John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2)

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 passengers 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 quass, 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 passed large droves of cattle, but all the way from Odessa the principal 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 glasses. 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 passed 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 cumbrous vehicle, padded and cushioned, in which, as we passed 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 shaggy 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 à 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 calêche 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.