Isabel Hapgood - Russian Rambles

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 superstitions, 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 nobles, 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 superstitions 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 kumys 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.

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 shores 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 competition ensued. But the competition 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 illustrations 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 latitude 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 latitude 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-class 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-class cabin was on the forward deck. The second-class 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.