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[Illustration: GREECE, TURKEY, _PART OF_ RUSSIA & POLAND.]
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA AND POLAND.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRAEA, AND THE HOLY LAND."
WITH A MAP AND ENGRAVINGS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
SEVENTH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1853.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by HARPER &
BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I. Page
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. 7
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. 28
CHAPTER III.
Moscow.--A severe Operation.--An Exile by Accident.--Meeting with an
Emigre.--A civil Stranger.--A Spy.--The Kremlin.--Sepulchres of
the Czars.--The great Bell.--The great Gun.--Precious Relics. 45
CHAPTER IV.
The Drosky.--Salle des Nobles.--Russian
Gaming.--Gastronomy.--Pedroski.--A Sunday in Moscow.--A Gipsy
Belle.--Tea drinking.--The Emperor's Garden.--Retrospective. 67
CHAPTER V.
Getting a Passport.--Parting with the Marquis.--The Language of
Signs.--A loquacious Traveller.--From Moscow to St.
Petersburgh.--The Wolga.--Novogorod.--Newski Perspective.--An
unfortunate Mistake.--Northern Twilight. 85
CHAPTER VI.
Police Requisites.--The Russian Capital.--Equestrian Statue of Peter
the Great.--The Alexandrian Column.--Architectural Wonders.--The
Summer Islands.--A perilous Achievement.--Origin of St.
Petersburgh.--Tombs of dead Monarchs.--Origin of the Russian Navy.
97
CHAPTER VII.
A Carroty Pole.--The Winter Palace.--Importance of a Hat.--An
artificial Mine.--Remains of a huge Monster.--Peter the Great's
Workshop.--The Greek Religion.--Tomb of a Hero.--A Saint
Militant.--Another Love Affair.--The Hermitage.--The Winter and
Summer Gardens. 118
CHAPTER VIII.
An Imperial Fete.--Nicolas of Russia.--Varied Splendours.--A
Soliloquy.--House of Peter the Great.--A
Boatrace.--Czarskoselo.--The Amber Chamber.--Catharine II.--The
Emperor Alexander. 140
CHAPTER IX.
The Soldier's Reward.--Review of the Russian Army.--American
Cannibals.--Palace of Potemkin.--Palace of the Grand-duke
Michael.--Equipments for Travelling.--Rough
Riding.--Poland.--Vitepsk.--Napoleon in Poland.--The Disastrous
Retreat.--Passage of the Berezina. 154
CHAPTER X.
Travel by Night.--A Rencounter.--A Traveller's
Message.--Lithuania.--Poverty of the Country.--Agricultural
Implements.--Minsk.--Polish Jews.--A Coin of Freedom.--Riding in a
Basket.--Brezc.--The Bug.--A searching Operation.--Women
Labourers.--Warsaw. 181
CHAPTER XI.
Warsaw.--A Polish Doctor.--Battle of Grokow.--The Outbreak.--The
fatal Issue.--Present Condition of Poland.--Polish Exiles.--Aspect
of Warsaw.--Traits of the Poles. 199
CHAPTER XII.
Religion of Poland.--Sunday in Warsaw.--Baptized Jews.--Palaces of
the Polish Kings.--Sobieski.--Field of Vola.--Wreck of a
Warrior.--The Poles in America.--A Polish Lady.--Troubles of a
Passport.--Departure from Warsaw.--An official Rachel.--A
mysterious Visiter. 215
CHAPTER XIII.
Friendly Solicitude.--Raddom.--Symptoms of a Difficulty.--A Court of
Inquisition.--Showing a proper Spirit.--Troubles
thickening.--Approaching the Climax.--Woman's Influence.--The
Finale.--Utility of the Classics.--Another Latinist.--A Lucky
Accident.--Arrival at Cracow. 235
CHAPTER XIV.
Cracow.--Casimir the Great.--Kosciusko.--Tombs of the Polish
Kings.--A Polish Heroine.--Last Words of a King.--A Hero in
Decay.--The Salt-mines of Cracow.--The Descent.--The
Mines.--Underground Meditations.--The Farewell. 254
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN GREECE, TURKEY, RUSSIA, AND POLAND.
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 destitute 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
nobleman 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 passports arranged; the Russian ambassador at
Constantinople, by-the-way, had given me a new passport in Russian, and
my companion, that he might travel with the advantages of rank and
title, got himself made "noble" 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 principal
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 shaggy,
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 passports 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 ambassador 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 passing over it looked
as if they were walking in the water. We rolled on rapidly all day,
passed 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 titles 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 title, 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 "noble," 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 pass 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 circumstances, that, when he was about moving
toward the house to pass 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 glass.
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 chasseur 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 passed 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."
[Illustration: 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 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 circumstances 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 destitute 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 passenger; 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 passed 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 God," 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 noble 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 nobler
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
bloody 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 arsenal 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 passed through it.
We passed 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
classes 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 assemblage was unusually large and brilliant; the
carriages drew up in a line, the ladies let down the glasses, 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 noble 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 mass 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.