FROM NIJNI-NOVGOROD TO KAZAN.
The Volga in winter--Varieties of podarojnaia--What is necessary
for a long sledge journey--Departure from Nijni--Posting relays
--A momentary thaw--The snow--Arrival at Kazan.
Hardly had I arrived at Novgorod, when I wished to begin my journey in
a sledge as soon as possible. Thus man is attracted towards unknown
adventures, even should he feel he is doomed to become, in consequence
of them, a sufferer.
I went at once to the governor of the province, in order that he might
afford me every facility for obtaining horses at the several posting
stages. To obtain relays, there are three kinds of recommendations,
which are called in Russian _podarojnaia_.
The most valuable and important of the three is the _podarojnaia de
courrier_, which can only be obtained for exceptional cases, for an
envoy extraordinary of the Emperor for instance.
When a traveller arrives at a stage provided with this order, the
posting master is obliged to furnish horses immediately, and if they
are not there, to demand them elsewhere by requisition; he also
commands the driver to gallop without intermission.
The Crown podarojnaia, although an order of the second rank, is,
nevertheless, much appreciated. It is generally accorded to the
functionaries who are returning to their posts, or to those who are
travelling in the public service. It was with one of these orders that
the governor of Nijni-Novgorod was pleased to furnish me. The posting
masters should always reserve a _troïka_ or _droïka_ (a vehicle with
three horses) in case a traveller should present himself furnished with
a Crown podarojnaia. It is therefore a rare occurrence to the bearer of
this important order when he presents himself at a posting stage not
to be provided with horses immediately. The drivers, under this order,
have copper badges attached to their caps and arms which warn afar
off other conductors coming in a contrary direction to clear the way
immediately, under a penalty of severe chastisement in case of neglect;
they also drive almost always at a gallop, like the drivers of the
podarojnaia de courrier.
Between the Crown podarojnaia and the simple podarojnaia, there is a
great difference. This is for the mass of ordinary travellers. It is
necessary to pay at once, pretty dearly, to get it at all, and then the
traveller is quite at the mercy of the postmasters, who will not give
him horses unless they are disposed to do so.
The rule is that each relay should have six hours’ rest between each
course. It, therefore, often happens that the traveller finds at the
stages no other relays than those taking their usual rest, excepting
always the reserve for the Crown podarojnaia. I have frequently seen
travellers who had been waiting, two or three days, until the posting
master was disposed to accommodate them or had been tired out with
having his guests on his hands.
Unfortunately, the contractors of relays find every advantage in
prolonging such a delay. The guest does not pay for his lodging,
which is gratuitous, but he always takes there some provisions, and
the postmasters hope to receive in the end, when he is tired out with
waiting, a liberal gratuity in addition, in order to furnish a troïka,
even with horses fatigued from a recent course.
The organization of the posting between Nijni-Novgorod and Tumen does
not at present belong to the Government. It is conceded temporarily to
M. Michaelof, who is making a rapid fortune by letting his horses at a
high rate.
Provided, as I have mentioned, with a recommendation from this
fortunate contractor, and also with a Crown podarojnaia, for which I
was indebted to the governor of Nijni, I thought I should be able to
start the following morning.
But, alas! I had reckoned, this time again, without Siberian frosts.
To complete my preparations for a prolonged journey in a sledge, I was
obliged the whole morning to run about from shop to shop. The number of
objects to be bought was incalculable. Constantine had made out a list
as long as an apothecary’s bill. I did not get back to my hotel till
one in the afternoon, worn out with fatigue, in a very bad humour,
thirsty and dying with hunger, and, moreover, so knocked up, that I
wished for nothing more than to go to bed at once and rest my weary
limbs.
I was in this state, when Constantine said to me with all the coolness
in the world: “Now, monsieur, we are quite ready; do you wish to
start?” I was about to propose not to get into the sledge till the
following day, or to wait at least a few hours, when I happened to cast
my eyes over my acquisitions, standing in a great heap in the middle of
the room.
The heap that had bewildered me, when I paid my visit to M. Pfaffius,
was a mere hillock beside this mountain. There were here heaped up
soft leather trunks filled with clothing, to be put at the bottom of
the sledge to deaden the jerks, round valises, to serve as bolsters
at night, _touloupes_, a _dacha_ in sheepskin, cushions, mattresses,
veal and mutton sausages, felt boots, felt rugs, bottles of brandy,
ropes, a hammer, a liberal supply of tools for iron and wood work,
eight pairs of large worsted stockings, belts, bags, a store of white
bread, pillows, and I don’t know what else. And then, my trunks being
no longer of any use, all the clothing I had brought from France lay
distributed everywhere in this little room, and for the first time
found themselves in such strange company. Neither the most crammed
railway cloak rooms, nor _chinoiserie_ shops, nor back rooms of
pawnshops, nothing, in fact, except perhaps the brain cases of certain
inveterate political reformers or the witches’ caldron in _Macbeth_,
could give any idea of such a perplexing jumble.
This exhilarating spectacle at once restored my courage; I then had but
one object in view--to get out of it as speedily as possible and start.
I ordered horses on the instant.
[Illustration: “THE SLEDGE BEING AN OPEN ONE, WE COULD ENJOY A VIEW OF
THE COUNTRY.”]
While a servant had gone in search of the team, we, Constantine and
myself, set to work to pack all the articles I have just enumerated
into a sledge, which I had ordered from the manufactory of Romanof--the
most celebrated of Russian coachbuilders. This sledge, especially,
was wonderfully built. Lightness and strength, the two most important
qualities of a good vehicle, were united in it to the highest point
of excellence. The sledge being an open one, at least in front, we
could enjoy, during the daytime, a view of the country; whilst a
fixed hood, which we closed in completely at night with tarred canvas,
protected us pretty well against the wind and the snow. Two pieces
of wood, fixed at a little height above the ground and disposed in a
sloping position from the front to the back, prevented the sledge from
overturning, at least in ordinary circumstances, and protected the body
of the vehicle against obstacles and shocks--encounters that were met
with, I believe, verily twenty or thirty times a day.
Just as you make your bed, you lie on it, says the proverb. And in
Russia, just as one arranges his sledge, he bears up in proportion
against the fatigue of the journey. Constantine had, in this art, real
talent. He laid the mattresses in a slanting position, just nicely
calculated; he adroitly smoothed over, in some way, every jutting angle
or boss as often as one or the other arose from the settling of the
contents during a long journey. As soon as a cavity had formed from the
jolting, no matter where, he immediately filled up the vacant space
with hay, and everything kept its place to the advantage of our ease.
He transformed, in short, our sledge into a comfortable soft bed,
which would have enabled us to support, without fatigue, the fifteen
hundred leagues we had to traverse as far as Irkutsk, if circumstances,
which I shall subsequently relate, had not occurred. When all these
preparations had been made and the horses put to, I began to wrap
myself in my travelling costume.
Those who have not visited Siberia have no idea of the excessive
wrapping-up and muffling necessary to a traveller on a long journey in
that climate.
To put on such a great number of garments is no light matter, and
cannot be accomplished, the first time especially, without laughing
outright a great deal and perspiring much more.
We first put on four pairs of worsted stockings and over them, like
jack boots, a pair of felt stockings that covered our legs. We then
wrapped ourselves in three garments of fur, one over the other. Then we
covered our heads with an _astrakan_ and a _bachelique_. When we had
got into the sledge we wrapped our legs in a fur rug and then buried
ourselves side by side in two more fur rugs.
These accoutrements, which would be excessive to protect one’s self
merely for a few hours against the cold, even the most intense, become
light enough and barely sufficient when the traveller remains exposed
to the air a long time, and especially to the fatigue of a sledge
journey prolonged night and day, without stopping to sleep.
The only defect in the construction of Siberian sledges is the want of
a seat for the _yemschik_ or driver: this unhappy individual is obliged
to sit on a wooden platform, that covers the travellers’ legs, with
his legs hanging either on the right or left side, and, consequently,
has to drive from either side. When he has troublesome horses to
manage he gets on his knees, or even stands up on the platform. This
arrangement is all the more inconvenient, inasmuch as it requires
unusual dexterity to drive and hold in the mettlesome little horses
of Northern Asia. The moment they feel the harness on their backs,
whether from natural ardour alone or from a want to get warm, there is
no holding them; their impatience is unparalleled in horseflesh. They
tremble with excitement, they paw and scrape the ground, nibble at the
snow, or make a huge ball with it, and then scatter it in a cloud of
fine particles. The drivers have a very difficult task to calm their
impetuosity; they accomplish this in the most soothing manner, by means
of a steady trill on their lips; they sustain this more intensely the
moment they leap on the platform of the sledge, which is for them a
very delicate gymnastic feat, demanding great agility. At this critical
moment, the horses, feeling no further restraint, uncurbed, rampant,
start off in a mad gallop, _le diable en queue_. If, on the other
hand, the driver should lucklessly make an abortive attempt, he is
hurled over the crosspieces like a tile by the passing gale, and the
travellers go on without a whip, flying on the wings of the wind.
This was just the hairbreadth escape that happened to the first
yemschik chance had thrown in our way. His horses, just as he seized
the platform to leap on to it, started off at a furious pace. Like a
brave fellow, he kept his grip on it like a bulldog, and, luckily, on
the reins too, and was thus hauled over the snow at our side for some
minutes. At the end of this critical interval he found some lucky
projection beside the sledge, where he could support his knee, and at
last, thanks to the herculean strength of his arms and the help we gave
him, he succeeded in gaining his seat and then tenaciously clung to it
to the end of the stage. Thus equipped, we left Nijni-Novgorod on the
17th of December at three o’clock in the afternoon.
This first day’s journey in a sledge was delightful and exhilarating.
We felt all the pleasure of the novelty of the locomotion without yet
beginning to experience the least fatigue, and at every moment we met
other travellers coming, twenty and even thirty leagues, to the city we
had just quitted, on their business or pleasure.
However great the distance may be, it is never an obstacle to the
Russians: they seem to make nothing of it, and never to calculate it. A
lady at St. Petersburg said to me one day: “You should go and see the
cascade of Tchernaiarietchka: I went there the other day, and I was
charmed with it; I never dreamt there was anything so beautiful at our
city gates.” On making inquiries about it a few days later, and as to
how I could get there, I found that it would take forty-eight hours by
rail, and twelve by diligence. I daresay they will think of sending the
poor seamen who are ordered to join their ships at Nicolaefsk to St.
Petersburg gates; it is only three hundred leagues from the Russian
capital. The reader will learn subsequently, if he is interested in
continuing the journey with me, that the Siberians, of the fair sex
even, are not at all dismayed at the prospect of undertaking journeys
of fifteen hundred, nay, two thousand leagues in a sledge, with young
children to boot, and these sometimes at the breast.
On account of the great novelty and variety of the spectacle, I found
the trip delightful on leaving Novgorod. The time passed more rapidly
than the banks of the river, over whose congealed surface our horses
continued fleeing at a mad pace as if pursued by a phantom.
This imposing Volga is of a character truly quite exceptional.
France, certainly, has no river worthy of so much admiration for
its grandeur. During the summer it is enlivened with an incessant
movement of steamers, and is of immense importance as a waterway;
and during winter also it continues rendering great services to
humanity, affording the means for the transport of the grain that it
has fertilized with its beneficent waters. Nothing is grander than this
glacial route of unusual width, and of a uniformity and smoothness
which no road laid by the hand of man can approach; without a pebble or
a rut, one glides over without a jolt. Nothing interests the traveller
more, the first time, than to watch the shores passing before the eye
like a panorama; to contemplate the mountains and valleys the frozen
way spares him the trouble of traversing; to coast the islands without
navigating; and to pass here and there some barque, or perhaps steamer,
imprisoned in the ice.
In about three hours and a half after leaving Novgorod, we reached our
first stage, it being then quite dark.
In all these posting stages, there is a room for the travellers; and
this room, though heated at the proprietor’s expense, becomes really a
free home for the wanderer: he may eat, drink, and sleep there; do, in
fact, whatever he likes; and what is still more singular, lodge there
as long as he wishes, no one having a right to dislodge him.
Although this privilege is secured by contracts made between the
posting masters and the Imperial administration, it would undoubtedly
be quite consistent with the Russian character to accord it if it were
not compulsory, the people being essentially hospitable.
This amiable quality results, perhaps, from the rigour of the climate;
but I am rather disposed to believe--so general and spontaneous is
it--that it is the consequence of a happy and generous disposition.
I shall have something more to say, by-and-by, on the merits of the
Russian peasantry. I do not say that they have a monopoly of this
benevolent spirit, for, indeed, it is common to all classes. The
society of St. Petersburg cannot, certainly, be suspected to be
wanting in kindness towards strangers; even the old Muscovite noble,
notwithstanding his haughtiness, notwithstanding his hatred of new
social institutions, notwithstanding his regret to see Moscow no longer
the residence of the emperors, and, moreover, his antipathy for
European ideas and fashions, adopted in the new capital;--in spite of
all that, the Muscovite lord has retained profoundly rooted in his
nature the old traditions of respect towards him who is his guest, and
he regards hospitality, not simply as a passive virtue, but seriously
as an active duty.
At the Siberian posting stages, the stranger often finds pleasant
company or something to amuse him in the travellers’ room; it is rare
to find it unoccupied; and when people are disposed to talk, subjects
of conversation are not wanting. Those who are going in a contrary
direction begin inquiring about everything that interests them on
the way; about the state of the route; about the difficulties, more
or less serious, that have been encountered in getting horses. Those
who are taking the same way have generally already met at one or more
stages, and now salute one another as old acquaintances. When the stage
happens to be in a village, the principal persons of the neighbourhood
generally come to pass away an hour or two very sociably with the
travellers. They are very curious to know all about political matters
from those who come from the West, and business affairs from those
coming from the East. They all chat together in a manner perfectly
free and easy, without the least exclusiveness on account of class,
profession, or position. Their intercourse is always marked with the
utmost good-nature and affability.
But at the stages that link Nijni to Kazan this kind of society is not
always so agreeable.
The travellers around here are, in fact, a little too much _civilized_
to be always quite so simple and warm-hearted. They are, perhaps, a
little too well initiated in the new social principles of _égalité_
and _fraternité_ to believe that these amiable sentiments have so
profoundly modified human nature as they find it in their surroundings.
They look on the people accident throws in their way rather as
competitors for accommodation, whose presence there may contribute to
retard their journey, and would, if they had the _liberté_, such as
their brethren and equals understand it (from the purely practical side
of the formula), much rather smash their brethren’s sledges, than give
them a helping hand under difficulties.
I did not linger very long in these first stages, where, on account
of the privileged recommendations I was favoured with for obtaining
horses, I met only with unfriendly looks and gestures; therefore, in
twelve hours from my departure, I had already accomplished more than a
quarter of the distance that separated me from Kazan.
We continued travelling over the Volga. A little before daybreak I was
surprised at the strange noise that was being produced by the horses’
feet over the ice: it was no longer the dull, hollow sound that had
terrified me at Nijni-Novgorod. It was to me one quite novel, and
people generally, especially the most experienced,--a circumstance far
from reassuring,--begin to get uneasy at it. This sound seemed to me
the most fearful that one could hear on the ice; it was a splashing. I
listened in terror; but as my companion had smiled at my first affright
at Nijni, I did not venture, till after a long interval, to reveal it
to him this time.
Through an excess of _amour-propre_ which I probably now derived from
intercourse with Russians, I was just going to allow him to fall off
asleep, when I was splashed full in the face, and my terror, excited to
its highest pitch, could no longer be smothered. I started up, leaping
almost over Constantine, who, to use a Siberian saying, “was snoring
enough to frighten the wolves.” It was but a poor resource against
actual danger. Whilst I was rousing him, my wits seemed to be going
a-wool-gathering; what wonderful feat were they not going to perform
in such a peril as this? My imagination in fact, stirred up, no doubt,
by the poesy of the journey, brought to my mind Dame Fortune saving
the life of a sleeping infant on the brink of a well. The complete
absence of wheels, however, soon brought me round to sober reality,
and I explained the situation to Constantine with a conciseness that
might serve as a model to many an orator. He questioned the yemschik on
the matter, who replied with complete indifference: “Yes, sir, it is
thawing; but it is merely the snow melting: the ice is just as thick as
ever.”
The sky being very cloudy, the night was profoundly dark. Experience
principally served to guide the driver in his course, and then the
water--a fatal indication, indeed, of the way, when this way is over
the bed of a frozen river! I crept back, without saying a word more,
into the bottom of the sledge; but I must admit that it seemed to me
that the ice successively yielded, cracked, and opened, and then,
freezing over again with sufficient thickness, bore us up firmly. What
does not the imagination shadow forth to an excited brain?
Gradually, but very gradually, the day came forth, or it would be more
exact to say rather a kind of twilight, for a thick fog veiled nearly
every object from our eyes. The summits of the hills that continuously
command the right bank of the Volga marked a shadow on the horizon
barely more sombre. Everything else appeared confounded in a general
grey hue, and nothing, not even the shore, could be distinguished. Our
ears soon began to catch the ominous sounds of a crackling under the
horses’ feet, thereby announcing that the thaw had begun its work, now,
indeed, on the ice. Then we could just distinguish very portentous
fissures, starting right and left under the passage of the sledge.
The yemschik at last, discovering that the situation was becoming
perilous, thought it now high time to take precautions. He therefore
dashed on as if chased by a pack of famishing wolves as far as the
first village, and here we were glad to set foot at last on _terra
firma_.
The following night snow began to fall, to our great discomfiture; for
no state of the atmosphere here is so disagreeable to travellers in a
sledge only partially closed.
Fatigued by the exciting emotions of the preceding night, and
especially by thirty-six hours’ duration of a kind of locomotion to
which I was not yet accustomed, I had fallen into a sound sleep. As
it was not very cold, Constantine and I had never thought of lowering
the canvas that partially closes in the front of the vehicle, and,
moreover, we had neglected to take the precaution to cover our faces.
But as the warmth of our breath dissolved the flakes that would
otherwise have interrupted our respiration, we had scarcely noticed
our situation. The snow, indeed, had penetrated and fallen thickly
everywhere; our faces even were quite covered; it had insinuated itself
in the openings of our _dachas_, and melting there, saturated our inner
mantles: water was now running fast down our necks and sleeves; we
were drenched: and it was likely to have been a very serious matter
if the cold, which then commenced to make itself felt very acutely,
had not roused us from our slumbers. But what a transition was that
awakening! My mind, which seemed at first to be wandering far away
from actual life, could in no way account for the situation; we opened
our eyes, it is true, but were unable to distinguish anything; we felt
a load pressing us down everywhere, and yet we were unable to grasp
anything. I fancied myself one moment in a delirium and in the next
the victim of a vivid nightmare; but the cold at last brought me to
my senses. The first thing we did was to urge the yemschik to drive
as fast as he could, that we might dry ourselves as soon as possible
at the first stage. The wind now turned towards the north, the clouds
had dispersed, and a piercing cold benumbed our limbs. Everything was
frozen to our garments, which had become to the touch as rigid as
tanned hides bristling “like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”
Fortunately, in this plight, the distance that separated us from Kazan
was not very great. The surface of the Volga, on which we were enabled
to continue our journey at daybreak, contributed very much to shorten
the way, and on the 19th of December, about one in the afternoon,
we drove into the ancient capital of the Tartars, after having
accomplished what they consider in Siberia a short, easy journey.