smoothness of motion from such an inferior-looking old craft?" "It must
be very swift to have no motion at all perceptible. Whereabouts are we,
and how much have we missed?"
I rose and raised the blind. The low shore opposite and far away, the
sandy islet near at hand, the river,--all looked suspiciously like
what our eyes had rested upon when we went to bed the night before. We
would not believe it at first, but it was true, that we had not moved a
foot, but were still tied up at the Siberian Landing. Thence we returned
to the town wharf, no apologies or explanations being forthcoming or to
be extracted, whence we made a final start at about nine o'clock, only
fifteen hours late! And the company professed to be "American"!
Progress up the river was slow. The cold rain and wind prevented our
availing ourselves of the tiny deck. The little saloon had no outlook,
being placed in the middle of the boat. The shores and villages were not
of striking interest, after our acquaintance with the lower Volga. For
hours all the other passengers (chiefly second-class) were abed,
apparently. I returned to my cabin to kill time with reading, and
presently found the divan and even the floor and partition walls
becoming intolerably hot, and exhaling a disagreeable smell of charred
wood. I set out on a tour of investigation. In the next compartment to
us, which had the outward appearance of a stateroom, but was inclosed on
the outside only by a lattice-work, was the smoke-pipe. The whistle was
just over our heads, and the pipe almost touched the partition wall of
our cabin. That partly explained the deadly chill of the night before,
and the present suffocating heat. I descended to the lower deck. There
stood the engine, almost as rudimentary as a parlor stove, in full sight
and directly under our cabin; also close to the woodwork. It burned
wood, and at every station the men brought a supply on board; the
sticks, laid across two poles in primitive but adequate fashion, being
deposited by the simple process of widening the space between the poles,
and letting the wood fall on the deck with a noise like thunder. The
halts and "wooding up" seemed especially frequent at night, and there
was not much opportunity for sleep between them. Our fear of being
burned alive also deprived us of the desire to sleep. We were nearly
roasted, as it was, and had to go out on the deck in the wind and rain
at short intervals, to cool off.
There was nothing especially worthy of note at any of the landings,
beyond the peculiar windmills, except at Gorodetz, which is renowned for
the manufacture of spice-cakes, so the guide-book said. I watched
anxiously for Gorodetz, went ashore, and bought the biggest "spice-cake"
I could find from an old woman on the wharf. All the other passengers
landed for the same purpose, and the old woman did a rushing business.
After taking a couple of mouthfuls, I decided that I was unable to
appreciate the merits of my cake, as I had been, after repeated efforts,
to appreciate those of a somewhat similar concoction known under the
name of "Vyazemsky." So I gave the cake to the grateful stewardess, and
went out on deck to look at a ray of sunlight.
"Where's your cake?" asked a stern voice at my elbow. The speaker was a
man with long hair and beard, dressed like a peasant, in a conical fur
cap and a sheepskin coat, though his voice, manner, and general
appearance showed that he belonged to the higher classes. Perhaps he was
an "adept" of Count Tolstoy, and was merely masquerading in that
costume, which was very comfortable, though it was only September.
"I gave it to the stewardess," I answered meekly, being taken by
surprise.
"What! Didn't you eat it? Don't you know, madam, that these spice-cakes
are renowned for their qualities all over Russia, and are even carried
to the remotest parts of Siberia and of China, also, I believe, in great
quantities? [He had got ahead of the guide-book in that last
particular!] _Why_ didn't you eat it?"
"It did not taste good; and besides, I was afraid of indigestion. It
seemed never to have been cooked, unless by exposure to the sun, and it
was soggy and heavy as lead. You know there has been a great deal of
rain lately, and what sun we have even now is very pale and weak, hardly
adapted to baking purposes."
This seemed to enrage my hairy mentor, and he poured out a volume of
indignant criticism, reproach, and ejaculations, all tangled up with
fragments of cookery receipts, though evidently not the receipt for the
Gorodetz cakes, which is a secret. The other passengers listened in
amazement and delight. When he paused for breath, I remarked:--
"Well, I don't see any harm in having bestowed such a delicate luxury on
the poor stewardess. Did any of you think to buy a cake for her? And why
not? I denied myself to give her pleasure. Look at it in that light for
a while, sir, if my bad taste offends you. And, in the mean while, tell
me what has inspired you with the taste to dress like a peasant?"
That settled him, and he retreated. That evening he and the friend with
whom he seemed to be traveling talked most entertainingly in the little
saloon, after supper. The friend, a round, rosy, jolly man, dressed in
ordinary European clothes, was evidently proud of his flow of language,
and liked to hear himself talk. Actors, actresses, and theatres in
Russia, from the middle of the last century down to the present day,
were his favorite topic, on which he declaimed with appropriate gestures
and very noticeable management of several dimples in his cheeks. As a
matter of course, he considered the present day degenerate, and lauded
the old times and dead actors and actresses only. It seemed that the
longer they had been dead, the higher were their merits. He talked very
well, also, about books and social conditions.
The progress of the weak-kneed steamer against wind and current was very
slow and uncertain, and we never knew when we should reach any given
point. Even the mouths of the rivers were not so exciting or important
in nature as they used to look to me when I studied geography. I
imparted to the captain my opinion that his engine was no better than a
_samovar_. He tried hard to be angry, but a glance at that ridiculous
machine convinced him of the justice of my comparison, and he broke into
a laugh.
We left the steamer at Yaroslavl (it was bound for Rybinsk), two hundred
and forty-one miles above Nizhni-Novgorod, and got our first view of the
town at daybreak. It stands on the high west bank of the river, but is
not so picturesque as Nizhni. Access to the town is had only through
half a dozen cuts and ravines, as at Nizhni; and what a singular town it
is! With only a little over thirty thousand inhabitants, it has
seventy-seven churches, besides monasteries and other ecclesiastical
buildings. There are streets which seem to be made up chiefly of
churches,--churches of all sizes and colors, crowned with beautiful
and fantastic domes, which, in turn, are surmounted by crosses of the
most charming and original designs.
Yaroslavl, founded in 1030, claims the honor of having had the first
Russian theatre, and to have sheltered Biron, the favorite of the
Empress Anna Ioannovna (a doubtful honor this), with his family, during
nineteen years of exile. But its architectural hints and revelations of
ancient fashions, forms, and customs, are its chief glory, not to be
obscured even by its modern renown for linen woven by hand and by
machinery. For a person who really understands Russian architecture,--
not the architecture of St. Petersburg, which is chiefly the invention
of foreigners,--Yaroslavl and other places on the northern Volga in
this neighborhood, widely construed, are mines of information and
delight. However, as there are no books wherewith a foreigner can inform
himself on this subject, any attempt at details would not only seem
pedantic, but would be incomprehensible without tiresome explanations
and many illustrations, which are not possible here. I may remark,
however, that Viollet-le-Duc and Fergusson do not understand the subject
of Russian architecture, and that their few observations on the matter
are nearly all as erroneous as they well can be. I believe that very few
Russians even know much scientifically about the development of their
national architecture from the Byzantine style. Yaroslavl is a good
place to study it, and has given its name to one epoch of that
development.
With the exception of the churches, Yaroslavl has not much to show to
the visitor; but the bazaar was a delight to us, with its queer pottery,
its baskets for moulding bread, its bread-trays for washtubs, and a
dozen other things in demand by the peasants as to which we had to ask
explanations.
Breezy, picturesque Yaroslavl, with its dainty, independent cabbies, who
object to the mud which must have been their portion all their lives,
and reject rare customers rather than drive through it; with its
churches never to be forgotten; its view of the Volga, and its typical
Russian features! It was a fitting end to our Volga trip, and fully
repaid us for our hot-cold voyage with the _samovar_ steamer against the
stream, though I had not believed, during the voyage, that anything
could make up for the tedium. If I were to visit it again, I would
approach it from the railway side and leave it to descend the river. But
I would not advise any foreigner to tackle it at all, unless he be as
well prepared as we were to appreciate its remarkable merits in certain
directions.
A night's journey landed us in Moscow. But even the glories of Moscow
cannot make us forget the city of Yaroslaff the Great and Nizhni
Novgorod.