Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland Volume II Part 1

Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland.

Vol. 2.

by John Lloyd Stephens.

CHAPTER I.

Choice of a Conveyance.--Hiring a Servant.--Another American.--Beginning of Troubles.--A Bivouac.--Russian Jews.--The Steppes of Russia.--A _Traveller's_ Story.--Approach to Chioff.--How to get rid of a Servant.--History of Chioff.

I HAD before me a journey of nearly two thousand miles, through a country more than half barbarous, and entirely dest.i.tute of all accommodation for travellers. Southern Russia was the Scythia of Darius, "savage from the remotest time." "All the way," says an old traveller, "I never came in a house, but lodged in the wilderness by the river side, and carried provisions by the way, for there be small succour in those parts;" and we were advised that a century had made but little change in the interior of the empire. There were no public conveyances, and we had our choice of three modes of travelling; first, by a Jew's wagon, in which the traveller stretches out his bed, and is trundled along like a bale of goods, always with the same horses, and therefore, of necessity, making slow progress; secondly, the char de poste, a mere box of wood on four wheels, with straw in the bottom; very fast, but to be changed always with the posthorses; and, thirdly, posting with our own carriage. We did not hesitate long in choosing the last, and bought a carriage, fortunately a good one, a large caleche which an Italian n.o.bleman had had made for his own use in travelling on the Continent, and which he now sold, not because he did not want it, but because he wanted money more. Next we procured a podoroshni, under which, "By order of his Majesty Nicolas the First, autocrat of all the Russias, from Odessa to Moscow and Petersburgh, all the postoffices were commanded to give ---- and ----, with their servant, four horses with their drivers, at the price fixed by law." Besides this, it was necessary to give security that we left no debts behind us; and if Mr. Ralli undertakes for all Americans the same obligation he did for me, it may happen that his office of consul will be no sinecure. Next, and this was no trifling matter, we got our pa.s.sports arranged; the Russian amba.s.sador at Constantinople, by-the-way, had given me a new pa.s.sport in Russian, and my companion, that he might travel with the advantages of rank and t.i.tle, got himself made "n.o.ble" by an extra stroke of his consul's pen.

The last thing was to engage a servant. We had plenty of applications, but, as very few talked any language we understood, we had not much choice, one, a German, a capital fellow, was exactly the man we wanted, only he could not speak a word of Russian, which was the princ.i.p.al qualification we required in a servant. At length came a Frenchman, with an unusual proportion of whiskers and mustaches, and one of the worst of the desperate emigres whom the French Revolution, or, rather, the Restoration, sent roaming in foreign lands. He had naturally a most unprepossessing physiognomy, and this was heightened by a sabre-cut which had knocked out several of his teeth, and left a huge gash in his cheek and lip, and, moreover, made him speak very unintelligibly. When I asked him if he was a Frenchman, he drew himself up with great dignity, and replied, "Monsieur je suis _Parisien_." His appearance was a gross libel upon the Parisians; but, as we could get no one else, we took him upon little recommendation the day before our departure, and, during the same day, threatened half a dozen times to discharge him. The police regulation, obliging him to pay his debts before leaving Odessa, he seemed to consider peculiarly hard; and, all the time he was with us, kept referring to his having been obliged to fritter away thirty or forty rubles before he could leave. We ought to have furnished ourselves with provisions for the whole road to Moscow, and even cooking utensils; but we neglected it, and carried with us only tea and sugar, a tin teapot, two tin cups, two tin plates, two knives and forks, and some Bologna sausages, trusting, like Napoleon when he invaded Russia, to make up the rest by foraging.

Before beginning our journey we had a foretaste of the difficulty of travelling in Russia. We had ordered posthorses three times, and had sent for them morning and evening, and received for answer that there were none in. At the third disappointment, our own consul being out of town, my friend the Spanish consul went with me to the director of the post, and found that during the time in which they had told us they had no horses, they had sent out more than a hundred. Instead of taxing them with their rascality, he talked the matter over very politely, paid the price of the horses, gave them a bonus of ten rubles, and obtained a promise by all the saints in the Russian calendar for daylight the next morning.

The next morning at eight o'clock the horses came; four s.h.a.ggy, wild-looking little animals, which no comb or brush had ever touched, harnessed with a collar and rope lines. They were tied in with rope traces, all abreast, two on each side the pole, and a postillion with a low wool cap, sheepskin coat and trousers, the woolly side next the skin, who would make an English whip stare, mounted the box. Henri followed, and my companion and myself took our seats within. The day before we had a positive quarrel upon a point unnecessary here to mention, in which I thought and still think he acted wrong, and the dispute had run so high that I told him I regretted exceedingly having made arrangements for travelling with him, and proposed even then to part company; he objected, and as we had purchased a carriage jointly, and particularly as our pa.s.sports were prepared, our podoroshni made out, and servant hired in our joint names, I was fain to go on; and in this inauspicious humour toward each other we set out for a journey of nearly two thousand miles, through a wild and desolate country, among a half-civilized people, whose language we could not understand, and with a servant whom we distrusted and disliked.

In spite of all this, however, I felt a high degree of excitement in starting for the capital of Russia; and I will do my companion the justice to say that he had been always ready to receive my advances, and to do more than meet me half way, which I afterward learned was from an apprehension of the taunts of his companions, who, not satisfied with getting rid of him, had constantly told him that it was impossible for an Englishman and an American to travel together, and that we would quarrel and fight the first day. I believe that I am enough of an American in my feelings, but such an idea had never entered my head; I met many Englishmen, and with some formed a friendship which, I trust, will last through life; and among all I met, these two were the only _young_ men so far behind the spirit of the age as to harbour such a thought. I did meet one _old_ gentleman, who, though showing me personally the greatest kindness, could not forget the old grudge. But men cannot be driving their elbows into each other's ribs, comparing money accounts, and consulting upon the hundred little things that present themselves on such a journey, without getting upon at least sociable terms; and before night of the first day the feelings of my companion and myself had undergone a decided change.

But to go back to Odessa. At the barrier we found a large travelling-carriage stopping the way, in which was my friend Mr. Ralli, with his lady, on his way to Nicolaif; part of his business there was to erect a monument to the memory of a deceased countryman. Mr. Munroe, son of a former postmaster in Washington, is another instance of the success of American adventurers in Russia. He went out to St. Petersburgh with letters from the Russian amba.s.sador and others, and entered the army, the only road to distinction in Russia. He accompanied the Grand-duke Constantine to Poland, and was made one of his aiddecamps, and on the death of Constantine was transferred to the staff of the Emperor Nicolas. At the time of the invasion of Turkey by the Egyptians under Ibrahim Pacha, Mr. Munroe held the rank of colonel in the army sent to the aid of the sultan. While the Russians were encamped at the foot of the Giant's Mountain, he visited Constantinople, and became acquainted with the American missionaries, who all spoke of him in the highest terms. He was a tall, well-made man, carried himself with a military air, and looked admirably well in the Russian uniform. On the withdrawal of the Russians from the Black Sea, Mr. Munroe was left in some important charge at Nicolaif, where he died in the opening of a brilliant career. I heard of him all over Russia, particularly from officers of the army; and being often asked if I knew him, regretted to be obliged to answer no. But, though personally unacquainted, as an American I was gratified with the name he had left behind him.

To return again to our journey: a few rubles satisfied the officer at the barrier that we were carrying nothing prohibited out of the "free port" of Odessa, and we started on a full run, to the great peril of our necks, and, to use the climax of a Dutch proclamation, "what's more, of breaking our carriage." In less than an hour we brought up before the door of a posthouse. Our wheels were smoking when we stopped. On our hind axle we carried a bucket of grease; half a dozen bipeds in sheepskin whipped off the wheels and greased them; four quadrupeds were tied into the carriage, another bete mounted the box, and we were off again at a full run. My companion undertook to keep a memorandum of expenses, and we put a certain sum in a purse and paid out of it till all was gone. This was a glorious beginning for a journey of two thousand miles. The country possessed little interest, being mostly level, and having but few villages. On the way we saw a natural phenomenon that is common enough in Egypt and the East, where the country is level, and known by the name of _mirage_. At a distance it seemed a mere pond or lake, and a drove of cattle pa.s.sing over it looked as if they were walking in the water. We rolled on rapidly all day, pa.s.sed through Balgarha, Kodurseve, and Pakra, timing every post and noting every village with a particularity which it would be tedious here to repeat, and at about eight in the evening dashed into the little town of Vosnezeuski, one hundred and thirty versts from Odessa. Here we came to a dead stand. We had begun to entertain some apprehensions from the conduct of Monsieur Henri, who complained of the hardness of his seat, and asked if we did not intend to stop at night, recommending Vosnezeuski as a place where we could sleep in the posthouse; we told him that we had no idea of stopping but to change horses, and should go on immediately.

Vosnezeuski lies on the river Bog, and is the chief town of the Cossacks of the Bog. This river is navigable for large vessels one hundred and fifty versts; beyond this for three or four hundred versts it is full of cataracts. The Cossacks of the Bog are a warlike tribe, numbering from six to seven thousand, and living under the same military system with the Cossacks of the Don. But we fell into worse hands than the Cossacks.

The postmaster was a Jew, and at first told us that he had no horses; then that he had no postillion, but would hire one if we would pay him a certain sum, about four times the amount fixed by law. We had been obliged before to pay a few extra rubles, but this was our first serious difficulty with the postmasters; and, in pursuance of the advice received at Odessa, we talked loud, demanded the book which is nailed to the table in every posthouse for travellers to enter complaints in, and threatened the vengeance of Count Woronzow and every one else, up to the emperor; but the Jew laughed in our faces; looked in our podoroshni, where we were described as simple travellers, without any of the formidable array of t.i.tles which procure respect in Russia; told us we were no grand seigneurs, and that we must either pay the price or wait, as our betters had done before us. We found too soon, as we had been advised at Odessa, that these fellows do not know such a character in society as a private gentleman; and if a man is not described in his podoroshni as a count, duke, or lord of some kind, or by some high-sounding military t.i.tle, they think he is a merchant or manufacturer, or some other common fellow, and pay no regard to him. I relied somewhat upon my companion's having been made "n.o.ble," but now found that his consul had been rather chary of his honours, and, by the Russian word used, had not put him up high enough to be of any use. We had a long wrangle with the Jew, the result of which was, that we told him, probably in no very gentle phrase, that we would wait a month rather than submit to his extortion; and, drawing up the window of our carriage, prepared to pa.s.s the night at the door of the posthouse.

One of our party was evidently well satisfied with this arrangement, and he was Monsieur Henri. We had hired him by the day to Moscow, and, if we wanted him, to St. Petersburgh, and very soon saw that he was perfectly content with the terms, and in no hurry to bring our journey to a close.

From the moment of our arrival we suspected him of encouraging the postmaster in his efforts to detain us, and were so much fortified in this opinion by after circ.u.mstances, that, when he was about moving toward the house to pa.s.s the night within, we peremptorily ordered him to mount the box and sleep there; he refused, we insisted; and as this was the first day out and the first moment of actual collision, and it was all important to decide who should be master, we told him that, if he did not obey, we would discharge him on the spot, at the risk of being obliged to work our way back to Odessa alone. And as he felt that, in that case, his debts would have been paid to no purpose, with a string of suppressed sacres he took his place on the box. Our carriage was very comfortable, well lined and stuffed, furnished with pockets and everything necessary for the road, and we expected to sleep in it; but, to tell the truth, we felt rather cheap as we woke during the night, and looked at the shut door of the posthouse, and thought of the Jew sleeping away in utter contempt of us, and our only satisfaction was in hearing an occasional groan from Henri.

That worthy individual did not oversleep himself, nor did he suffer the Jew to do so either. Early in the morning, without a word on our part, the horses were brought out and harnessed to our vehicle, and the same man whom he professed to have hired expressly for us, and who, no doubt, was the regular postillion, mounted the box. The Jew maintained his impudence to the last, coming round to my window, and then asking a few rubles as a douceur. Good English would have been thrown away upon him, so I resented it by drawing up the window of the carriage and scowling at him through the gla.s.s.

Many of the postmasters along this road were Jews; and I am compelled to say that they were always the greatest scoundrels we had to deal with; and this is placing them on very high ground, for their inferiors in rascality would be accounted masters in any other country. No men can bear a worse character than the Russian Jews, and I can truly say that I found them all they were represented to be. They are not allowed to come within the territory of old Russia. Peter the Great refused their application to be permitted to approach nearer, smoothing his refusal by telling them that his Russian subjects were greater Jews than they were themselves. The sagacious old monarch, however, was wrong; for all the money business along the road is in their hands. They keep little taverns, where they sell vodka, a species of brandy, and wring from the peasant all his earnings, lending the money again to the seigneurs at exorbitant interest. Many of them are rich, and though alike despised by rich and poor, by the seigneur and the serf, they are proud of exhibiting their wealth, particularly in the jewels and ornaments of their women. At Savonka, a little village on the confines of old Poland, where we were detained waiting for horses, I saw a young girl about sixteen, a Polonese, sitting on the steps of a miserable little tavern, sewing together some ribands, with a headdress of brown cloth, ornamented with gold chains and pearls worth six hundred rubles, diamond earrings worth a hundred, and a necklace of ducats and other Dutch gold pieces worth four hundred rubles; altogether, in our currency, worth perhaps two hundred and fifty dollars.

Here, too, while sitting with Henri on the steps of the posthouse, I asked him in a friendly way how he could be such a rascal as to league with the postmaster to detain us at Vosnezeuski, whereupon he went at once into French heroics, exclaiming, "Monsieur, je suis vieux militaire--j'etais cha.s.seur de Napoleon--mon honneur," &c.; that he had never travelled before except with grand seigneurs, and then _in_ the carriage, more as compagnon de voyage than as a servant, and intimated that it was a great condescension to travel with us at all.

We pa.s.sed through several villages, so much alike and so uninteresting in appearance that I did not note even their names. As night approached we had great apprehensions that Henri would contrive to make us stop again; but the recollection of his bed on the box served as a lesson, and we rolled on without interruption. At daylight we awoke, and found ourselves upon the wild steppes of Russia, forming part of the immense plain which, beginning in northern Germany, extends for hundreds of miles, having its surface occasionally diversified by ancient tumuli, and terminates at the long chain of the Urals, which, rising like a wall, separates them from the equally vast plains of Siberia. The whole of this immense plain was covered with a luxuriant pasture, but bare of trees like our prairie lands, mostly uncultivated, yet everywhere capable of producing the same wheat which now draws to the Black Sea the vessels of Turkey, Egypt, and Italy, making Russia the granary of the Levant; and which, within the last year, we have seen brought six thousand miles to our own doors. Our road over these steppes was in its natural state; that is to say, a mere track worn by caravans of wagons; there were no fences, and sometimes the route was marked at intervals by heaps of stones, intended as guides when the ground should be covered with snow. I had some anxiety about our carriage; the spokes of the wheels were all strengthened and secured by cords wound tightly around them, and interlaced so as to make a network; but the postillions were so perfectly reckless as to the fate of the carriage, that every crack went through me like a shot. The breaking of a wheel would have left us perfectly helpless in a desolate country, perhaps more than a hundred miles from any place where we could get it repaired. Indeed, on the whole road to Chioff there was not a single place where we could have any material injury repaired; and the remark of the old traveller is yet emphatically true, that "there be small succour in these parts."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tumuli on the Steppes.]

At about nine o'clock we whirled furiously into a little village, and stopped at the door of the posthouse. Our wheels were smoking with the rapidity of their revolutions; Henri dashed a bucket of water over them to keep them from burning, and half a dozen men whipped them off and greased them. Indeed, greasing the wheels is necessary at every post, as otherwise the hubs become dry, so that there is actual danger of their taking fire; and there is a _traveller's_ story told (but I do not vouch for its truth) of a postillion, wagon, and pa.s.sengers being all burned up on the road to Moscow by the ignition of the wheels.

The village, like all the others, was built of wood, plastered and whitewashed, with roofs of thatched straw, and the houses were much cleaner than I expected to find them. We got plenty of fresh milk; the bread, which to the traveller in those countries is emphatically the staff of life, we found good everywhere in Russia, and at Moscow the whitest I ever saw. Henri was an enormous feeder, and, wherever we stopped, he disappeared for a moment, and came out with a loaf of bread in his hand and his mustache covered with the froth of qua.s.s, a Russian small beer. He said he was not always so voracious, but his seat was so hard, and he was so roughly shaken, that eating did him no good.

Resuming our journey, we met no travellers. Occasionally we pa.s.sed large droves of cattle, but all the way from Odessa the princ.i.p.al objects were long trains of wagons, fifty or sixty together, drawn by oxen, and transporting merchandise toward Moscow or grain to the Black Sea. Their approach was indicated at a great distance by immense clouds of dust, which gave us timely notice to let down our curtains and raise our gla.s.ses. The wagoners were short, ugly-looking fellows, with huge sandy mustaches and beards, black woolly caps, and sheepskin jackets, the wool side next the skin; perhaps, in many cases, transferred warm from the back of one animal to that of the other, where they remained till worn out or eaten up by vermin. They had among them blacksmiths and wheelwrights, and spare wheels, and hammer, and tools, and everything necessary for a journey of several hundred miles. Half of them were generally asleep on the top of their loads, and they encamped at night in caravan style, arranging the wagons in a square, building a large fire, and sleeping around it. About midday we saw clouds gathering afar off in the horizon, and soon after the rain began to fall, and we could see it advancing rapidly over the immense level till it broke over our heads, and in a few moments pa.s.sed off, leaving the ground smoking with exhalations.

Late in the afternoon we met the travelling equipage of a seigneur returning from Moscow to his estate in the country. It consisted of four carriages, with six or eight horses each. The first was a large, stately, and c.u.mbrous vehicle, padded and cushioned, in which, as we pa.s.sed rapidly by, we caught a glimpse of a corpulent Russian on the back seat, with his feet on the front, bolstered all around with pillows and cushions, almost burying every part of him but his face, and looking the very personification of luxurious indulgence; and yet probably, that man had been a soldier, and slept many a night on the bare ground, with no covering but his military cloak. Next came another carriage, fitted out in the same luxurious style, with the seigneur's lady and a little girl; then another with nurses and children; then beds, baggage, cooking utensils, and servants, the latter hanging on everywhere about the vehicle, much in the same way with the pots and kettles. Altogether, it was an equipment in caravan style, somewhat the same as for a journey in the desert, the traveller carrying with him provision and everything necessary for his comfort, as not expecting to procure anything on the road, nor to sleep under a roof during the whole journey. He stops when he pleases, and his servants prepare his meals, sometimes in the open air, but generally at the posthouse. We had constant difficulties with Henri and the postmasters, but, except when detained for an hour or two by these petty tyrants, we rolled on all night, and in the morning again woke upon the same boundless plain.

The posthouse was usually in a village, but sometimes stood alone, the only object to be seen on the great plain. Before it was always a high square post, with black and white stripes, marking the number of versts from station to station; opposite to this Henri dismounted, and presented the podoroshni or imperial order for horses. But the postmasters were high above the laws; every one of them seemed a little autocrat in his own right, holding his appointment rather to prey upon than to serve travellers; and the emperor's government would be but badly administered if his ukases and other high-sounding orders did not carry with them more weight than his podoroshni. The postmasters obeyed it when they pleased, and when they did not, made a new bargain. They always had an excuse; as, for instance, that they had no horses, or were keeping them in reserve for a courier or grand seigneur; but they listened to reason when enforced by rubles, and, as soon as a new bargain was made, half a dozen animals in sheepskin went out on the plain and drove up fifteen or twenty horses, small, rugged, and tough, with long and s.h.a.ggy manes and tails, which no comb or brush had ever touched, and, diving among them promiscuously, caught four, put on rope headstalls, and tied them to our rope traces. The postillion mounted the box, and shouting and whipping his horses, and sometimes shutting his eyes, started from the post on a full gallop, carried us like the wind, ventre a terre, over the immense plain, sometimes without a rut or any visible mark to guide him, and brought us up all standing in front of the next post. A long delay and a short post, and this was the same over and over again during the whole journey. The time actually consumed in making progress was incredibly short, and I do not know a more beautiful way of getting over the ground than posting in Russia with a man of high military rank, who can make the postmasters give him horses immediately on his arrival. As for us, after an infinite deal of vexation and at a ruinous expense, on the morning of the fourth day we were within one post of Chioff. Here we heard with great satisfaction that a diligence was advertised for Moscow, and we determined at once to get rid of carriage, posting, and Henri. We took our seats for the last time in the _caleche_ gave the postillion a double allowance of kopeks, and in half an hour saw at a great distance the venerable city of Chioff, the ancient capital of Russia. It stands at a great height, on the crest of an amphitheatre of hills, which rise abruptly in the middle of an immense plain, apparently thrown up by some wild freak of nature, at once curious, unique, and beautiful. The style of its architecture is admirably calculated to give effect to its peculiar position; and, after a dreary journey over the wild plains of the Ukraine, it breaks upon the traveller with all the glittering and gorgeous splendour of an Asiatic city. For many centuries it has been regarded as the Jerusalem of the North, the sacred and holy city of the Russians; and, long before reaching it, its numerous convents and churches, crowning the summit and hanging on the sides of the hill, with their quadrupled domes, and spires, and chains, and crosses, gilded with ducat gold and glittering in the sun, gave the whole city the appearance of golden splendour. The churches and monasteries have one large dome in the centre, with a spire surmounted by a cross, and several smaller domes around it, also with spires and crosses connected by pendant chains, and all gilded so purely that they never tarnish. We drove rapidly to the foot of the hill, and ascended by a long wooden paved road to the heart of the city.

During the whole of our last post our interest had been divided between the venerable city and the rogue Henri. My companion, who, by-the-way, spoke but little French disliked him from the first. We had long considered him in league with all the Jews and postmasters on the road, and had determined under no circ.u.mstances to take him farther than Chioff; but as we had hired him to Moscow, the difficulty was how to get rid of him. He might take it into his head that, if we did not know when we had a good servant, he knew when he had good masters; but he was constantly grumbling about his seat, and calculated upon three or four days' rest at Chioff. So, as soon as we drove up to the door of the hotel, we told him to order breakfast and posthorses. He turned round as if he had not fully comprehended us. We repeated the order, and for the first time since he had been with us he showed something like agility in dismounting; fairly threw himself from the box, swore he would not ride another verst that day for a thousand rubles, and discharged us on the spot. We afterward paid him to his entire satisfaction, indemnifying him for the money he had squandered in paying his debts at Odessa, and found him more useful at Chioff than he had been at any time on the road.

Indeed, we afterward learned what was rather ludicrous, viz., that he, our pilot and interpreter through the wilderness of Russia, knew but little more of Russian than we did ourselves. He could ask for posthorses and the ordinary necessaries of life, count money, &c., but could not support a connected conversation, nor speak nor understand a long sentence. This changed our suspicions of his honesty into admiration of his impudence; but, in the mean time, when he discharged us, we should have been rather dest.i.tute if it had not been for the servant of a Russian traveller, who spoke French, and, taking our direction from him, we mounted a drosky and rode to the office of the diligence, which was situated in the Podolsk or lower town, and at which we found ourselves particularly well received by the proprietor. He said that the attempt to run a diligence was discouraging; that he had advertised two weeks, and had not booked a single pa.s.senger; but, if he could get two, he was determined to try the experiment. We examined the vehicle, which was very large and convenient, and, satisfied that there was no danger of all the places being taken, we left him until we could make an effort to dispose of our carriage. Relieved from all anxiety as to our future movements, we again mounted our drosky. Ascending the hill, we pa.s.sed the fountain where St. Vladimir baptized the first Russian converts; the spring is held sacred by the Christians now, and a column bearing a cross is erected over it, to commemorate the pious act and the ancient sovereignty of Chioff.

The early history of this city is involved in some obscurity. Its name is supposed to be derived from Kiovi or Kii, a Sarmatian word signifying heights or mountains; and its inhabitants, a Sarmatian tribe, were denominated Kivi or mountaineers. It is known to have been a place of consequence in the fifth century, when the Suevi, driven from their settlements on the Danube, established themselves here and at Novogorod.

In the beginning of the tenth century it was the capital and most celebrated and opulent city in Russia, or in that part of Europe.

Boleslaus the Terrible notched upon its "golden gate" his "miraculous sword," called by the monks "the sword of G.o.d," and the Poles entered and plundered it of its riches. In the latter part of the same century the capital of Russia again fell before the conquering arms of the Poles. Kiev was at that time the foster-child of Constantinople and the Eastern empire. The voluptuous Greeks had stored it with all the luxuries of Asia; the n.o.ble architecture of Athens was festooned with the gaudy tapestry of Lydia, and the rough metal of Russian swords embossed with the polished gold of Ophir and Persia. Boleslaus II., shut up within the "golden gate" of this city of voluptuousness, quaffed the bowl of pleasure till its intoxicating draught degraded all the n.o.bler energies of his nature. His army of warriors followed his example, and slept away month after month on the soft couches of Kiev; and in the language of the historian, as if they had eaten of the fabled fruit of the lotos-tree, at length forgot that their houses were without masters, their wives without husbands, and their children without parents.

But these tender relations were not in like manner oblivious; and, after seven years of absence, the Poles were roused from their trance of pleasure by the tidings of a revolt among the women at home, who, tired of waiting their return, in revenge gave themselves up to the embraces of their slaves. Burning under the disgrace, the Poles hurried home to wreak their vengeance on wives and paramours; but they met at Warsaw a b.l.o.o.d.y resistance; the women, maddened by despair, urged on their lovers, many of them fighting in person, and seeking out on the battle-field their faithless husbands: an awful warning to married men!

For a long time Kiev was the prey alternately of the Poles, the Lithuanians, and the Tartars, until in 1686 it was finally ceded by the Poles to Russia. The city is composed of three distinct quarters; the old, with its Polish fortifications, containing the palace of the emperor, and being the court end; the Petcherk fortress, built by Peter the Great, with ditches and high ramparts, and an a.r.s.enal capable of containing eighty or a hundred thousand stand of arms; and the Podolsk, or business part, situated at the foot of the hill on the banks of the Dnieper. It contains thirty thousand inhabitants besides a large military garrison, partly of Cossack troops, and one pretty good hotel; but no beds, and none of those soft couches which made the hardy Poles sleep away their senses; and though a welcome resting-place for a traveller through the wild plains of Russia, it does not now possess any such attraction as to put in peril the faith and duties of husbands. By its position secluded from intercourse with strangers, Kiev is still thoroughly a Russian city, retaining in full force its Asiatic style of architecture; and the old Russian, wedded to the manners and customs of his fathers, clings to it as a place which the hand of improvement has not yet reached; among other relics of the olden time, the long beard still flourishes with the same solemn dignity as in the days of Peter the Great. Lying a hundred miles away from the direct road between Moscow and the Black Sea, few European travellers visit it; and though several of them have done so since, perhaps I was the first American who ever pa.s.sed through it.

We pa.s.sed the morning in riding round to the numerous convents and churches, among which is the church of St. Sophia, the oldest in Russia, and, if not an exact model of the great St. Sophia of Constantinople, at least of Byzantine design; and toward evening went to the emperor's garden. This garden is more than a mile in length, bounded on one side by the high precipitous bank of the hill, undulating in its surface, and laid out like an English park, with lawn, gravel-walks, and trees; it contains houses of refreshment, arbours or summer-houses, and a summer theatre. At the foot of the hill flows the Dnieper, the ancient Borysthenes, on which, in former days the descendants of Odin and Ruric descended to plunder Constantinople. Two or three sloops were lying, as it were, asleep in the lower town, telling of a still interior country, and beyond was a boundless plain covered with a thick forest of trees.

The view from this bank was unique and extraordinary, entirely different from anything I ever saw in natural scenery, and resembling more than anything else a boundless marine prospect.

At the entrance of the garden is an open square or table of land overlooking the plain, where, every evening at seven o'clock, the military band plays. The garden is the fashionable promenade, the higher cla.s.ses resorting to it in carriages and on horseback, and the common people on foot; the display of equipages was not very striking, although there is something stylish in the Russian manner of driving four horses, the leaders with very long traces and a postillion; and soldiers and officers, with their splendid uniforms, caps, and plumes, added a brilliant effect.

Before the music began, all returned from the promenade or drive in the garden, and gathered in the square. It was a beautiful afternoon in June, and the a.s.semblage was unusually large and brilliant; the carriages drew up in a line, the ladies let down the gla.s.ses, and the cavaliers dismounted, and talked and flirted with them just as in civilized countries. All Chioff was there, and the peasant in his dirty sheepskin jacket, the shopkeeper with his long surtout and beard, the postillion on his horse, the coachman on his box, the dashing soldier, the haughty n.o.ble and supercilious lady, touched by the same chord, forgot their temporal distinctions, and listened to the swelling strains of the music till the last notes died away. The whole ma.s.s was then in motion, and in a few moments, except by a few stragglers, of whom I was one, the garden was deserted. At about ten o'clock I returned to my hotel. We had no beds, and slept in our cloaks on settees stuffed with straw and covered with leather. We had no coverlets; still, after four days and nights in a carriage, it was a luxury to have plenty of kicking room.

CHAPTER II.

A lucky Encounter.--Church of the Catacombs.--A Visit to the Saints.--A tender Parting.--Pilgrims.--Rough Treatment.--A Scene of Starvation.--Russian Serfs.--Devotion of the Serfs.--Approach to Moscow.

EARLY in the morning, while I was standing in the yard of the hotel, chaffering with some Jews about the sale of our carriage, an officer in a faded, threadbare uniform, with two or three ribands at his b.u.t.tonhole and stars sparkling on his breast, came up, and, taking me by the hand, told me, in capital English, that he had just heard of the arrival of two English gentlemen, and had hurried down to see them; that he was a great admirer of the English, and happy to have an opportunity, in the interior of his own country, to show its hospitalities to the natives of the Island Queen. At the risk of losing the benefit of his attentions, I was obliged to disclaim my supposed English character, and to publish, in the heart of a grinding despotism, that I was a citizen of a free republic. Nor did I suffer for my candour; for, by one of those strange vagaries which sometimes happen, we cannot tell how or why, this officer in the service of Russia had long looked to America and her republican government as the perfection of an ideal system. He was in Chioff only by accident. Wounded in the last campaign against the Turks, he had taken up his abode at Ismail, where, upon his pension and a pittance of his own, he was able to live respectably as a poor officer. With no friends or connexions, and no society at Ismail, his head seemed to have run princ.i.p.ally upon two things, apparently having no connexion with each other, but intimately connected in his mind, viz., the British possessions in India and the United States of America; and the cord that bound them together was the wide diffusion of the English language by means of these powerful agents. He told me more than I ever knew of the const.i.tution and government of the East India Company, and their plan of operations; and, in regard to our own country, his knowledge was astonishing; he knew the names and character, and talked familiarly of all our princ.i.p.al men, from the time of Washington to the present day; had read all our standard works, and was far more familiar with those of Franklin, Irving, &c., than I was; in short, he told me that he had read every American book, pamphlet, or paper he could lay his hands on; and so intimate was his knowledge of detail, that he mentioned Chestnut-street by name as one of the princ.i.p.al streets in Philadelphia.

It may be supposed that I was not sorry to meet such a man in the heart of Russia. He devoted himself to us, and seldom left us, except at night, until we left the city.

After breakfast, accompanied by our new friend with as unp.r.o.nounceable a name as the best in Russia, we visited the catacombs of the Petcherskoi monastery. I have before remarked that Chioff is the holy city of the Russians, and the crowds of pilgrims we met at every turn in the streets constantly reminded us that this was the great season of the pilgrimage.

I was but imperfectly acquainted with the Russian character, but in no one particular had I been so ignorant as in regard to their religious impressions. I had seen Italian, Greek, and Turkish devotees, but the Russian surpa.s.sed them all; and, though deriving their religion from strangers, they exceed the punctilious Greeks themselves in the observance of its minutest forms. Censurable, indeed, would he be considered who should pa.s.s, in city or in highway, the figure of the cross, the image of the Virgin, or any of the numerous family of saints, without taking off his hat and making on his breast the sacred sign of the cross; and in a city like Chioff, where every turn presents some new object claiming their worship, the eyes of our drosky boy were rapidly turning from one side to the other, and his hand was almost constantly in a quick mechanical motion.

The Church of the Catacombs, or the Cathedral of the a.s.sumption, attached to the monastery, stands a little out of the city, on the banks of the Dnieper. It was founded in ten hundred and seventy-three, and has seven golden domes with golden spires, and chains connecting them. The dome of the belfry, which rises above the hill to the height of about three hundred feet, and above the Dnieper to that of five hundred and eighty-six, is considered by the Russians a chef d'oeuvre of architecture. It is adorned with Doric and Ionic columns and Corinthian pilasters; the whole interior bears the venerable garb of antiquity, and is richly ornamented with gold, silver, and precious stones and paintings; indeed, it is altogether very far superior to any Greek church I had then seen.

In the immense catacombs under the monastery lie the unburied bodies of the Russian saints, and year after year thousands and tens of thousands come from the wilds of Siberia and the confines of Tartary to kneel at their feet and pray. In one of the porches of the church we bought wax tapers, and, with a long procession of pilgrims, bareheaded and with lighted tapers in our hands, descended a long wooden staircase to the mouth of the catacomb. On each side along the staircase was ranged a line of kneeling devotees, of the same miserable description I had so often seen about the churches in Italy and Greece. Entering the excavated pa.s.sages of the catacombs, the roof of which was black from the smoke of candles, we saw on each side, in niches in the walls, and in open coffins, enveloped in wrappers of cloth and silk, ornamented with gold and silver, the bodies of the Russian saints. These saints are persons who have led particularly pure and holy lives, and by reason thereof have ascended into heaven, where they are supposed to exercise an influence with the Father and Son; and their bodies are left unburied that their brethren may come to them for intercession, and, seeing their honours after death, study to imitate them in the purity of their lives.

The bodies are laid in open coffins, with the stiffened hands so placed as to receive the kisses of pilgrims, and on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s are written their names, and sometimes a history of their virtuous actions. But we saw there other and worse things than these, monuments of wild and desperate fanaticism; for besides the bodies of saints who had died at G.o.d's appointed time, in one pa.s.sage is a range of small windows, where men had with their own hands built themselves in with stones against the wall, leaving open only a small hole by which to receive their food; and died with the impious thought that they were doing their Maker good service. These little windows close their dwelling and their tomb; and the devoted Russian, while he kneels before them, believes that their unnatural death has purchased for them everlasting life, and place and power among the spirits of the blessed.

We wandered a long time in this extraordinary burial-place, everywhere strewed with the kneeling figures of praying pilgrims. At every turn we saw hundreds from the farthest parts of the immense empire of Russia; perhaps at that time more than three thousand were wandering in these sepulchral chambers.

The last scene I shall never forget. More than a hundred were a.s.sembled in a little chapel, around which were arranged the bodies of men who had died in peculiar sanct.i.ty. All were kneeling on the rocky floor, an old priest, with a long white beard streaming down his breast, was in the midst of them, and all there, even to the little children, were listening with rapt attention, as if he were preaching to them matters of eternal moment. There was no hypocrisy or want of faith in that vast sepulchre; surrounded by their sainted dead, they were searching their way to everlasting life, and in all honesty believed that they saw the way before them. We ascended once more to the regions of upper air, and stopped a few moments in the courtyard of the monastery, where the beggar pilgrims were eating the hard bread distributed to them by the monks from the bounty of government. No man seemed more relieved than the major. He was a liberal in religion as well as in politics, but he crossed himself everywhere most devoutly, to avoid, as he said, offending the prejudices of his countrymen, though once he rather scandalized a group of pilgrims by cross-questioning a monk about a new saint, who seemed to be receiving more than a usual share of veneration, and who, he said, had been canonized since he was there last.

But there is a time for all things, and nothing is more absolutely fixed by Nature's laws than a time for dinner. Almost at the first moment of our acquaintance the major had told me of an engraving representing a scene in _New-York_, which was to be found at a second or third rate hotel, and I proposed to him, in compliment to the honest publican who had the good taste to have such a picture in his house, to go there and dine. We went, and in a large room, something like a barroom in our hotels, saw on one of the walls, in a black wooden frame, a gaudy and flaring engraving representing the pulling down of the statue of George the Second in the Bowling Green. The Bowling Green was a.s.sociated with my earliest recollections. It had been my playground when a boy; hundreds of times I had climbed over its fence for my ball, and I was one of a band of boys who held on to it long after the corporation invaded our rights. Captain Cook mentions the effect produced upon his crew by finding at one of the savage islands he visited a silver spoon marked "London;" my feelings were, in a small way, of the same nature.

The grouping of the picture was rude and grotesque, the ringleader being a long negro stripped to his trousers, and straining with all his might upon a rope, one end of which was fastened to the head of the statue, and the other tied around his own waist, his white teeth and the whites of his eyes being particularly conspicuous on a heavy ground of black.

It was a poor specimen of art, but it was a home scene; we drew up our table opposite the picture, and here, in the very headquarters of despotism, I found a liberal spirit in an officer wearing the uniform of the autocrat, who pledged me in the toast, "Success to liberty throughout the world."

I had another occupation, which savoured more of home, and served to keep my faculties from rusting; and that was the sale of our carriage.

We had made a calculation, and found that it would be cheaper, to say nothing of other advantages, to give it away, and take the diligence to Moscow, than go on posting. We accordingly offered it for sale, and every time we returned to the house found a group of Jews examining it.

The poor thing found no favour in their eyes; they told us that we had been riding in it at peril of our lives; that we might be thankful it had not broken down on the road; and, in short, that it was worth nothing except for old iron, and for that it was worth forty-five rubles, or about _nine dollars_. We could not stand this. It had cost us one hundred and forty less than a week before, was cheap at that, and as good now as when we bought it. On the eve of departure, therefore, we offered it to our landlord for three days' board; but the old Turk (he was a Jew turned Christian, and in his regenerated worse than his natural state) refused our offer, thinking that we would go away and leave it on his hands. But we resolved to burn it first; and while hesitating about offering it to our friend the major, he relieved us from all delicacy by telling us that he did not want it, and had no horses to put to it; to save us from imposition, he would willingly give us the full value, but he was not worth the money. He had, however, a piece of fifty rubles, or about ten dollars, in his pocket, and, if we would take that, he would keep the carriage as a souvenir. We gladly accepted his offer, and had the satisfaction of finding that we had grievously disappointed both the Jews and our landlord.