." If cuffed on one cheek, he would turn the other. No matter what another person may be doing, the utmost force that is permitted to be used against him is passive resistance or persuasion. 14 If a man robs you, who are you that sets yourself up to judge him whether he is in the right or the wrong ? One man has no right to judge another, nor to assume the office of executioner by using violence against him. If a man knocks you down, who knows but you have deserved it? 44 One person has no right to use violence against another under any circumstances whatever, not even to oppose violence. There must be no self-defense be- yond passive resistance. To subdue the passions and gain the upper hand of our human pride is man's first duty to himself and to his fellows. After that, all the rest will come easy enough." After listening to such talk the Count's advice to keep away from the churches sounded oddly. An American minister from New York once visited Tolstoi at Yasnia Polyana. Did I know him? I did not; and although Tolstoi spoke with ever)- mark of respect for his visitor as a man, he let it be very plainly understood that the less the rising generation had to do with the modern expounders of the gospels the better for their comprehension of the true religion as he conceives it. Previous to his conversion the Count had been an atheist. About ten years before there was a census of Russia. It is the custom of the government to im- press the students of the universities to assist in taking 112 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. a census. Tolstoi's eldest son was then a student in Moscow, and the father accompanied the son in going his rounds to number the people. The task took them into some of the Moscow slums. The scenes of squalid poverty and wretchedness that the Count was then brought in contact with was the turning point in his career. For fifty years he had lived a life of selfish ease and pleasure. He had been through the whole mill of gay, fashionable existence. As a youth, he had been dissipated ; as a man, well-to- do and successful. The world had been to him a pleasure-ground, and the future a subject of philosoph- ical speculation. He went home a changed man. It seemed as if all his life had been utterly wasted. The selfishness of a life that had been largely devoted to pleasure and self- seeking now seemed to him an enormity of error and wrong. How should he expiate the great crime of fifty years of wrong-doing? He sought consolation in the existing forms of religion. He said he found them worse than honest atheism. He turned to the Scriptures and independ- ent research and harkened to the teachings of Sutaieff, a free-thinking peasant of Novgorod, who had been persecuted by the priests for independent action in the matter of baptizing his children. He drew inspiration from the child-like simplicity of the peasantry on his estate. He brought to bear on his observations and researches the mind of a cultured man and the intellect of a genius. The result has been the teachings that the world now recognizes as the Tolstoian creed. After he had become convinced that salvation lay in WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 113 living a Christly life in a truly unselfish sense, the Count was for getting rid of his property forthwith by distributing it among the peasantry. His plan was to descend at once to the level of the poorest of those about him, and earn his living with the plow and the hoe. That this was not done was due entirely to the Countess and friends of the family. Such, then, was the apostle of this new religion, or, as he would say, of the Christian religion rightly inter- preted, at home. Practical people in America would find in many of his ideas the vagaries of an ill-balanced but brilliant intellect. Genius-like, he was not always logical and con- sistent. In discussing the merits of Bellamy's "Look- ing Backward," he condemned the author's judgment in presuming that such a state of society as he de- scribes would be possible with human beings, possessed with the weaknesses and frailties of our kind. Only angels, he said, could exist under such conditions. Yet in the case of these same human beings, with the same weaknesses and frailties that would be the stum- bling block in Bellamy's new social world, he advocated " no government, no police, no prisons, no army, no church, no judiciary, no punishment for wrong doing." The Count's ideas of what is best were still in a state of development. A couple of years before my visit Mr. Stead, of the " Review of Reviews," paid him a visit. At that time he told Stead that he regretted every moment that he did not feel he was dying. He longed to have done with this world and to fathom the mystery of the next. Now he had changed his mind and told me his only fear was that he would not ii4 THROUGH RUSSIA OAT A MUSTANG. live long enough to finish all the work he wanted to do. The wife of Tolstoi' is a buxom lady, who looked about forty. She has a broad, matronly figure ; a kind, motherly face, and was the daughter of a St. Peters- burg physician. She is the mother of thirteen children, of whom nine were living. The eldest daughter and the two youngest children were at home. The others were traveling or away visiting, and the eldest son was officiating as Secretary on a Commission at the Prison Congress, which was then sitting in St. Peters- burg. He had just written a letter to his mother, ex- pressing disgust at the round of speeches and dinners that appeared to him to be the only probable outcome of the Congress. The Countess acted as her husband's amanuensis and copyist. She copied and corrected all of his manu- scripts. She seemed to be a most excellent woman. The family life appeared to be altogether charming. Both wife and children fairly idolize the Count. The nieces also think their uncle the embodiment of wisdom and goodness, and the only point on which they openly take issue with him is, naturally enough, on the sub- ject of romantic love as denounced in the " Kreutzer Sonata." These young people do not always fathom the Count, but they never doubt the wisdom of his actions or the goodness of his motives. Everything he does is right. If you venture to criticise anything the Count has said or done, in their hearing, they defend him stoutly. * We stayed to lunch at twelve, then rode away. In WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. the house of strict temperance, where the master lives on curds and koumiss, cutlets and a bottle of wine were set out for the visitors. We ate the cutlets but left the wine untouched. " I thank you very much for coming," said the Count, as he shook hands and advised us to be careful of our horses. " I wish you a pleasant journey to the Crimea," said the Countess, " and a safe return to America." Russia is a country where fantastic religious ideas seem to find a congenial soil. The dwarfing of the people's intellects in matters political, is productive of curious expansions in other directions. Between Mos- cow and Tula I stumbled upon a truly queer religious idea. None but a logical mind could, however, have conceived it. It is intended chiefly to comfort and console people of a doubting and skeptical turn of mind. People who are so unfortunately constituted that they don't know whether or not to believe in the existence of a personal God, and are forever casting about for light on the subject, arc instructed by the new religion- to " pray to the power that is responsible for their existence." By adopting this broad ground, all fears of missing the mark, so to speak, are done away with, and none need be afraid of going astray through ignorance or misconception. CHAPTER VII. AMONG THE MOUJIKS. ROM Moscow to Count Tolstoi's our road was 1 through the northern forest zone, where the mou- jiks are poor and superstitious. In many of the win- dows of the peasants' cottages were dead branches and faded wreaths of ferns and twigs. These were reminiscent of the Whitsuntide celebrations, which the Russian peasantry keep up with many curious cere- monies, remnants of their old heathen rites. Games that were formerly celebrated in honor of the Goddess of Spring, have now been transferred with changed names and certain modifications to the Whit- suntide festivities. On the Thursday before Whit- Sunday the peasants flock to the forests and devote themselves to singing and making merry. They cut down a young birch tree and dress it in gown and gar- land in rude imitation of a female, whom they further- more garnish with bright ribbons and scraps of rag. This is the Goddess of Spring, in whose honor they now feast and make merry under the trees. In the evening they carry the goddess home with them, singing and dancing before her on the way, and install her as an honored guest in one of their houses till Whit- Sunday. Visits of ceremony are paid to her by the inhabitants of the village on Friday and Saturday, and AMONG THE MOUJIKS. 117 on Sunday they take her to the nearest pond or stream and throw her in. On Whit-Sunday the Russian churches are decorated with green as ours are on Christmas ; and the flowers and branches are preserved and taken to their homes by the peasants, who believe them to be efficacious in keeping out witches, strange domovois, and epidemic diseases. Many strange customs still obtain in different parts of Russia in connection with spring, which have come down from the ancient heathen worship of the vernal Deity. All over Russia is held on Thursday, in the seventh week after Easter, the feast, called Semik. In most places, the Spring Goddess takes the form mentioned above. In others, however, the handsomest maiden of the village is chosen to represent Spring; she is enveloped in boughs and blossoms and carried about by the other girls. In the evening the girls and young moujiks join in a circling dance, known as the khorovod. The maidens wear floral wreaths and the youths sport flowers in their hat-bands. After the dancing is over, the girls repair to the nearest water and toss in their wreaths, watching them anxiously to see whether they sink or swim, float ashore, or turn round in a circle. If a wreath doesn't run ashore, the lucky damsel who has been wearing it will have long life and a happy marriage. If it circles round, the wearer will become the victim of unrequited love; and if it sinks she will either become an old maid or meet with an early death. When going to the forest to manufacture the god- dess from a young birch, or to envelop the chosen one n8 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. in foliage, the maidens sing an ode addressed to the trees, which is evidently a relic of ancient tree-worship. The oak is the Summer tree, and the birch the tree of Spring. They first address the oaks, singing : Rejoice not, Oaks ; Rejoice not, green Oaks. Not to you go the maidens, Not to you do they bring pies, cakes, omelettes. Then turning to the birches, which are the Semik or seventh week (after Easter) trees, they sing, raising their voices to a shout : Io, Io, Semik and Troitsa (Trinity) ! Rejoice, Birches, rejoice green trees ! To y 'on go the maidens, To yon they bring pies, cakes, omelettes. At the present day, in India, the natives of remote villages, in which there is no large idol, place offerings of food at the foot of trees that have been made sacred to certain of their gods. And a common enough sight is to see the people bowing to the ground, apparently worshiping these trees. In reality they are paying their devotions to the god, whom the tree, in the absence of the idol itself, is believed to represent. The above song of the Russian village maidens seems to point to a time in the past when offerings of food were also made to trees in that country. From one end of Russia to the other there is one form of amusement that is common to the whole peo- ple. It is the circling dance known as the khorovod. It is common also to the Slavs of other countries, be- AMONG THE MOUJIKS. 119 ing in fact a Slav dance, which gives it a broader geo- graphical and ethnographical meaning. The writer has seen more of it, indeed, in the villages of Crotia and Slavonia, Austria-Hungary, than in Russia. The ride through Russia was made during hay-time and harvest, the busy season, when the young peasants have little time for khorovods on a grand scale. But the children are given to dancing khorovods of an evening, and the writer also saw one danced by a troupe of Little Russians in one of the summer gardens of St. Petersburg. Near every village is an open spot, where on holidays the young people, arrayed in their brightest costumes, assemble to perform khorovod dances. They form themselves in a circle, as in the old-fashioned game of kiss-in-the-ring, and commence moving round and round, this way and that, singing songs appropriate to the season and the occasion. There are spring khor- ovods, performed at Easter and Whitsuntide; summer khorovods for midsummer, and autumn khorovods after harvest. Sometimes, in a large village, two khor- ovods are formed, one at each end of the broad, long street, of which there is only one in a Russian v illage, as has been observed. At a signal, the two khorovods, which may be a verst apart, begin moving toward each other, preserving the circular formation in the broad road, singing and circling, until they come together in the middle of the village. The songs are legion, and on every phase of Russian rural life: love, marriage, death, harvest, mother-in-law, and what not. There is the " Millet-sowing khorovod," the " Beer-brewing khorovod," and one called the 120 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. " Titmouse." The titmouse khorovod, as well as many others, has a sort of minor dramatic character. The dramatis persona consists of the Bullfinch, a young man, or a girl with a man's hat on; the Tit- mouse, his sister, and any number of marriageable maidens, who join hands and form a ring around them. The Bullfinch wishes to get married, and the Titmouse has assumed the responsibility of finding him a suit- able spouse. The khorovod begins to circle and to sing in the sad, low cadence peculiar to Russian village maidens: Beyond the sea the Titmouse lived ; Not grand, nor sumptuous, was her state, etc.; chorusing observations on the character and peculiari- ties of many different birds. A feast is held, at which, according to regular Russian tradition, the man look- ing for a bride may pick and choose among the many who are to be present. The widow Owl, though uninvited, came. . . . The Owl caressed the feathers of her head. . . . Why ever don't you marry Bullfinch, dear ? . . . etc. The Bullfinch passes various shrewd opinions on the merits or demerits of the several candidates : " I'd take the Magpie — but she chatters so," — and finally winds up by choosing the Quail, a plump and useful, rather than ornamental, bird. Generally the songs of the khorovods, when not de- voted to any particular theme, deal with the old, yet ever new, story of love. A peculiarity of these village love songs is that they seldom treat of the sentiment in AMONG THE MO U J IKS. 1 2 I a joyous, triumphant mood ; but deal almost exclu- sively with its sad and melancholy phases. It is a maiden repining for her lover, who has died or gone away; a youth lamenting the perfidy of his sweet- heart, who has jilted him for the sake of a richer suitor • a young couple whose parents forbid them to marry; a young wife whose husband has died or been drafted into the army ; a maiden carried off by marauding Tar- tars; a hard mother-in-law, who ill-uses the young bride — these are the melancholy themes of the love songs of the Russian peasants. The melody of the songs, too, is in harmony with the sentiments, being sung in a sad, low, wailing tone, — a lamentation rather than a song. The songs of the khorovods, indeed, arc in keeping with the whole character of the Russian land, life, and institutions. They are in harmony and color with the monotonous gray of the level steppes, and the bound- less wilderness of the northern forests; level, sad, and melancholy to the senses. From Archangel to Astra- khan there is neither mountain nor beauteous valley ; in the equally broad realm of Russian popular song the general tone is correspondingly monotonous. In spirit, the songs breathe the tragedy of the people's life and history. The story of the Russian peasantry is a mel- ancholy history of toil, sorrow, suffering, and despair. Their songs are a reflection of their history ; and where they sometimes aspire to comedy, a hollow, counter- feit, almost pitiful ring may readily be detected. Their humorous efforts treat almost exclusively of the uni- versal vice of drunkenness among the moujiks, and of wife-beating. 122 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. A fair specimen is the khorovod " A Wife's Love." A youth, and maiden, who represent the husband and wife, are surrounded by the circle of singers. The hus- band offers his wife a present, which she seizes and flings contemptuously to the ground. The khorovod singers, amazed at this exhibition of wifely insubordi- nation, sing: Good people, only see! She does not love her husband at all ! Never agrees with him, never bows down to him ; From him turns away ! The husband goes to the bazaar and buys a whip, which he offers his wife as a more acceptable present than the one she threw on the ground. When he brings' a whip in his hand, she receives him with every mark of affection ; and after a blow with it she bows very low and submissively, and rewards him with kisses. The khorovod singers laugh approvingly and change their song : Good people only see ! How well she loves her lord ! Always agrees with him ; always bows down to him ; Gives him kisses, even. But the subject of wife-beating is not always treated of humorously in the khorovods. One popular song runs thus : Beat not thy wife without a cause ; But only for good cause beat thy wife ; And for a great offense, — etc. These circling choral dances are believed to be of very remote antiquity among the people of Russia. AMONG THE MO U J IKS. 123 They seem to be allied to somewhat similar dances performed by the Greeks, and doubtless had their origin in pagan ceremonies, when the devotees formed in circles round their idols. Near Tula, the first large town we rode through after leaving Moscow, is a ring of stones, which, according to a legend of the dis- trict, represents a khorovod of singing maidens, who, while circling round, were suddenly transformed into stones. In the winter, when the khorovods or other outdoor games are out of season, the young people indulge in social gatherings at each other's homes, called in some districts Besyedi, in others Posidyelki. Special even- ings are appointed by the social leaders of the com- munity, and one of the moujiks offers them the use of his house for the occasion. The maidens usually take some light work with them, such as knitting, or spin- ning wool or flax. The young men who may be pos- sessed of musical talents bring their instruments, which are usually a rude sort of flageolet or flute made of lengths of reed, or the balalaika of Little Russia, a simple stringed instrument. Refreshments, consisting of kwass and rye cakes, or if the entertainers for the occasion are able to afford the luxury, piroghi, a sort of meat pie, that Russians of the better classes eat at the beginning of their dinner with the soup, are pro- vided. The evening is spent in singing songs with a rousing chorus, dancing, and listening to stories from the lips of long-tongued old women, or garrulous old moujiks with a reputation as story-tellers, and deposi- tories of folk-lore and tradition. The dances consist of standing in rows or in a circle, 124 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. forming a sort of indoor khorovod, while several of the number take the middle of the floor, turning alter- nately to one another their backs and faces, meanwhile singing and stamping time with the feet. The songs of the Posidyelki gatherings treat chiefly of the senti- ments of love and marriage : Remember, dear, remember, My former love, How we two together, my own, would wander, Or sit through the dark autumn nights, And whisper sweet secret words. Thou, my own, must never marry. I, the maiden, will never wed ! Soon, very soon, my love has changed her mind: Marry, dear, marry ! I am going to wed. In Little Russia, more particularly, these social gatherings last all night, the party breaking up at dawn. People who have seen something of the flirta- tions of the young burlaks and servant girls in St. Petersburg, where after ten o'clock of an evening, while walking the streets, you are constantly stumb- ling up against young workmen hugging and kissing their sweethearts in the untrusty shadows of porches and doorways, need only to be told that flirtation is one of the recognized privileges at the Posidyelki, and that the village moujik's ideas of flirtation are even more crude than the burlak's. In some districts it is customary, instead of holding the Posidyelki at each house of the village in turn, to select the largest and most suitable, and rent it for the evenings of the entire winter. The young men pay a couple of kopecks an evening, or a quarter of a ruble AMONG THE MOUJIKS. for the season. The moujik who owns and lives in the selected cottage derives a revenue of ten or fifteen rubles from the enterprise each winter, and considers himself very well recompensed for the trifling annoy- ance of having his home converted into a pandemo- nium of dance and song about every night for several months. CHAPTER VIII. SCENES ON THE ROAD. OR the first week of our ride the weather was sul- 1 try, and occasional thunder-showers, and some- times dismal rainy days, contributed to the discomforts of both horses and riders. Green-head horse-flies attacked Texas and his companion by the hundreds ; and their ravenousness was intensified by the stormy character of the weather to such a degree that nothing but a blow would cause them to relinquish their hold. Texas, being a peculiarly thin-skinned and particular sort of animal, danced and capered along, kicking, striking, and biting at them every step of the way, the very picture of equine misery. Occasionally he con- sidered himself worried to a point that would justify him in lying down in the road and rolling, regardless of the fact that a human being was in the saddle ; and he would pause and impudently essay a certain signifi- cant and time-honored movement of the legs, peculiar to his tribe, preliminary to carrying out this heroic method of ridding himself of his tormentors. Perhaps it was owing to the flies, but along these early stages of the journey he developed a remarkable fondness for sidling up against Sascha's horse and en- deavoring to persuade that more sedate animal to halt and permit him to rub himself against him as against a tree or fence. Finding these cajolings of no avail, 126 SCENES ON THE ROAD. 127 owing to the objections of every other member of the party, he eventually took to scrubbing up against him as we rode along. Our fortunes at night were various, though always of a degree calculated to humble us to the level of the rude, uncivilized life and unrefinements of the moujik. Sometimes we stayed at traktirs, but in the smaller villages, where the prospective consump- tion of vodka and weak tea would not justify the es- tablishment of a house of public accommodation, we had to seek refuge with a moujik. Traktirs, as everything else in Russia that is patron- ized by the commoner subjects of the Czar, are regarded by the authorities chiefly as teats from which the largest possible yield of taxes are to be milked. A roadside traktir, according to a proprietor of one whom we questioned, pays a tax of .500 rubles a year and up- ward ; and a courtyard for the accommodation of teams, 250 rubles. No wonder these people are picayunish and over- reaching in their small way, and disposed to make the utmost of any casual stranger who comes along. The moujiks presented a somewhat less monotonous level of commercial depravity than the proprietors of the traktirs ; but the general level of all was disagreeably low. The tendency of all from whom we were com- pelled to seek accommodation for man and beast, seemed to be to get the utmost possible number of kopecks out of us, and part from next to nothing in return. Most of them would simply speculate on our neces- sities, and take advantage of the fact that we had to accept what they chose to supply us with or go with- out. 12 8 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. The writer's preconceived idea of rural Russia was, that it would be found a country very poor as to ready money, but, nevertheless, a rude plenty in the matter of horse-feed and coarse food. The first proposition turned out to be singularly correct, and rye bread was tolerably plenty, but it was occasionally impossible to get a feed of oats for our horses, and I doubt whether Texas had a half-dozen feeds of decent hay on the whole journey. The " hay " was almost invariably nothing but weeds ; and, in striking contrast to the American custom of supplying it to a traveler's horse in gener- ous armfuls, a pair of scales would be brought forth, and " skoolka pfund ? " (how many pounds?) would be the question. And, regardless of its glaring worthless. ness, the amount called for would be weighed as critically as though it were the most precious and valuable com- modity, the veriest pinches being deducted to avoid over-weight. A particularly annoying advantage that was as often as not taken of us, in the bargain, was to select the moldiest and most utterly worthless armfuls that could be found, with the choice of that or nothing at all. The idea seemed to be to take advantage of strangers, to dispose of what they couldn't very well get rid of to regular customers. In the matter of food, they were, almost without ex- ception, abominably lazy, and reluctant to put them- selves to extra trouble, even for the sake of earning money. Milk was easy to obtain, for the reason that no trouble was required beyond fetching it out of the cellar ; and it was often of excellent quality and accept- ably cold. A suggestion to cook a chicken, or even to fry us eggs, invariably brought a positive negative as to SCENES ON THE ROAD. 129 the chicken, and a counter-suggestion of " samovar" on the question of the eggs. "Samovar" meant that it would be less trouble to cook the eggs in the same water that was being boiled to make tea, a handy, slip-shod method exceedingly con- genial to a shiftless, reluctant mind. There were ex- ceptions, however, and they are as memorable as fresh little oases on a journey across a desert, no less from their scarcity than from their striking contrast. After leaving Count Tolstoi's, the nature of the country and the character of the villages underwent a change. We were leaving the region where all had formerly been covered with forest, and were getting into the borderland between forest and steppe. The houses of the moujiks were no longer built exclu- sively of wood ; but, commencing with Yasnia Polyana itself, at least half the number in the villages were of brick. The moujiks make their own bricks, and for the most part build their own houses. In work of this sort, which in most countries would be performed by professional brick-layers and carpenters, the moujiks are probably cleverer than the peasants in almost any other country in the world. To a man, almost, they arc expert with an ax, and can hew logs and build a house far neater than the American backwoodsman. In building a log-house, the walls arc calked with hemp, twisted up like a hay rope and punched tightly into every crack and crevice. The house is put to- gether close to where it is to stand, and then moved into its proper position by means of rollers and levers. Whilst in process of building, a rude wooden cross is erected close by, presumably as a measure of protec- 130 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. tion against the interference of evil spirits and witches. Curious ceremonies are performed in connection with occupying a new house, varying somewhat in different parts of Russia, but all clearly allied to the rites and ceremonies of old heathen times. It is believed that if the builders call out the name of any one whilst delivering the initiative blows of the axes, the person denominated will immediately go into a decline and quickly die. By-standers are particularly - deferential toward the builders during the preliminaries of putting up a house, lest offense might be given ; and the former are expected to call out the name of some bird or animal, in proof that they have not maliciously brought evil upon any of their neighbors. In many parts of Russia the foundations of the new house are sprinkled with the blood of some victim slaughtered for the purpose — nowadays, a fowl or young kid ; but in ancient pagan times, probably a human being. The head of the slaughtered fowl or animal is cut off and buried under the corner of the new edifice that is to be occupied by the ikons, the most vener- ated part of the house. Another part of the new house, to which great ceremonial importance is attached, is the threshold. Precautions are taken to prevent any one crossing it until it has been crossed by the oldest member of the family who is to occupy it, and a cross is made on it to bar the ingress of witches and objectionable spirits. In various provinces some venerable household god, such as a small ikon, or relic of a saint, that has been for a long time an heirloom of the family, is buried under the threshold ; and the more superstitious of SCENES ON THE ROAD. the peasants are extremely reluctant to sit down on the threshold of a house. In some places, if a child is still- born in the house it is the custom to bury it under the threshold ; and when a child has been baptized, it is held over the threshold for a minute or two on the way home from the church. To wash a sick child over the threshold is also believed to be almost as efficacious a remedy as sprinkling it with holy water. When a family are moving out of an old house into a new one, everything portable is removed from the former residence, and a fire is kindled in the stove by the oldest female member of the family. At midday, the embers of this farewell fire are put in a jar and carefully carried to the new domicile and placed in the new stove. The jar is smashed and the fragments care- fully collected and buried in the same corner that has been honored with the head of the sacrificial cock or lamb at the laying of the foundations. When peasants migrate long distances, and the jar of embers cannot possibly be managed, they are care- ful to take with them a relic of some kind from the old stove, to be incorporated with the one they expect to build in their new home. In connection with the house-changing ceremonies, moreover, great impor- tance is attached to certain formulas addressed to the domovoi, or house spirit, who is cordially invited to accompany the family to their new home, and is wel- comed at the threshold of the new house by the heads of the family with bread and salt. The removal of the domestic ikons is a matter of considerable ceremony in many places, where the moujiks seem to have gone little further in their con- 1 3 2 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. version to Christianity than to transfer their heathen conceptions and ceremonies from the household idols of their ancestors to the holy ikons of the Orthodox religion. A cock and hen are carried into the new- house and turned loose, whilst the head of the family respectfully holds the ikons until the cock crows, before placing them in their new corner. As great misfortune would come upon the family should chan- ticleer refuse to lend his support to this all-important ceremony, care is taken to ascertain beforehand the crowing proclivities of the various members of the farm- yard flock, so as to select one that maybe depended on to make himself heard in no uncertain manner. On the ninth day of the ride we crossed the second provincial boundary line, which took us out of the province of Tula into Orel, and we passed through the town of Msuesue. Strange to say, we here discovered, among the moujiks, a local peculiarity that one is almost sure to find among the peasants of certain localities in any Eastern country. In reply to our inquiries about distances, they always replied that it was a " verst and a half," regardless of the actual distance. You find the same thing in Persia and in Asiatic Turkey. It is sim- ply a curious phase of Oriental politeness, which leads the people to give the traveler an answer such as they imagine will fall pleasantly on his ear. In certain parts of Persia, the writer found it next to impossible to learn the actual distance to any given point ahead, owing to this extremely annoying peculiarity. They take it for granted that the desire of the questioner is to arrive as quickly as possible at the end of the fatigues and discomforts of the road, and so they sim- SCENES ON THE ROAD. 133 ply give rein to the nonsensical politeness of misinform- ing him as to the distance, in order to minimize it and win his momentary approval. In Orel we, as a matter of course, excited the suspi- cions of the police, who, however, contented themselves with merely keeping a close watch upon our move- ments until we left the city. The streets of Orel were disreputably rough even for a Russian provincial city, and the whole place seemed such a wretched dust-hole that we halted in it only long enough to get dinner and to give our horses a few hours' rest. As in any other Russian town the conspicuous objects were the churches and the prison. At the doors of the churches stood old men, mechanically jingling little hand-bells, and extending to passers-by, for donations, alms-re- ceivers decorated with crosses. A peculiar feature of religious fanaticism and men- dicancy in Russia are certain old men who sometimes take their stand at favorable points in the cities, and sometimes wander about all over the empire, from vil- lage to village, like the wandering dervishes of Persia. These men have taken vows to collect money enough to build a church for the salvation of their own souls, or they hold commissions from one or other of the big churches of Moscow or Kiev to collect money for re- pairs or other purposes. They simply devote their lives to wandering about and begging for money, and because it is not for theirown use, but for religious pur- poses, they are able to accumulate large sums. Here, it seemed to the writer, newly impressed at this time with the financial slipperiness of the people along the road, was a particularly fine field for the ex- 134 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. ercise of small knavery, by collecting donations from the Orthodox and easily-gulled moujiks, under the pretense of wishing to build a church. It seemed to me that this would be an exceedingly congenial game to any number of Russians ; but my companion assured me that this class of fraud was positively unknown among them, owing to their dread of incurring the wrath of the saints. There was probably no mistake whatever about this explanation. One who might be the biggest rogue in all Russia in dealing with his fellows, would tremble in his boots with fear at the suggestion of bamboozling the saints by collecting money falsely in their name. And on the road, in any dangerous part of the country infested by Orthodox robbers, the toe-nail or shin-bone of a saint, bearing the " hall-mark " of Holy Kiev to prove its genuineness, would be a better protection to the traveler than a whole arsenal of revolvers. All through the provinces of Orel and Kursk, our ears were gladdened, — evening, night, and morning, — by the singing of an astonishing number of nightingales. The forests seemed alive with them, and of an evening fairly rang with their sweet melody. Whether influ- enced by the cheeriness and the example of these forest songsters, or whether this particular part of Russia is blessed with some mysterious property of earth or air that inspires the vocal muse in humans as well as birds, seemed a reasonable enough fantasy in which to indulge one's mind ; for here, too, we heard more singing from the village maidens than at any other part of the ride. Nightingales are, indeed, said by some authorities to be more plentiful in this part of Russia than in any other country. It would be interesting to know what SCENES ON THE ROAD. 135 attracts such numbers of them to this particular locality. In the villages we now began to see small and tem- porary rope-walks, and the cultivated landscape, which farther north presented chiefly fields of rye and pota- toes, here displayed broad areas of hemp, one of the great staples of Russian export. The village rope- walks were the property of itinerant rope-walkers, who wander over the country from village to village to ply their trade. They usually have a horse and telega to convey their rope-making paraphernalia, and in all re- spects live the life of gypsies and tinkers. They make the hemp crops of the moujiks into rope of various sizes for a small amount per pood, and, when they have exhausted the stock of customers in one village, pull up stakes and move on to the next. It was in the village of Subazhna where a youthful assistant to one of these rope-makers gave me a new idea of the extent to which the curse of vodka-drink- ing has undermined the moral perceptions of the rural Russians. It was a wet, miserable day, and we were compelled to remain over at the village traktir. It was some sort of a holiday, and the traktir was full of roystering moujiks, spending the day, as moujiks spend all their holidays, — drinking themselves into a beastly state of intoxication. I had taken a little table out under the shed and was writing a letter, when there came reeling out of the back door the youth in question, well-nigh help- lessly drunk. He was not more than twelve years old, and was endeavoring, in a pitifully maudlin way, to make a display of jollification. Over and over again I3 6 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. he fell sprawling in the mud, and it was pouring with rain. At length, after staggering about the yard and falling a number of times, insensibility or helplessness overcame him, and, already drenched to the skin and plastered with mud, the poor little wretch fell like a log into a puddle of mud and slush, the most pitiable case of " drunk and incapable " that it had ever been my misfortune to see. This was not later than ten o'clock in the morning. And a particularly revolting sight was to see full-grown men, still in the possession of their senses, taking no other notice of this child, lying there drunk in the pelting rain, than to make some trifling and quite in- different attempt at jocularity at his expense. Sascha and I carried him, under the shed and laid him on some hay, a proceeding that attracted ten times as much notice as did the condition of the precocious bibber, from the men whom he had beaten in the reck- less race to get into the gutter and thereby glorify the saint in whose honor they were spending the holiday. When we had been a couple of hours on the road, next day, Sascha suddenly discovered that he had lost his passport ; and when, at noon, we reached a village, it seemed indeed a curious verification of the old maxim that " misfortunes never come singly," that we should for the first time on the ride make the un- welcome acquaintance of an uriadnik. Of all the vast multitude of bureaucratic satellites that revolve about the throne and the sacred autoc- racy of the Great White Czar, to prevent it being blown over by the breath of public opinion, my readers are commended to the uriadnik, as a valuable study in SCENES ON THE ROAD. 137 the science of paternal government as it is understood at St. Petersburg. The uriadnik first appeared on the stage in 1878; and in the great Russian drama of " The Czar and his Loyal Moujiks," plays the part of rural autocrat among the latter. Commencing in this picturesque role, he has succeeded in working his way up to the distin- guished position of first villain in the Russian tchin. His most critical and competent judges are the mou- jiks, whom his existence and the exercise of his talents mostly concern ; and from one end of Russia to the other, the writer could get from them but one verdict, which was that the uriadnik is the prettiest combina- tion of police-tyrant, bribe-taker, blackmail-levier, and all-round scourger of his children, that their amiable and well-meaning father, the Czar, has allowed to be laid on their backs. The very word " uriadnik," is indeed likely to always remain in use among the Russian peas- antry, even should they and the entire dramatis per soiicc of the paternal government one day disappear, and it will be as the synonym of as many attributes of ras- cality as could possibly be crowded into the character of one person. The wearers of the title have become a by-word among the moujiks, who have, since their introduction among them, been brought into closer touch with the governing body than they were before. As the Czar is autocrat of Russia, and a Governor- General of his province, so is the uriadnik autocrat of the village community. Prior to 1878, the moujiks were left very much to the management of their own village affairs, and if they paid their taxes promptly, and allowed their minds to remain dormant on the 138 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. perilous questions of State politics and religion, were not likely to be annoyed and harassed in their daily life. When the Nihilists commenced to stir things up, however, prior to the assassination of Alexander II, and a particularly active crusade was inaugurated against them, a full share of the repressive measures fell on the people for whose liberation the desperate knights of bomb and pistol professed to be working. A force of near 6000 uriadniks was organized and scattered throughout rural Russia, and given police powers in the village communes ; and in Russia " police powers " means well-nigh anything under the sun in the shape of tyrannical and irresponsible interference with the private citizen. Like all Russian officials, the uriadnik is underpaid, and would find it very difficult indeed to keep up appearances consistent with the importance of his official position, if he had no other source of income than his salary. The office of uriadnik is worth 200 rubles a year, or about $10 a month. Yet you see these gentlemen sporting gold watches, and they ap- pear, on the otherwise monotonous and colorless field of Russian rural life, full-blown, well-nourished, even gorgeous flowers. They have far more tyrannical power over the peasantry than has the Turkish zaptieh among the villages of Asia Minor. Though " paternal," the Russian government scarcely seems, in any of its relations, part of the same family as the people. In a constitutional country the police- man, despite his uniform and baton, always gives the impression of being in familiar touch with the people, even those whose heads he may be on the point of SCENES ON THE ROAD. !39 cracking ; and there is a subtle spirit of apology in his bearing and movements. It is as though he were say- ing to his fellow-citizens, whom he is ordering to " move on," " It's my duty, you know, and I have no option but to order you about ; otherwise I should be very happy to let you loiter and look in the windows or do anything else you please." All this is reversed in the Russian police. They, forsooth, are anything but the servants of the people, and they always impressed me as invaders and con- querors of the country. They represent the Czar, the autocratic power ; and their bearing is insufferably in- solent, or condescendingly tolerant, according to the disposition of the individual policeman or the status of the person before him. The uriadnik in the peas- ants' village has the same arbitrary powers of domi- ciliary visit as the highest police authorities have in the cities. He can invade the houses of the people without warning or preliminary preparation of any kind, at any hour of the day or night. On the grounds of his own suspicions, he is empowered to make noctur- nal visitations, and to tumble people out of their beds, search their houses from roof to cellar, and play bull in the china-shop, generally, among the people. Even the most malignant Turkish zaptieh has no such powers as these. He is required by the powers at St. Petersburg to exercise the same paternal authority over the every- day affairs of the people as villagers, as they do in a national sense. His duties embrace such supervisory tasks as compelling the moujiks to throw open their windows for purposes of ventilation, to keep their floors 1 4° THRO UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG. swept clean, and all manner of sanitary and inquisi- torial inspection. In theory, this sort of inspection is no doubt rather to be commended than otherwise ; the trouble is, that not one Russian in ten thousand is fit to be intrusted with powers that practically leave the people at his mercy. The writer has slept in rooms in Russian villages where the windows had evidently not been opened from one year's end to another, for venti- lation seems as unnecessary and uncongenial to a moujik, and even to many Russians of considerable education, as to a mole. The " best room," in nearly every village traktir we stayed at over night, was notoriously in need of being thrown open for ventilation by the uriadnik. The writer found the air in them, that had been boxed up all summer, so insupportable that I used to go and sleep, by preference, under the shed with the horses. Sascha, however, didn't seem to care ; or, at all events, it seemed to his Russian mind " so much like a moujik to sleep with the horses," that he preferred the dangers of suffocation in foul air. I expected to get up some morning and find him a ghastly corpse ; but, somehow, he survived to the end. It is not the proprietors of traktirs, however, not the gentleman whose cellar contains barrels of vodka, and who owns a half dozen samovars, always ready to be steamed up for the making of tea, that ever feels the inconvenience of the inquisitorial powers of the uriadnik. In one village, where the traktir sleeping- room had to all appearances been sealed up since winter, we heard a queer story of a moujik whose window had been thrown open nearly every day during SCENES ON THE ROAD. 141 the long bitter winter by an over-zealous uriadnik, in this case over-zealous for reasons that would not be very difficult to guess. One hardly knows what quarter to turn to for the responsibility of the uriadnik. Considered apart from the motive that prompted his creation and distribution among the peasantry, the Russian government cer- tainly committed no heinous crime in organizing a rural constablery, a privilege well within the rights of the most liberal of governments. Considering also the criminal indifference of the moujiks in sanitary matters, one can hardly blame the authorities for ordering summary lessons to be given them in ele- mentary sanitation and the like. Here, however, the tolerable ends ; and despotism begins with the right of domiciliary visit, without warrant or responsibility. But the chief responsibility for the evil reputation that attaches itself to their office, rests on the uriadniks themselves. And the underlying explanation is to be found in the lamentable fact that it is quite out of the question to find in Russia a body of men equal to the moral obligations of an honest performance of the uriadnik's duties. Were the entire tribe in possession of the field to be suddenly seized and hanged, and a fresh batch of average subjects of the Czar told off to fill their places, in six months the new gang would be as ripe for the hangman's noose as their predecessors. As a general thing, the uriadniks content themselves with accepting small bribes, which are given to them by people by way of propitiation, in order to be allowed to live in peace, and to blackmailing such persons as seem to be reluctant and unmanageable in 142 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. the matter of bribes. There are uriadniks, however, who, like the domovois on the 30th March, are given to fits of wanton deviltry, seemingly out of spontane- ous and irrepressible exultation over the opportunities of their position. Stories are current of uriadniks en- tering moujiks' houses, and, on the ground of defective sanitary practices, upsetting jars of milk and tubs of picked cucumbers on to the floor. In many of the villages south of Tula, one of the standing precautions against fire that the moujiks are required to maintain is to keep ready to hand, beside the water-buckets, axes, etc., previously mentioned, a swab attached to a long pole, which is to be dipped in water for flogging a blazing roof. An uriadnik is said to have once discovered attached to one of these fire poles, instead of the regulation swab, a dead magpie, which the owner of the house had fastened there as a precaution against witches. The zealous officer was naturally indignant, and determined to make an ex- ample of the offender that would be remembered for some time, carried it into the house and added it, feathers, corruption, and all, to the kettle of cabbage soup which the house-wife was boiling for the family dinner. As the magpie is a bird which was cursed centuries ago by a Moscow metropolitan, and is there- fore unholy, the kettle of soup had to be thrown away. But to return to the narrative of our own experi- ences on the road, our first uriadnik, who had turned up in so curious a manner at the exact moment when we could least afford to have anything to do with gentlemen of his kidney, as though uriadniks had the faculty of scenting from afar the vulnerable points of SCENES ON THE ROAD. 143 the rest of mankind, as buzzards scent from astonish- ing distances a carcass, turned out to be a reasonable sort of a chap after all. After considerable bargaining and casual references to the smallness of an uriadnik's salary, he finally accepted the trifling sum of three rubles, in consideration of which he would close his eyes to the fact that Sascha had no passport at all and mine was " irregular." The least we could do to show our appreciation of this extremely moderate demand was to take him into the traktir and set up a friendly samovar of tea. CHAPTER IX. INTO MALO RUSSIA. ON Sunday morning, July 13, we rode into the pro- vincial capital of Kursk ; and applied at the police station for a renewal of Sascha's passport. Strange to say, we were not received with anything beyond a mild and reasonable degree of suspicion by the police authorities of Kursk. The population of Kursk, how- ever, is pre-eminently Orthodox, and the principal busi- ness of the police officials being, in consequence, of a monotonously routine character, their bumps of suspi- cion are of less abnormal development than in localities intellectually wider awake. The chief features of the police station were the vast number of documents piled on the tables and desks, and an exceedingly pom- pous gentleman, whom we immediately decided must be no less a personage than the Governor-General, but who afterward turned out to be the assistant chief of police, with a salary of, perhaps, 2000 rubles a year, or $20 a week. One of the stock grievances that the Russians have against the Germans, is, that a German officer, with the salary of a journeyman tailor, will assume airs and ape the hauteur of a prince with an enormous income. It must not, therefore, be supposed that in speaking of the tremendous personalities seen among the police officers of the Russian service, that these worthy gen- 144 INTO MA 10 RUSSIA. 145 tlemen are guilty of imitating the people whom, of all others in the world, they most cordially hate. It is true that they also sometimes outshine princes with enormous incomes, while drawing the salaries of jour- neymen tailors, but they manage to do it in a different way from that of the Germans. The difference is, that whereas the German official manages to do it on his salary, it cannot be reiterated too often that the salary of a Russian police officer has very little bearing, indeed, on the size of his income. But all this has nothing whatever to do with the portly and theatrical gentleman whose personality made the police station of Kursk a memorable spot on our ride ; he being, no doubt, an exceptionally honest and trustworthy official. Far be it from the writer to express the smallest suspicion to the contrary, seeing that the gentleman in question, instead of taking a cynically suspicious interest in us, appeared chiefly de- sirous of exhibiting, for our edification, the pompous and portentous aspects of human vanity, thereby hop- ing to make such an impression on our minds as would cause us to remember him to the end of our lives. That he succeeded in this, seems very probable, since, whenever my mind happens to revert to the subject of the Russian police, the figure that invariably looms up in the foreground is that of a remarkably pompous gentleman, six feet or more in height, weighing 400 pounds, and clad, July 13, in a heavy gray ulster over- coat, warm enough for January 13, that reached to the floor, who issued from the inner sanctum sanctorum of the Kursk police station, and startled the numerous underlings about the room nearly out of their skins, by 1 46 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA JVC. stamping impatiently with his foot. Having startled the scribes, secretaries, and policemen in this manner, the assistant police master beamed inquiringly in our direction a moment through his spectacles and then passed out. In Kursk, as in most provincial Russian cities, the motive that prompts anybody to seriously take up their residence in it is a positive enigma to a foreigner. In summer the people seem to exist chiefly for the purpose of assembling every evening in a little public garden, illumined with colored lamps, where they circle round and round a fountain and peer into each other's faces to the music of a military band, kindly provided by the courtesy of His Excellency the Governor-General of the province. On this particular Sunday evening there were to be extraordinary doings in the little garden, in virtue of which a small admission fee was charged. Rockets and bombs, which exploded and hissed in fiery flight about 6 o'clock P.M., announced to the city that the performances for the evening had begun. We made our way thither and mingled with the gathering throng. We called for tea and cigarettes at the garden restaurant, and, seated at a table, watched the proceedings with considerable interest. There was a sack-race around the fountain for an accordion ; and any number of abortive efforts on the part of men and boys to "climb to the summit of a greased pole, the prize being in this case a samovar. The proprietors of the entertainment seemed to have taken good care that the pole should be so thoroughly covered with grease that they would have been quite safe even had they put up a prize of a million rubles. INTO MALO RUSSIA. 147 There were more rockets and bombs, and then everybody paused in their circular promenade around the fountain to witness the dispatch of a tissue-paper balloonlet. At the flight of the little messenger to the clouds there was an universal clapping of hands, and everybody looked supremely happy. All then resumed the serious business of walking round and round. There were a good many ladies, the ilite of Kursk, and a good many more who seemed to be even more ele- gant ladies than the real ladies ; some were pretty, and a good many more owed their pretensions to the same to the kindly influence of the colored lamps and the charitable twilight of the ending day. The military and the police were in the majority among the gentlemen, and private citizens seemed to be nowhere. Our friend, the assistant chief, was very much on hand, overcoat suspended cavalierly from his shoulders like a Spanish cloak, he, evidently, having better use for his arms than to thrust them in the sleeves. The arms were utilized as he walked, — not round and round, as everybody else was doing, but at eccentric angles, from one part of the garden to another, for the purpose of greeting his many friends with a glad and sudden surprise — utilized to bulge out the coat to such ample breadth that he seemed to require as much space as a full half dozen ordinary, private subjects of the Czar. The greater part of the following morning was spent in endeavoring to overcome the prodigious difficulties of dispatching a valise off by rail to Ekaterinoslav. By means of a vast deal of patience, and efforts that came near being superhuman, we succeeded in eventually THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. getting the railway employees to exchange a receipt for our money, and to take the responsibility of for- warding the valise. There were no suspicions here, however, to overcome — nothing but red tape ; skeins of that precious claptrap commodity having to be un- raveled at eight different desks and departments ere a common traveler's valise could be sent away. At the police station we obtained, for rubles, a genuine Russian responsibility-shirking document for my companion ; a sort of a " house-that-Jack-built " paper, stating that he had come there and said he had lost his passport, which he said he had obtained in Moscow, in which city he had said he resided,- and in which city he had said he had received his education ; together with a whole string of other " saids," but which as a passport was of no account whatever. South of Kursk we began to find a decided and exceedingly welcome improvement in the interiors of the people's houses. Here and there we were, at first, astonished to find houses that were clean and sweet within, and before reaching Kharkoff we were among a people who whitewash their interiors every six weeks, an improvement indeed upon the moujiks of the northern forests. We were getting into the famous " black earth region," and a change, too, came over the life to be seen in the fields. Men were harrowing newly plowed fields with as many as four harrows strung one behind another ; and on the road we met single teamsters in charge of as many as ten telegas. Wheat, rye, and oat harvest was in progress, and the fields were alive with moujiks and their wives and children, all taking a hand. As a general thing, the INTO MALO RUSSIA. 149 grain was cut with cradles, swung by the men, and the women did the binding. There were, however, many females who wielded reaping hooks. Regular camps were formed in the fields, since the fields were often many versts away from the villages ; and a novel fea- ture of the camps would be the babies in swinging cribs suspended to rude tripods, and the toddlers next in size taking care of them. Occasionally might be seen the mothers, leaving their reaping or binding to kneel beside the cribs and indulge themselves and in- fants, the one as truly gratified to give as the other to receive. Near' the town of Oboiyan, both men and horses came near scoring a catastrophe in a stream with a bottom of quicksand. Texas, being the livelier horse of the two, managed to scramble out almost before lie was in ; but Sascha's animal got fairly into it, and whilst plunging about pitched his rider heels over head into the sand and water. Luckily both horse and rider escaped with no greater damage than a wetting and a fright. Beyond Oboiyan the northern moujik and his red shirt began to gradually fall into the background, and the white-shirted peasants of Little Russia to take his place. The moujik of Malo (Little) Russia cuts a less picturesque figure in the fields than his Muscovite con- freres of the north. In tlie fields of the forest zone the red specks conjured up the comparison of poppies, and in our gayer moods it was by this floral title that we would call one another's attention to them. But by no stretch of the imagination, nor by any enchant- ment born of distance, would it be possible to call the 150 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. moujik of Malo Russia a flower. His raiment consists of a coarse white shirt and loose black trousers, top boots, and almost any kind of a hat that comes his way. " Poppies " were yet reasonably numerous, however; and at noon on July 11, we halted for refreshments at a wayside traktir, kept by a very energetic old lady, who immediately took us into her confidence in regard to the laziness and all-round worthlessness, of a young gentleman in a red shirt to whom she bore the relation- ship of mother-in-law. The old lady was one of the singularly few persons I came across in Russia who seemed to have positive, rather than negative, qualities of mind and body ; and almost without asking us what we wished to eat, she set about making us a big omelette, and boiling potatoes. Her son-in-law, she avowed, was the disappointment of her life. She was a farmer as well as proprietor of the traktir, and her ambition had been to secure a husband for her daugh- ter who would make a success of the farm whilst she attended to the traktir. As it turned out, she and her daughter had to perform most of the work, whilst the son-in-law did little beyond eating what they earned, drinking vodka, and sleeping on top of the stove. When we rode up, both daughter and son-in-law were out in the harvest field; but the old lady assured us that it was the daughter alone who was doing any work. The son-in-law, she said, would be found snoozing beneath a shock of grain, pretending to be ill. A couple of hours after our arrival, the object of the old lady's wrathful denunciations turned up to sharpen his scytjie and eat his dinner. He turned out to be a INTO MA 10 RUSSIA. poor little sallow-faced chap, who looked the very picture of misery. Suspecting that he was, probably, more sinned against than sinning, and she likely to turn out the finest specimen of " mother-in-law " we should stumble upon, we asked him what was the trouble between him and his wife's mother. He replied that the old lady never gave him a moment's peace ; that she wanted him to work night and day, and was for- ever accusing him of being unkind to her daughter. " My wife," said he, " is a good deal bigger and stronger than I am, as you can see for yourselves ; how, then, can I be unkind to her? Is it possible that a small, weak dog, should treat unkindly one that is half as big again, and twice as strong, as it? M The mother sometimes kicked up such a row, he added, that there was nothing left for him but to try and take his own part ; in which case, sometimes, mother and daughter got him down on the floor and beat him. The daughter, who had also returned to the house, was of a truth the bigger and stronger of the two, and in the matter of energy she seemed a worthy chip off the maternal block. We asked the son-in-law why he didn't seek happiness in flight, and the answer we received appeared to indicate that the mothers-in- law of Russia, like the police, have a powerful ally in the passport regulations of the country. He couldn't leave without a passport, he said, and this it would be quite impossible for him to obtain without the consent of his wife and mother-in-law. " But your mother-in-law wishes you were dead," we protested; " surely she would place no obstacle in the way, if you wished to clear out." THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. " Pooh ! she only talks that way," returned he ; " the reason she wouldn't let me go is because I do more work than both of them together." This young man was well-nigh the last of the " pop- pies " seen in the roadside fields, though red-shirts are numerous in the cities of the South as well as in the northern part of the Empire. All through this part of the country an article in great request among the moujiks was paper for the making of rude cigarettes. Shepherds, particularly, would come running to the road from considerable dis- tances to beg pieces of paper. One day we asked one of these shepherds whether it was likely to be wet weather, the shepherds being regarded as the best weather- prophets in the country. His test, in reply to our query, was to moisten his forefinger with his mouth, then hold it up for a few seconds, — a primitive sort of barometer, indeed. CHAPTER X. SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. ON the evening of July 19 we arrived in Kharkoff, a city of 200,000 inhabitants, and one of the uni- versity towns of Russia. About 3500 students find accommodation in its various institutions of learning. It is the metropolis of Little Russia ; and on its streets are seen more handsome women than in any other city of the Empire, save Warsaw. It has numerous splen- did churches, with interiors all ablaze with riches, and of its one hundred versts of streets, fifty versts are execrably paved and the other fifty not paved at all. This glaring difference between the wealthines*s of the churches, and the poverty or indifference of the municipalities in Russian cities, was always a matter of controversy between myself and companion. His ex- planation was that the St. Petersburg government was actively at the back of the churches, whilst the cities had to look after their own streets. Special medals are given for donations of 5000 rubles and upward to churches, and as these medals are much coveted by wealthy merchants, who have no other means of ob- taining decorations, the churches simply roll in wealth. It seemed, indeed, that this ingenious method of coax- ing donations from wealthy parvenues, might with equally happy results be applied to the far more need- 1 53 154 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. ful improvement of the streets, which in all cities, save St. Petersburg, are simply abominable. We bought a Kharkoff morning paper of the date of our arrival in that city. It contained this delightfully accurate piece of news : Mr. Thomas Sveepos, an American gentleman who is riding on horseback from Moscow to the Black Sea, will leave Kursk this morning, e7i route to Kharkoff. He is accompanied by a Moscow student, A. Krega (Sascha's name was Kritsch). After complet- ing this novel undertaking, Mr. Sveepos intends riding around the world on a bicycle (!). On the way out of Kharkoff we were honored for the space of a couple of hundred yards with the com- pany of a gentleman with an exceedingly rusty coat, an exceedingly husky voice, and an exceedingly purple nose. His nationality was as uncertain as his gait, though we judged him to be a Russian of French or Italian descent. Seeing us pass by, he issued from a vodka-shop, and hailing us as " Franzositch corre- spondenta " offered, for the price of a drink of vodka, to sing us a song from Lermantoff. This tempting offer was not to be resisted, and so we immediately took him up, stipulating that he should sing it while keeping pace with us. Receiving his reward, he doffed his hat and, bidding us bon voyage, returned to wet his whistle in our honor, never doubting that we were " Franzo- sitch correspondenta." That night we stumbled upon the only genuine ex- pression of hospitality, beside our hospitable reception at the country mansion of Count Tolstoi, that revealed itself to us on the journey, until I, after Sascha's re- turn, got among the Crimean Tartars. S USPICIO US PEA SA N TS. l 55 At the village of Babayi there was no postayali dvor, and the family of a Rostoff shipping agent, who were spending the summer there, offered us the hospitality of their datscha for the night, and in the morning in- sisted on us remaining a day to rest. It was in com- pany of this family that we paid our visit to the con- vent-monastery of Karashavitch, an account of which is found in later pages. In the summer nearly every Russian city family, who can afford the luxury, spend three or four months in the country. Here the ladies pass the warm period of summer in a life of well-nigh ideal lotus-eating. They take their meals under the trees about the grounds, and indulge their love of cigarettes and tea to the last M papyros," and the last cup, demanded by the limits of utter satisfaction. They gossip and read Zola, play cards, and take long drives in the family linega. If there is water near, they indulge frequently in swimming and wading in it, and get the waterman to row them about in his leaking wherry. In inland Rus- sia, boats always seem leaky, vehicles ramshackly, harnesses old and patchy, fences broken, hedges gappy, and indeed well-nigh everything out of joint. An interesting member of this hospitable family was a young man who wore the uniform of the Imperial navy. He had, to some extent, worked out his own career, and had entered upon it under very extraordi- nary circumstances. When he applied for admission to the naval academy, it was to discover that he was de- barred on account of being, according to the rules, one year over age. Nothing daunted, he, in the teeth of all persuasions as to the folly of so doing, wrote a letter THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. direct to the Czar, stating his case, and begging that an exception might be made in his favor. To the astonish- ment of everybody, he received, fifteen days later, an Imperial document which secured to him the coveted permission to enter the academy. He had passed his examination and had been on several cruises in and about the Black, Mediterranean, and Red Seas. This young officer gave the writer an amusing insight into some of the mental conceptions of the Russian sailors and younger inferior officers. They liked the French sailors better than the English, he said, because the French sailors kissed them, whereas the English sailors were always punching their heads. There is, it seems, a species of personal assault familiarly known in the Russian navy as being " boxed by a John." English sailors are the " Johns," and boxing, as it is " understanded of the Russian sailors," appears to be less of a scientific operation and more of the pummel- ing order of assault and defense than is permissible by the actual rules of the ring. Once — this young officer and protegi of the Czar went on to say — his vessel was stationed at Alexandria, at the same time that an English vessel was stationed there, and every day, sailors, after leave ashore, used to come aboard with blackened eyes and broken noses, all evidences of having been " boxed by the Johns." My informant was a very intelligent young Russian, but in common with a good many Russians, even of fair education, deep down among the bottom layers of his convictions and beliefs were scraps of fanaticism that belong to the days of Peter the Hermit, and seem SUSPICIOUS FEASANTS. 5 7 startlingly curious in these days of well-nigh universal enlightenment among the Western nations. In speak- ing of the different navies, he seemed thoroughly con- scious of the superiority of the British navy over the Russian; " but," said he, "if a British ship were to attempt to run down a Russian ship, God would inter- fere on behalf of the Russians, and before the English ship could reach them it would go to the bottom." One can understand how the Russian authorities manage to foster such beliefs in the soldiers, who are never allowed to come under any outside influence, but it was something of a revelation to the writer, that a young officer who had knocked about in foreign ports should still seriously entertain such fanatical ideas as this. We were now fairly in Little Russia, and at Khar- koff we had reached the end of the broad cliaussc, which we had followed all the way from Moscow. The difficulty of finding our way across a country threaded with small roads that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, during our first day out from Babayi, afforded Sascha exceptional opportunities for the display of one of his peculiarities of disposition. This peculiarity consisted of assuming the looks and the language of utter despair, on the smallest possible provocation. Any difficulty about finding the road, getting food to eat, or a place to pass the night, or the likelihood of being overhauled by the police about our passports, would bring from Sascha the exclamation, " Now what to do ? " with such a tremendous emphasis on the " what," that at first I used to look at him with astonishment, supposing him to be in a frame of mind THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. akin to that of a man who has just been sentenced to death. After no end of these " now what to do's," and an hour or so of floundering about in a sort of morass, we eventually struck a broad and well-defined road, though the roads were now nothing more than a broad swath of land across the country, preserved by the government as " the Czar's highway." We stayed that night at a postayali-dvor, where we experienced the welcome novelty of a clean white table-cloth, and clean pillows to repose our heads on, though we slept out of the house, Sascha in the stable, I by the side of a hay-rick in the orchard. The secret of the clean linen was, that the proprietor of the place had married a French governess, who seemed to have taken charge of the management by preference, as Frenchwomen in France delight in keeping shop. The contrast between her and the Russian women belonging to similar establishments along our road, was remarkably striking. The women were lazier and even more indifferent about getting us anything to eat, or putting themselves out of the way in any shape or manner for our accommodation, than were the men. And this churlish heedlessness of character grew to be worse, and productive of more and more discomfort to us, as we progressed into the heart of Malo Russia. Here, we were among a people who could scarcely be got to give us a civil answer in reply to our questions about the road. The moujiks seemed particularly morose and disinclined to show us any courtesy. At Constantinograd, a small town, two days' ride south of Kharkoff, we were getting well into Malo SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 159 Russia. The most striking feature of the landscape were big fields of sunflowers. All Russia nibbles sunflower seeds in its moments of leisure. Imagine half the citizens of the United States carrying, habitually, a supply of peanuts around in their pockets and nibbling them continually, and you have a hardly exaggerated idea of the ubiquitous part played by the sunflower seed in Russian life. In the circus, in the theater, in the offices, the shops, the tea-houses, the city streets, the village door-stoop, men, women, girls and boys, peasants, nobles, mer- chants, soldiers — everybody, everywhere, nibble sun- flower seeds. It is to supply this universal taste that thousands of acres of those gorgeous flowers are cultivated on the northern border of Malo Russia. People who have only seen the big sunflower as a garden ornament can have but a dim conception of the magnificent sight afforded by a forty-acre field of these gorgeous yellow blossoms. I first saw a field of them in the morning, when every big round golden face, with- out an exception in all the myriads, was looking toward the east. The scene was striking, and suggested a vast multitude of floral Aztecs worshiping the morning sun. Not being acquainted with the habits of the sunflower I wondered all the morning whether all those worshipful faces would, in the evening, be turned toward the west. So I watched other fields as we rode along, and learned, what every other reader of these pages very likely knows already, that the sunflower always turns its face to the east. Here the mind naturally reverted to a period of the 160 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. past, when a slim gentleman in knee breeches, long hair, and with a big sunflower in his button-hole, emerged from the fogs of London to create a passing furore in America in favor of the floral monarch of the Little Russian steppes. The sunflower crop is one of the best paying in Russia. A good crop is worth, as it stands in the field, 100 rubles a dessiatine, or about $25 an acre. The seeds are sold by the farmer for one and a half to two rubles a pood. Then the merchants retail them for four rubles a pood, and at about every street crossing in Russian provincial cities are stands and peddlers with baskets, selling to the passers-by the product of the big sunflower. In the field the sunflowers are sowed in rows like the " drilled corn " of the Kansas farmer, and, like corn, are cultivated and hilled up with shovel plows. The peasants of Little Russia seemed to be even more superstitious than the moujiks of the northern forests. Once we halted for noon at a little village when the men were all away at work. The fields be- longing to a village are often several versts away. So uneventful is the life of these people that the ap- pearance of a couple of strangers, on horseback, dressed differently from themselves, is an event of portentous possibilities. The woman from whom we demanded shelter and feed for our horses crossed herself several times and turned pale. She opened the gate, however, and brought us hay. Afraid to approach us, she placed the hay inside the gate and retreated. We went into the house to see about getting a samovar to make tea. SUSPICIO US PEA SA N TS. 161 The poor woman was quaking with fear, but was too frightened to oppose us in anything we might wish to do. The children avoided us and watched us furtively from a distance. On entering the house we failed to cross ourselves before the ikons, or holy pictures, in the corner. This sacrilegious omission struck new terror to the heart of our unwilling hostess, who decided then and there that we were a pair of antichrists, come to " steal away the souls of the family." She crossed herself several times whenever we spoke to her, and dispatched one of the children to summon a neighbor. The neighbor arrived, in the form of an ancient crone, who was probably the village znakharka, a mysterious individual to the villagers, half witch, half quack, but, to the better educated, wholly knave. After surveying us awhile and talking the matter over, the znakharka prescribed a piece of bread wet with holy water as the most likely thing to counteract any evil designs we might have on the household. On January 5 every year a quantity of water is con- veyed to the churches of Russia, where it is converted into holy water by the blessings of the priests. Every Orthodox Russian carries home a bottle of this water and keeps it in the house. It is supposed to be effi- cacious for many ailments, both bodily and spiritual. The poor woman now produced her precious bottle of holy water, and, pouring some on pieces of bread, gave a piece to each of the children and to a young calf that was in the room. She then ate a piece her- self. Her terror of us was so genuine that I bade Sascha 1 6 2 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. try to calm her fears. He produced from his bosom the miniature ikon that had been given him by his mother at the beginning of the journey, and assured the woman that he also was a Christian. For a moment her suspicions were allayed, and for very thankfulness she knelt and crossed herself many times. Then it seemed to occur to her that Sascha's ikon was probably worn for purposes of deception ; why else had he not crossed himself when he first entered the house ? All her suspicions were intensified. Tears rolled down her cheeks. In vain Sascha tried to reassure her. Her house would burn down and the souls of the fam- ily would wither away as a consequence of our visit. When we departed she was afraid to take money di- rectly from my hand, but motioned us to lay it down. Though less superstitious than the women, the men regarded us with a different order of suspicion. To some we were mysterious strangers, spying out the country; toothers we were secret police. In either case we had sinister designs on the people. The most common form of suspicion was that we were secretly engaged in numbering the people and assessing the property for the purpose of increasing the taxes. An attempt to photograph a house pro- duced considerable excitement. To the peasants this was proof positive that aggressive measures, in the nature of heavier taxes, would be the outcome of our visit. The peasants themselves were as chary of the Kamaret as the most timid and suspicious of the East African tribes which the writer met the summer before. S [JSP I CIO US PEA SA NTS. Their timidity and suspicions, it is fair to say, were not always the result of superstition. In some cases superstition and ignorance formed the groundwork of their objections, but their chief fears were that we were agents of the government. In one small village the people were so convinced that we were government spies secretly assessing their property that a delegation of elders waited on us and naively offered to pay us for undervaluing their belongings. The peasants are always in dread of some new scheme of squeezing more money out of their pockets. The traveler finds among these people the same dread of government officials as in Turkey, Persia, China, and other countries where the officials are notoriously corrupt, though not in the same degree. The evidence of bad government, which finds expression in the servile prostitution of the peasantry before the minions of the governing power, is seen to the best advantage in the Armenian villages of Asiatic Turkey. The arrival of a Turkish officer in a village creates as much consternation among the people as if they were rats in a pit, and the man in uniform the terrier, who is heavily backed to kill them all in a certain length of time. Nine tenths of them are invisible from the time of his arrival to his departure ; the other tenth hover about, watchful and alert, to anticipate his every wish. The state of affairs in Russia is a decided improvement on this ; but when the worst fears of the peasants take the form of sus- picion that the stranger who comes among them is an officer of the government, something evidently is wrong. One sees less of the military element in provincial THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. Russia than might have been expected. There are camps at every good-sized town — a tented field — for in Russia the army goes into camp all summer. But gar- rison towns are few and far apart, and it is only by bearing in mind the vast extent of Russian territory that one can come to accept as probable the numerical claims of its army. It is curious to see soldiers in uniform working in the harvest fields or mending the roads. The pay of the Russian soldier is only seventy kopecks a month — less than Uncle Sam pays his boys in blue per day. As an offset, however, the Russians are permitted to hire out as laborers or artisans — anything they can find to do. In the cities, the soldiers of the garrison usually have the preference over others as supers in the theaters, and among them are often found amateur actors, singers, and musicians of considerable talent. In the provinces they work at harvesting, plowing, ditch-digging, or anything the large landed proprietors can find for them to do. In every village are young men who have returned home from their three years' military duty. The Rus- sian peasant dreads going into the army, but when he returns is immensely proud of his service. He then considers himself far superior to those whom three years before he would have given an ear to change places with in order to remain at home. The secret of his exaltation is that while in the barracks he has received a rudimentary education, and knows a thing or two more than the rustics about him. The military burden, apart from the expenses of keeping up the army, seems to sit lightly enough on SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. >6 5 the population. Neither the eldest son, nor a son on whom depends the support of his parents, is required to serve. The young man who can pass a certain examination is required to serve only one year in the regular army as a volunteer recruit. Between Kharkoff and Ekaterinoslav, the crops w ere a failure. From April I to June I there bad been no rain, and all along our way w ere fields of grain too poor to repay the expense of cutting. The country seemed to be farmed mostly by large proprietors; villages were becoming scarce and the mansions of big land-owners became a prominent feature of the landscape. Jews and sectarians began to be more prominent in the towns. At Constantinograd, the proprietor of thetraktir w as a Jew, and on the wall of our room hung a steel por- trait of Sir Moses Montefiore. Tin's portrait of Sir Moses is to be seen on the wall of every Jewish family in Russia, who can afford the luxury of a picture. It was not always easy to distinguish, readily, Hebrew proprietors by their features, in Malo Russia, for many of the Little Russians themselves are dark and Isi ael- itish in appearance ; but the absence of ikons and the presence of the portrait of Sir Moses Montefiore in the room would immediately put us right. However it may be with the Jews of Russia as a body, the writer is bound to do them the justice of recording the fact that such few specimens as I came in contact with, chiefly keepers of village traktirs, were a decided improvement, as regards cleanliness and willingness to put themselves to trouble, on the Orthodox traktir-keep- ers. And only in one instance did it seem to me that they were in the slighte st degree ''smaller" and more i66 THROUGH RUSSIA OAT A MUSTANG. grasping as to kopecks. As between the two, though both were decidedly picayunish in their dealings from a Western point of view, if the writer ever got satis- factory accommodation in return for the charges made, it would be from the Jew proprietors rather than the Russian. The Jews were, certainly, shrewder, but not a whit more grasping and inclined to petty exac- tions; and the superior spirit of enterprise was at least productive of a decent place to sleep and something beyond weak tea and ancient hard boiled eggs to eat. They were suspicious, however; even more so than the moujiks. At this time the Russian government was giving one of its periodical twists to the Jewish screw, and these people were comically suspicious that we might be secret agents of the government. Some- times this continual suspicion of both Russians and Jews would grow irksome, and the annoyance of it would be aggravated by the boorish reluctance of a Russian traktir-keeper to move in the matter of satisfy- ing the cravings of a traveler's hunger ; and the hunger and the annoyance would give rise to vengeful imagin- ings, in which the Jews were permitted to ruin all the moujiks, and the moujiks then permitted to rise up and massacre all the Jews! The condition of a man's stomach has more to do with his frame of mind than many people who have never known semi-starvation are aware of. Near Pereschepinsk men were ducking, in a marshy tract of country, with old Catherine II match-locks, and huge flint-locks tied to stakes driven in the mud. Others were ambushed among the reeds and flags with flails, with which they smote the unwary quackers with S USPICIO US PEA SA N TS. 167 unerring blows, born of long practice. Wild ducks were offered us at seven kopecks apiece ; but it was useless to attempt to get one cooked. By this time I was well-nigh beginning to believe that the real secret of why the lower orders of Russia live on rye bread, salted cucumbers, and stewed buckwheat, is because they are too abominably lazy and shiftless to cook anything else. All through this region of drouth, rye bread seemed to be.abundant and cheap, w hile oats or horse-feed of any kind was difficult to obtain. It was the famous " black earth zone," where wheat and rye seemed to have driven out oats. At first Texas turned up his snip nose disdainfully at rye bread, and looked around with an almost human look of inquiry for oats, but he eventually came down to it, merely stipulating that the first couple of feeds be lightly sprinkled with salt. At one of the postayali (Ivors we found the proprietor a comparatively rich land-owner, a young man whose father had left him 500 dessiatincs of land. He and his better half were about the worthiest couple we had happened across on the road, for traktir-keepers. Our bed this night was in the hay-loft, and an hour or so after I had returned, Sascha made his appearance in such a jovial frame of mind that I decided he and the host must have been drinking one another's health with something more of ardor than discretion. Inquir- ing the cause of his hilarity, however, I learned to my astonishment that it was all because our genial host had rewarded him for the yarns he had been spinning about our experiences on the ride, by using the en- i68 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. dearing " thou," instead of the more formal "you," in talking to him. At Novo-Moskovski we once again came under the meddlesome suspicions of the police. The " lion " of Novo-Moskovski was a wooden church with nine small domes, which had been put together without using a single nail. Everything was done by dovetailing and with wooden pins. We were looking at this church, after having put up our horses at the postayali dvor, when up stepped a police officer and demanded to see our passports. They were, of course, declared to be " irregular." Mine was not in language that they could understand, and Sascha's house-that-Jack-built document was no passport at all. Though an ispravnik, and several " niks " higher in the scale of the Tchin than our useful friends the uriad- niks, this official was afraid to peep into the little view-finder of my Kamaret, and he was thoroughly mystified by the pictures in a copy of an American magazine, which he discovered in my saddle-bags. His suspicions of this magazine were, indeed, so remark- ably comical that it was with great difficulty I could keep my countenance. He demanded a minute ex- planation of several plans of Japanese theaters that it contained, evidently suspecting that they might be plans of Russian forts. Another of his suspicions was directed at a Russian cap which the writer had found preferable in the hot sun, to the one I might otherwise have worn. The fact that a foreigner was wearing a Russian cap smote him as an additional reason why we should be regarded with suspicion, and subjected to annoyance. SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 169 After detaining us till eleven o'clock next morning, they announced that the chief objection to allowing us to proceed on our way was Sascha's house-that-Jack- built paper. This was a plain enough bid for a modest contribution to the official pocket, and as the quickest way of settling the difficulty we applied for a paper that would enable him to avoid any further in- terference. The result was that we obtained another responsibility-dodging document, stating that Sascha had appeared to this police-station with a paper which he said he had obtained at Kurskh, where he had said that he had lost his passport, which he said he had obtained in Moscow, in which city he had said he re- sided, and in which city lie had said he received his education, etc., etc., etc. (!) CHAPTER XI. NUNS AND CONVENTS. BEFORE continuing our ride toward the Crimea, let me ask the reader to retrace a few versts of our road, and visit a Russian convent. A few miles south of Kharkoff is the convent monastery of Karashavitch. It occupies a picturesque knoll overlooking the rich bottom lands of the River Donetz, and contains quarters for both monks and nuns. Sascha and I were enjoying the hospitality of the Rostoff merchant's family before spoken of, and it being Sunday we paid a visit to the monastery. Monks I had visited in the Alexandra Nevski Mon- astery at St. Petersburg, and the Nicholai Oograshinski Monastery near Moscow, but this was the first oppor- tunity that had presented itself of seeing something of the manners and custom of the " brides of Christ " in holy Russia. In most countries it is difficult for a male biped to gain admittance into a convent, but the holy Sisters of Russia are extremely liberal iri their ideas; and the monastery of Karashavitch, the grounds being occupied in part by monks, was as easy of access to one sex as to the other. Its very name, Karasha, in fact, signifies literally, " all right." We timed our visit so as to see the nuns at dinner, which we were told would be the most interesting event of the day. We arrived, however, in time for the morning service in the church as well, A visit to 170 NUNS AND CONVENTS. 171 a Russian monastery carries the visitor back at once to the Middle Ages, and no sooner were we inside the irregular high wall that crowned the summit of the knoll than our eyes were riveted on a scene worthy of " The Hunchback of Notre Dame." A nun in black robes and black velvet helmet-shaped head-dress was up in the open belfry of the church ringing a clamorous peal of three bells, by means of ropes manipulated in a curiously skillful manner, with both hands and one foot. One of the bells was a regu- lar " Big Ben," with a funereal boom that must have been the terror of aerial demons for twenty miles around ; and in the task of putting them to flight this bell was ably seconded by its lesser, but by no means small brother, the middle bell of the peal. The little bell joined in with a quickening " tinkle-tinkle-tinkle," voicing its imperative mandates half a dozen times to Big Ben's one, as though, in the work of routing the enemy, it was determined not to be outdone by the others. Lucifer himself would have stood no chance against all three, and even had he braved the bells, a glance at the weird-looking figure in the belfry would have convinced him of the folly of bravado in the pres- ence of so skillful and vigorous a holy Sister. The black figure against the blue summer sky, with black-draped arms outstretched and one foot working a treadle, the whole body bending and swaying in muscular unison with the curious medley of the bells — could that possibly be a woman ? A woman it was, however — one of the older nuns ; and her performance in this belfry was worth traveling half across Russia to see. 1 7 2 THRO UGH R US SI A ON A MUS TA NG. In response to her summons, the shaded walks of the monastery grounds suddenly became alive with black- robed figures. They were the nuns and novices flock- ing to church from all directions, singly and by twos. The belts of the black frocks were well up between the shoulders, and worldly gewgaws, save black ribbon, had been rigorously eschewed. Only the head-dress could be called fantastic. The older Sisters wore close-fitting helmets of black velvet and the novices a tall, pointed head-dress of the same material, in shape not unlike that of the Pomeranian Guards of Prussia. A pardonable concession to the world, the flesh, and the devil was permitted in the display of remarkably fine lengths of hair. Russian women have their fair share of this chief glory of the sex, and the young novices were allowed to indulge in single braids which, like a Chinaman's queue, often fell below the waist, and were tied at the end with little bows of black ribbon. There was nothing noteworthy in the service except the singing. Imagine the offices of the priests in a Roman Catholic church performed by the older nuns, and you have a sufficiently clear idea of this service. But the singing was soft and sweet and sad, — the plaintive melody that characterizes the popular songs of the Russian people, chastened and refined. As before stated, most Russian popular songs are tales of sorrow, bewailing the loss of a sweetheart, or the death of cherished hallucinations, and their music is a melancholy plaint. " John Brown's Body," in Russia, instead of a humorous production, would have been a veritable dirge. In sacred music it is the same. NUNS AND CONVENTS. *73 While our churches ring with songs of triumph, praise, and glory, the churches of Russia are rilled with sweet, sad plaints for mercy. By purchasing a small ikon from a grateful little old Sister who kept a stall for the sale of holy pictures,"we gained admittance to the dining-room to see the nuns at dinner. They filed in from church or from their cells, greet- ing each other affectionately as they came into the room, and stood up in rows along the walls. While waiting the dinner hour they chatted and smiled, and laid their heads together, and formed little gossiping groups, the queer head-dresses bobbing and turning, bowing and nodding. The novices had donned white aprons. The table being ready, the nuns clustered together, and, turning their faces toward Jerusalem, sang a paternoster, afterward taking their seats. Four nuns had to eat from one plate and drink from one glass. Each had a square piece of black bread, a tiny cellar of salt, and a wooden spoon. Decanters of kwass were on the tables, and seemed to be in more demand than anything else. Whether they were thirsty after their singing, or whether the kwass was irresistible in itself, those who got a first chance at the decanters gave small heed to the rights of their sisters, many of whom got next to none. Kwass, black bread and salt, cab- bage soup, and a porridge of grain was the meal. Four of the plumpest of the young novices were waiters, while others handed in the bowls and dishes at a door. Throughout the meal one of the nuns stood and read aloud from the lives of the Saints, while another also 174 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. stood in a corner as a punishment for some slight breach of discipline. It was all very interesting, and when, on returning to St. Petersburg after the ride to the Crimea, a lady invited me to accompany her to one of the largest con- vents in Russia, I readily accepted. This was the Monastery of Novodaiveetsa, in the eastern suburbs of St. Petersburg. This visit turned out to be even more interesting than the other. We took with us a little tea-set to present to a nun with whom my friend was acquainted, and who, it was believed, would show us over the place. A ninth-day service for a young lady who had been buried in the convent cemetery was going on in the church when we arrived. There was the same plaintive singing by a choir of novices as at Karashavitch, only, this being a mass for the dead, two patriarchal priests performed the rites. The head-dresses were of a hussar, rather than Pomeranian Guard pattern, and veils of black crape flowed to the ground. In one corner, facing the choristers, was an old lady weeping bitterly, the mother of the young woman for whom the service was held. One of the nuns presented her with a loaf of holy bread. Sister Salavioff, recognizing my companion, came over and kissed her several times, first on one cheek, then on the other, and saluted the author with a bow. Hers was a pale face, and, save for a roguish twinkle in a pair of remarkably lively black eyes, might have served as a model for a typical holy Sister. After the service it was her duty to extinguish the candles, when she said she would show us everything worth seeing in the convent. NUNS AND CONVENTS. 175 We followed the priests and the choristers to the grave of the dead girl to see the services there. The grave was hidden beneath piles of flowers and wreaths, and the priests swung censers over it as they led the services. "God have mercy upon our sister's soul," wailed the nuns in the same melancholy yet melodious strain. The poor mother and a small gathering of friends stood at one end of the mound of fading flowers, and wept and made signs of the Cross. The services being ended, a big dish of boiled rice was produced and set on the grave. Everybody ate a spoonful, and the rest was scattered over the grave, This cemetery was the most beautifully kept and interesting I had ever seen. Sister Salavioff showed us over it, explaining everything. In their family life the Russians are an affectionate people, and they do their best to follow their departed friends into the spirit world. " They think more of the dead than of the living," said my companion. And, indeed, this convent cemetery was to me a reve- lation of how far superstition and religion combined may carry people in their striving to penetrate the mysteries of the future life and link them with the present. The ambition of every Russian is to be buried in a monastery, and those who are rich enough invari- ably find a resting place within this sacred boundary. Rich merchants, who are, in Russia, often as igno- rant and superstitious as the peasants, leave large sums of money to the monasteries in return for choice burial plots and future masses for the welfare of their souls. A grave costs from 500 to IOOO rubles for positions 176 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. near the cemetery church, down to 50 rubles for remote situations near the outer wall. Over many of the graves are built beautiful little houses, chiefly of glass and ornamental marble or iron, like small summer-houses. These houses are cosily fur- nished with rugs, tables, chairs, etc., and the windows are embellished with fancy curtains or made of stained glass. Photographs of the dead hang on the rear wall, which is not of glass, and sometimes busts stand on a shelf. Easter eggs, religious books, and other memen- toes of the departed are on the table. Pots of flowers stand around, and ikons and holy pictures hang up or stand on a shelf as in the houses of the living. In one of these houses sat a woman reading a book, and with a samovar of tea on the table. u A disconso- late widow," explained Sister Salavioff, " who comes twice a week to spend the day in reading or knitting, and drinking tea in the company of her departed hus- band." In another house were a family party, also with a samovar, and luncheon brought in a basket. Some of the family were smoking cigarettes. They, too, were enjoying the company of such members of the family as had " gone before." These houses over the graves are peculiarly inter- esting, as being a distinct survival of heathenism, which the Russians have clung to and shaped to their conceptions of the Christian religion. The pagan Slavs used to build wooden huts on the graves of their ancestors for the accommodation of the spirit when it chose to return to earth and visit the body, and also for the use of the relatives when they came to mourn NUNS AND CONVENTS. 177 on the grave. In spite of ecclesiastical prohibition, the peasants of remote districts still erect log huts on the graves, and in the case of those who have rubles to bestow on the monks and nuns, full liberty to indulge this ancient custom seems to be given. Eating from a dish of rice around the grave, and scattering the remainder over it, is likewise a relic of paganism. The heathen Slavs used to feast and revel on the graves of the newly buried and leave portions of the food for the use of the departed. In modern Russia the feasting is observed at home after the visit to the grave, but the formal eating and scattering of the rice is decidedly pagan. Whether the old heathen builders of the wooden huts would have thought the structures in the Novodaiveetsa monastery a sign of degeneracy, as they certainly would the substitution of the dish of rice for the old feasting and carousing, is a speculation. But there is a wide difference, indeed. Many of the houses cost from 10,000 to 15,000 rubles, and the finest one in the cemetery cost 30,000 rubles. Our guide explained further that one of the smaller sources of the convent's revenue was the furnishing of samovars of hot water to relatives who come to drink tea with the dead in these houses. Main- of the houses were occupied ever) r day in the year for a few- hours by one or another of the relatives, it being looked upon as a special mark of love to the departed to visit and drink tea with them every day. These visitors bring tea and sugar, but find it more conven- ient to obtain samovars of hot water from the nuns. On saints' days, name days, etc., candles are burned, and tapers in cups of holy oil are always burning. The i 7 8 Through Russia on a mustang. nuns are paid from ten rubles a year upward for water- ing the flowers and keeping each grave trim. The shafts over such graves as had no house were often quite as interesting. A photograph or crayon portrait of the deceased is usually set in the monu- ment and covered with glass. Or there is a bust or small statuette, the latter being used chiefly in the case of infants. The monument of a celebrated actress was pointed out, whose life-size bust in bronze rested on the top, together with a bronze mask and harp — heathenism again, and a relic of the days when the arms and horse of the dead warrior were buried with him, and domestic implements were interred with his wife or daughter. The weirdest thing in the cemetery was a grave that is simply a. glass house, containing a vault or cellar with a trap-door and steps leading down into it. The Sister told us its story. After twenty years of married life, during which their prayers for offspring had been unanswered, a couple were finally presented with a daughter in. 1873. Three years later the new-comer died. The unhappy parents had the body embalmed and placed in a cofrin with a glass opening above the face. The tomb in question was built and the cofrin deposited in the crypt. Every day for fourteen years past the mother had visited the house, descended through the trap-door, and spent some time looking into the face of the little one through the glass. No change had taken place in its appearance. This last item was told us with a ring of honest pride in her voice, as indicating the peculiar fitness of the convent cemetery as a place of burial. NUNS AND CONVENTS. 179 Afterward we went to the convent, following our guide and chaperon along a dim corridor, that be- trayed a number of little doors in the walls. Before one of these doors we halted, while it was unlocked. " Domois pazhalt gospodin," said the guide, after my friend had entered, and accepting the invitation we found ourselves in a nun's cell. It was a cellar- like room, about eight paces by four, divided into two compartments by a screen. Small grated windows were on a level with the ground without, and the sills contained pots of flowers. The floor was innocent of carpet, but was polished as if with wax. The sitting-room contained a plain chest of drawers, chairs, table, and a little clock. A small brass samovar, which we were told was thirty years old, stood on the table, and on the wall hung small photographs of the Mother Abbotess, a couple of priests, and relatives of the outer world, besides the inevitable ikons and holy prints. A hospitable offer to steam up the samovar was declined on the score of time and trouble. The smaller compartment contained a narrow bed, with snowy sheets and a thick, comfortable mattress, stuffed with hemp, a chair, and a few other necessaries. The whole was a snug enough retreat. We next visited the department where the convent kwass is brewed. This was in charge of a lively old nun who, in the outer world had been a countess, and showed good breeding in every movement. She wore a working suit of rusty black and devoted her time to brewing kwass for the rest of the nuns. The room was full of big iron pots, tubs and sacks of rye flour, and was partly occupied by a big oven for baking and i8o THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. drying the bread used in the process of kwass-making. Kwass and sugar for sweetening it were brought for us, and excellent black bread. The erstwhile Countess was so pleased at the praise bestowed on her rye bread that she insisted on wrapping several slices of it up in a paper for us to take home. Everything consumed by the nuns is, as far as pos- sible, the work of their own hands. They aim to pro- vide for all their own wants as well as to make things for sale. We visited the shoemaking room, where several Sisters were busy as bees with lasts, hammers, awls, wax, and thread ; and they brought out for our inspection several pairs of gaiters which had just been finished. Shoemaking is as much beyond a woman as sharpening a pencil is, and I must confess that my admiration of these elastic sides was the grossest flattery. We were soon in woman's true sphere, however, and there was no flattery in praising the gorgeous vest- ments of silk and gold which the nuns were making to sell to priests. Nor was it flattery, in the ikon room, which led us to praise the work of twenty or thirty demure-looking Sisters who were engaged in stamping out the most intricate patterns and mosaics on metal surfaces. Here they could work from patterns and tracings and were equal or superior to men. There was also a department or studio where about fifty nuns were painting holy pictures, with ancient ikons for their models; and another room where other nuns ground and prepared the paint. From these very interesting scenes of life and activ- ity we once more sought the acquaintance of the dead, NUNS AND CONVENTS. iSl in the burial vaults beneath the convent. Only the very wealthy are buried here. Here was a burial-place, indeed. The cool, silent vaults were railed off with iron into squares, in which people were buried. There were marble angels, and paintings of the Saviour by eminent artists. Stained-glass windows flooded the scene with soft light. Here, too, were chairs, tables, etc., for the use of relatives. On one of the chairs in a family inclosure, sat a big tabby cat, fat and sleepy. " Da-dah," said the Sister, laughing, 1 she is keeping watch over the dead." CHAPTER XII. STOPPED BY THE POLICE. ON Saturday noon, July 26, just four weeks out from Moscow, we drew rein a moment to inquire of some moujiks the distance to Ekaterinoslav, which we could see ahead of us, spread over the slope leading up from the southern bank of the Dneiper to the steppe beyond. A few versts through the sandy, fly-plagued bottom lands of the Dneiper, and we were crossing the river over one of the finest iron bridges in Russia. There was a railway track, and a road for ordinary traffic, above. The broad, though shallow river, far below, presented a scene that was made up of slowly floating rafts and small river steamers, carrying passengers, or towing curious round-roofed barges. Small boats, of the pointed half-moon pattern affected by the Cossacks of the Dneiper, were also moving languidly hither and thither. A small toll was collected from teams and horsemen crossing the bridge. Foot-passengers paid no toll. Ekaterinoslav, which from a distance made a favor- able impression on our minds, seemed to mock at our delusion as we sought a closer acquaintance. Russian cities, like the Russian character and nearly all Russian institutions, are seen to the best advantage when not too closely inspected. A city where all the roofs of 182 STOPPED BY THE POLICE. the houses are painted green and red, among which are a half dozen enormous churches with golden domes, or domes painted blue and spangled with golden stars, in imitation of the sky, presents a pretty enough pic- ture spread over a gentle slope, with a broad river for a foreground. Vast quantities of paint are used in Russia. Every- thing is daubed with paint — houses, roofs, railway sta- tions, prisons — nearly everything in the cities. The colors most in vogue are red, blue, green, and yellow. The colors of the roofs and houses in the cities, and the equally gay hues of the clothes worn by the peas- ants in the country, are the salvation of Russia from an artistic point of view. Without the red shirts of the moujiks the Russian villages would present not a sin- gle feature pleasing to the eye of the passing traveler; and without the brightening paint the provincial cities would be equally depressing. Ekaterinoslav consists of one long, broad street, or boulevard, and several short streets, crossing it at right angles. It is a provincial capital, and contains about 40,000 inhabitants, with a large proportion of Hebrews and sectarians of many creeds. It was founded by Catharine II, on her memorable and fantastic journey of triumph through her dominions, from St. Petersburg to the Crimea, under the management of her gorgeous favorite, Potemkin. That shrewd and gallant courtier of the great Catha- rine, having discovered in advance that much of the territory through which his Imperial mistress would pass was uninhabited steppe, conceived and carried out the truly Oriental project of building sham villages all THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. along the route. Log villages, brightly painted, sprang up like mushrooms at his bidding, and thousands of peasants were compelled, nolens volens, to take up their residence in them and to turn out in their Sunday clothes when the Imperial party drove through. From Kiev the Empress sailed in barges down the Dneiper, and taking a fancy to the spot on which Ekaterinoslav now stands, ordered a city to be built. Her statue is perched on the highest spot of ground at the east end of the boulevard. This boulevard consists of three parallel roads. The center track is divided from the others by an avenue of trees and sidewalks, and is paved after the usual manner of provincial Russia, in other words, so abominably rough that the drosky drivers keep off it altogether, except in wet weather, when the side roads are sloughs of sticky mud. These side roads were several inches deep in dust as we rode down the street in search of a hotel, and droskies and squeaking telegas plowing through it filled the air to suffocation. Dusty policemen eyed us suspiciously, and news was immediately conveyed to the Chief of Police that a couple of strange horsemen had arrived in the city. Ekaterinoslav is full of latent sedition, both civil and religious, and the authorities are offensively suspicious of anything that strikes them as being a trifle out of the ordinary. That we were dangerous characters to be at large seemed the opinion of every policeman who cast his eye on us as we rode down the street, and at the hotel our passports were at once declared l ' irregular." In short, we were to be detained on some pretext or other until the police authorities had time to revolve STOPPED BY THE POLICli. in their exceedingly suspicious minds all known cir- cumstances connected with us. Of course, we w ere not told this in a straightforward manner, blunt honesty in such matters being entirely foreign to the police authorities of Russia, except those at the top of the tree in St. Petersburg, who have nothing to fear in case of making a mistake. The provincial tchinovnik, when called upon to take action upon anything outside his ordinary routine, is prone to lose his senses and com- mit some remarkable piece of folly. His logic is sur- prisingly eccentric to begin with, and he is always pain- fully aware of being between the Scylla of underzeal, which may cost him his official head, and the Charvb- dis of "putting his foot in it " through meddling with what he does not understand. The officials of Ekaterinoslav could not believe that two horsemen might ride through the country and be neither spies of some foreign government, secret mis- sionaries bent on corrupting the allegiance of the Ortho- dox moujiks, political propagandists disseminating the seeds of sedition, nor Nihilists inciting them to rebell- ion against the Czar. All these possibilities and a hundred variations of these, occurred to the inscrutable minds of the tchinovniks of Ekaterinoslav in connec- tion with our appearance. They could not understand my American passport. " It should have been written in Russian." Sascha's document was no passport at all — a fact that we had had very good reason to know without further enlighten- ment here. " Why hadn't I a special passport grant- ing the right to travel through Russia in this most ex- traordinary manner?" i86 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. This was indeed the rub — we were a little different from the mortals about them, a thing that never fails to arouse the suspicions of the Russian officials to ab- normal activity. A foreigner on horseback with a strange Russian for an interpreter, the one with no document except an American passport which they were unable to make anything of, the other with an " irregular " paper ! No wonder that officials, whose first qualification for the faithful discharge of their du- ties is to be suspicious of everything and everybody, were more than suspicious of us. In Russia everybody is considered a criminal of some kidney or other, unless he has papers in his pocket proving him to be otherwise. Since, to the tchinovnik mind, we were without such papers, we must therefore be " something," though they were sorely puzzled for a definite reply to their suspicions. Arrest us? Oh, dear, no! not yet. No telling who or what this American might turn out to be. Detain us, then, on suspicion ? No, not even that on direct police responsibility ; this American might have friends in high places in St. Petersburg; who could tell ? Still, for all this, we must be detained on some pretext or other, and, however fantastic in his logic, the Russian tchinovnik is never at a loss for a pretext. When we returned to the hotel, after a visit to the post-office and to the railway station, where it had taken us a couple of hours to unravel sufficient red tape to dispatch a valise to Sevastopol, the hostler in- formed us that a gentleman in a black coat and derby hat had been in the stable critically examining our STOPPED BY THE POLICE. ,87 horses. By and by we received notice from the Chief of Police that the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had pronounced Sascha's horse unfit to travel, owing to a saddle-sore on its back, and, therefore, though very reluctant to detain us, he would have to beg us to postpone our departure until further notice. This was really a clever move, thoroughly Russian, not to say Oriental ; worthy of Mahmoud Yusuf Khan, the Afghan chief, who once obstructed the author's road through Afghanistan, not because he wished to do so, but " for your own good " ; worth}' indeed of the wiliest of diplomats. It seemed odd, though, that there should be in Ekaterinoslav, the head-center of Russian Jew-baiting and sectarian persecution, a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There was one, however — a society of emotional old ladies, so far as we could learn. They were certainly handy for the Chief of Police to turn to in a case like ours, and the tchinovnik who thought of them, and reasoned that horses that had been ridden through the midsummer heat from Mos- cow might perhaps not be in first-class form, deserved promotion then and there. We proceeded to the police station on Sunday morning, and spent an hour or so waiting for the ar- rival of the chief. To the under police officers an American was a rara avis, and his demeanor a positive enigma. The spectacle of a human being in civilian's clothes, and somewhat travel-worn clothes to boot, presuming to conduct himself in a self-reliant, inde- pendent manner in a room full of tchinovniks, filled them with amazement. i88 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. In provincial Russia the ordinary civilian is expected to cringe and cower like a whipped cur before every petty officer of police, and the constitutional attitude of the latter is one of overbearing insolence. Ekaterinos- lav is one of the worst police-ridden holes in Russia, owing to the mixed character of the population, and the fact that the city aspires to the distinction of being the chief intellectual center of South Russia. " Intel- lectual centers " being, in the opinion of the Czar's government, synonymous with treason, political in- trigue, and the like, the good people of Ekaterinoslav have to put up with a more than ordinarily trouble- some dose of police officers as an offset to their human vanity in the indulgence of intellectual aspirations. The writer flatters himself that he very likely gave the police officers of Ekaterinoslav the first faint con- ception which had ever entered their queer minds that a person in private clothes might, after all, possess a few abstract rights, even in the presence of minions of autocracy in uniform. Since none of them offered me a seat, I simply took the nearest empty one. Such a remarkable occurrence as this had probably never happened before in all the eventful history of the police station of Ekaterinoslav. A civilian so independent in the presence of police officers as to take a seat! This action produced a mild sensation among the officers, and was rewarded with side looks of consternation from half a dozen civilians who stood huddled up near the door, hats in hand, the very pic- ture of sheepish submission. This was decidedly amusing, and, leaning back com- STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 189 fortably in the chair, I now cocked my feet up on a wooden bench about two feet high. This, though a popular American attitude, was, of course, under the circumstances, wrong. But I was now merely acting a part for the purpose of giving these gentlemen an exaggerated idea of the relative positions of policemen and civilians in America, which I wanted them to understand to be opposite to their relations in Ekateri- noslav. The last attitude caused them to redden up to the very roots of their hair, and there really seemed a danger that one or two of them might even go off into apoplectic fits. To them I was as much of a phenom- enon as a sheep who should venture among wolves without exhibiting fear. Had I suddenly thrown off my civilian garb, and in familiar Russian revealed myself to them as Gen. Rusezki, of the Petersburg Division of the Third Section Secret Police, who had dropped in on them in the guise of an American traveler, they would have comprehended me at once, independent attitude and all. But since nothing of the sort took place, one of the officers summoned Sascha into an adjoining room and proceeded to ques- tion him in regard to my extremely queer behavior. Was this gentleman aware that he was in the pres- ence of police officers ? " Yes," said Sascha, " he knows you are police offi- cers, but he is an American, and in America it is the police who humble themselves before the people, and not the people before the police." This was Sascha's exaggerated interpretation of what had been told him some days before as to the THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. relations between police and people in England and America. The officer probably did not believe him, since a Russian seldom believes what is told him, unless it agrees in some measure with his own knowledge and conceptions ; and nothing in all the wide range of human affairs could seem so wildly improbable to this man as the explanation that had been vouchsafed by my companion. Still there must be something in it, for on no other grounds could my extraordinary bearing be explained. And so, after considerable consultation together, they decided to compromise matters by simply asking me to assume an upright position in the chair instead of the free-and-easy American loll. Sascha explained afterward their talk among them- selves, which is worth mentioning as an evidence of the Russian idea of Americans. They were more puzzled than affronted at my independent bearing. They had always had a friendly feeling toward Ameri- cans, though they knew very little about them, they agreed among themselves and with Sascha. But my conduct was decidedly different from anything they had ever thought of in connection with us. " Tell them that the police officers are the servants and not the masters of the people in America," I said to Sascha, not, however, without mental reservations that would, if expressed, have made my case rather foggy and difficult to be understood. " But this is Russia," replied one of the officers. " Here the Czar is master and the police represent his power among the people. Here the people not only have to obey the police, but they also have to come to STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 191 the police and beg and pray to be allowed to do what they wish." And this was said in a tone of exultation : " It is we who have the whip hand in Russia, and wc mean to keep it, too ! " The police stations are the busiest places in Russia. ' Through the instrumentality of the police the govern- ment of the Czar attempts to regulate the goings in and the comings out, and well-nigh every move, motive, and concern of the whole vast population of this broad empire, which extends from the German frontier to the Pacific, and contains 120,000,000 souls. This great organization of belted, booted, and sabered policemen are the hands, eyes, and ears of the paternal government of the White Czar. This paternal govern- ment assumes that the people are children, who are not to be permitted to take the initiative in anything beyond the mere animal acts of eating, drinking, sleep- ing, and working in the fields. By means of the elaborate passport system the police are enabled to keep their hands on all this numerous family, and to require them to apply at the police stations whenever they wish to do anything or go any- where, much as children apply to their parents. Hence it comes that in the Russian police stations there is a stream of people constantly coming and going. The people are mulcted in fees on every imaginable pre- text, and the amount of money that flows into the treasury through the sluices of the police stations, in the form of petty exactions, must be enormous. Half as much more, probably, finds its way into the pockets of the police officers in the form of bribes. Bribery is carried on in the Russian police offices in THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. a comically open manner. We were in the Ekaterinos- lav office probably an hour, and during that time ob- served three separate cases that took place under our very noses with hardly an effort at secrecy. The man who seemed to come in for the lion's share of the bribes was a little bald-headed fellow who wore a re- markably high collar. He was the secretary, who had to fill out passports, prepare petitions, and the like. When seated at his desk his back was turned to my point of observation, and when he was bent over, writing, his enormous collar concealed all but the baldest and shiniest part of his head. And when he looked up and exposed the remnants of hair that still clung to the sides, it was as though a young chicken had just succeeded in pecking a hole in its shell, sufficiently large to peep out and take a curious inventory of its surroundings. The head did, in fact, take very frequent inventories, not exactly of its surroundings, but of the group of civilians who stood huddled up in a humbly submissive attitude, hats in hand, near the door. Russian officials who occupy situations where bribes are offered in the presence of other people always wear short office jackets with pockets ready to hand at the sides. The little man with the high collar wore one of these jackets, as a matter of course, and the dex- terity with which he could transfer paper money from the hand of a petitioner to the pockets in it was beauti- ful to see. There was nothing particularly rapid about the movement, nothing of legerdemain, in which the quickness of the hand is relied on to deceive the eye, but there was an elegant gracefulness in the act that STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 193 stamped it at once as an accomplishment acquired by long and daily practice. The givers of bribes seemed to be mostly ignorant moujiks from the country. Among the applicants of the morning was a moujik who had neglected to renew his passport at the proper time. Passports have to be renewed at regular intervals, and a person who absents himself for any length of time beyond brings down on himself the suspicions of the authorities in addition to penalties and fines. The " children " of the Czar, like any other children, arc forever doing some foolish thing or other that would get them into trouble should it come to the paternal knowledge. Anyhow, it is ex- tremely uncomfortable to come under the ban of sus- picion, and above all things else the moujik dreads anything that will bring him conspicuously to the notice of the police. The moujik in question stood, apparently, perilously near the precipice of police suspicion, as the bald head of the little secretary protruded once again above the white collar and scrutinized the group against the door, and slightly nodded. The moujik stepped forward, and, touching his top-knot with the hand that held his cap, handed the secretary a tattered document. It was his passport, that should have been renewed some time before. The secretary whirled round in his chair, and, look- ing the delinquent full in the face, shot from the depths of his big, lack-luster eyes a look that spoke plainer than printed words. The moujik very likely could not have read print, but he readily understood the secretary's look, and, in fact, had been expecting it. i 9 4 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. Crumbled up in his horny fist were several greasy ruble notes, part of which were to pay for the new pass- port and the others were to be his salvation from the dreaded suspicion of the police. The notes were handed over, covertly slipped from one half-closed hand to another, and, presto ! part of them fell into the handy pocket just below the little secretary's extended hand, and the rest were smoothed out leisurely on his desk and laid away in the drawer where they belonged. The little secretary was, in effect, a flesh-and-blood automaton : his pocket was the slot in which the moujik put the rubles, and the prize drawn was a passport, dated a month or two back — in substance, a certificate of immunity from further annoy- ance and suspicion for several months to come. It is their salvation from a peck of trouble that the common people of Russia know that an automaton of this character is to be found in every police station, not necessarily with a bald head and high collar, but always with a slot for ruble notes, by means of which a surprising variety of prizes may be drawn. When not too outrageously exacting, these tchinovniks, with ready hands and pockets, are consequently to be regarded as friends rather than enemies of the people. In Russia anything a man does, or anything he says, or even anything he does not do or say, may get him into trouble. Everything depends on how he manages to stand in the estimation of the police. The offenses of omission are as numerous as those of commission. There is a story popular among the peasants that a moujik was once found dead in the forest. The priest refused to grant him burial in the grave-yard for fear he STOPPED BY THE POLICE. had committed suicide, and the police refused to let him be buried outside for fear he had not committed suicide. To settle the question an autopsy was held on the corpse, and when it was cut open a police certi- ficate was found inscribed on the heart stating his age, his name, his sex, the color of his hair, beard, and eyes, his native village, and the number of his house, etc. In Russia almost every conceivable thing a man might do is regulated by the written law. The Rus- sian idea of governing the people is in direct opposi- tion to the conceptions of the West. With us every- thing that the law does not expressly forbid is per- mitted ; in Russia everything is forbidden that the law does not expressly grant, which means next to noth- ing at all. And when the whole matter is removed from the realm of theory to cvery-day practice, Russia, though there is a code of between twenty and thirty huge folio volumes of about 2000 pages apiece, is a country as lawless as an African chieftain's do- main. A man with neither money to bribe, nor influ- ence in high places to protect, is at the mercy of any petty police officer or secret government spy, who, out of sheer personal spite, may get him shipped off to the mines of Siberia and ruined for life, though he be the most innocent and harmless person in all Russia. The second man, who greased the palm and found his way to the good offices of the little bald-headed secretary by means of rubles, seemed to be a burlak or city workman. The exact nature of the transaction we couldn't make out. This time when the secretary examined the document that was handed to him he discovered the rubles neatly placed between the folds. 196 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA JVC He didn't seem in the least surprised or disconcerted; didn't even give expression to an apologetic little cough, nor bestow a single glance of acknowledgment on the burlak, but just simply lowered the document and the rubles a trifle below the level of his desk, and when the document was spread out a moment later on the desk the rubles were gone. Only this, and nothing more. My heart began to warm toward this worthy gentle- man, as to a doctor engaged in alleviating the suffer- ings of the halt, the sick, and the blind, for which he refuses to charge more than they are able and willing to give. Bribery, as an abstract thing, may be detesta- ble, but so long as the present form of government obtains in Russia, by all means multiply the number of baldheaded little tchinovniks with high collars and large pockets. The petitioners who came to the police station while we were in the office were a curious crowd. There was an isv'oshchic who came to complain that a man had ridden in his drosky without having the money to pay his fare. There was a poor old woman who was waiting when we arrived and was still waiting, without anybody paying attention to her, when we left ; and there was a plump, good-looking young crea- ture, who sailed in, was received with polite attention, shown into a private office, and bowed out again, all inside of ten minutes. But the most interesting character of any was a loutish young moujik, of about twenty-five summers, in a sheepskin overcoat warm enough for the north pole, though he was in South Russia and it was July. This STOPPED BY THE POLICE. 197 typical young Orthodox came blubbering into the police office with wet eyes, which he had rubbed with a pair of huge, greasy fists until they were redder than his hair, and between pitiful "boo-hoos!" and heart- broken snuffles, told the officers that he had been play- ing cards and lost eight rubles. His chum, another moujik in a sheepskin, came with him to confirm his story. There was no complaint of being cheated. He had simply come to the police as a child, who had let an apple fall out of the window, would go weeping to tell its mother. " Nitchevo ! " said the officers, stroking his shaggy red head in mock affection and patting him gently on the sheepskin overcoat. "Nitchevo!" and they sent him off to tell his tale of woe to some official at the other end of the city. This officer would likewise reply tenderly, " Nitchevo ! " and send him to some one else; and this one again to yet another distant quarter of Ekaterinoslav, to tell some one else. By the end of the day the unfortunate moujik and his chum would become weary of being sent hither and thither to no purpose, and so give it up. What the)- expected to gain by informing the police had probably never occurred to them. At length the Chief of Police arrived. Behind him came a couple of policemen, bringing a wretched look- ing Jew, whom they said had set, or had tried to set, fire to a building. The Chief ordered him to be shut up three days in a dark cell without food or water. Sascha interpreted the sentence to me, and added that it served him right. The three days' sentence was, I suppose, preliminary to his trial. 198 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. The Chief was an intelligent, energetic man. He took us into his private office and, understanding that I knew nothing of Russian, proceeded to question Sascha. " Why was I traveling through Russia in this strange manner? How came it that a Russian and an Ameri- can were journeying together on horseback ? What was our motive? Who had given us permission ? Did I take notes and send off letters ? Who and what was I ? etc." But the questions and answers were such a curious study of the multiformity of the suspicions that can be brought to bear on any given subject by a Russian police officer that they deserve a separate chapter. They read like one of those catechetical productions that once went the round of the American newspapers under the title of " Mullkittle's Kid." CHAPTER XIII. A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAMINATION. WHEN we returned to our hotel, after the visit to the Ekaterinoslav police station, Sascha declared himself " out of mind with trouble." From the way the Chief had questioned him no end of trouble was to be expected, and all the Police Master had said in regard to letting us proceed on our way was to advise us to see the Governor of the province. Sascha's spirits, like those in a barometer in stormy weather, were much given to rising and falling, carrying him into Himalayan heights of bliss, and plunging him into abysmal depths of despair, man)- times during a day- Though he flung himself on the lounge in our room with the abandon of a person utterly undone, w he n we returned from the police station, dinner, with a bottle of his favorite cordial, brought him around at once to a rosier view of the situation. The Chief, he thought, had asked him at least two hundred questions, many of which were ridiculous. The catechetical examina- tion, as near as he could recall it, was as follows: " Who is this man, your companion ? " " He is an American, Mr. Stevens." u How do you know he's an American ? " " He has an American passport and he speaks Eng- lish. I believe he's an American." " The passport doesn't prove anything. He might 199 200 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. have obtained that from some one else. How do you know who he is? How are we to know ? " " I believe there is no doubt about his being an American. He sends his letters to America." " Ha, he sends letters, then ? " " Yes, to America." " What does he say in his letters, and where does he send them to ? " " I don't know what he says. He sends them to New York." "How often does he send away letters; are they big letters ? " "Yes, big letters, and he sends them whenever we reach a city." "But what does he find to write about? what's his business? is he a correspondent?" " He sends letters to America and he will write a book about Russia. This is what he is riding through the country on horseback for." "Butyou. What are you with him for? How'sthis?" " I am traveling with him to interpret for him and because I wish to see the country." " But I can't understand it. A Russian and an American traveling together in this extraordinary manner. Who gave you leave to do this thing? " " My brother and my mother both gave their con- sent. My certificate of communion and college certifi- cate were both lost with my passport. You have seen my passport, obtained at Orel." " That is not a passport ! You have nothing to prove who you are ! You look more like an Italian than a Russian ! " (Sascha was dark.) A SEARCHING CROSS-EXAM J NATION. 201 " I am a Russian Orthodox. I am well known in Moscow, where my brother is in business." "What's your brother's name? How old is he? What business is he in ? How do we know all this?" "His name is Nicolai Critsch. All I tell you is true." " Did you ask the Governor of Moscow to let you make this journey? " " No, we didn't think it would be necessary." "Did people in Moscow know you were going to start?" " It was announced in the newspapers there." " What newspapers ? " " The Moskovski List ok > the Novosti, and others." " Where did you get the money to make this jour- ney ? " " Mr. Stevens pays the expenses for both of us." " Where does he get it ? " " I don't know. From America, I suppose." " Has he got much ? " " I don't know." " But there must be some motive for such a journey. People don't spend money and undergo the fatigues of such undertakings for nothing." " I have told you — he wished to write a book about Russia." " Ah ! Has he written books before ? " " Yes ; two, I believe." "About Russia?" "No; about Africa, and about a bicycle journey around the world." " Is he a celebrated man ? Is he the American who 2 o 2 THR 0 UGH R US SI A ON A M US TA NG % was once a cowboy and has now become famous? " (A confused idea of Stanley, and Carver's " Wild Amer- ica " — that had been performing in Moscow — cropped out here.) " I don't know." " Is he writing good things or bad about Russia ? " " I don't know. I don't think he is writing bad things, however." " How do you know he isn' f ? " " I don't know." " Where's his writing? Where does he keep it?" " He has sent it away, I have said." " Sent all of it away? " " He makes notes in a book every day — short notes." "What about?" " About the things we see along the road." "What do you mean ? What things has he seen ?" " He writes about the moujiks, the traktirs, the uriadniks, and the country." " What does he say about the moujiks ? " " He tells about the way they live, what they eat, and how they cultivate the land." " Does he have anything to say to them ? " " No ; he doesn't speak Russian." " Are you sure that he doesn't speak Russian ?" " I have never heard him speak Russian." " Perhaps he only pretends that he doesn't. How do you know ? " " I don't believe he speaks any Russian. He asks me about everything."