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

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 assembled in a little chapel, around which were arranged the bodies of men who had died in peculiar sanctity. 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 associated 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.

In the morning the proprietor of the diligence, learning that we had sold our vehicle, raised the price of places fifty rubles apiece; the major heard of it, and insisted upon our taking back the carriage, when the proprietor took another tone, talked of the expense of sending his huge vehicle with only two passengers, and we listened and assented. We started to accompany him, and just at the door of the hotel saw two runaway horses coming furiously down the street with a drosky, and an officer entangled and dragging on the ground. We picked him up and carried him into the hotel. He was a noble-looking man, who but a few minutes before had attracted my attention by his proud and manly bearing, now a miserable mangled object, his clothes torn, his plume soiled with mud, and his face covered with dust and blood, and, when we left, it was uncertain whether he would live or die.

The major accompanied us to the office of the diligence, and our parting was rather tender; he rubbed his mustache on both my cheeks, wrote his name in my memorandum-book, and I gave him my address; he said that our visit had been an interlude relieving the dull monotony of his life; that we were going to new scenes, and would soon forget him, but he would not forget us. Nor shall I forget him, although it is not probable that he and I will ever meet again.

We took our seats in the diligence for Moscow, and set off with an uncommon degree of satisfaction at having got rid of posting and of Henri, and, with them, of all our troubles. We had nothing to do, no wrangling with postmasters, no cheating to undergo from Jews, and were in that happy state which made the honest Hibernian indifferent to an upset or a breakdown; that is to say, we were merely passengers. With great pomp and circumstance we drove through the principal streets, to advise the Knickerbockers of Chioff of the actual departure of the long-talked-of diligence, the conducteur sounding his trumpet, and the people stopping in the streets and running to the doors to see the extraordinary spectacle.

We descended the long wooden road to the river, and crossed the Dnieper on a bridge about half a mile long. On the opposite bank I turned for the last time to the sacred city, and I never saw anything more unique and strikingly beautiful than the high, commanding position of "this city on a hill," crowned with its golden cupolas and domes, that reflected the sun with dazzling brightness.

For a short distance the country was rather undulating, but soon settled into the regular steppe. We rolled on all day without anything to annoy us or even to interest us, except processions of pilgrims on their way to Chioff. They travelled on foot in bands of one or two hundred, men, women, and children, headed by a white-bearded monk, barefooted, and leaning on a staff. During the night I was roused by a loud chant, and, looking out, saw a group of more than a hundred pilgrims gathered round a fire, with an old monk in the midst of them, breaking the stillness of night with songs of devotion; and all the night long, as we rode swiftly by, I saw by the bright moonlight groups of forty, fifty, or a hundred lying by the roadside asleep under the trees. More than fifty thousand pilgrims that year visited the catacombs of Kiev, coming from every part of the immense empire of Russia, and many from Kamschatka and the most distant region of Siberia, performing the whole journey on foot, seldom sleeping under a roof, and living upon the precarious charity of the miserable peasants on the road. I have since seen the gathering of pilgrims at Jerusalem, and the whole body moving together from the gates of the city to bathe in the Jordan, and I have seen the great caravan of forty thousand true believers tracking their desolate way through the deserts of Arabia to the tomb of the Prophet at Mecca; but I remember, as if they were before me now, the groups of Russian pilgrims strewed along the road and sleeping under the pale moonlight, the bare earth their bed, the heavens their only covering.