primarily, from the example of the Bashkirs and the Kirghiz, who are
gaunt and worn by the hunger and cold of winter, but who blossom into
rounded outlines and freshness of complexion three or four days after
the spring pasturage for their mares begins. Some persons argue that
life with these Bashkirs and an exclusive diet of kumys will effect a
speedy cure of their ailments. Hence they join one of the nomad hordes.
This course, however, not only deprives them of medical advice and the
comforts to which they have been accustomed, but often gives them kumys
which is difficult to take because of its rank taste and smell, due to
the lack of that scrupulous cleanliness which its proper preparation
demands.
There are establishments near St. Petersburg and Moscow where kumys may
be obtained by those who do not care to make the long journey to the
steppe; but the quality and chemical constituents are very different
from those of the steppe kumys, especially at the best period, May and
June, when the plumegrass and wild strawberry are at their finest
development for food, and before the excessive heats of midsummer have
begun.
As I have said, when people wish to make the cure on their own estates,
the indispensable Tatar is sent for, and the requisite number of
middle-aged mares, of which no work is required, are set aside for the
purpose. But from all I have heard, I am inclined to think that benefit
is rarely derived from these private cures, and this for several
reasons. Not only is the kumys said to be inferior when prepared in such
small quantities, but no specialist or any other doctor can be
constantly on hand to regulate the functional disorders which this diet
frequently occasions. Moreover, the air of the steppe plays an important
part in the cure. When a person drinks from five to fifteen or more
bottles a day, and sometimes adds the proper amount of fatty, starchy,
and saccharine elements, some other means than the stomach are
indispensable for disposing of the refuse. As a matter of fact, in the
hot, dry, even temperature of the steppe, where patients are encouraged
to remain out-of-doors all day and drink slowly, they perspire kumys.
When the system becomes thoroughly saturated with this food-drink,
catarrh often makes its appearance, but disappears at the close of the
cure. Colic, constipation, diarrhoea, nose-bleed, and bleeding from the
lungs are also present at times, as well as sleeplessness, toothache,
and other disorders. The effects of kumys are considered of especial
value in cases of weak lungs, anaemia, general debility caused by any
wasting illness, ailments of the digestive organs, and scurvy, for which
it is taken by many naval officers.
In short, although it is not a cure for all earthly ills, it is of value
in many which proceed from imperfect nutrition producing exhaustion of
the patient. There are some conditions of the lungs in which it cannot
be used, as well as in organic diseases of the brain and heart,
epilepsy, certain disorders of the liver, and when gallstones are
present. It is drunk at the temperature of the air which surrounds the
patient, but must be warmed with hot water, not in the sun, and sipped
slowly, with pauses, not drunk down in haste; and generally exercise
must be taken. Turn where we would in those kumys establishments, we
encountered a patient engaged in assiduous promenading, with a bottle of
kumys suspended from his arm and a glassful in his hand.
Coffee, chocolate, and wine are some of the luxuries which must be
renounced during a kumys cure, and though black tea (occasionally with
lemon) is allowed, no milk or cream can be permitted to contend with the
action of the mare's milk unless by express permission of the physician.
"Cream kumys," which is advertised as a delicacy in America, is a
contradiction in terms, it will be seen, as it is made of cow's milk,
and cream would be contrary to the nature of kumys, even if the mare's
milk produced anything which could rightly pass as such. Fish and fruits
are also forbidden, with the exception of _klubniki_, which accord well
with kumys. _Klubnika_ is a berry similar to the strawberry in
appearance, but with an entirely different taste. Patients who violate
these dietary rules are said to suffer for it,--in which case there
must have been a good deal of agony inside the tall fence of our
establishment, judging by the thriving trade in fruits driven by the old
women, who did not confine themselves to the outside of the gate, as the
rules required, but slipped past the porter and guardians to the house
itself.
We found the kumys a very agreeable beverage, and could readily perceive
that the patients might come to have a very strong taste for it. We even
sympathized with the thorough-going patient of whom we were told that he
set oft regularly every morning to lose himself for the day on the
steppe, armed with an umbrella against possible cooling breezes, and
with a basket containing sixteen bottles of kumys, his allowance of food
and medicine until sundown. The programme consisted of a walk in the
sun, a drink, a walk, a drink, with umbrella interludes, until darkness
drove him home to bed and to his base of supplies.
We did not remain long enough, or drink enough kumys, to observe any
particular effects on our own persons. As I have said, we ate in town,
chiefly, after that breakfast of kumys-mare beefsteak and potatoes of
the size and consistency of bullets. During our food and shopping
excursions we found that Samara was a decidedly wide-awake and driving
town, though it seemed to possess no specialties in buildings,
curiosities, or manufactures, and the statue to Alexander II., which now
adorns one of its squares, was then swathed in canvas awaiting its
unveiling. It is merely a sort of grand junction, through which other
cities and provinces sift their products. In kumys alone does Samara
possess a characteristic unique throughout Russia. Consequently, it is
for kumys that multitudes of Russians flock thither every spring.
The soil of the steppe, on which grows the nutritious plume-grass
requisite for the food of the kumys mares, is very fertile, and immense
crops of rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and so forth are raised whenever
the rainfall is not too meagre. Unfortunately, the rainfall is
frequently insufficient, and the province of Samara often comes to the
attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891,
because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the
government. In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches,
there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without
peril. Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it,
and many peasants are attracted from the "black-bread governments" to
Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they
hire out for the harvest.
But such a singular combination of conditions prevails there, as
elsewhere in Russia, that an abundant harvest is often more disastrous
than a scanty harvest. The price of grain falls so low that the cost of
gathering it is greater than the market value, and it is often left to
fall unreaped in the fields. When the price falls very low, complaints
arise that there is no place to send it, since, when the ruble stands
high, as it invariably does at the prospect of large crops, the demand
from abroad is stopped. The result is that those people who are situated
near a market sell as much grain and leave as little at home as possible
in order to meet their bills. The price rises; the unreaped surplus of
the districts lying far from markets cannot fill the ensuing demand. The
income from estates falls, and the discouraged owners who have nothing
to live on resolve to plant a smaller area thereafter. Estates are
mortgaged and sold by auction; prices are very low, and often there are
no buyers.
The immediate result of an over-abundant harvest in far-off Samara is
that the peasants who have come hither to earn a little money at reaping
return home penniless, or worse, to their suffering families. Some of
them are legitimate seekers after work; that is to say, they have no
grain of their own to attend to, or they reap their own a little earlier
or a little later, and go away to earn the ready money to meet taxes and
indispensable expenditures of the household, such as oil, and so on.
"_Pri khlyeby bez khlyeby_" is their own way of expressing the
situation, which we may translate freely as "starvation in the midst of
plenty." Thus the extremes of famine-harvest and the harvest which is an
embarrassment of riches are equally disastrous to the poor peasant.
Samara offers a curious illustration of several agricultural problems,
and a proof of some peculiar paradoxes. The peasants of the neighboring
governments, which are not populated to a particularly dense degree,--
twenty male inhabitants to a square verst (two thirds of a mile), and
not all engaged in agriculture,--have long been accustomed to look
upon Samara as a sort of promised land. They still regard it in that
light, and endeavor to emigrate thither, for the sake of obtaining
grants of state land, and certain immunities and privileges which are
accorded to colonists. This action is the result of the paradox that
overproduction exists hand in hand with too small a parcel of land for
each peasant!
Volumes have been written, and more volumes might still be written, on
this subject. But I must content myself here with saying that I believe
there is no province which illustrates so thoroughly all the distressing
features of these manifold and complicated problems of colonization, of
permanent settlements, with the old evils of both landlords and peasants
cropping up afresh, abundant and scanty harvests equally associated with
famine, and all the troubles which follow in their train, as Samara.
Hence it is that I can never recall the kumys, which is so intimately
connected with the name of Samara, without also recalling the famine,
which is, alas, almost as intimately bound up with it.
XII.
MOSCOW MEMORIES.
St. Petersburg is handsome, grand, impressive. Moscow is beautiful,
poetic, sympathetic, and pervaded by an atmosphere of ancient Russia,
which is indescribable, though it penetrates to the marrow of one's
bones if he tarry long within her walls. Emperor Peter's new capital
will not bear comparison, for originality, individuality, and
picturesqueness with Tzar Peter's Heart of Holy Russia, to which the
heart of one who loves her must, perforce, often return with longing in
after days,--"white-stoned golden-domed, Holy Mother Moscow."
But a volume of guide-book details, highly colored impressionist
sketches, and dainty miniature painting combined would not do justice to
Moscow. Therefore, I shall confine myself to a few random reminiscences
which may serve to illustrate habits or traits in the character of the
city or the people.
"'Eography," says Mrs. Booby, in one of the famous old Russian comedies
which we were so fortunate as to witness on the Moscow stage: "Ah! good
heavens! And what are cabmen for, then? That's their business. It's not
a genteel branch of learning. A gentleman merely says: 'Take me to such
or such a place,' and the cabman drives him wherever he pleases."
Nowadays, it is advisable to be vulgar and know the geography of Moscow,
if one is really enjoying it independently. It is a trifle less
complicated than the geography of the Balkan Principalities, and, unlike
that of the Balkan Principalities, it has its humorous side, which
affords alleviation. The Moscow cabby has now, as in the time of Mrs.
Booby, the reputation of being a very hard customer to deal with. He is
not often so ingenuous, even in appearance, as the man who drove close
to the sidewalk and entreated our custom by warbling, sweetly: "We must
have work or we can't have bread." He is only to be dreaded, however, if
one be genteelly ignorant, after Mrs. Booby's plan. I cannot say that I
ever had any difficulty in finding any place I wanted, either with the
aid (or hindrance) of an _izvostchik_, or on foot, in Moscow or other
Russian towns. But for this and other similar reasons I acquired a
nickname among the natives,--_molodyetz_, that is to say, a dashing,
enterprising young fellow, the feminine form of the word being
nonexistent. A Russian view of the matter is amusing, however.
"I never saw such a town in which to hunt up any one," said a St.
Petersburg man in Moscow to me. "They give you an address: 'Such and
such a street, such a house.' For instance, 'Green Street, house of Mr.
Black.' You go. First you get hold of the street in general, and
discover that the special name applies only to one block or so, two or
three versts away from the part where you chance to have landed. Moscow
is even more a city of magnificent distances, you know, than St.
Petersburg. Next you discover that there is no 'house of Mr. Black.' Mr.
Black died, respected and beloved, God be with him! a hundred years ago
or less, and the house has changed owners three times since. So far, it
is tolerably plain sailing. Then it appears that the house you are in
search of is not in the street at all, but tucked in behind it, on a
parallel lane, round several corners and elbows." (I will explain, in
parenthesis, that the old system of designating a house by the name of
the owner, which prevailed before the introduction of numbers, still
survives extensively, even in Petersburg.)
"The next time you set out on a search expedition," continued my
informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions,
"you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes!
and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a
parody on, "Inquire of the Swiss," or "of the yard-porter."] You start
off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could
fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is considered
rather above the average in cleverness. But that is in Petersburg, and I
may as well tell you at once that clever Petersburgers are fools
compared to the Moscow men, in a good many points, such as driving a
hard bargain. Well, suppose that the house you want is No. 29. You find
No. 27 or No. 28, and begin to crow over your cleverness. But the next
house on one side is No. 319, and the house on the other side is No. 15;
the one opposite is No. 211, or No. 7, or something idiotic like that,
and all because the city authorities permit people to retain the old
district number of the house, to affix the new street number, or to post
up both at their own sweet will! As you cannot find the laundress to
question, under the circumstances, you interview every Swiss
[hall-porter], yard-porter, policeman, and peasant for a verst round
about; and all the satisfaction you get is, 'In whose house? That is Mr.
Green's and this is Mr. Bareboaster's, and yonder are Count Thingumbob's
and Prince Whatyoumaycall's.' So you retreat once more, baffled."
Fortifying himself with more tea and cigarettes, the victim of Moscow
went on:--
"But there is still another plan. [A groan.] The favorite way to give an
address is, 'In the parish of Saint So-and-So.' It does n't pin you down
to any special house, street, or number, which is, of course, a decided
advantage when you are hunting for a needle in a haystack. And the
Moscow saints and parishes have such names!" Here the narrator's
feelings overcame him, and when I asked for some of the parochial titles
he was too limp to reply. I had already noticed the peculiar
designations of many churches, and had begun to suspect myself of
stupidity or my cabman and other informants of malicious jesting. Now,
however, I investigated the subject, and made a collection of specimens.
These extraordinary names are all derived--with one or two exceptions
for which I can find no explanation--from the peculiarities of the
soil in the parish, the former use to which the site of the church was
put, or the avocations of the inhabitants of its neighborhood in the
olden times, when most of the space outside of the Kremlin and China
Town was devoted to the purveyors and servants of the Tzars of Muscovy.
St. Nicholas, a very popular saint, heads the list, as usual. "St.
Nicholas on Chips" occupies the spot where a woodyard stood. "St.
Nicholas on the Well," "St. Nicholas Fine Chime," are easily understood.
"St. Nicholas White-Collar" is in the ancient district of the court
laundresses. "St. Nicholas in the Bell-Ringers" is comprehensible; but
"St. Nicholas the Blockhead" is so called because in this quarter dwelt
the imperial hatmakers, who prepared "blockheads" for shaping their
wares. "St. Nicholas Louse's Misery" is, probably, a corruption of two
somewhat similar words meaning Muddy Hill. "St. Nicholas on Chickens'
Legs" belonged to the poulterers, and was so named because it was raised
from the ground on supports resembling stilts. "St. Nicholas of the
Interpreters" is in the quarter where the Court interpreters lived, and
where the Tatar mosque now stands. Then we have: "The Life-Giving
Trinity in the Mud," "St. John the Warrior" and "St. John the Theologian
in the Armory," "The Birth of Christ on Broadswords," "St. George the
Martyr in the Old Jails," "The Nine Holy Martyrs on Cabbage-Stalks," on
the site of a former market garden, and the inexplicable "Church of the
Resurrection on the Marmot," besides many others, some of which, I was
told, bear quite unrepeatable names, probably perverted, like the last
and like "St. Nicholas Louse's Misery," from words having originally
some slight resemblance in sound, but which are now unrecognizable.
Great stress is laid, in hasty books of travel, on the contrasts
presented by the Moscow streets, the "palace of a prince standing by the
side of the squalid log hut of a peasant," and so forth. That may,
perhaps, have been true of the Moscow of twenty or thirty years ago. In
very few quarters is there even a semblance of truth in that description
at the present day. The clusters of Irish hovels in upper New York among
the towering new buildings are much more picturesque and noticeable. The
most characteristic part of the town, as to domestic architecture, the
part to which the old statements are most applicable, lies between the
two lines of boulevards, which are, in themselves, good places to study
some Russian tastes. For example, a line of open horse-cars is run all
winter on the outer boulevard, and appreciated. Another line has the
centre of its cars inclosed, and uninclosed seats at the ends. The
latter are the most popular, at the same price, and as for heating a
street-car, the idea could never be got into a Russian brain. A certain
section of the inner boulevard, which forms a sort of slightly elevated
garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every
winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the
snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the
thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to
grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into
action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a
stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the
fascinating horse races on the ice.
In the districts between the boulevards, one can get an idea of the town
as it used to be. In this "Earth Town" typical streets are still to be
found, but the chances are greatly against a traveler finding them. They
are alleys in width and irregularity, paved with cobblestones which seem
to have been selected for their angles, and with intermittent sidewalks
consisting of narrow, carelessly joined flagstones. The front steps of
the more pretentious houses must be skirted or mounted, the street must
be crossed when the family carriage stands at the door, like the most
characteristic streets in Nantucket. Some of the doorplates--which are
large squares of tin fastened over the _porte cochere_, or on the gate
of the courtyard--bear titles. Next door, perhaps, stands a log house,
flush with the sidewalk, its moss calking plainly visible between the
huge ribs, its steeply sloping roof rising, almost within reach, above a
single story; and its serpent-mouthed eave-spouts ingeniously arranged
to pour a stream of water over the vulgar pedestrian. The windows, on a
level with the eyes of the passer-by, are draped with cheap lace
curtains. The broad expanse of cotton wadding between the double windows
is decorated, in middle-class taste, with tufts of dyed grasses, colored
paper, and other execrable ornaments. Here, as everywhere else in
Moscow, one can never get out of eye-shot of several churches; white
with brilliant external frescoes, or the favorite mixture of crushed
strawberry and white, all with green roofs and surmounted with domes of
ever-varying and original forms and colors, crowned with golden crosses
of elaborate and beautiful designs. Ask a resident, whether prince or
peasant, "How many churches are there in 'Holy Moscow town'?" The answer
invariably is, "Who knows? A forty of forties," which is the old
equivalent, in the Epic Songs, of incalculable numbers. After a while
one really begins to feel that sixteen hundred is not an exaggerated
estimate.
Very few of the streets in any part of the town are broad; all of them
seem like lanes to a Petersburger, and "they are forever going up and
down," as a Petersburg cabman described the Moscow hills to me, in
serious disapproval. He had found the ground too excitingly uneven and
the inhabitants too evenly dull to live with for more than a fortnight,
he confessed to me. Many of the old mansions in the centre of the town
have been converted into shops, offices, and lodgings; and huge, modern
business buildings have taken the places formerly occupied, I presume,
by the picturesque "hovels" of the travelers' tales.
One of the most interesting places in the White Town to me was the huge
foundling asylum, established by Katherine II., immediately after her
accession to the throne. There are other institutions connected with it,
such as a school for orphan girls. But the hospital for the babies is
the centre of interest. There are about six hundred nurses always on
hand. Very few of them have more than one nursling to care for, and a
number of babies who enter life below par, so to speak, are accommodated
with incubators. The nurses stand in battalions in the various large
halls, all clad alike, with the exception of the woolen _kokoshnik_,--
the coronet-shaped headdress with its cap for the hair,--which is of a
different color in each room. It requires cords of "cartwheels"--the
big round loaves of black bread--to feed this army of nurses. If they
are not fed on their ordinary peasant food, cabbage soup and sour black
bread, they fall ill and the babies suffer, as no bottles are used.
The fact that the babies are washed every day was impressed on my mind
by the behavior of the little creatures while undergoing the operation.
They protested a little in gentle squeaks when the water touched them,
but quieted down instantly when they were wiped. It is my belief that
Russian children never cry except during their bath. I heard no
infantile wailing except in this asylum, and very little there. Many
Russian mothers of all ranks still tie up their babies tightly in
swaddling clothes, on the old-fashioned theory that it makes their limbs
straight. But these foundlings are not swaddled. After its bath, the
baby is laid on a fresh, warm, linen cloth, which is then wrapped around
it in a particular manner, so that it is securely fastened without the
use of a single pin. Two other cloths, similarly wrapped, complete the
simple, comfortable toilet. This and another Russian habit, that of
allowing a baby to kick about in its crib clad only in its birthday
suit, I commend to the consideration of American mothers.