Russian Rambles Part 18

The n.o.bles took the hint, and made no further unnecessary advances. Yes, these Volga peasants certainly possess as strong a sense of democratic equality as any one could wish. But the soft ingenuousness of their manners and their tact disarm wrath at the rare little liberties which they take. Even their way of addressing their former masters by the familiar "thou" betokens respectful affection, not impertinence.

Our men soon wearied of pulling against the powerful current, dodging the steamers and the tug-boats with their strings of barks signaled by constellations of colored lanterns high in air. Perhaps they would have borne up better had we been able to obtain some Astrakhan watermelons from the steamer wharves, which we besieged in turn as we pa.s.sed. They proposed to tow us. On Piotr's a.s.surance that it would be a far swifter mode of locomotion, and that they would pay no more visits to "their gardens," we consented. They set up a mast through an opening in one of the thwarts, pa.s.sed through a hole in its top a cord the size of a cod-line, fastened this to the stern of the boat, and leaped ash.o.r.e with the free end. Off they darted, galloping like horses along the old tow-path, and singing vigorously. Piotr remained on board to steer. As we dashed rapidly through the water, we gained practical knowledge of the manner in which every pound of merchandise was hauled to the great Fair from Astrakhan, fourteen hundred and forty miles, before the introduction of steamers, except in the comparatively rare cases where oxen were made to wind windla.s.ses on the deck of a bark. It would have required hours of hard rowing to reach our goal; but by this means we were soon walking across the yielding sands to Piotr's cottage. Our cunning rogues of boatmen took advantage of our scattered march to obtain from us separately such installments of tea-money as must, in the aggregate, have rendered them hilarious for days to come, if they paid themselves for their minstrelsy in the coin which they had suggested to us before breakfast.

Piotr's smiling wife, who was small, like most Russian peasant women, had baked us some half-rye, half-wheat bread, to our order; she made it remarkably well, much better than Osip. We secured a more lasting memento of her handiwork in the form of some towel ends, which she had spun, woven, drawn, and worked very prettily. Some long-haired heads were thrust over the oven-top to inspect us, but the bodies did not follow. They were better engaged in enjoying the heat left from the baking.

It was two o'clock in the morning when we drove through the village flock of sheep, that lay asleep on the gra.s.sy street. With hand on pistol, to guard against a possible stray wolf, we dashed past the shadowy chalk hills; past the nodding sunflowers, whose sleepy eyes were still turned to the east: past the grainfields, trans.m.u.ted from gold to silver by the moonlight; past the newly plowed land, which looked like velvet billows in its depths of brown, as the moon sank lower and lower beyond in a mantle of flame.

By this time practice had rendered us expert in retaining our seats in the low, springless _lineika_; fortunately, for we were all three quarters asleep at intervals, with excess of fresh air. Even when the moon had gone down, and a s.p.a.ce of darkness intervened before the day, our headlong pace was not slackened for a moment. As we drove up to the door, in the pearl-pink dawn, Tulip, the huge yellow mastiff with tawny eyes, the guardian of the courtyard, received us with his usual ceremony, through which pierced a pet.i.tion for a caress. We heeded him not. By six o'clock we were fast asleep. Not even a packet of letters from home could keep our eyes open after that four-and-twenty hours'

picnic, which had been unmarred by a single fault, but which had contained all the "experiences" and "local color" which we could have desired.

How can I present a picture of all the variations in those sweet, busy-idle days? They vanished all too swiftly. But now the rick-yard was heaped high with golden sheaves; the carts came in steady lines, creaking under endless loads, from those fields which, two years later, lay scorched with drought, and over which famine brooded. The peasant girls tossed the grain, with forked boughs, to the threshing-machine, tended by other girls. The village boys had a fine frolic dragging the straw away in bundles laid artfully on the ends of two long poles fastened shaft-wise to the horse's flanks. We had seen the harvesting, the plowing with the primitive wooden plow, the harrowing with equally simple contrivances, and the new grain was beginning to clothe the soil with a delicate veil of green. It was time for us to go. During our whole visit, not a moment had hung heavy on our hands, here in the depths of the country, where visitors were comparatively few and neighbors distant, such had been the unwearied attention and kindness of our hosts.

We set out for the river once more. This time we had a landau, and a cart for our luggage. As we halted to drink milk in the Tchuvash village, the inhabitants who chanced to be at home thronged about our carriage. We espied several women arrayed in their native costume, which has been almost entirely abandoned for the Russian dress, and is fast becoming a precious rarity. The men have already discarded their dress completely for the Russian. We sent one of the women home to fetch her Sunday gown, and purchased it on the spot. Such a wonderful piece of work! The woman had spun, woven, and sewed it; she had embroidered it in beautiful Turanian, not Russian, patterns, with silks,--dull red, pale green, relieved by touches of dark blue; she had striped it lengthwise with bands of red cotton and embroidery, and crosswise with fancy ribbons and gay calicoes; she had made a mosaic of the back which must have delighted her rear neighbors in church; and she had used the gown with such care that, although it had never been washed, it was not badly soiled. One piece for the body, two for the head, a sham pocket,--that was all. The footgear consisted of crash bands, bast slippers, rope cross-garters. The artists to whom I showed the costume, later on, p.r.o.nounced it an ethnographical prize.

These Tchuvashi are a small, gray-eyed, olive-skinned race, with cheek-bones and other features like the Tatars, but less well preserved than with the latter, in spite of their always marrying among themselves. There must have been dilution of the race at some time, if the characteristics were as strongly marked as with the Tatars, in their original ancestors from Asia. Most of them are baptized into the Russian faith, and their villages have Russian churches. Nevertheless, along with their native tongue they are believed to retain many of their ancient pagan customs and superst.i.tions, although baptism is in no sense compulsory. The priest in our friends' village, who had lived among them, had told us that such is the case. But he had also declared that they possess many estimable traits of character, and that their family life is deserving of imitation in more than one particular. This village of theirs looked prosperous and clean. The men, being brought more into contact with outsiders than the women, speak Russian better than the latter, and more generally. It is not exactly a case which proves woman's conservative tendencies.

On reaching the river, and finding that no steamer was likely to arrive for several hours, we put up at the cottage of a prosperous peasant, which was patronized by many of the neighboring n.o.bles, in preference to the wretched inns of that suburb of the wharves. The "best room" had a citified air, with its white curtains, leaf plants, pretty china tea service, and photographs of the family on the wall. These last seemed to us in keeping with the sewing-machine which we had seen a peasant woman operating in a shop of the little posting-town inland. They denoted progress, since many peasants cherish religious scruples or superst.i.tions about having their portraits taken in any form.

The athletic sons, clad only in shirts and trousers of sprigged print, with fine chestnut hair, which compensated for their bare feet, vacated the room for our use. They and the house were as clean as possible.

Outside, near the entrance door, hung the family washstand, a double-spouted teapot of bronze suspended by chains. But it was plain that they did not pin their faith wholly to it, and that they took the weekly steam bath which is customary with the peasants. Not everything was citified in the matter of sanitary arrangements. But these people seemed to thrive, as our ancestors all did, and probably regarded us as over-particular.

To fill in the interval of waiting, we made an excursion to the heart of the town, and visited the pretty public garden overhanging the river, and noteworthy for its superb dahlias. As we observed the types of young people who were strolling there, we recognized them, with slight alterations only, which the lapse of time explained, from the types which we had seen on the stage in Ostrovsky's famous play "The Thunderstorm." The scene of that play is laid on the banks of the Volga, in just such a garden; why should it not have been on this spot?

All peasant _izbui_ are so bewilderingly alike that we found our special cottage again with some difficulty, by the light of the young moon. By this time "the oldest inhabitant" had hazarded a guess as to the line whose steamer would arrive first. Accordingly, we gathered up our small luggage and our Tchuvash costume, and fairly rolled down the steep, pathless declivity of slippery turf, groping our way to the right wharf.

How the luggage cart got down was a puzzle. Here we ordered in the _samovar_, and feasted until far into the night on the country dainties which we had brought with us, supplemented by one of the first watermelons from Astrakhan, which we had purchased from a belated dealer in the deserted town market. The boat was late, as a matter of course; but we understood the situation now, and asked no questions. When it arrived, we and our charming hosts, whose society we were to enjoy for a few days longer, embarked for Samara, to visit the famous k.u.mys establishments on the steppes.

Russian harvest-tide was over for us, leaving behind a store of memories as golden as the grain, fitly framed on either hand by Mother Volga.

XI.

THE RUSSIAN k.u.mYS CURE.

It is not many years since every pound of freight, every human being, bound to Astrakhan from the interior of Russia simply floated down the river Volga with the current. The return journey was made slowly and painfully, in tow of those human beasts of burden, the _burlaki_. The traces of their towpath along the sh.o.r.es may still be seen, and the system itself may even be observed at times, when light barks have to be forced upstream for short distances.

Then some enterprising individual set up a line of steamers, in the face of the usual predictions from the wiseacres that he would ruin himself and all his kin. The undertaking proved so fabulously successful and profitable that a wild rush of compet.i.tion ensued. But the compet.i.tion seems to have consisted chiefly in the establishment of rival lines of steamers, and there are some peculiarities of river travel which still exist in consequence. One of these curious features is that each navigation company appears to have adopted a certain type of steamer at the outset, and not to have improved on that original idea to any marked degree. There are some honorable exceptions, it is true, and I certainly have a very definite opinion concerning the line which I would patronize on a second trip. Another idea, to which they have clung with equal obstinacy, though it is far from making amends for the other, is that a journey is worth a certain fixed sum per verst, utterly regardless of the vast difference in the accommodations offered.

Possibly it is a natural consequence of having been born in America, and of having heard the American boast of independence and progress and the foreign boast of conservatism contrasted ever since I learned my alphabet, not to exaggerate unduly, that I should take particular notice of all ill.u.s.trations of these conflicting systems. Generally speaking, I advocate a judicious mixture of the two, in varying proportions to suit my taste on each special occasion. But there are times when I distinctly favor the broadest independence and progress. These Volga steamers had afforded me a subject for meditations on this point, at a distance, even before I was obliged to undergo personal experience of the defects of conservatism. Before I had sailed four and twenty hours on the broad bosom of Matushka Volga, I was able to pick out the steamers of all the rival lines at sight with the accuracy of a veteran river pilot. There was no great cleverness in that, I hasten to add; anybody but a blind man could have done as much; but that only makes my point the more forcible. It was when we set out for Samara that we realized most keenly the beauties of enterprise in this direction.

We had, nominally, a wide lat.i.tude of choice, as all the lines made a stop at our landing. But when we got tired of waiting for the steamer of our preference,--the boats of all the lines being long overdue, as usual, owing to low water in the river,--and took the first which presented itself, we found that the lat.i.tude in choice, so far as accommodations were concerned, was even greater than had been apparent at first sight.

Fate allotted us one of the smaller steamers, the more commodious boats having probably "sat down on a sand-bar," as the local expression goes.

The one on which we embarked had only a small dining-room and saloon, one first-cla.s.s cabin for men and one for women, all nearly on a level with the water, instead of high aloft, as in the steamers which we had hitherto patronized, and devoid of deck-room for promenading. The third-cla.s.s cabin was on the forward deck. The second-cla.s.s cabin was down a pair of steep, narrow stairs, whose existence we did not discover when we went on board at midnight, and which did not tempt us to investigation even when we arose the next morning. Fortunately, there were no candidates except ourselves and a Russian friend for the six red velvet divans ranged round the walls of the tiny "ladies' cabin," and the adjoining toilet-room, and the man of the party enjoyed complete seclusion in the men's cabin. In the large boats, for the same price, we should have had separate staterooms, each accommodating two persons.

However, everything was beautifully clean, as usual on Russian steamers so far as my experience goes, and it made no difference for one night.

The experience was merely of interest as a warning.

The city of Samara, as it presented itself to our eyes the next morning, was the liveliest place on the river Volga next to Nizhni Novgorod.

While it really is of importance commercially, owing to its position on the Volga and on the railway from central Russia, as a depot for the great Siberian trade through Orenburg, the impression of alertness which it produces is undoubtedly due to the fact that it presents itself to full view in the foreground, instead of lying at a distance from the wharves, or entirely concealed. An American, who is accustomed to see railways and steamers run through the very heart of the cities which they serve, never gets thoroughly inured to the Russian trick of taking important towns on faith, because it has happened to be convenient to place the stations out of sight and hearing, sometimes miles out of the city. Another striking point about Samara is the abundance of red brick buildings, which is very unusual, not to say unprecedented, in most of the older Russian towns, which revel in stucco washed with white, blue, and yellow.

But the immediate foreground was occupied with something more attractive than this. The wharves, the s.p.a.ce between them, and all the ground round about were fairly heaped with fruit: apples in bewildering variety, ranging from the pink-and-whiteskinned "golden seeds" through the whole gamut of apple hues; round striped watermelons and oval cantaloupes with perfumed orange-colored flesh, from Astrakhan; plums and grapes. After wrestling with these fascinations and with the merry _izvostchiki_, we set out on a little voyage of discovery, preparatory to driving out to the famous k.u.mys establishments, where we had decided to stay instead of in the town itself.

Much of Samara is too new in its architecture, and too closely resembles the simple, thrifty builders' designs of a mushroom American settlement, to require special description. Although it is said to have been founded at the close of the sixteenth century, to protect the Russians from the incursions of the Kalmucks, Bashkirs, and Nogai Tatars, four disastrous conflagrations within the last forty-five years have made way for "improvements" and entailed the loss of characteristic features, while its rank as one of the chief marts for the great Siberian trade has caused a rapid increase in population, which now numbers between seventy-five and eighty thousand.

One modern feature fully compensates, however, by its originality, for a good many commonplace antiquities. Near the wharves, on our way out of the town, we pa.s.sed a lumber-yard, which dealt wholly in ready-made log houses. There stood a large a.s.sortment of cottages, in the brilliant yellow of the barked logs, of all sizes and at all prices, from fifteen to one hundred dollars, forming a small suburb of samples. The lumber is floated down the Volga and her tributaries from the great forests of Ufa, and made up in Samara. The peasant purchaser disjoints his house, floats it to a point near his village, drags it piecemeal to its proper site, sets it up, roofs it, builds an oven and a chimney of stones, clay, and whitewash, plugs the interstices with rope or moss, smears them with clay if he feels inclined, and his house is ready for occupancy. Although such houses are cheap and warm, it would be a great improvement if the people could afford to build with brick, so immense is the annual loss by fire in the villages. Brick buildings are, however, far beyond the means of most peasants, let them have the best will in the world, and the ready-made cottages are a blessing, though every peasant is capable of constructing one for himself on very brief notice, if he has access to a forest. But forests are not so common nowadays along the Volga, and, as the advertis.e.m.e.nts say, this novel lumber-yard "meets a real want." When the Samarcand railway was opened, a number of these cottages, in the one-room size, were placed on platform cars, and to each guest invited to the ceremony was a.s.signed one of these unique drawing-room-car coupes.

About four miles from the town proper, on the steppe, lie two noted k.u.mys establishments; one of them being the first resort of that kind ever set up, at a time when the only other choice for invalids who wished to take the cure was to share the hardships, dirt, bad food, and carelessly prepared k.u.mys of the tented nomads of the steppes. The grounds of the one which we had elected to patronize extended to the very brink of the Volga. In accordance with the admonitions of the specialist physicians to avoid many-storied, ill-ventilated buildings with long corridors, the hotel consists of numerous wooden structures, of moderate size, chiefly in Moorish style, and painted in light colors, scattered about a great inclosure which comprises groves of pines and deciduous trees,--"red forest" and "black forest," as Russians would express it,--lawns, arbors, shady walks, flower-beds, and other things pleasing to the eye, and conducive to comfort and very mild amus.e.m.e.nt.

One of the buildings even contains a hall, where dancing, concerts, and theatricals can be and are indulged in, in the height of the season, although such violent and crowded affairs as b.a.l.l.s are, in theory, discountenanced by the physicians. All these points we took in at one curious glance, as we were being conducted to the different buildings to inspect rooms. I am afraid that we pretended to be very difficult to please, in order to gain a more extensive insight into the arrangements.

As the height of the season (which is May and June) was past, we had a great choice offered us, and I suppose that this made a difference in the price, also. It certainly was not unreasonable. We selected some rooms which opened on a small private corridor. The furniture consisted of the usual narrow iron bedstead (with linen and pillows thrown in gratis, for a wonder), a tiny table which disagreeably recalled American ideas as to that article, an apology for a bureau, two armchairs, and no washstand. The chairs were in their primitive stuffing-and-burlap state, loose gray linen covers being added when the rooms were prepared for us.

Any one who has ever struggled with his temper and the slack-fitting shift of a tufted armchair will require no explanation as to what took place between me and my share of those untufted receptacles before I deposited its garment under my bed, and announced that burlap and tacks were luxurious enough for me. That one item contained enough irritation and excitement to ruin any "cure."

The washstand problem was even more complicated. A small, tapering bra.s.s tank, holding about two quarts of water, with a faucet which dripped into a diminutive cup with an unstoppered waste-pipe, was screwed to the wall in our little corridor. We asked for a washstand, and this arrangement was introduced to our notice, the chambermaid being evidently surprised at the ignorance of barbarians who had never seen a washstand before. We objected that a mixed party of men and women could not use that decently, even if two quarts of water were sufficient for three women and a man. After much argument and insistence, we obtained, piecemeal: item, one low stool; item, one basin; item, one pitcher.

There were no fastenings on the doors, except a hasp and staple to the door of the corridor, to which, after due entreaty, we secured an oblong padlock.

The next morning, the chambermaid came to the door of our room opening on the private corridor while we were dressing, and demanded the basin and pitcher. "Some one else wants them!" she shouted through the door.

We had discovered her to be a person of so much decision of character, in the course of our dealings with her on the preceding day, that we were too wary to admit her, lest she should simply capture the utensils and march off with them. As I was the heaviest of the party, it fell to my lot to brace myself against the unfastened door and parley with her.

Three times that woman returned to the attack; thrice we refused to surrender our hard-won trophies, and asked her pointedly, "What do you do for materials when the house is full, pray?" Afterwards, while we were drinking our coffee on the delightful half-covered veranda below, which had stuffed seats running round the walls, and a flower-crowned circular divan in the centre, a lively testimony to the dryness of the atmosphere, we learned that the person who had wanted the basin and pitcher was the man of our party. He begged us not to inquire into the mysteries of his toilet, and refused to help us solve the riddle of the guests' cleanliness when the hotel was full. I a.s.sume, on reflection, however, that they were expected to take Russian or plain baths every two or three days, to rid themselves of the odor of the k.u.mys, which exudes copiously through the pores of the skin and scents the garments.

On other days a "lick and a promise" were supposed to suffice, so that their journals must have resembled that of the man who wrote: "Monday, washed myself. Tuesday, washed hands and face. Wednesday, washed hands only." That explanation is not wholly satisfactory, either, because the Russians are clean people.

As coffee is one of the articles of food which are forbidden to k.u.mys patients, though they may drink tea without lemon or milk, we had difficulty in getting it at all. It was long in coming; bad and high-priced when it did make its appearance. As we were waiting, an invalid lady and the novice nun who was in attendance upon her began to sing in a room near by. They had no instrument. What it was that they sang, I do not know. It was gentle as a breath, melting as a sigh, soft and slow like a conventional chant, and sweet as the songs of the Russian Church or of the angels. There are not many strains in this world upon which one hangs entranced, in breathless eagerness, and the memory of which haunts one ever after. But this song was one of that sort, and it lingers in my memory as a pure delight; in company with certain other fragments of church music heard in that land, as among the most beautiful upon earth.

I may as well tell at once the whole story of the food, so far as we explored its intricate mysteries. We were asked if we wished to take the _table d'hote_ breakfast in the establishment. We said "yes," and presented ourselves promptly. We were served with beefsteak, in small, round, thick pieces.

"What queer beefsteak!" said one of our Russian friends. "Is there no other meat?"

"No, madam."

We all looked at it for several minutes. We said it was natural, when invalids drank from three to five bottles of the nourishing k.u.mys a day, that they should not require much extra food, and that the management provided what variety was healthy and advisable, no doubt; only we would have liked a choice; and--what queer steak!

The first sniff, the first glance at that steak, of peculiar grain and dark red hue, had revealed the truth to _us_. But we saw that our Russian friends were not initiated, and we knew that their stomachs were delicate. We exchanged signals, took a mouthful, declared it excellent, and ate bravely through our portions. The Russians followed our example.

Well--it was much tenderer and better than the last horseflesh to which we had been treated surrept.i.tiously; but I do not crave horseflesh as a regular diet. It really was not surprising at a k.u.mys establishment, where the horse is worshiped, alive or dead, apparently, in Tatar fashion.

That afternoon we made it convenient to take our dinner in town, on the veranda of a restaurant which overlooked the busy Volga, with its mobile moods of sunset and thunderstorm, where we compensated ourselves for our unsatisfactory breakfast by a characteristically Russian dinner, of which I will omit details, except as regards the soup. This soup was _botvinya_. A Russian once obligingly furnished me with a description of a foreigner's probable views on this national delicacy: "a slimy pool with a rock in the middle, and creatures floating round about." The rock is a lump of ice (_botvinya_ being a cold soup) in the tureen of strained _kvas_ or sour cabbage. _Kvas_ is the sour, fermented liquor made from black bread. In this liquid portion of the soup, which is colored with strained spinach, floated small cubes of fresh cuc.u.mber and bits of the green tops from young onions. The solid part of the soup, served on a platter, so that each person might mix the ingredients according to his taste, consisted of cold boiled sterlet, raw ham, more cubes of cuc.u.mber, more bits of green onion tops, lettuce, crayfish, grated horseradish, and granulated sugar. The first time I encountered this really delectable dish, it was served with salmon, the pale, insipid northern salmon. I supposed that the lazy waiter had brought the soup and fish courses together, to save himself trouble, and I ate them separately, while I meditated a rebuke to the waiter and a strong description of the weak soup. The tables were turned on me, however, when Mikhei appeared and grinned, as broadly as his not overstrict sense of propriety permitted, at my unparalleled ignorance, while he gave me a lesson in the composition of _botvinya_. That _botvinya_ was not good, but this edition of it on the banks of the Volga, with sterlet, was delicious.

We shirked our meals at the establishment with great regularity, with the exception of morning coffee, which was unavoidable, but we did justice to its k.u.mys, which was superb. Theoretically, the mares should have had the advantage of better pasturage, at a greater distance from town; but, as they cannot be driven far to milk without detriment, that plan involves making the k.u.mys at a distance, and transporting it to the "cure." There is another famous establishment, situated a mile beyond ours, where this plan is pursued. Ten miles away the mares pasture, and the k.u.mys is made at a subsidiary cure, where cheap quarters are provided for poorer patients. But, either on account of the transportation under the hot sun, or because the professional "taster"

is lacking in delicacy of perception, we found the k.u.mys at this rival establishment coa.r.s.e in both flavor and smell, in comparison with that at our hostelry.

Our mares, on the contrary, were kept close by, and the k.u.mys was prepared on the spot. It is the first article of faith in the creed of the k.u.mys expert that no one can prepare this milk wine properly except Tatars. Hence, when any one wishes to drink it at home, a Tatar is sent for, the necessary mares are set aside for him, and he makes what is required. But the second article of faith is that k.u.mys is much better when made in large quant.i.ties. The third is that a k.u.mys specialist, or doctor, is as indispensable for the regulation of the cure as he is at mineral springs. The fourth article in the creed is that mares grazing on the rich plume-gra.s.s of the steppe produce milk which is particularly rich in sugar, very poor in fat, and similar to woman's milk in its proportion of alb.u.men, though better furnished: all which facts combine to give k.u.mys whose chemical proportions differ greatly from those of k.u.mys prepared elsewhere. Moreover, on private estates it is not always possible to observe all the conditions regarding the choice and care of the mares.

At our establishment there were several Tatars to milk the mares and make the k.u.mys. The wife of one of them, a Tatar beauty, was the professional taster, who issued her orders like an autocrat on that delicate point. She never condescended to work, and it was our opinion that she ought to devote herself to dress, in her many leisure hours, instead of lounging about in ugly calico sacks and petticoats, as hideous as though they had originated in a backwoods farm in New England. She explained, however, that she was in a sort of mourning. Her husband was absent, and she could not make herself beautiful for any one until his return, which she was expecting every moment. She spent most of her time in gazing, from a balcony on the cliff, up the river, toward the bend backed by beautiful hills, to espy her husband on the steamer.

As he did not come, we persuaded her, by arguments couched in silver speech, to adorn herself on the sly for us. Then she was afraid that the missing treasure might make his appearance too soon, and she made such undue haste that she faithlessly omitted the finishing touch,-- blacking her pretty teeth. I gathered from her remarks that something particularly awful would result should she be caught with those pearls obscured in the presence of any other man when her husband was not present; but she may have been using a little diplomacy to soothe us.

Though she was not a beauty in the ordinary sense of the Occident, she certainly was when dressed in her national garb, as I had found to be the case with the Russian peasant girls. Her loose sack, of a medium but brilliant blue woolen material, fell low over a petticoat of the same terminating in a single flounce. Her long black hair was carefully braided, and fell from beneath an embroidered cap of crimson velvet with a rounded end which hung on one side in a coquettish way. Her neck was completely covered with a necklace which descended to her waist like a breast-plate, and consisted of gold coins, some of them very ancient and valuable, medals, red beads, and a variety of brilliant objects harmoniously combined. Her heavy gold bracelets had been made to order in Kazan after a pure Tatar model, and her soft-soled boots of rose-pink leather, with conventional designs in many-colored moroccos, sewed together with rainbow-hued silks, reached nearly to her knees. Her complexion was fresh and not very sallow, her nose rather less like a b.u.t.ton than is usual; her high cheek-bones were well covered, and her small dark eyes made up by their brilliancy for the slight upward slant of their outer corners.

Tatar girls, who made no pretensions to beauty in dress or features, did the milking, and were aided in that and the other real work connected with k.u.mys-making by Tatar men. According to the official programme, the mares might be milked six or eight times a day, and the yield was from a half to a whole bottle apiece each time. Milk is always reckoned by the bottle in Russia. I presume the custom arose from the habit of sending the _muzhik_ ("Boots") to the dairy-shop with an empty wine-bottle to fetch the milk and cream for "tea," which sometimes means coffee in the morning. The mare's milk has a sweetish, almond-like flavor, and is very thin and bluish in hue.

At three o'clock in the morning, the mares are taken from the colts and shut up in a long shed which is not especially weather-proof. In fact, there is not much "weather" except wind to be guarded against on the steppe. In about two hours, when the milk has collected, the colts follow them voluntarily, and are admitted and allowed to suck for a few seconds. Halters are then thrown about their necks, and they are led forward where the mothers can nose them over and lick them. The milkmaid's second a.s.sistant then puts a halter on the neck of a mare and holds her, or ties up one leg if she be restive. In the mean time the foolish creature continues to let down milk for her foal. The milkmaid kneels on one knee and holds her pail on the other, after having washed her hands carefully and wiped off the teats with a clean, damp cloth. If the mare resists at first, the milk obtained must not be used for k.u.mys, as her agitation affects the milk unfavorably. Roan, gray, and chestnut mares are preferred, and in order to obtain the best milk great care must be exercised in the choice of pasture and the management of the horses, as well as in all the minor details of preparation.