'*/' 
 
 RUSSIA IN 1870. 
 
RUSSIA IN 1870. 
 
 BY 
 
 HERBERT BARRY, 
 
 LATE DIRECTOR OF THE CHEPELEFFSKY ESTATES AND IRON WORKS 
 IN THE GOVERNMENTS OF VLADIMIR, TAMBOV, AND 
 
 NIJNY NOVGOROD, EMPIRE OF RUSSIA. 
 AUTHOR OF "RUSSIAN METALLURGICAL WORKS," ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 WYMAN & SONS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, W.C. 
 1871. 
 
 [All rights reserved.'} 
 
LONDON : 
 
 \VTMAN AND SONS, PBINTEHS, GKEAT QUEEN-STBEET, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, w.c. 
 
 S0&- ^^ /3, 
 
 
 
DK3Z 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 "1 /TR. W. HEPWOETH DIXON unquestionably 
 deserves the thanks of everyone 
 interested in the well-being of Russia for 
 drawing attention to that Empire, and I had 
 hoped that the perusal of " Free Russia" 
 would have given the reader a fair insight 
 into that country, and that from the pen 
 of its distinguished author the world would 
 have learned what Russia is, and what the 
 Russians really are. 
 
 Upon reading Mr. Dixon's work, however, 
 I come to a very different conclusion, and 
 am strongly reminded of the statement of 
 
 M282584 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 Prince Dolgorouky, quoted by Mr. Suther- 
 land Edwards in his interesting book, " The 
 Russians at Home," " That Russians alone 
 ought to write on the subject of Russia" 
 (the Prince of course meaning that only 
 those, from long residence, well acquainted 
 with Russia ought to take the subject in 
 hand), and also that of Dr. Eckhardt, " Still 
 worse is it with the statements of those who 
 have come to Russia as strangers, and who 
 endeavour to convey the impressions they 
 have received without being acquainted with 
 the premises or even knowing of their ex- 
 istence." 
 
 It is evident that Mr. Dixon has depended 
 greatly upon second-hand information for 
 much of the material of his book, otherwise 
 he could not have been led into the errors 
 which overrun his work. 
 
 The chapters upon subjects that have been 
 studied are not only interesting, but as might 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 have been expected, coming from a source of 
 observance so acute as Mr. Dixon' s, are 
 graphic and powerful; how unfortunate 
 therefore is it that Mr. Dixon 5 s exceedingly 
 limited sphere of travel in Eussia should 
 have resulted in such erroneous conclusions 
 and inferences on those questions where he 
 has necessarily had to depend upon the infor- 
 mation of others. 
 
 Had Mr. Dixon contented himself with 
 giving us the first volume only of his work, 
 then, in his interesting account of the 
 monasteries, a subject which he has evi- 
 dently well studied, there would have been 
 found an entertaining and instructive work, 
 to which no student of Russian life and 
 manners could have objected; but when a 
 writer as powerful as Mr. Dixon enters into a 
 statement of so-called facts, and from them of 
 deductions which are equally incorrect the 
 one as the other, it becomes necessary for all 
 
viii 'Preface. 
 
 who have studied the question, to help to 
 place the correct side of it before the 
 readers. 
 
 Russia is a country which, young as it 
 is in the path of reform and improvement, 
 cannot afford to be misunderstood ; and at 
 this time, above all others, when the re- 
 actionary party are striving to overcome that 
 of progress, it is more than ever necessary 
 that those interested in the subject should 
 have placed before them none but well 
 considered facts. 
 
 Many visits to Russia during the last 
 twelve years, together with a continued resi- 
 dence in the interior for the latter four years 
 of that period, combined with the experience 
 afforded me as the head of one of the largest 
 industrial enterprises in the Empire, have 
 given me many opportunities of studying 
 the institutions of Russia and the character 
 of the Russian people. 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 Extended travel over all parts of trie 
 Empire, both for the purposes of business 
 and observation, has brought me much in 
 contact with all sorts and descriptions of 
 people from politicians to peasants. These 
 experiences have prompted me to attempt to 
 give a true account of those institutions 
 under which I have lived, and of the people 
 amongst whom I have lived, particularly 
 drawing attention to the changes and re- 
 forms both pf the people and their insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 It will, I fear, be found that I have omitted 
 in this book to treat upon several topics, 
 notably literature, military, naval matters, 
 &c. These subjects, however, are now being 
 discussed by far abler pens than mine, and 
 I have been throughout most careful to 
 introduce no subject with which I was not 
 personally quite conversant. 
 
 No one can have lived in Russia, watched 
 
Preface. 
 
 its struggles for liberty, and the manner in 
 which its people, so unaccustomed to free- 
 dom, use their liberty, without seeing the 
 germ of a future importance and greatness 
 impossible to realize. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 ON ME. DIXON'S BOOK " FREE RUSSIA " ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OLD ABUSES AND LATE REFORMS 43 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE PEOPLE 105 
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 TOWNS AND VILLAGES 152 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 PRIESTS, CHURCH, AND EMPEROR 175 
 
xii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. PAGE 
 
 SPORTS AND PASTIMES 208 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 MANUFACTURES AND TRADE 251 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. s, 
 
 WAYS AND COMMUNICATIONS 281 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 SIBERIA 308 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE GREAT FAIR OP NIJNY NOVGOROD ... 343 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE CENTRAL ASIAN QUESTION 397 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 CONCLUSION 414 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON ME. DIXON' S BOOK " FREE RUSSIA.' 
 
 1VTATTJRALLY I have great diffidence in 
 contradicting such an experienced and 
 able author as Mr. Dixon ; but I have no 
 alternative but to devote a few pages to 
 his book. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to find out in what 
 parts of that empire Mr. Dixon has studied 
 " Free Kussia," as from the preface I read, 
 " My journeys, just completed, carried me 
 from the Polar Sea to the Ural Mountains ; " 
 and at the first page of vol. ii., " My line 
 from the Arctic Sea to the southern slopes 
 
 B 
 
Russia in 1870. 
 
 of the Ural range ; " statements which would 
 have led me to suppose that Mr. Dixon 
 would have studied his subject over an 
 immense breadth of territory, rather than 
 have chosen the very extraordinary spot of 
 the " northern zones " as the principal place 
 for his observations. 
 
 Unless it were to study that specimen of 
 the human race which Mr. Dixon describes 
 as meaning " cannibal," I cannot make out 
 why he went so far north to find repre- 
 sentatives of free Russia. It is not on the 
 road from Archangel to St. Petersburgh 
 that one can judge of the Russians under 
 her northern latitudes ; for that purpose the 
 traveller must go much farther to the east 
 than Mr. Dixon appears to have gone. 
 
 In the preface I also find, " Two journeys 
 made in previous years have helped me to 
 judge the reforms which are opening out the 
 Japan-like empire of Russia." Why was 
 
Russia in 1870. 3 
 
 the reader not told where these journeys 
 were made to ; and, more particularly, what 
 was the different state of things that Mr. 
 Dixon now found existing there ? 
 
 I also read, " I have much to say about 
 pilgrims, monks, and parish priests, about 
 village justices and patriarchal life^ about 
 beggars, tramps, and sectaries, &c. &c., 
 in short, about the Human Forces which 
 underlie and shape the external politics of 
 our time." 
 
 With the exception of the reservation I 
 have made in my preface, I cannot admit 
 that Mr. Dixon has said much about what 
 he promises ; and what he has said, if 
 allowed to pass categorically uncontradicted, 
 can only lead to the reader being greatly 
 mistaken in his opinions of free Russia and 
 the free Russians. 
 
 I presume to think that Mr. Dixon does 
 not speak the Russian language ; and, as I 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Russia in 1870. 
 
 do not find anywhere a hint dropped of his 
 ideas or sayings being communicated by 
 means of an interpreter, I cannot under- 
 stand expressions such as the following, 
 which I find pervade the book : " You hear 
 in their speech ; " " I asked what is this 
 hole in the stone ; " " In answer to my 
 question;" "Yes, yes, you may hear a 
 Mujik say." Does Mr. Dixon assume that 
 a traveller can pass through a country, and 
 write a work entering politically, socially, 
 and economically into his subject, when he 
 is unable to understand what is said to him, 
 or to ask that which he wants to find out ? 
 Perhaps it is to this we may attribute some 
 of the extraordinary errors which we find in 
 that gentleman's work. 
 
 I do not presume to criticize the book as 
 a book, but at once to challenge many of the 
 statements, trivial as some of them may be 
 to general readers, but most important, if 
 
Russia in 1870. 
 
 we suppose that Mr. Dixon wishes any one 
 to have a correct idea of the country from 
 his work. 
 
 I at once therefore plunge into that por- 
 tion of the book which alone justifies the 
 title used. 
 
 The chapter on the emancipation of the 
 serfs is so manifestly incorrect, that it has 
 already drawn forth the criticisms of the 
 most powerful portion of the press; there 
 is no occasion, therefore, for me to repeat 
 what is so well known to all students of the 
 question. 
 
 I can only say upon this head, then, What 
 confidence can be placed in the statements 
 of an author who leads us to suppose that 
 Pensa and Kazan villages are occupied by 
 Poles and Mala Russians ? 
 
 I maintain that the peasant is the most 
 important character to note in the empire, 
 from the great preponderance in number 
 
Russia in 1870. 
 
 of his class over any other, and therefore 
 any erroneous ideas about him are of the 
 greatest consequence. 
 
 Now I find in the chapter on patriarchal 
 life the following : " A patriarch is lord in 
 his own house and family, and no man has 
 a right to interfere with him, not even the 
 village elders and the imperial judge; he 
 stands above oral and written law . . . 
 every act of his done within that cabin is 
 supposed to be private and divine . . 
 they would not order her to be flogged 
 not now the new law forbids it; that is 
 to say, in public. In his own cabin Daniel 
 may flog Nadia when he likes." 
 
 The whole inference to be drawn from 
 this passage is incorrect. Everybody would 
 suppose from it that the patriarch or head 
 of the family, had a literal right to carry 
 out any excesses he chose in his own home, 
 and that, assuming they were carried out, 
 
Russia in 1870. 
 
 nobody had the right to interfere with him 
 or call him to account. 
 
 The only power the patriarch has in the 
 matter of chastising is limited, and if he 
 carries that power out to too great an 
 extent, the person so treated can apply 
 to the community, and the community will 
 interfere and punish the offender. 
 
 In one village I knew a patriarch who 
 had flogged his son, and then locked him 
 up, so that he could not personally go and 
 complain ; but he managed to communicate 
 with some one who went to the community 
 for him : and they there and then sent 
 deputies to the house to hold an inquest 
 on the matter. 
 
 The other statement, copied from a news- 
 sheet : " Euphrosine M , a peasant- 
 woman, living in the province of Kherson, 
 is accused by her husband of unfaithfulness 
 to her vows. The rustic calls a meeting 
 
8 Russia in 1870. 
 
 of patriarchs, who hear his story, and 
 without hearing the wife in her defence, 
 condemn her to be walked through the 
 village stark naked in broad daylight in 
 the presence of all her friends." 
 
 The reader would have supposed that this 
 event (if it did take place) was one of recent 
 occurrence, whereas Mr. Dixon's authority 
 is the " Gazette of New Russia " for 1864. 
 To show that the authorities do not shut 
 their eyes to excesses committed by the 
 peasants when they do occur, I will mention 
 one fact. 
 
 On our estate a woman had been bar- 
 barously treated by two men : the local 
 coroner and the community shirked their 
 duty : the matter got into the newspapers, 
 .and the next day an imperial order demanded 
 an inquest, and the offenders were brought 
 to justice. 
 
 How much must my opinion be shaken 
 
Russia in 1870. 9 
 
 in what Mr. Dixon has written generally 
 upon the sects, which is a subject I have 
 not had time to study, when I find, speaking 
 of an old believer, he says " The chances 
 are that he will not smoke," when the 
 merest tyro would have told him that this 
 sect abhors the use of tobacco. 
 
 I have known a member of it, have his 
 house whitewashed and cleaned throughout, 
 in consequence of a man having taken a 
 couple of whiffs at his papiross, not knowing 
 that his host was an old believer. 
 
 Again " Every new Emperor makes a 
 Saint." Mr. Dixon should have been aware 
 that the present Emperor, instead of making 
 new Saints, has, by ukaze, much diminished 
 the number of days to be observed as Saint 
 days or Holidays. 
 
 Where has Mr. Dixon seen the Scoptsi 
 (detestable sect as they are)? "White, weak, 
 and wasting, they appear in the shops like 
 
10 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ghosts." As a rule, with the exception of 
 being generally rather fat, there is not much 
 difference to be observed between them and 
 other people. 
 
 Who, that knows the people whom Mr. 
 Dixon calls " Non-payers of Bent," can un- 
 derstand what he means by calling them a 
 cc sect ? " They are the people to whom I 
 allude in Chapter IX. as those who will not 
 pay their land-tax; and they may with as 
 much truth be called a "sect," as that 
 portion of the Irish population who refuse 
 to pay their rent, believing, as both parties 
 do, that the land belongs to them. 
 
 In " Village Republics " I read such state- 
 ments as these : " From ancient times 
 the members of these village democracies 
 derive a body of local rights, of kin to 
 those family rights which reforming ministers 
 and judges think it wiser to leave alone. 
 They choose their own elders, hold their 
 
Russia in 1870. 11 
 
 own courts, inflict their own fines . . . 
 exercising powers which the Emperor has 
 not given and dares not take away. The 
 Starosta . . . elected for three years . . . 
 the rule is for the richest peasant of the 
 village to be chosen ... . an unpaid servant 
 of his village . . . But a village elder, 
 backed by his meeting, can defeat the 
 Imperial will, and set the beneficent public 
 code aside." 
 
 Now these certainly are about as pretty 
 pictures of autocratical democracies as it is 
 well able to conceive. Let me lay before 
 the reader the real facts, and show how apt 
 to mislead Mr. Dixon's statements are. The 
 least competent court in the village is the 
 Starosta acting under the power of the 
 community, whose powers of punishment are 
 so trivial as not to require mentioning ; the 
 next court, and the one which doubtless 
 Mr. Dixon means, is the district commune 
 
12 Russia in 1870. 
 
 or volost, an assembly of representatives 
 of several parishes, presided over by the 
 Starshinar, or head man. To this court the 
 previously mentioned one is in a degree sub- 
 servient, just as the Starosta is subservient 
 to the Starshinar. 
 
 This elected assembly, then, again elect 
 the volost court of justice, which, according 
 to the size of the volost, consists of from 
 four to twelve people, three of whom sit to 
 try cases, their sentences being carried out 
 by the Starshinar as the executive officer. 
 
 From reading Mr. Dixon's account, any 
 one would suppose the power of this court 
 was unlimited; on the contrary, it is very 
 small civil jurisdiction under one hundred 
 roubles or fifteen pounds the administering 
 of twenty-four blows with the rod power 
 to fine in criminal cases up to three silver 
 roubles, and to send to prison for seven 
 days. 
 
Russia in 1870. 
 
 The Starosta is never chosen for his 
 riches, but always for his talking powers, 
 as the community love a man who can talk 
 well. He is also invariably paid for his 
 services. 
 
 At the conclusion of the same chapter 
 is, " Two-thirds of a village mob, in which 
 every other voter may be drunk, can send a 
 man to Siberia for his term of life;" and 
 in the following chapter is explained, " Such 
 cases of village justice are not rare," and 
 " they can summon him to appear, and find 
 him worthy to be expelled . . . rejected 
 from his commune ... he cannot enter a 
 village." Now I object to these statements 
 in to to. First of all, drunken people are not 
 allowed to be at communal meetings ; and, 
 secondly, the commune has no power to 
 send any one to Siberia. If any member of 
 the community does not pay his dues, his 
 brethren have the power of turning him 
 
14 Russia in 1870. 
 
 out of the community, after having tried all 
 other means of bringing him to reason ; but 
 he is eligible for admittance into any other 
 commune that will take him. 
 
 In cases where a discharged member 
 cannot get into another commune, he is 
 sent, at the expense of the Government, 
 with others of the same sort, to found a 
 colony, and hence a community elsewhere ; 
 but, certainly, he is not sent to a " Siberian 
 mine," a punishment kept for murderers 
 and other great criminals. 
 
 Mr. Dixon evidently knows very little of 
 the workings of the village communities, or 
 he would never have stated what he does in 
 page 58 of vol. ii. : " Now, the villagers 
 pretty well know the brother who is rich 
 enough to give his roubles, in place of baring 
 his back ; and when they thirst for a dram 
 at some other man's cost, they have only to 
 get up some flimsy charge on which that 
 
Russia in 1870. 15 
 
 brother can be tried. The man is sure to 
 buy himself off." I would venture to advise 
 Mr. Dixon, the next time he goes to Russia, 
 to study the administration of justice by 
 some of the volost tribunals : he will not be 
 ashamed of the justice he sees administered 
 there, I am sure. 
 
 So with their houses and living is Mr. 
 Dixon as much in error as with the insti- 
 tutions of the peasant. I read, " The elder's 
 hut is bigger than the rest . . . the floor is 
 mud. One house here and there may have 
 a balcony, a cow-shed." "Where, in the 
 name of goodness, is this general descrip- 
 tion taken from ? Most positively not from 
 Russia. Has Mr. Dixon ever seen a mud 
 floor in a peasant's house in Great Russia ? 
 Excepting, perhaps, when a village has been 
 burned, and temporary huts have been 
 erected, I have hardly ever seen one. The 
 living part of a peasant's house is almost 
 
16 Russia in 1870. 
 
 invariably approached by a staircase. How 
 can a mud floor be found on the first story 
 of a house without the mud is placed on 
 wood ? and it is hardly likely a peasant 
 would take that trouble from choice. 
 
 Not only what is called a cow- shed, but 
 under the denomination of "yard," contain- 
 ing rough shanty for stable, place for carts, 
 sledges, &c., in fact, the housing for the 
 peasant's all, is a universal attribute to 
 every peasant's house. This is so general, 
 that, in speaking of the number of domiciles 
 in a village, one never says, so many houses, 
 but such and such a number of " yards." 
 
 Again, I read, speaking generally of the 
 peasants, that " His dinner, on days that 
 are not kept as fasts, being a slice of black 
 bread, a gherkin, and a piece of dried cod." 
 What little knowledge this shows of what 
 the peasant does live upon : on. fast days he 
 does eat fish, but certainly not cod. I do not 
 
Russia in 1870. 17 
 
 suppose ninety-nine out of a hundred Rus- 
 sians ever heard the word " cod ; " the 
 most ordinary observer could have seen 
 what fish they do eat, and whence it 
 comes ; but the mistake is, that in this 
 description the national dish, " Tschee," or 
 cabbage-soup, is entirely overlooked, whilst 
 it is the universal dish of the Russian 
 peasant. I know peasants who eat three 
 pounds of black bread for their dinner, and 
 also not one gherkin but six. 
 
 Had I not already expressed a supposi- 
 tion that Mr. Dixon does not speak the 
 Russian language, I should have questioned 
 the statement, " I have myself heard a 
 rustic ordered to be flogged by his elder, 
 on the bare request of two gentlemen, who 
 said he was drunk and could not drive." 
 Now I conclude he was told that this was 
 what the elder ordered. I cannot find the 
 sequel. Assuming the word here used as 
 
 H 
 
18 Russia in 1870. 
 
 meaning village elder, it was impossible that 
 lie could individually order the boy to be 
 flogged ; that is to say, according to com- 
 munal law, he must have been tried by the 
 village tribunal first. But, of course, people 
 sometimes do, not only in Russia, but in all 
 other countries, that which they have no 
 business to do ; but this fact is told us, in 
 the chapter on serfs, as though it were the 
 regular way of proceeding. 
 
 Mr. Dixon will excuse my saying that, if 
 he did not see the sentence of flogging 
 carried out, I cannot think it took place. 
 
 In the chapter on serfs there appears this 
 passage, describing the origin of serfage : 
 "A bargain was made between two con- 
 senting parties, peasant and .noble, under 
 the authority of law, for their mutual dealing 
 with a certain estate, consisting (say) of 
 land, lake, and forest, with the various 
 rights attached to ownership, hunting, &c." 
 
Russia in 1870. 19 
 
 What can this mean ? Are we to under- 
 stand that the serfs wished and consented 
 of their own free will to be serfs ? If so, 
 why does not the writer bear out the asser- 
 tion which, I assume, from his statement, 
 he means to make ? 
 
 Reading the account of the parish priest 
 and his family, is to me more like a farce 
 than a comedy. Does Mr. Dixon seriously 
 mean to assert that the following is a correct 
 description ? " Each parish priest is the 
 centre of a circle, who regard him, not only 
 as a man of God, ordained to bless in His 
 holy name, but as a father to advise them 
 in weal and woe." . . . " Father Peter, the 
 village pope ... his cabin is very clean ; 
 some flower-pots stand on his window-sill ; 
 a heap of books loads his presses ; . . . a 
 pale and comely wife is sitting near his door 
 . . . watching the urchins at their play . . . 
 those boys are singing beneath a tree ; sing- 
 
 c 2 
 
20 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ing with, soft, sad faces one of their ritual 
 psalms ... A priest is so great a man in 
 his village, that even when he is tipsy . . . 
 he is treated by his parishioners with a 
 child-like duty and respect." 
 
 It is the more extraordinary that the 
 writer should have been led into this error, 
 as every traveller who has noted the subject 
 has not failed to observe upon the very dis- 
 agreeable feature of the parish priest, and 
 his mode of life. 
 
 From a rather extensive knowledge of 
 the village priest or " pope," I find him 
 to be, firstly, a man for whom the 
 villagers do not have the slighest respect; 
 a character happily only confined to Kussia, 
 of hardly any education, hardly any morals, 
 depending for his support almost as much 
 upon the sweat of his brow as upon his 
 clerical duties, and is very little removed 
 from his neighbours the Mujiks. 
 
Russia in 1870. 21 
 
 He lives in very much the same sort of 
 house as the other villagers, with, however, 
 a few more comforts in it, in the shape of 
 furniture ; his wife, differing little from her 
 peasant neighbour, does all the house work, 
 whilst her children run about pretty much 
 the same as the other village children. 
 
 The pope has his land, which he farms 
 himself the same as the peasant, and his 
 life is one monotonous roll of church ser- 
 vices, farming, and idleness. His drinking 
 powers are renowned, and upon the great 
 holidays he is invariably drunk. They 
 themselves are not ashamed of the practice, 
 and the people are so used to the sight of a 
 drunken pope, that they take no notice of 
 it, and pass him by with perhaps, in some 
 cases, a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 Left much to their own resources, with 
 a very lax. system of inspection, they 
 gradually subside into a state little better, 
 
22 Russia in 1870. 
 
 in a social point of view, than their neigh- 
 bours the Mujiks, and what little association 
 they do have is generally with them. 
 
 One great reason that kept them in 
 this state of abjectness has been their 
 perfect inability to rise beyond the grade 
 of parish priest; thus one great incentive 
 to industry, that of self-raising, has been 
 denied to them. 
 
 I have several times seen a pope drunk 
 when attending to a religious service, and 
 have on more than one occasion found one 
 stealing. 
 
 What can be said in defence of priests 
 who would tolerate one of their number 
 keeping a whisky-shop, and yet I knew 
 such a one, and gave him the license to 
 do so : he asked for it nominally for the 
 profits of his church, but really, under the 
 rose, it was for his own account, and 
 curiously enough, as against Mr. Dixon's 
 
Russia in 1870. 23 
 
 theory, this pope was, with the exception of 
 his drinking propensities, a very respectable 
 and better educated specimen of his class. 
 
 How is it possible that the parish priest 
 can be as Mr. Dixon represents him 
 poverty-stricken and socially kept down as 
 he is. 
 
 I trust that from the pages of this book, 
 may be gathered what Father Peters are 
 really like. There are exceptions to all 
 rules, but I am afraid that Mr. Dixon' s 
 
 Father P is the exception and not the 
 
 rule. 
 
 In the chapter on " Freedom 5! is this 
 statement : " This reckless sense of right 
 and wrong is due to that serfage under 
 which the peasants groaned for two hundred 
 and sixty years serfage made men indif- 
 ferent to life and death . . . and the 
 liberty which some of the freest peasants 
 enjoyed the most was the liberty of revenge," 
 
24 Russia in 1870. 
 
 In order to prove this theory of peasant 
 revenge, Mr. Dixon quotes the Gorski process, 
 a case in which a man murdered a whole 
 family at Tambof; but unfortunately for 
 Mr. Dixon's case, Gorski did not happen to be 
 a peasant or an emancipated serf, but was 
 a Polish student and tutor in the family he 
 so cruelly murdered. 
 
 This is followed by the recountal of Daria 
 Sokolof's case, who Mr. Dixon says murdered 
 a whole family, including a lap-dog, and " as 
 no witness of the crime was left, she could 
 only be condemned to a dozen years in 
 Siberian mines." 
 
 The jury who tried her, however, in spite 
 of a confession subsequently recanted, came 
 to the conclusion that she did not commit 
 the murders, but that they were committed 
 by another person who was not found, and 
 Daria Sokolof was found guilty of concealing 
 the murder, and so received her punishment. 
 
Russia in 1870. 25 
 
 That somebody must have been misin- 
 forming Mr. Dixon very materially, is clear 
 from the following, written in the chapter on 
 the "Secret Police:" "The secret police 
 have an authority which knows no bounds 
 save that of the Emperor's direct com- 
 mands." What can this possibly be read as 
 implying, but that the " third division " * are 
 paramount, above all law and all jurisdiction ? 
 
 Will Mr. Dixon take upon himself the 
 responsibility of asserting that the secret 
 police have any, or exercise any, jurisdiction 
 in ordinary matters, criminal or civil ? Does 
 he not know that the fundamental habeas 
 corpus clause of the new law is, that no man 
 can be arrested without being brought before 
 a proper judge within a very limited time ? 
 
 What are the "third division" but the 
 executive to carry out the order of their 
 
 Appellation for secret police. 
 
26 Russia in 1870. 
 
 chief ; and are they not chiefly, or, I may 
 say, invariably employed in what are called 
 political matters ? 
 
 Do not let it for one moment be supposed 
 that I am defending such an institution as 
 secret police ; or that I am not quite capable 
 of believing that this " third division " are 
 even now an institution much to be deplored; 
 and that at this day they are sometimes em- 
 ployed for purposes which they ought not 
 to be ; but Mr. Dixon, in describing the 
 secret, or, properly called, political police, is 
 saying what they were like in 1848, not 
 what they are now. 
 
 If he refers to the new measure of law as 
 proposed in 1862, which is so clearly ex- 
 plained by Dr. Bckhardt,* and which plan 
 was adhered to in the ultimate completion 
 of the arrangements, he will find that the 
 
 * In "Modern Russia." 
 
Russia in 1870. 27 
 
 first part ordained separation of judicial 
 power from that of the administration ; the 
 executive power from that of legislation ; the 
 introduction of juries for hearing and trying 
 crimes in so far as these were not of a 
 political nature ; publicity of justice, &c. &c. 
 
 I have remarked that this plan was car- 
 ried out in the final arrangement which 
 came into force in some portions of the 
 Empire in 1864 : how can, then, this asser- 
 tion of Mr. Dixon's be substantiated ? 
 
 The " third division " have nothing what- 
 ever to do with anything but political 
 matters ; and, what is more, I have never 
 heard of late years of any interference by 
 them in ordinary criminal business. 
 
 I know a good deal of the working of the 
 new law ; and although even Mr. Dixon 
 admits that its working is satisfactory, he 
 spoils the effect of the assertion by his state- 
 ments and inferences concerning the " third 
 
28 Russia in 1870. 
 
 division " of the Imperial Chancery; and I 
 prefer taking the unqualified statement of 
 such an observer as Dr. Eckhardt, that " Of 
 all the reforms undertaken under the present 
 Government, tne remodelling of the ad- 
 ministration of justice is decidedly the most 
 successful," to the one-sided commendation 
 of the former. 
 
 Such a reform as this must necessarily be 
 of immense importance to Russia; suc- 
 cessful as it has been, it deserves to be 
 chronicled in all its fulness ; and it is impos- 
 sible to allow such inferences as might be 
 drawn by the statements now under notice, 
 to pass without giving them an unqualified 
 denial. 
 
 The story of Pavlenkoff is then described ; 
 his having been exiled to Viatka, for opening 
 a subscription to gain funds to place a stone 
 over the tomb of the young writer Pizareff. 
 
 I am not acquainted with the facts that 
 
Russia in 1870. 29 
 
 were alleged against Pavlenkoff, but on 
 two occasions my experience has been dif- 
 ferent, having been allowed to subscribe to 
 a purse, which was being raised for two 
 political exiles, Eussians, then on their 
 dreary way to Siberia. No secret was made 
 of this, the police doubtless knew all about 
 it; and although several of the subscribers 
 were known as not having very favourable 
 opinions towards the Government, nobody 
 was troubled on the subject, and no objection 
 was made to the money being received. 
 
 Allow me also to tell Mr. Dixon, that the 
 policeman he saw in Archangel was probably 
 requesting the .householder to illuminate, and 
 not saying he must do so. 
 
 I have always adopted the principle, that 
 if I live and accept the protection of a 
 foreign country, I ought in return to con- 
 form to the customs and habits of the 
 people; and if, in fulfilling this principle, I 
 
30 Russia in 1870. 
 
 have occasionally forgotten to do such a 
 thing as "illuminate," I have never heard 
 anything about it ; and lest it might be 
 supposed that being a foreigner was the 
 reason of being left alone, I must add, that 
 my neighbours on all sides, Russians, paid, 
 as a rule, less attention to these so-called 
 " orders " than I did. 
 
 From the style of Mr. Dixon's work, and 
 what a reviewer has called the transitions in 
 the chapters, it is a difficult task to follow 
 the statements and arrive at his meaning. 
 
 In reading the chapter on exile, I at first 
 thought Mr. Dixon had been in Siberia ; but 
 when I study the chapter, and read " In 
 one day's drive in a Tarentasse, I saw a 
 dozen hamlets, in which every man serving 
 as a justice of the peace was a Pole," I 
 come to the immediate conclusion that he 
 has not, for the most cogent of all reasons, 
 that at the date Mr. Dixon is speaking 
 
Russia in 1870. 31 
 
 about, there were no justices of the peace in 
 Siberia. 
 
 In whatever other part of Russia the 
 writer is alluding to, I must be allowed to 
 be incredulous as to Mr. Dixon passing, in 
 one day, through a dozen hamlets in which 
 justices of the peace resided. 
 
 These functionaries do not exist in all 
 hamlets, far from it ; they have large dis- 
 tricts allotted them, and that man must have 
 been a wonderful traveller indeed who could 
 have in one day driven in a Tarentasse past 
 twelve villages, each boasting a justice of the 
 peace. 
 
 But that they are all Poles is the most 
 extraordinary statement of all. Even this 
 does not astonish me more than the para- 
 graph in the same chapter, that " the tracks 
 have been laid down, and in a few months 
 a railroad will be made from Perm to 
 Tomsk." 
 
32 Russia in 1870. 
 
 This information is certainly exclusive so 
 exclusive, in fact, as to be unknown to his 
 Excellency the Minister of Ways and Com- 
 munications himself, as I state, upon the 
 authority of the report of the Special Com- 
 mittee on Railways, published a few months 
 ago, that a special commission was only just 
 then being sent to the Oural to settle the 
 route which the Siberian railway will take, 
 and I think Mr. Dixon will find that it will 
 not go near Tomsk, nor even Perm. 
 
 The most ardent desirer for the Siberian 
 railway does not hope for its going a greater 
 distance than from Tiumen to the Kama, 
 to connect the water systems of Asia with 
 those of Europe ; and surely Mr. Dixon's 
 knowledge of geography must have told 
 him, if he had thought upon the question, 
 that the distance from Perm to Tomsk is 
 thirteen hundred miles ; and he would 
 surely know that even the Russians could 
 
Russia in 1870. 33 
 
 not make a railway, piercing the Ural 
 Mountains, of such a length in a few 
 months. How confidence must be shaken 
 in the statements of a book which assert 
 in so positive a t manner such impossible 
 facts. 
 
 About the same time that Mr. Dixon was 
 going down the Volga I was in Perm, and 
 there they knew nothing of the railway from 
 thence to Tomsk. 
 
 I also find Siberia designated as an 
 " Asiatic waste," not, I presume, from 
 Mr. Dixon's own observations. I have 
 found several places there not meriting 
 this description. Mr. Atkinson, who has 
 travelled in that country a good deal, gives 
 rather a different account of it. 
 
 The chapter on " Siberians " I presume 
 to be one founded on information from " a 
 Pole with whom I travel some days," not 
 one of the most reliable sources from whence 
 
 D 
 
34 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to get information on such a subject. As, 
 therefore, Mr. Dixon does not give us that 
 chapter as his own idea, I pass it over. 
 
 Eegarding the people, I find in the chapter 
 on " Masters and Men " some second-hand 
 information, as follows : " You cannot teach 
 a Russian girl." If there is one point upon 
 which most writers on the Russian character 
 have agreed more than upon any other, it is 
 the one of the extraordinary aptitude of the 
 Russian peasant to be taught anything in 
 the shap of work ; they are very monkeys 
 in this respect most extraordinary imita- 
 tors ; prejudiced, I admit, to a great ex- 
 tent, and very difficult to get out of their 
 own ways for their own purposes ; but as 
 servants, whilst lazy to a degree and shirking 
 work, fall into their masters' ways in an 
 incredibly short time. 
 
 Amongst the many thousands of workmen 
 I have had under my care, I have observed 
 
Russia in 1870. 35 
 
 amongst all classes the most extraordinary 
 power of imitation ; and if Mr. Dixon had 
 paid any attention to the present manu- 
 factures of the empire, he would have been 
 as much struck as I have been with this 
 peculiar trait. 
 
 The poor Mujik has quite enough faults 
 to answer for without being libelled. 
 
 In the chapter on " Towns " I read, as 
 descriptive of the bazaar : " Next to rye- 
 bread and salt fish, saints and cards are the 
 articles mostly bought and sold." What 
 an erroneous opinion this is ! The common 
 people do not play cards to a great extent ; 
 and when I am told " the burghers . . . 
 see these gamblers throw down their cards, 
 imbonnet their heads and fall upon their 
 knees, . . . the priest is coming down the 
 street with his sacred picture and cross, 
 . . . and fellows who were gambling for 
 their shirts are now upon their knees in 
 D 2 
 
36 Russia in 1870. 
 
 prayer," I hardly know what to say. That 
 the people take their hats off and cross 
 themselves when the saints pass, is true ; 
 but kneeling down in the streets is hardly 
 ever to be seen : this description is much 
 exaggerated. 
 
 Describing " Artel and Tsek," we are told 
 as fallows : " No man not of noble birth 
 can live in Moscow, save by gaining a place 
 in one of the recognized orders of society, 
 in a Tsek, guild or a Chin. ... In one 
 of these societies a peasant must get his 
 name inscribed ... if he has been lucky 
 enough to get his name on the books of a 
 Tsek." 
 
 I read this as contradictory; but the 
 information is incorrect, as a peasant, a 
 servant, can reside in Moscow without any 
 such formality being gone through as Mr. 
 Dixon describes. 
 
 In the chapter on the " Bible " is : " A 
 
Russia in 1870. 37 
 
 learned Father of the ancient rite made some 
 remarks to me on the Bible in Russia which 
 live in my mind as parts of the pictures of 
 this great country, . . . said the priest 
 . . . in every second house of Great 
 Russia, the true old Russia in which we 
 speak the same language and have the 
 same God, you will find a copy of the 
 Bible;" and " in my journey through the 
 country I find this true, though not so much 
 in the letter as in the spirit. Except in 
 New England and Scotland, no people in 
 the world, as far as they can read at 
 all, are greater Bible-readers than the Rus- 
 
 sians." 
 
 Now, leaving out of the question what the 
 Father said, and which Mr. Dixon is therefore 
 not responsible for, I have only to do with 
 the statement of Mr. Dixon himself. 
 
 I have never seen a Bible in a peasant's 
 house in Russia; I don't assert that there 
 
38 Russia in 1870. 
 
 are not houses in which the Bible is to be 
 found, but taking into consideration how 
 often I enter their houses, if they had been 
 so plentiful as we are led to suppose, it is 
 curious that I never saw one ; and as 
 regards the quantity of Bible-readers in 
 Russia, " so far as they can read," it is a 
 pity that the reader of "Free Russia" was 
 not told what number of the Russian people 
 can read; but admitting the number amongst 
 the agricultural class of Great Russia to be 
 one per cent., the Bible-readers in Russia 
 must be few. But from a statement like 
 this, much misapprehension may arise. The 
 reader would be led to suppose that the 
 Russian, whom I have always held up as a 
 model for the manner in which he carries 
 out his religious observances, does so from 
 a truly religious feeling, in the sense gene- 
 rally understood. 
 
 On the contrary, it is only an infatuation 
 
Russia in 1870. 39 
 
 which prompts their feelings, and an idea 
 that by doing so they will benefit themselves ; 
 and their blind belief in a great all-seeing 
 Power, whom they believe they propitiate 
 by these observances. They are entirely 
 fatalists, this is seen in every one of their 
 movements, and they have a notion that 
 by the single fact of going to church or 
 crossing themselves, they are averting some- 
 thing which will otherwise fall upon them ; 
 but as to studying the question of religion, 
 or knowing anything about it, I certainly 
 maintain that they do no such thing. 
 
 One frequently sees two Mujiks in a cart 
 or drosky in a town, drunk ; one holds the 
 other round the waist, whilst that one crosses 
 himself as they pass a saint, and his friend 
 does the same duty for him immediately 
 afterwards ; this certainly cannot be called 
 religious feeling, although it is observance. 
 
 In the last page of " Free Russia" I read 
 
40 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the following : " One dark December day 
 . . . the Emperor . . . walks into the 
 church that is to be his final home . . . 
 the English visitors look down upon the 
 scene within . . . alone, his cap drawn 
 tightly on his brow . . . the Emperor passes 
 from slab to slab." 
 
 Is this what the recounter saw himself? 
 Was he a witness of the Emperor entering a 
 church with his cap drawn tightly on his 
 broiu, or still more of seeing that Emperor, 
 with his head covered, pass from slab to 
 slab those only monumental relics of his 
 father and his father's father ? If Mr. Dixon 
 saw it himself, necessarily I have nothing to 
 say, but if he did not, then all I can say is, 
 that neither myself, one single Russian, or 
 anybody that knows Eussia or the Rus- 
 sians, can ever suppose that the head 
 of the Orthodox Church did anything of 
 the sort. 
 
Russia in 1870. 41 
 
 In the preceding pages of this introductory 
 chapter, I have drawn attention to a few of 
 the errors in Mr. Dixon's statements that 
 must more particularly jar upon the minds 
 of those who have any interest in Russia. 
 They are questions concerning the internal 
 life of this much abused people, that trivial 
 as they may seem on the first blush, are 
 so bound up with the economical question 
 of Free Russia, that it is impossible they 
 can be allowed to pass by unnoticed. 
 
 The other innumerable errors in the book 
 neither space nor time allow me to dwell 
 upon, or I might have said much in 
 contradiction to Mr. Dixon's opinion as 
 to the reason Russian peasants are called 
 " Christiani," on his ideas of " Pan- 
 slavonianism," in fact upon almost all his 
 book, excepting the monasterial part of it. 
 
 When Mr. Dixon undertook to present a 
 work to the public under such a compre- 
 
42 Russia in 1870. 
 
 liensive title as lie has chosen, and to give 
 his impressions upon subjects which it is 
 clear he has never studied, then he took 
 upon himself a task which he could not 
 fulfil, has not fulfilled, and laid himself 
 open to the criticisms of every student of 
 the question, whose only duty can be to 
 show, first, that Mr. Dixon has written very 
 little on " Free Russia," and that the little 
 he has written conveys generally the most 
 erroneous impressions. 
 
 In concluding this chapter I cannot help, 
 in conjunction with many others, thanking 
 Mr. Dixon for expressing his opinion that 
 the emancipation of the serfs has been a 
 success, and thus, by his powerful pen, 
 contradicting a very popular fallacy. 
 
43 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OLD ABUSES AND LATE KEFORMS. 
 
 FN" no country of Europe has the march 
 of civilization and progress in modern 
 times been more rapid, decided, and sys- 
 tematic than in Russia. 
 
 The contemplation of the changes that 
 have been wrought and are now working 
 among the so recently nomadic populations 
 of Russia's vast interior, by the energy and 
 wisdom of a few master minds, will be a 
 matter of astonishment to future genera- 
 tions, to whom it will prove, when fully 
 revealed, one of the most instructive chap- 
 ters of the book of history. 
 
44 Russia in 1870. 
 
 To the present Emperor was left the 
 glorious opportunity of inaugurating those 
 reforms which have led to the present 
 prosperity of Russia. 
 
 The empire had existed almost a thousand 
 years when Alexander II. ascended the 
 throne, on the 2nd of March, 1855. His 
 goodness of heart and intelligence soon 
 began to be felt, and he quickly showed 
 himself to be a reformer. 
 
 The conclusion of peace in the succeed- 
 ing year gave him the opportunity to 
 commence his good work. He had many 
 difficulties to contend with : a strong and 
 powerful party opposed to all reforms, 
 wedded to the system of corruption and 
 peculation which was disseminated through 
 all departments of the State exerted all 
 their influence to counteract the new ideas 
 that, in spite of their efforts to the contrary, 
 would get diffused amongst the people. 
 
Russia in 1870. 45 
 
 This party cried out against the reduc- 
 tion of the army ; at the very idea of rail- 
 ways being thought necessary for Eussia; 
 bigoted in the extreme, they were against 
 any reform in the management of Church 
 affairs ; regarded the proposed change in 
 the law as revolutionary; and they viewed 
 the long-talked-of scheme of emancipating 
 the serfs as only the precursor to the ruin 
 of the empire itself. 
 
 At least so they pretended. They knew 
 well enough what would be the real result 
 to themselves. Owners of vast estates, 
 counting their slaves by tens of thousands, 
 exercising an imperial and despotic power 
 over their fellow - creatures, they felt that 
 their day of unchecked extravagance and 
 cruelty was coming to an end ; and that 
 the first breath of reform, giving, as 
 it would, new life and energy to the 
 common people, would lead to their ruin : 
 
46 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ruin, I say, for those among them who could 
 not conform to the new order of things. 
 
 They were a powerful body, but the new 
 party were too strong for them, and reforms 
 followed quickly one upon the other. In 
 those days all was bribery and corruption, 
 the whole system was rotten ; money was 
 the only motive power ; then all Government 
 business was a matter of bargaining. If 
 you agreed to the price demanded by the 
 Tchinovnik,* you had a chance of your 
 business going through ; if you did not fall 
 in with their ideas, the business would never 
 move. 
 
 I remember a friend, than whom nobody 
 knew better the ways of bureaucracy then 
 existing, giving me the following advice : 
 " Whenever you want anything done in a 
 department, apply to the soldier who opens 
 
 * Government employe. 
 
Russia in 1870. 47 
 
 the door ; lie will tell you to whom to go, 
 whom to pay, and how much to pay;" and 
 this advice was perfectly true. 
 
 It was seldom that anybody refused money 
 in those days ; but in order to be sure, and 
 not wound the susceptibilities of such a 
 one, a particular friend of mine hit upon 
 the ingenious plan, afterwards so well 
 known, of placing his intended present in 
 one side of a cigar-case, whilst on the 
 other side were papirosses, and with an 
 "Allow me, Excellency," handed the case 
 open to the man with whom he was doing 
 business. It was not often that a papiross 
 was taken in lieu of the paper. 
 
 The emancipation had often been thought 
 of by preceding monarchs, and Nicholas had 
 alleviated the position of the serfs in several 
 respects. It was he who allowed serfs to 
 hold land and make contracts in fact, gave 
 them civil rights ; he also stopped the sale 
 
48 Russia in 1870. 
 
 of serfs off the land, and would have pro- 
 bably even carried out his wished- for idea 
 of total emancipation, if he could only have 
 shaken off the feeling of insecurity that 
 weighed upon him, caused by the revolution 
 which took place on his accession. 
 
 He died, and it was thus left to Alex- 
 ander II. to break those chains which had 
 for upwards of two hundred and fifty years 
 bound five-and-forty millions of his subjects 
 in a state of serfdom and ignorance, denounced 
 by all civilized nations as a relic of cruelty 
 and barbarism. 
 
 Alexander II. then boldly grappled and 
 gloriously carried out that work which his pre- 
 decessor did not, perhaps could not, achieve. 
 
 When this great policy, regenerating the 
 Russian people, was once firmly established, 
 other minor but still important reforms fol- 
 lowed fast, and Russia, which had remained 
 years and years behind her sisters in Western 
 
Russia in 1870. 49 
 
 Europe, began to move forward with a steady 
 progress that promises in this generation to 
 make up for much wasted time in the past. 
 
 Although only ten years have elapsed since 
 this great change was effected, I think but 
 one opinion can be given as to the result 
 attained, and that is, that it has been a 
 grand success. 
 
 In all great changes that are carried out, 
 some small errors are sure to creep into the 
 arrangements necessary for their fulfilment : 
 this was so in the Emancipation Act of 
 Russia. There were many conflicting in- 
 terests to guard, and much diversity of 
 opinion existed as to the best means to be 
 adopted in order to act with fairness, as well 
 to the landlords as to the serfs themselves ; 
 and probably, had the matter been better 
 understood and more discussed by the 
 people themselves, the clauses which related 
 to the measurement of the land, and which 
 
 E 
 
50 Russia in 1870. 
 
 still bound the peasant to the soil for a term 
 of years, would not have appeared in the 
 regulations. 
 
 However, it is not my wish to discuss the 
 details of the Act itself, but only for a 
 moment to allude to the measurement of 
 the land clause, as bearing more particularly 
 upon the question as to whether the result 
 has been fair to the proprietors. 
 
 By the Act, although the amount of land 
 which was to be allowed the peasants was 
 fixed from a minimum of two and three- 
 quarters to a maximum of twenty-five acres, 
 they were permitted to retain possession 
 of the land that they actually held until 
 such time as it should be measured and 
 the legal quantity assigned them. This 
 law being sanctioned in 1861, gave first 
 two years, which was afterwards increased 
 to eight, in which the land was to be 
 measured and allotted. 
 
Russia in 1870. 51 
 
 Should the measurement not have been 
 accomplished in this time, then the quantity 
 of land actually in the occupation of the 
 peasants was to be considered as the 
 proper allowance, and be allowed them in 
 perpetuity. 
 
 The official whose duty it was to see the 
 land fairly measured was the " Miravoy 
 Pasrednick," or arbitrator of peace, an 
 office created by the Emancipation Act, 
 and, in fact, a sort of judge between the 
 proprietor and peasant. 
 
 These arbitrators were, in the first place, 
 much too sparingly appointed, and con- 
 sequently in many instances had more 
 business than they could - manage; in other 
 cases they were lazy and would not work; 
 and again, others meddled in concerns they 
 had nothing to do with, and assumed duties 
 which did not belong to them, to the 
 neglect of those for which they were prin- 
 E 2 
 
52 Russia in 1870. 
 
 cipally appointed, viz., the measurement of 
 the land. 
 
 Proper surveys had to be made, and 
 these, when shown to the peasants, were 
 almost invariably refused, as, being made by 
 the proprietors, they were assumed by the 
 Mujiks to be unfair to them. 
 
 This, then, entailed a resurvey by the 
 Government surveyor, which consumed more 
 time ; and thus it became difficult to get the 
 matter finished. 
 
 The arbitrator of peace would be re- 
 quested to measure the land, but frequently 
 not attending, the people got tired of sending 
 for him, and began to look upon the affair 
 as hopeless. This difficulty was only felt 
 by large proprietors, the man with the small 
 estate getting his measurements finished in 
 the time allowed. 
 
 By the last law, then, on the subject, all 
 such measurements must be commenced in 
 
Russia in 1870. 53 
 
 the time named, and as this commencement 
 only required the plans to be sent in by the 
 proprietor, the fault was his if not done. 
 
 When this measurement will be finished I 
 do not know, but from my experience, if the 
 Executive does not brush up the arbitrator, 
 it will last a long time yet. 
 
 Judging from what I have seen, I should 
 consider that the peasants on nearly all the 
 large estates were in possession of more land 
 than the legal quantity, and as every year 
 \Vhilst this measurement continues in abey- 
 ance the peasant gradually enlarges his 
 boundaries, in most instances he has far 
 exceeded his limit in quantity. 
 
 The peasant naturally took the best land 
 he could find, and the proprietor is damnified 
 to the extent of having lost his rent of it 
 for the last ten years. 
 
 In a property of half a million of acres 
 which I had under my management, there 
 
54 Russia in 1870. 
 
 were thirty-six villages with a population of 
 about forty thousand people ; and when I 
 came to have the land measured, I found 
 that all the villages but two had more land 
 than they had any right to, and some very 
 considerably more. Now, all this land was 
 cultivated surely a sufficient proof that so 
 far the emancipation has not failed, by 
 reason of the peasants not utilizing the land 
 given them, one of the popular fallacies 
 which is very prevalent. 
 
 I am aware that there is rather a nume- 
 rous party who are apt to describe the 
 emancipation as a failure : it is somewhat 
 difficult to get at the arguments upon which 
 such an assertion is founded. One of the 
 most common is that to which I have 
 already alluded ; another is that the land- 
 owners cannot get enough labourers to till 
 that portion of the land whioh has been 
 left to them. 
 
Russia in 1870. 55 
 
 I do not believe that this statement is 
 true, or that, if it is a fact, that in some 
 portions of the empire a difficulty is 
 found in obtaining the necessary amount of 
 labour at particular seasons of the farming 
 year, say at haymaking and harvest-time ; 
 it is owing to the effects of the emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 Admitting that it is not to the advantage 
 of the proprietor that he should find any 
 difficulty in obtaining labour, I contend that, 
 as regards the peasant, it is a proof that 
 he has received direct benefit from his 
 freedom, as it is evidence of his having 
 enough employment on his own land to 
 occupy his time. 
 
 Some may say this is no proof, as he 
 may be, on the contrary, spending his time 
 in idleness. This I deny. He and his 
 family must live or starve : starve they 
 don't, and beg they don't. 
 
56 Russia in 1870. 
 
 In no country that I have visited have I 
 observed less begging than in Russia. 
 
 In the large towns beggars exist, as they 
 do in all large towns ; but even these are 
 more of the professional sort than one sees 
 elsewhere. By professional I mean those 
 who beg in kind and not for money, selling 
 what they receive. 
 
 Such a Russian beggar is always provided 
 with a large wallet, in which he collects his 
 alms, very generally lumps of bread, and 
 these he regularly sells. In the country 
 and the small towns beggars are very rare, 
 and generally confined to those soliciting 
 alms at the church-door; but these speci- 
 mens usually are the old and decrepit of 
 either sex. 
 
 If there is a scarcity of labour (which I 
 do not admit), it is rather to be traced to 
 the fact of the larger extent of ground now 
 under cultivation. 
 
Russia in 1870. 57 
 
 Many of the proprietors finding that the 
 emancipation had taken away a great part 
 of their income, by giving them in ah 1 cases 
 a fixed " Obrok," in place of, in many in- 
 stances, the large sums which they or their 
 intendants used to screw out of these 
 much-oppressed serfs, naturally turned their 
 attention to their properties, and began to 
 farm on their own account to a greater 
 extent than they had before attempted. 
 Finding, as they assert, a scarcity of labour, 
 the cry was raised that the emancipation 
 had ruined them ; whereas the true reason 
 was the natural difficulty they found in 
 getting sufficient hands to till the ground 
 that had lain idle for years, and had conse- 
 quently neither required or employed labour. 
 
 I have, however, a very decided opinion 
 that the time will come when labour will 
 be scarce in Eussia, unless some plan is 
 adopted to encourage emigration from those 
 
58 Russia in 1870. 
 
 parts where there is a superabundance of 
 workmen to those places where the deficiency 
 exists. 
 
 In spite of all that has been written about 
 the nomadic tendencies of the Russians, it 
 is not at all an easy task to get them to 
 emigrate ; they do not like changing their 
 homes, and no man more than a Russian 
 loves his native village. 
 
 As the emancipated serf feels his freedom 
 and his footing, and sees what a compara- 
 tively good position he really occupies, he 
 will become gradually aware of the fact 
 that he is independent of seeking other 
 work than on his own land, that his land 
 is enough and more than enough for his 
 wants ; and as railways give him the oppor- 
 tunity of selling his produce at better prices, 
 and increased locomotion and intelligence 
 teach him how to cultivate his ground more 
 profitably, he will in time become master of 
 
Russia in 1870. 59 
 
 his position and refuse to work for any but 
 himself. 
 
 In the mean time, unless by some means 
 the population may be increased, I think 
 labour will get scarcer and scarcer. 
 
 That it must rise in price is clear, as 
 until now the wages in towns are too high, 
 in comparison with those of the rural 
 population ; and the establishment of good 
 communications must cause the day's pay 
 of the Mujik to be much enhanced. 
 
 That at the present moment there can 
 be no scarcity of labour, is proved by the 
 rapid and daily rise in the value of land. 
 
 In any good land district this augment- 
 ation in price is immense : land that a few 
 years ago could be bought for ten roubles 
 a deciatine,* is now in demand at seventy 
 roubles ; and paying these prices to farm 
 
 About 2J acres. 
 
60 Russia in 1870. 
 
 oneself leaves a handsome remuneration, 
 so that now proprietors must be reaping 
 greater advantages from their land than 
 they were before the emancipation ; never 
 mind whether it is owing to that fact or 
 not. 
 
 I do not believe the nobility of Russia 
 have lost anything from the loss of gra- 
 tuitous serf labour, if the expression is 
 taken in its fair meaning. 
 
 The nobility of Russia, or rather that 
 portion of them who now raise that cry, 
 did not reap their large incomes from 
 " gratuitous serf labour," but from the 
 incomes of their serfs who had permission 
 to go and seek employment in the towns 
 and elsewhere, and paid annually large sums 
 as rent for this permission. 
 
 In all my conversations on the subject, 
 I have found these ideas predominate in 
 the minds of those who are able to, and do 
 
Russia in 1870. 61 
 
 give an honest and disinterested opinion. 
 Some of the intendants of the largest pro- 
 perties in the empire have borne out to 
 me the truth of these remarks : people, 
 many of whom have spent all their lives 
 in what was no doubt nigger- driving, 
 have attested these statements as being 
 correct. 
 
 The above are, I believe, the principal 
 facts the anti-emancipation party rely upon, 
 and, as I have said, in my humble opinion 
 there is not a word of truth in them. 
 But, to judge of the real effect, and form 
 an opinion whether this great work is or 
 is not a failure, I prefer looking to the 
 peasants themselves, and from that crude 
 source arrive at my conclusions. 
 
 In all I see there I see signs of improve- 
 ment. I notice new houses in the villages, 
 much repairing of the old ones, the fields 
 better fenced, the yards enlarged, the 
 
62 Russia in 1870. 
 
 iron tickets of the fire insurance companies 
 fixed up on many of the houses of the more 
 prosperous ci-devant serfs, the horses more 
 generally shod, the more general use of 
 iron tires on the cart-wheels, the use of 
 candles in the dwellings in place of pieces 
 of pine-wood, the men and women both 
 dressing better, a demand for the means 
 of education, a knowledge that they are 
 protected by the law, a better idea of 
 what is going on in the neighbouring 
 town, the entering into small businesses, 
 such as millers, tanners, barge owners, 
 steamboat proprietors, cattle dealers, iron- 
 masters, &c., using rough machinery to 
 prepare their flax and winnow their corn, 
 treating their women-folk with more con- 
 sideration, less living in a state of con- 
 cubinage among the people. 
 
 Instances of all the foregoing are to be 
 observed by a careful traveller in Russia. 
 
Russia in 1870. 63 
 
 Are they not all, I ask, a proof that the 
 peasant is improving ? And are not most 
 of them facts which never would have arisen 
 under a system of serfage ? 
 
 I ask the reader if I am not right in my 
 assertion, that the emancipation is not a 
 failure, but on the contrary, a success, and 
 a great one too. 
 
 Could such conversations as the following 
 have taken place with serfs but I heard 
 them with emancipated ones. 
 
 At a small buffet on the Moscow Nijny 
 railway, a general in full uniform (which 
 personage in old times, was considered by 
 the peasants as Old Nick himself, as far 
 as his means of torture and exercising those 
 means went) was having a row with a waiter, 
 the man did not attend to something the 
 general had ordered, and was giving him 
 some reply. 
 
 "Don't you know I'm a general?" 
 
64 Russia in 1870. 
 
 responded the infuriated red-lined coated 
 aristocrat. 
 
 " Oh yes," said the waiter, " I see you 
 are, but now generals are not any more than 
 anybody else." 
 
 Under the old regime, I should hardly 
 have liked to have been the waiter, whereas 
 under the new, he had the best of it, and 
 the laugh was all on his side. 
 
 The other conversation was this : Riding 
 in a Tarentasse, accompanied by the colonel 
 of one of the crack cavalry regiments, we 
 found our post coachman not going fast 
 enough ; we tried hollowing at him, it was 
 no use ; swearing also had no effect ; then 
 my friend stood up, when the driver knowing 
 what that generally meant in old times, 
 turned round and, addressing the man of 
 wrath, said, 
 
 "You know, Excellency, you daren't hit 
 me now," which had the very natural con- 
 
Russia in 1870. 65 
 
 sequence of shutting my companion up, as 
 he is one of the right sort, and was quite 
 as much pleased as I was to see such inde- 
 pendence, and the knowledge the man had of 
 his newly-acquired rights. To show more 
 fully the strength of this anecdote on the 
 bearing of the question under discussion, I 
 should remark that this prince who was 
 with me, was a landowner owning an estate 
 of some hundreds of thousands of acres, 
 situated a few versts only from where 
 this incident took place, and therefore 
 well known to the peasant as being the 
 most powerful man in his part of the 
 country. 
 
 Who can say, then, that the self-opinion 
 of the peasant is not improving, and is 
 not this attribute one of the most desirable 
 to observe in people rising from a state of 
 slavery and bondage*? If necessary I could 
 write very much more about the improve- 
 1 
 
66 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ments of the man, and the success of the 
 emancipation, but in these pages much more 
 will be gathered in anecdotes and otherwise, 
 to show what he was and what he is, or 
 perhaps more strictly speaking, what he is 
 coming to. 
 
 The emancipated serf is beyond a doubt 
 the most important and interesting subject 
 for observation in Russia ; he has been much 
 maligned, but study him as I have studied 
 him, live with him and over him as I 
 have done for years, learn to know him 
 thoroughly, get him above all things to trust 
 you and then to talk with you, and after 
 having done all these myself to a con- 
 siderable extent, I am not ashamed to tell 
 my aristocratic friends in Russia that I like 
 their emancipated serf and that the emanci- 
 pation has been a very great success. 
 
 This great reform, tnen, was followed by 
 the introduction of railways. 
 
Russia in 1870. 67 
 
 Although Russia is a country in which 
 railways must, in course of time, become 
 self-supporting and intrinsically profitable, 
 private enterprise had hitherto recoiled 
 before the map of immense distances and 
 widely- distributed towns ; and no important 
 addition to the one railroad from St. Peters- 
 burg to Moscow would probably have been 
 seen by this generation, had not the Em- 
 peror's Government undertaken the matter 
 in a provident spirit, and incurred the pre- 
 sent losses of construction or guarantee for 
 the sake of the country and the future. 
 
 The Emperor, the landed proprietor, and 
 the peasant, reap a common benefit from the 
 network of lines that has now brought the 
 capital within easy reach of all the marts, 
 granaries, and mines of the empire, and 
 opened convenient ports of shipment to in- 
 exhaustible stores of mineral wealth and 
 immense tracts of excellent corn-producing 
 
 -n O 
 
 .V -J 
 
68 Russia in 1870. 
 
 land, until now cut off and isolated by their 
 distance from the coast. 
 
 That the empire has gained vastly in 
 military strength by its new means of com- 
 munication between the capital and the 
 distant frontiers is self-evident. 
 
 It is related that the plans of the rail- 
 road from St. Petersburg to Moscow were 
 submitted for approval to the Emperor 
 Nicholas. He was begged to decide be- 
 tween the rival claims of two diverging 
 lines, and set the matter at rest by laying 
 a ruler across the map and marking a 
 direct line from terminus to terminus ; and 
 the railway was constructed accordingly. 
 There is only one town, Twer, of any 
 importance at all on the whole journey of 
 400 miles. 
 
 The country people make frequent use of 
 the means of travelling afforded them to 
 visit the chief cities, carrying back with 
 
Russia in 1870. 69 
 
 them broader and more intelligent ideas 
 than they are used to acquire in their 
 villages. 
 
 This influence is now at work throughout 
 the country, to the destruction of old pre- 
 judices and the general improvement of the 
 people. 
 
 With the increase of travelling, the vexa- 
 tious old restrictions on the liberty of so 
 doing are becoming things of the past. 
 Ten years ago, those restrictions were abo- 
 minable ; everywhere passports were de- 
 manded; and delays, vexation, and bribery 
 were the traveller's hourly experience. Now 
 the system is changed, and the same pass- 
 port serves from one end of the empire to 
 another, without interference of officials or 
 police, or restrictions on your perfect free- 
 dom of action. 
 
 In a journey that I made a year ago over 
 more than 10,000 versts, I was not asked 
 
70 Russia in 1870. 
 
 for, and therefore never produced my pass- 
 port at all. 
 
 The tendency of Russian policy is now in 
 all matters liberal. In a society so peculiarly 
 constituted as that of Russia, the introduc- 
 tion of any reform is a task to be cautiously 
 undertaken. The last tariff, although de- 
 cidedly protective to English ideas, is 
 yet a great improvement on the previous 
 one. 
 
 A steady reform is going on in the subor- 
 dinate offices of the administration ; the 
 number of the officials has been in several 
 departments considerably reduced ; ancient 
 abuses are brought to light, and, gently or 
 suddenly, as the case requires, are swept 
 away ; and I speak after my personal know- 
 ledge of the officials the heads of depart- 
 ments are, one and all, pledged to a thorough 
 administrative reform. 
 
 It can be easily understood that the task 
 
Russia in 1870. 71 
 
 of breaking through this venal state of 
 things was an arduous one ; the affair had 
 become so ramified, that it was difficult to 
 get to the bottom of it ; the subordinates in 
 the different offices had got matters into 
 their own hands, and it was almost impossible 
 to find out who was in the swim and who 
 was not. 
 
 Vigorous measures, however, succeeded ; 
 and now a very different state of things 
 exists. 
 
 Take as an example the department of 
 finance which, under the honest and able 
 ministry of Mr. de Reutern and his adjoint, 
 General Greig, is conducted to-day as much 
 like a Western European establishment as 
 possible, and is a model for some of the 
 others to follow. 
 
 The impudent extortion of the typical 
 Russian " official" of the old school is hap- 
 pily impossible now. In the days when they 
 
72 Russia in 1870. 
 
 flourished, such men would accost you most 
 candidly, demand your sympathy with their 
 empty pockets, large families, and small pay ; 
 explain by what process or fiction of arbi- 
 trary power they could annoy you, and leave 
 you in the impossibility of not understanding 
 that, unless you did "so and so" (alluding 
 to roubles), they would reluctantly have to 
 do "so and so " in the name of prostituted 
 law. 
 
 An occasion of doing their duty was to 
 them no more than a chance of extorting 
 money ; and no consideration of public safety 
 or possible consequence was too important 
 for a pecuniary compromise. 
 
 I found myself one summer evening in 
 a well-known pleasure garden at Moscow, 
 the proprietor of which believed that he had 
 acquired a sort of English nationality in 
 early life by exhibiting a collection of per- 
 forming dogs to our late Queen Dowager, 
 
Russia in 1870. 73 
 
 and took every opportunity of ventilating 
 his limited knowledge of our language. 
 
 He was discussing his personal grievances 
 with me, and in broken English said : 
 
 "Look at these blackguards of people/' 
 pointing to a party of officials faring 
 sumptuously at his expense " after I had 
 paid three hundred roubles for my licence, 
 a hundred roubles for the brandy patent, 
 a heap of money for the lease after all 
 this, a man came to me and said : ( I am 
 the government architect, if you don't give 
 me fifty roubles, I will write a certificate 
 
 that the whole d d place is going to 
 
 tumble down.' ' % 
 
 I asked him what was his answer, 
 
 " Why, I paid the money because it was 
 
 true; the whole d d place was going 
 
 to tumble down." 
 
 And so the matter was compromised; 
 the architect pocketed his roubles and the 
 
74 Russia in 1870. 
 
 public continued to drink tea and vodky 
 at the hazard of their lives. 
 
 In justice to the venal tribe, it must be 
 admitted that their roguery was an inevit- 
 able result of the administrative system, in 
 which it must have been calculated, when 
 their salaries were determined at a rate at 
 which it was plainly impossible for them to 
 subsist. 
 
 A judge in one of the old provincial 
 courts informed me that his annual salary 
 was 200 roubles about thirty pounds a 
 year and "how can I live upon that? " he 
 said. 
 
 How, indeed, he did manage to live, and 
 prosper, with such a salary, will be pro- 
 bably conjectured from his next speech to 
 me. 
 
 " Now, as you have plenty of business 
 to do in my court, and continually have 
 to send your clerks over here to do it, 
 
Russia in 1370. 75 
 
 don't you think it would be a good thing 
 if you were to appoint me your attorney ? 
 It would save you a good deal of expense 
 and trouble, and you would be sure to have 
 your business done properly." 
 
 I believe that his mind, grown rusty in 
 the long practice of a vicious system, did 
 not really understand the incongruity of 
 the arrangement he proposed ; and that he 
 was less offended than surprised by what 
 he considered the squeamish folly of my 
 refusal. 
 
 I believe also that he had a certain 
 confidence in the general justice of my 
 cause, and did not contemplate the pos- 
 sibility of being called upon to deliver an 
 unjust sentence on my behalf; but it is 
 hard to believe that my antagonists would 
 have had a fair chance, if the arrangement 
 had been concluded, in any case on which 
 the arguments were pretty equally balanced. 
 
76 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The rigid reserve and dignified indif- 
 ference to personal considerations, which 
 we regard as the indispensable attribute of 
 a judge, were unknown in Russia. My 
 clerk, returning from a court in which I 
 had been interested in a number of cases, 
 in some as plaintiff, in others as defendant, 
 would bring me from the judge confidential 
 tidings of the progress of my various suits : 
 " Such and such a matter has been decided 
 in your favour," "Ivan Ivanovitch was 
 pronounced to be in fault," " Michael 
 Michaelovitch had no case," and so on 
 "in fact" summing it all up "every- 
 thing has been decided as you wished ; " 
 then, "the judge sends his compliments 
 to you, and would you be kind enough 
 to send him a few roots of dahlias for his 
 garden." 
 
 Such were the amenities that smoothed 
 away the vexations inseparable from a fre- 
 
Russia in 1870. 77 
 
 quent appeal to the strong arm of the 
 law. 
 
 But not only were the favour and autho- 
 rity of the judge a marketable commodity ; 
 even the least of the understrappers had 
 his dues, and levied his share of black-mail, 
 for the performance of the most ordinary 
 of his duties of routine. 
 
 Supposing, for example, that you entered 
 a public office for the transaction of some 
 matter of regular routine ; you approached 
 the prt>per " Tchinovnik " (who, immediately 
 he saw your intention, began to scribble 
 most assiduously) with a polite and friendly 
 " Good morning, Ivan Ivanovitch." Ivan 
 ignored you, and his pen travelled faster 
 and faster, repeat the salutation a dozen 
 times, Ivan would be deaf as the paper he 
 was spoiling. Then you would quietly lay 
 a three rouble note on his paper, and 
 again say, " Good morning, Ivan Ivan- 
 
78 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ovitch," and inquire into the state of his 
 health. Ivan would start as if electrified 
 from the deep absorption of his industry, 
 and with a friendly shake of the hand 
 inquire what he could have the pleasure 
 to do for you. Then you might be sure 
 that your business would be completed 
 with all the dispatch possible, for which, 
 without the pecuniary incentive, you might 
 have waited until you were weary. 
 
 It must occur to everybody, that a judge 
 open to receive money must frequently find 
 himself in the difficulty of being paid by 
 both parties. A curious instance of that 
 came within my experience. 
 
 I had an important case in a local court, 
 and the decision arrived at by the judges 
 was privately reported to me in advance 
 of its public announcement; and it was a 
 very awkward decision for the interests I 
 represented. Now the judges, I knew, 
 
Russia in 1870. 79 
 
 were friends, both of my adversary and 
 myself, and they wished to please us both 
 as far as possible. 
 
 Accordingly they came to a decision of 
 this kind : " Verdict for the plaintiff, with 
 right of appeal to defendant ; the judgment 
 not to be enforced until the result of the 
 appeal was known." 
 
 The last part of this judgment was plainly 
 contrary to the laws of the land ; and on the 
 whole the decision would have amounted to 
 nothing at all, as the appeal would last for 
 
 years. 
 
 I sent my clerk to the court in due course 
 
 to read and transcribe the sentence from the 
 register of the court. He found it was not 
 entered in the terms that had been com- 
 municated to me, the last clause was omitted 
 and the judgment was dead against our 
 interests. 
 
 By closely examining the register, however, 
 
80 Russia in 1870. 
 
 he discovered that the paper on which the 
 sentence was recorded had been newly pasted 
 into the register, in place of the proper 
 leaves of the register which had been torn 
 out ; further, the record of the sentence had 
 not been signed by the secretary of the 
 court. Hereupon I questioned the secretary 
 in the matter, and pointed out to him that, 
 according to law, to tamper with registers 
 or alter decisions was a Siberian affair 
 what did it mean ? 
 
 He confessed that, when the court dis- 
 covered their previous decision to be illegal, 
 they cut out the leaves of the register on 
 which it was recorded, and pasted in the 
 new ones. They threw the old sentence 
 into the stove, but, as there was no fire, 
 he had taken them out, and, in fact, here 
 they were ! 
 
 I need scarcely add that, having brought 
 the whole transaction to the knowledge of 
 
Russia in 1870. 81 
 
 the proper authorities ad hoc, I heard no 
 more of the second decision, and the case 
 had to be begun over again. I never knew 
 for certain what became of the court, but I 
 believe they were all suspended. 
 
 The old law of evidence in Russia pre- 
 cluded a party to bear witness in his own 
 case. 
 
 A curious story exemplifying the effect of 
 this law is current in Moscow. It is related 
 that a certain prince of high family, and who 
 had a fastidious taste for dress, was very much 
 dissatisfied with a suit of clothes which he 
 had received from a fashionable tailor of the 
 place, and he called at the tailor's house to 
 remonstrate. The tailor treated his noble 
 visitor with contempt, told him that he did 
 not permit that his clothes should be found 
 fault with, and ended the interview abruptly 
 by kicking the prince downstairs; there 
 happened to be nobody looking on. 
 
82 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The prince went immediately to the com- 
 missary of police of the district, and 
 demanded redress. The " Quartalnik," as a 
 stereotyped preliminary, inquired, " Where 
 are your witnesses?" Unfortunately there 
 were none nobody witnessed the assault 
 but the parties to it. The " Quartalnik " 
 could only shrug his shoulders helplessly, 
 and express his regret that he was unable 
 to act in the matter. 
 
 The prince, not despairing at one failure, 
 but steadily ascending through all the ranks 
 of official precedence, applied successively to 
 the fourth, third, and second police-master, 
 always with the same result ; without the pro- 
 duction of witnesses no steps could be taken. 
 
 Finally, he went to the first police-master, 
 repeated his case, and added 
 
 " Now, Excellency, although I know that 
 this tailor makes your clothes also, I have 
 no doubt you pay for them. I believe that 
 
Russia in 1870. 83 
 
 your aides, to whom my previous applica- 
 tions have been addressed, do not. I trust, 
 therefore, that you will procure me some 
 satisfaction for the insult I have sustained." 
 The high officer answered, like his subor- 
 dinates, " Where are your witnesses ?" 
 
 However, on the following day the prince 
 received a letter from the police-master, 
 telling him to expect a visit from the 
 offending tailor at a certain hour to apolo- 
 gize. A few minutes before the appointed 
 time, the prince sent his servant on an 
 errand to the other end of the town and 
 received the tailor alone ; he then locked the 
 door, horsewhipped the tailor, and finally 
 kicked him downstairs. 
 
 The astounded tailor, who had been led 
 to look for a gracious acceptance of his 
 apology, hurried off to the police-master to 
 tell how unexpectedly he had been received. 
 " I went," said he, " solely to be agreeable 
 Q 2 
 
84 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to your Excellency, believing that the prince 
 would receive an apology; instead of that 
 he has beaten me and kicked me downstairs, 
 and I demand justice." 
 
 The chief sent again to the prince, and 
 remonstrated that he had treated the tailor 
 so ill under the circumstances, that, instead 
 of listening to the apology the tailor came 
 prepared to make, he had beaten the man 
 and kicked him downstairs. 
 
 " Indeed, Excellency," said the prince, 
 " the tailor may have told you that story ; 
 but where are his witnesses ? " 
 
 About the last case of glaring jobbery 
 under the old law which I heard of was the 
 following : 
 
 A case at law, which had lasted many 
 years, was at last decided by the senate in 
 a manner that would have ruined the un- 
 successful litigant. 
 
 He was at his wits' ends, and had resigned 
 
Russia in 1870. 85 
 
 himself to the inevitable loss of the whole 
 of his substance, when he was visited one 
 morning by a small bullet-headed Tchinovnik, 
 who, without much circumlocution, asked 
 him what his fee would be if he could manage 
 to stave off the execution of the sentence of 
 the court. The other at first pointed out 
 that it was impossible he could do so, as 
 the senate had decided, and from their 
 decision there was no appeal. " Never 
 mind that," said the Tchinovnik. "Will 
 you give me 5,000 roubles if I postpone 
 the verdict for six months ? " " Willingly," 
 said the other ; " but how are you going 
 to do it?" "Never mind that; that is 
 my business. Do you remember our bar- 
 gain ? " The Tchinovnik left him very 
 partially reassured ; but in effect time 
 passed on, and, to his surprise, he heard 
 nothing of the verdict, and so began to 
 believe his Tchinovnik was at work. 
 
86 Russia in 1870. 
 
 In the meantime he was not idle, but 
 steadily realized his property, which lay in 
 the Government of Tambov, and when he 
 had turned it nearly all into portable assets 
 he took a journey to Switzerland, " for the 
 benefit of his health," he said. From this 
 haven of refuge he corresponded with his 
 creditor, and made a satisfactory compro- 
 mise and settlement of his claim; after 
 which he returned to Russia. 
 
 At the end of about six months he was 
 notified of the sentence of the court, now 
 harmless ; and the Tchinovnik claimed his fee. 
 
 When he had received it he explained 
 how he had managed the affair. " Nothing 
 could be easier," he said ; "it is my duty 
 to address the envelopes that contain the 
 notification of the sentence of the court. 
 I happened, by misadventure, to have ad- 
 dressed yours wrongly to the Governor of 
 Tomsk instead of Tambov, and, as you 
 
Russia in 1870. 87 
 
 know, it takes, including our official for- 
 malities, at least six months for a letter to 
 go to Tomsk and back; so the error was 
 not discovered until the time that I promised 
 you had elapsed." 
 
 "Did you not get into trouble for the 
 blunder ? " asked the defendant. " Not I. 
 You see, it was a mistake that anybody 
 might make for once merely the direction 
 of an envelope to the wrong governor ! " 
 
 The abuses that I have exemplified in 
 the above few anecdotes are now being fast 
 swept away by the new law that, under the 
 present Emperor, has already been put in 
 force in many of the governments of the 
 Empire. 
 
 Already the Emperor Nicholas had set 
 in motion the machinery resulting in this 
 immense reform, by the establishment of an 
 excellent school of jurisprudence for the 
 education of young men to the profession 
 
Russia in 1870. 
 
 of the law. Their studies must have been 
 voluminous and complicated, for the old law 
 consolidated under the Czar Alexai Michaelo- 
 vitch in the year 1664, contained upwards 
 of 30,000 statutes, which were classified and 
 arranged by the order of Nicholas. 
 
 It was not found possible to introduce the 
 new law all over Russia at once, for the 
 want of men fitted in ability to be the 
 judges of the provincial courts. 
 
 Under the old regime, the so-called ad- 
 ministration of justice was carried on by 
 written forms in private sittings. Probably 
 the greatest benefit under the new law is, 
 that the administration of justice is now 
 public, and that the superior judges are 
 irremovable. 
 
 To every district a paid justice of the 
 peace is appointed by election of the inhabit- 
 ants and landed proprietors of each district. 
 This election must be renewed every three 
 
Russia in 1870. 89 
 
 years, at the expiration of which time he 
 retires, but is eligible for re-election. He 
 must be qualified by the possession of a cer- 
 tain amount of landed property. With no 
 appeal from his decision he can inflict a fine 
 not exceeding fifteen roubles, or a term of 
 imprisonment of not more than three days ; 
 but subject to further appeal his jurisdic- 
 tion in civil matters extends to all cases 
 in which the value involved is not more 
 than 500 roubles ; in criminal cases, to 
 those for which the punishment fixed by law 
 is not more than three months of prison. 
 
 An appeal from his decision may be carried 
 to the assembly of justices of the peace, which 
 court maybe compared to our quarter sessions. 
 This decision is final, as in subordinate cases 
 there is no further appeal. 
 
 Large and important civil suits must be 
 brought, in the first place, at once before the 
 Circuit Court, in which, besides the judges, 
 
90 Russia in 1870. 
 
 sits the Procureur Imperial, whose duty it is 
 at the close of a case, to give the judges 
 his opinion of it, and particularly to point 
 out and explain to the court the particular 
 statutes which bear upon the case. When 
 he has done this, the judges retire from the 
 court, and arrive at their decision among 
 themselves. 
 
 From this court of first instance there is 
 an appeal to the high court of justice, and 
 from that court to the senate ; not the old 
 senate, but a particular and special depart- 
 ment, which acts only as a Court of Cassa- 
 tion, does not enter into discussion of the 
 merits of the case brought before it, but only 
 of the strict legality of the proceedings of 
 the lower courts. 
 
 In heavy criminal cases regular trial by 
 jury is established ; the jurors being elected 
 from all classes. The judges are now well 
 paid, and therefore independent ; and the 
 
Russia in 1870. 91 
 
 old system of bribery and corruption is now 
 impossible. Generally, I have heard but one 
 opinion expressed in all parts of Russia, and 
 that is, that the new law works most satis- 
 factorily. For my own part, I can add my 
 testimony to its efficiency. I have had much 
 occasion to watch it at work, in the towns 
 and in the country places ; and, as all re- 
 actionary agencies are apt to go beyond their 
 mark, so I think it is with the courts esta- 
 blished under the new law, which are apt 
 to exaggerate beyond the limits of strict 
 justice the indulgence they show to the poor 
 man in his occasional disputes with his 
 wealthy neighbours. But this temporary 
 evil will subside with the novelty of the 
 changes that have been effected. 
 
 It is a better error than the former evil, 
 when an observant writer on Russian policy 
 remarked, The administration of justice 
 was indeed the department most requiring 
 
92 Russia in 1870. 
 
 reform ; for of no country could it be more 
 truly said that " there is one law for the 
 poor, and another for the rich." 
 
 I have known the time when a man of 
 high military rank would literally override 
 everything and everybody in a so-called court 
 of justice ; now such a one is no better than 
 his neighbour, and before a justice of the 
 peace the Mujik receives the same justice as 
 the gentleman. 
 
 Under the old regime, the long delays of 
 the law, in criminal as well as in civil courts, 
 were notorious. Now, the decisions are so 
 prompt, that the peasants are bewildered. 
 I had occasion recently to prosecute a pea- 
 sant for stealing staves. He was found 
 guilty, and condemned to three months' im- 
 prisonment. The day after the trial, his 
 wife came to me, to ask me how much a 
 week I should allow her for the term of her 
 husband's imprisonment. I was astonished 
 
Russia in 1870. 93 
 
 at such a request, and I asked her, " Don't 
 you think he deserved it?" " Yes," she 
 said, " he certainly stole the staves ; but the 
 matter has been decided so quickly, that my 
 husband has had no time t<3 arrange his 
 affairs before he was sent away to prison." 
 
 If the Minister of Justice should ever read 
 that anecdote, it will tell him volumes of the 
 superior efficiency of the new law to the old. 
 
 There is a great want of clever advocates 
 in Russia ; as, until 1862, any free man could 
 act as an advocate before any court. The 
 chief cities are fairly provided with clever and 
 educated men of this profession, and some 
 among them are scrupulously honest. While 
 I write, I am reminded of such an excep- 
 tional advocate of Moscow, who has often 
 advised me in intricate matters, and aroused 
 my admiration, not alone for his great 
 talents and his perfect knowledge of his 
 own law, but for his equal familiarity with 
 
94 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the laws of foreign countries, especially our 
 own. 
 
 But in the country towns, a good lawyer 
 was rarely to be found. There was no dis- 
 tinction of solicitor and advocate as with us, 
 and nothing in the rules of the profession 
 prevented the most ignorant of men adopt- 
 ing it at their own pleasure. 
 
 Advocates attached to the courts esta- 
 blished by the new law, that is, to the 
 Circuit Courts, or the Supreme Courts, are 
 now sworn in ; and facilities for pleading on 
 behalf of their clients are allowed them, 
 which are withheld from strangers practising 
 as advocates. 
 
 I remember, a few months back, that my 
 attention was called to a drunken and loqua- 
 cious lawyer, at a public traktir in Nijny 
 Novgorod, who was exhibiting to the com- 
 pany his client's papers, powers of attorney, 
 and such things, and boasting of his influ- 
 
Russia in 1870. 95 
 
 ence in the courts. The man's appearance 
 fully confirmed what I was told of his station 
 in life he was a simple Mujik. 
 
 A remarkable advance in the principle, long 
 since an element of Russian society, of local 
 self-government, has been made by the insti- 
 tution of certain elected bodies called district 
 assemblies. One of these elected assemblies 
 is established in every district, and may be 
 described as combining the functions of our 
 vestries and Board of Works. It looks after 
 the roads, bridges, distribution of state 
 taxes amongst the population, &c., and 
 sends some of its members to the provincial 
 assembly, which looks after the general busi- 
 ness of the province, such as imposing taxes, 
 attending to hospitals, prisons, doctors, &c. 
 
 Local self-government is no new respon- 
 sibility for the Russian peasant, in theory, 
 however much the abuse of power may 
 have trammelled him hitherto in its prac- 
 
96 Russia in 1870. 
 
 tical enjoyment, and the working of the 
 new system of Zemstvoes is found to be 
 improving, although it must be admitted 
 that at present they have not done much. 
 In some provinces they have been able to 
 come to the assistance of the Government 
 by supporting a share of the burdens of 
 the guarantee, by means of which the 
 capital has been raised for the railways. 
 
 It is abundantly evident that the liberal 
 measures of the Government have inspired 
 confidence in the people. Many significant 
 facts prove this. 
 
 A few years ago, the peasantry hoarded 
 their savings in their own possession, having 
 no faith in the security of the Government 
 funds. Now, these savings of years are 
 being brought to daylight, and the invest- 
 ments of the peasantry have already pro- 
 duced a notable effect on the value of the 
 imperial securities. 
 
Russia in 1870. 97 
 
 The produce of the soil is improved in 
 value by the new facilities of transport that 
 the railways afford. The small farmer (and 
 all Russian peasants under the communal 
 system are small farmers) perceives that his 
 cereals fetch a better price in a distant 
 market than they do in the neighbouring 
 bazaar. This discovery puts into his head 
 an idea of trading ; he combines with his 
 neighbours to carry it out, and frequently 
 prospers beyond his most sanguine expecta- 
 tions. I know many men, formerly of the 
 lowest peasant class, who are now become 
 the heads of really important mercantile 
 concerns. 
 
 An important lesson that all Russians 
 have still to learn, and that probably 
 nothing but railway travelling will teach 
 them, is the value of time. I was travelling 
 once on the railway from Nijny Novgorod 
 to Moscow, and happened to remark to a 
 
 H 
 
98 Russia in 1870. 
 
 fellow-passenger that the train was two 
 hours behind time. He appeared to be 
 quite astonished at my noticing such a 
 trifle, and, after a puzzled pause, replied, 
 " What possible difference can it make to 
 you and me if we get to Moscow to-day or 
 to-morrow?" 
 
 Generally, manufactures and trade prosper 
 and increase under the new regime : the 
 people are becoming intelligent and apt to 
 imbibe new ideas ; newspapers are more 
 numerous, and more generally read, than 
 they used to be. One hears much free 
 discussion of politics and the acts of the 
 Government ; the masses are being aroused 
 to watchfulness of their own interests ; and 
 the old lethargy of despondency that a few 
 years ago was so characteristic of the 
 Russian character is altogether gone. 
 
 It is instructive to watch the annual 
 improvement of the budget during the past 
 
Russia in 1870. 99 
 
 lew years. In spite of the large annual 
 amount nearly thirteen millions sterling 
 required for the payment of interest on the 
 national debt, and setting aside extra- 
 ordinary receipts and extraordinary ex- 
 penditure, the deficit on the rest of the 
 account is now not so important, and is 
 diminishing year by year. 
 
 If Russia can only remain at peace for a 
 few years, her development must assuredly 
 be extraordinary. 
 
 This country, so rich in natural resources, 
 with her mineral wealth as yet unexplored, 
 her almost unlimited corn-producing power, 
 and her vast steppes of incalculable acreage 
 of pasture-land for cattle, requires only the 
 blessing of peace to be, under her present 
 liberally inclined Government, fully opened 
 up. What the future destiny of the mighty 
 Empire will be few can judge. With her 
 resources such as I have mentioned, her 
 H 2 
 
100 Russia in 1870. 
 
 system of making herself gradually inde- 
 pendent of other countries by the extension 
 of her own manufacturing power, she is 
 marching onwards rapidly yet surely ; and 
 few people, who have not travelled much 
 over the country, have any idea of what 
 she is doing. Russia is now making her 
 own rails in more places than one; several 
 manufactories exist for building railway 
 waggons; contracts have been undertaken 
 by native Russian subjects for the building 
 of locomotives : and the day is not far off 
 when Russian-built locomotives will be 
 running on Russian railways. 
 
 Government do all they can to foster 
 and encourage the increase of manufactories. 
 The restrictions that formerly harassed the 
 employer of labour and fettered trade, are 
 rapidly being abolished. 
 
 The Government itself, which was a large 
 manufacturer and producer (particularly of 
 
Russia in 1870. 101 
 
 metals), is transferring its interests to 
 private, therefore to more judicious and 
 profitable management than its own ; and 
 the principle is now thoroughly established 
 in the Empire, that government and not 
 commerce is the proper occupation of the 
 Crown. 
 
 A great field is opening up in Russia 
 for the immigration of foreign labour and 
 enterprise. In former years there was 
 always a certain risk attached to foreign 
 undertakings ; they were regarded with 
 disfavour, subjected to severe restrictions, 
 and occasionally suffered severely from the 
 injustice that was the rule of official business 
 rather than the occasional exception. Now, 
 on the contrary, their rights and liberties 
 are as safe as at home ; they are favoured 
 and protected, encouraged to set the ex- 
 ample of intelligent perseverance to the 
 natives, who follow in the track with much 
 
102 Russia in 1870. 
 
 alacrity when they are shown how money 
 
 is to be made. 
 
 . 
 
 I have made the acquaintance of many 
 English, Germans, and others now settled 
 in Russia, who, having come over as work- 
 ing mechanics, or, at best, as foremen to 
 works, have all achieved independence, 
 and many, great wealth in the country, and 
 are now engaged in large undertakings on 
 their own account. 
 
 An Englishman, settled in Tiumen, said 
 to me the other day, " Yes, I have just 
 come from a visit to the old country; but 
 I like Russia best. I was a foreman in 
 Glasgow seven years ago, when I had the 
 offer of coming here. I wanted to better 
 myself, and I came. Well, I have not 
 done so badly over here ; I have just 
 given up my situation, and I have got 
 15,000 roubles in the bank of my own, 
 and now I am going into building steam- 
 
Russia in 1870. 103 
 
 boats, which I mean to run on the Siberian 
 
 rivers." 
 
 This man would have been a long time 
 accumulating 2,000 as an engineer's fore- 
 man in Glasgow. 
 
 A sign of the change that is working 
 among the people, of their steady advance 
 in intelligence and prudence, is the recent 
 increase in the practice of life and fire in- 
 surance throughout the country. 
 
 Fire insurance has now become more 
 the rule, as may be seen in passing among 
 houses and other buildings in far-away 
 parts, by the metal badges of the companies 
 nailed to the walls. In the old times the 
 people had a strong religious prejudice against 
 insurance ; they said it was mistrusting 
 Providence. 
 
 In those days, when a fire broke out in 
 a village, the custom of the people was 
 first to remove their pictures of the saints, 
 
104 Russia in 1870. 
 
 then their little quantity of household goods, 
 take the windows out of the houses, and 
 so let the whole village blaze away ; while 
 they stood looking on with their hands 
 folded, and exclaimed, in their own lan- 
 guage, " It is the act of God 1 " This 
 happened often within my own experience. 
 Once, when I found the priest and all the 
 people quietly looking on at a large fire 
 close to a lake, I asked the " pope " why 
 he was not trying to put the fire out. 
 " No use to try that," he said, " it is the 
 act of God." "Well," I said, "I will try 
 what I can do ; " and, in effect, under my 
 orders, the people put the fire out before 
 very much damage was done. ISText morn- 
 ing I met the pope, and said to him: 
 " Well, you see we put that fire out last 
 night." " Oh, no," he said, " not you ; it 
 was the act of God 1 " 
 
105 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 T)EFORE the emancipation there were 
 only two classes of people in Russia 
 the nobles and the serfs, excepting always 
 the foreigners in the great towns. As 
 Bishop James, in his " Journal of a Tour 
 in 1813," says : " Looking to society in 
 Russia, we shall find there exist in fact 
 only two distinct classes, the nobles and 
 the slaves." This is altered now, and we 
 may divide the native population into at 
 least five classes: 1. The high aristocracy; 
 2. The landowners, or common nobility ; 
 
106 Russia in 1870. 
 
 3. The merchants, who have adopted French 
 ways of living and thinking, in imitation 
 of the aristocracy, and thus, as it were, 
 de-Russianized themselves ; 4. The native 
 merchants and tradesmen, who retain the 
 manners of their ancestors ; 5. The pea- 
 santry. 
 
 The first class is, in my opinion, a useless, 
 effete order of men. In spite of their elabo- 
 rate system of education, there are but few 
 individuals among them who write their 
 mark on society. They all speak a number 
 of languages with fluency ; they bow with 
 an extraordinary grace that would do credit 
 to a dancing- master ; they are superficially 
 polite, and versed in the shibboleths of the 
 fashionable world ; they are great con- 
 noisseurs of wine, horses, operas, and such 
 things; and epicures in eating, dressing, 
 and furnishing; but there is little that is 
 manly or earnest in the race ; and gene- 
 
Russia in 1870. 107 
 
 rations of luxury and vanity have turned 
 their blood to water. Brought up from the 
 cradle in luxurious and effeminate habits, 
 they never shake these off in after-life. 
 
 Their schoolboys are pasty-faced dolls 
 over-dressed little swells, in polished boots 
 and glossy clothes, for which they shudder 
 at a drop of rain. When I think of the 
 healthy schoolboy life of home, it makes 
 me pity these poor little mannikins, who 
 trot about the streets in the hands of a 
 governess, who lectures them everlastingly 
 on the proprieties. The boys are so like 
 girls that there is nothing to say of these 
 last, excepting perhaps that they are more 
 so. As a result they form a frivolous and 
 immoral society, a useless and costly ex- 
 crescence on the social body. In the reign 
 of the late Emperor, every young man was 
 obliged to serve in one or other of the 
 employments of the Government ; now this 
 
108 Russia in 1870. 
 
 is no longer compulsory, although regarded 
 as the proper thing to do. 
 
 The favourite branch of the service for the 
 youths of noble family is the Guards, whose 
 occupation it is, in handsome uniform and 
 equipments, to play at soldiers in the capital 
 for their work, and to kill time in their more 
 laborious hours of pleasure. 
 
 They are to be seen in multitudes at all 
 places of fashionable amusement, and with- 
 out them neither opera, concert, nor ball is 
 attractive to the upper class. 
 
 These spoilt children of fortune have 
 an amiable trait of their character, and 
 more agreeable companions by road or rail 
 it would be difficult to meet. They are 
 courteous and friendly to foreigners, how- 
 ever haughtily disposed to their countrymen; 
 well informed, too, in a certain way that is, 
 in matters relating to the lighter interests 
 of humanity, which are the business of their 
 
Russia in 1870. 109 
 
 lives. The politics of the Jockey Club and 
 the opera-house, for them fill the place of 
 more serious matters of interest, and they 
 are nearly all excellent players at games of 
 chance and skill. But it would be rash to 
 ask or expect from them information about 
 the antiquities or history of their country, 
 its frontier possessions, or internal resources. 
 They would give no better answer than my 
 postboy did, when I asked him about an 
 old Tartar earthwork, near Kosloff, that he 
 passed every day of his life, that his fore- 
 fathers probably helped to make " under the 
 knout." It was a long, low embankment, 
 with a dry moat at the foot, as plainly man's 
 work as a brick house, but he only knew of 
 it as a " little hill." 
 
 The better sort are not blind to the im- 
 perfections of the system of education, that 
 ends in the accomplishments of the ballroom 
 and the court, and they were well advised 
 
110 Russia in 1870. 
 
 by a learned man high in office when, a year 
 or two since, making a visit of inspection 
 at the University of Kertch, he said : 
 " Gentlemen, see if you cannot educate your 
 young men to make them more like men. 
 The present generation, I admit, are, 
 superficially, very intelligent. They are very 
 polite, make a very good appearance in a 
 ball-room, talk excellent French and other 
 modern languages ; but in spite of all this, 
 they positively know nothing at ah 1 . Talk 
 to them, and you will see that the majority 
 are, according to the ideas of the other 
 civilized nations of the world, not educated 
 at all. Now, gentlemen, teach them a little 
 more Latin, Greek, and history, and make 
 men of them ! " 
 
 In some houses where the claims of 
 society are less acknowledged, the fashion 
 of education falls into the opposite extreme, 
 and we find little pedants of ten years old 
 
Russia in 1870. Ill 
 
 at their book from morning to night, to the 
 destruction of their health and the confusion 
 of their mental faculties. Both boys and 
 girls are launched into society at an early 
 age, and from the date of that event 
 " society " claims them utterly, to the ex- 
 clusion of all solid national pursuits. 
 
 There are but a few learned societies in 
 St. Petersburg, but the members of the 
 aristocracy who belong to them are not 
 numerous. 
 
 The population of every country town 
 always includes a large number of persons 
 having more or less claim to the designa- 
 tion of noblemen. Their abundance is more 
 ridiculous here than in Germany. Every- 
 body who held freehold land was formerly 
 noble, and all their children and descendants 
 continue noble to the end of time. 
 
 As a consequence, multitudes of a low 
 position in the social scale claim the dis- 
 
112 Russia in 1870. 
 
 tinction ; and, to add to the crowd, every 
 Tchinovnik or servant of the Crown is 
 noble also by virtue of his office; so also 
 do certain distinctions at the universities 
 achieve nobility. 
 
 The Tchinovniks, educated in the gym- 
 nasium or public school of their district, are 
 not eminent either for learning or intelli- 
 gence. These men seldom know any language 
 but Russian, or anything else but the routine 
 of their duties and a few games of cards. 
 They eat enormously, sleep profoundly and 
 perpetually, and devote their waking moments 
 to gambling or the local theatres. 
 
 They are (less now than formerly) a proud 
 and exclusive set, disdaining the society of 
 the merchant class, whose admission to the 
 nobility club used to be rigorously prohibited. 
 The ladies of this exclusive set, not having 
 the resources of a club or even a nominal 
 employment, lead, if possible, a lazier, more 
 
Russia in 1870. 113 
 
 listless life than their husbands. What they 
 find to do besides eating, sleeping, and talking 
 scandal, they alone know. I have been 
 frequently in their houses, and I seldom or 
 never saw a book in their possession ; a 
 library, or any collection of books, is an 
 object of astonishment to them. 
 
 When it is remembered how principal a 
 part modern languages form of all educa- 
 tion in Russia, and that these Tchinovniks 
 abound in all country-towns, being in fact 
 the Government officials of their respective 
 quarters, it will be seen that the picture I 
 have drawn of their want of education is 
 not over-coloured from the following in- 
 cident. 
 
 A friend on his way to visit me, was 
 stopped in his journey by a river, which had 
 reached that stage of congelation at which it 
 can be crossed neither in a boat nor sledge 
 the ice, obstructing the water, and yet 
 
 i 
 
114 Russia in 1870. 
 
 being too weak to support a man's weight 
 my friend had to wait for the effects of 
 another day of frost before venturing to 
 continue his journey, but he could speak 
 no word of Russian, and had important 
 need of an interpreter. Under these cir- 
 cumstances the whole town was searched 
 for one, and it was only after repeated 
 attempts that at last a French lady, a 
 governess in a family, was discovered; not 
 one of the Tchinovnicks, nor their families, 
 being able to interpret a few words of 
 French, German, or English. 
 
 I know the town well. Among its 15,000 
 inhabitants I believe there are, at most, 
 three or four who can speak the French 
 language. 
 
 To close my remarks about the aristocracy 
 of Russia, I quote one of the most learned 
 professors in the city of Moscow, who said 
 to me, " the Russian aristocracy have all 
 
Russia in 1870. 115 
 
 the worst vices of the French grafted on 
 to their native barbarism." I believe this is 
 too severe a censure to pass on a whole 
 class, among which must be found many 
 amiable and highly intelligent individuals, 
 but I quote the words of a man respected 
 by themselves, to show that the opinion I 
 have expressed is not a hasty nor an 
 exaggerated one. The class is, collectively, 
 deserving of the worst I have said of them, 
 and it is clear that I am describing them 
 in the aggregate without detraction from 
 the few noble and exemplary exceptions to 
 be found in their centre. 
 
 The happiness and the well-being of the 
 millions of Russia have been for genera- 
 tions in their hands. Isolated by immense 
 distances from external pressure, supreme 
 and absolate in the midst of their ignorant 
 serfs, they have had a great opportunity 
 of elevating and promoting the happiness 
 
 i 2 
 
116 Russia in 1870. 
 
 of the latter. That they have shamefully 
 abused that opportunity is evident to the 
 most unreflecting traveller in their country. 
 The power is now taken from them the 
 accident of birth no longer makes each 
 among them a petty monarch. They are 
 brought out of their retirement to the light 
 of public observation, and what are they ? 
 an effeminate, enervated race, in which the 
 habits that lead to ruin are apparent; and 
 what are the people entrusted to them and 
 their fathers ? a long oppressed and down- 
 trodden race, who, in nine years of liberty, 
 have shown the world already the indications 
 of what they might have become generations 
 since, in the hands of wise or unselfish masters. 
 Inseparable from the idea of a Muscovy 
 trader is a vision of a bearded man in a 
 round black cap, in a long ungraceful-looking 
 cloth coat, and a pair of very high leather 
 boots to meet its skirts. The modern 
 
Russia in 1870. 117 
 
 merchant of Eussia has discarded all this, 
 and appears now-a-days on 'Change, close 
 shaven and trim in a suit of the fashionable 
 cut ; a keen and eager man of business, 
 liberal in his habits, large in his enterprise ; 
 a man moreover who has learned the money 
 value of a good position in " society." He 
 courts and cultivates "society," bnt he does 
 so as a means and not an end. Money is 
 his final aim and end. " Society" his means 
 reversing the creed of the southern sons 
 of trade the Frenchman whose manners 
 he imitates, or the Englishman whose busi- 
 ness habits he admires. He has learned 
 thoroughly the lesson, that reputation of 
 wealth is a sure road to its acquisition. 
 Gorgeous furniture, sumptuous feasts, won- 
 derful horses, and a wife hung in jewels, 
 are his advertisements, but he has no delight 
 in them for himself. However splendid and 
 costly the frequent feasts he will give, " as a 
 
118 Russia in 1870. 
 
 matter of business " to his clients, he returns 
 with real pleasure to his peasant habits 
 the moment that the motive for display is 
 removed. What do such men want with 
 money ? is a natural question when one 
 considers them. 
 
 The corporation of a country town hon- 
 oured me with a dinner ; and I slept at the 
 house of a rich merchant of the place. The 
 old gentleman took me, according to custom, 
 into every room of his house, and showed 
 me all the expensive property he had stuffed 
 it with pictures, furniture, ornaments, 
 clocks, carpets, silver and gold I was called 
 on to exhaust my vocabulary of admiration. 
 Among the rest he showed me his own bed- 
 room, furnished with a very fine bed, and he 
 asked me the invariable question, What did I 
 think of that ? I admired it properly I 
 thought it was magnificent ! (it was covered 
 with blue silk and lace.) " Yes," he said, 
 
Russia in 1870. 119 
 
 " that cost a deal of money/' but (winking 
 as nobody but a Russian knows how to wink) 
 " I don't sleep atop of that bed I sleep un- 
 derneath it ! " The children of these merchants 
 are in a dangerous position. As a rule, the 
 father of the family is a man of no education, 
 who has made his fortune too late in life to 
 have acquired polish by the luxury of his new 
 surroundings. There is a great gulf between 
 himself and his children " born in the pur- 
 ple." He has no pleasure in their society 
 nor they in his. His instincts and tastes are 
 repulsive to them, and theirs are of wasteful 
 folly to him. He leaves them at home to 
 the teachers and trainers he employs, whom 
 he looks to, to direct and carry out their 
 education. These governors and governesses 
 too often take a pleasure in assisting nature 
 to develope expensive and frivolous propen- 
 sities, and extinguish the better instincts of 
 their pupils. Latterly the custom has be- 
 
120 Russia in 1870. 
 
 come more general of sending such children 
 to travel through the countries of Europe. 
 They may return more enlightened, but not 
 often so well fitted to amass money as their 
 parents. 
 
 The hereditary merchant or trader of the 
 old school, who has held fast to the manners 
 of his ancestors, is a happier, if not so great 
 a man as his more ambitious brother. He 
 has not made sacrifice of his domestic life, 
 but keeps a simple home of his own, stocked 
 with wife and children of his own rank in 
 life, imbued with the same tastes and pre- 
 judices as himself, and sympathizing perfectly 
 in his ruling passion for the accumulation of 
 wealth. 
 
 Many of these old-fashioned traders are 
 possessed of really considerable fortunes, 
 laboriously amassed, copeck by copeck, 
 through a long career of industry and self- 
 denial. Considering their nationality and 
 
Russia in 1870. 121 
 
 their love of money, it is a remarkable fea- 
 ture of their character, that they have sub- 
 dued the Russian instinct for gambling. 
 They do not love rash speculation in trade, 
 nor do they play much at cards. They prefer 
 to plod along steadily in the beaten path 
 of their ancestors, meeting good times with 
 additional industry, and bad times with per- 
 severing economy. They are respectable 
 pious people, neglecting no church ordi- 
 nance, and zealously observing every holiday 
 and fast. In this as in other peculiarities 
 they strongly resemble the Jews. 
 
 It remains to be seen whether they will 
 bend their Russian stubbornness to compli- 
 ance with the changes and innovations which 
 the march of civilization is introducing into 
 their country. If not, they will inevitably 
 be crowded out of their livelihood by the 
 upstarting of foreign and " go-a-head " com- 
 petitors. 
 
122 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The Russian Mujik, or peasant, is a cha- 
 racter not to be described in a few words, 
 and the description of one type will apply to 
 the people of the many provinces of the 
 Empire. My own opportunities of observa- 
 tion have been extended to all the provinces 
 between St. Petersburg and Siberia, and 
 down south as far as Kief. Throughout this 
 vast tract of territory and deep in the wilds 
 of Siberia, the salient characteristics of the 
 peasantry are constantly the same. It is the 
 fashion among those who are interested in 
 perpetuating the degradation of the Mujik, 
 to describe him slightingly as a mere boor, 
 without education or refinement, or the wish 
 to acquire either ; to adopt a tone of absurd 
 condescension in intercourse with him, such 
 as would be assumed towards a child or a 
 superior kind of animal ; and, further, to 
 take amusement in fostering the principal 
 vice of his character, his passion for strong 
 
Russia in 1870. 123 
 
 drink. This was doubtless a very pretty and 
 aristocratic amusement so long as the Mujik 
 was tied hand and foot by the iniquitous 
 system of serfdom, dependant for his exist- 
 ence on the good pleasure of a master, and 
 without hope of achieving liberty or comfort 
 by his own exertions. But the time is at 
 hand when he will compete in a fair struggle 
 for existence with his former condescending 
 patrons, and I am no judge of character if the 
 contest do not prove in the end that the 
 down-trodden serf was a better man than his 
 master. 
 
 The privileged classes and the peasantry 
 in Russia are playing out the old fable of the 
 two shepherd dogs, alternately spoiled by 
 luxury in the city and invigorated by labour 
 and hardship in the fields, and the dog best 
 prepared to seize the wolf by the throat is 
 still that which has the most recently led the 
 hardest and the most laborious life. 
 
124 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The peasant is accused of want of educa- 
 tion, and, to the shame of those who have held 
 despotic control of his doings for many gene- 
 rations, the accusation is justified by facts. 
 He is entirely devoid of all literary educa- 
 tion. It is rarely indeed that a peasant is 
 found in any of the agricultural villages who 
 can read or write properly; and, speaking 
 from a particular and extensive knowledge of 
 the subject, I do not believe that one per 
 cent, of the agricultural peasants of the 
 centre of Russia can write their own names. 
 
 In the " Zavods" or villages collected round 
 the great industrial undertakings, and in the 
 Oural, and in many parts of Siberia, the 
 percentage will be higher; but, generally, 
 the peasant has a remarkable reluctance in 
 confessing that he is able to write. 
 
 I have had frequent occasion to visit 
 different villages for the purpose of making 
 contracts for labour, charcoal, &c., with 
 
Russia in 1870. 125 
 
 the villagers. When the terms had been 
 agreed upon, and the contract had been 
 drawn up, I used to call out for the " Gram- 
 maters " to come forward, and sign the 
 contract on behalf of the community. No- 
 body would advance, until, having informed 
 myself that one of them could write, I called 
 him by name. Seeing there was no help 
 for it, and pushed on by his companions, 
 the talented man advanced reluctantly, and, 
 first shaking hands with each individual 
 by which he was understood to acquire 
 their power of attorney he approached the 
 table, and took up a pen as if it were a 
 hot iron; and so, with intense application, 
 after a length of time, wrote his name to 
 the document. I have read at times that 
 the Mujik is a careless, useless sort of 
 animal, who does not want, or care about, 
 education. This is not true. He does want 
 it, and is crying out For it. 
 
126 Russia in 1870. 
 
 I admit that, at present, when he is so 
 lucky as to be able to read or write, he 
 owns to his ability with a sort of sheepish 
 reluctance. This is only because he knows 
 that his companions are jealous of his 
 superior attainments, and afraid he might 
 use them to their disadvantage. 
 
 Wherever isolated attempts have been 
 made to remedy the really awful ignorance 
 of the people, the schools have been in- 
 trusted to the lower orders of priests ; men, 
 as I shall show in a subsequent chapter, 
 themselves of no education, and in other 
 respects utterly unfitted for the charge of 
 the schools, which in most cases were more 
 often closed than open. I tried the ex- 
 periment myself in one village, where I 
 established a school for the children, and 
 engaged two good teachers, first class 
 priests, and soon had about seventy boys 
 in constant attendance, and quite alive to 
 
Russia in 1870. 127 
 
 the good they were doing for themselves. 
 But I kept the school under my own super- 
 vision. 
 
 The absenteeism, or indifference of the 
 proprietors of the land, is at the root of 
 the evil of ignorance. These landlords, 
 owning estates of princely extent, which 
 they never visited, left them to the mercy 
 of some agent, whose duties and interests 
 ended with the collection of revenue ; and 
 if this man, as too frequently happened, 
 were a dishonest or worthless character, 
 the sufferings of the peasantry under his 
 rule were terrible. 
 
 These sort of agents commonly amassed 
 great fortunes for themselves, by a course 
 of injustice that could only be continued 
 so long as the peasantry remained ignorant, 
 and consequently helpless under his extor- 
 tions. It is painful, at times, to be brought 
 into contact with the men ; so timid and 
 
128 Russia in 1870. 
 
 sheepish are they in the company of their 
 superiors, that they seem to lose their 
 faculties in a sort of amazement when they 
 are spoken to. 
 
 A black-bearded son of toil was guiding 
 me along a road, 
 
 " Well, Ivan/ 9 I said, " how many children 
 have you ?" 
 
 " Indeed, Excellency," said Ivan, " you 
 must ask my wife ; I don't know." 
 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 "Ivan." 
 
 " Yes, but your other name ? " 
 
 " I have not got one ; at least, I don't 
 know it." 
 
 A messenger had been sent to me, post 
 haste from a distant village, to inform me 
 that some buildings were on fire. 
 
 " Well, Ivan, is it a large fire ? " 
 
 " A large fire, Excellency." 
 
 " Is it a small fire, Ivan ? " 
 
ft 
 
 Russia in 1870. 129 
 
 A small fire, Excellency." 
 Is it very windy ? " 
 
 "Very windy." 
 
 "Is it very calm weather, Ivan ? " 
 
 " Yery calm. Excellency." And so on. 
 
 Now, this man was, to my knowledge, 
 no fool, but a very good charcoal-burner. 
 
 Your true Russian peasants are always 
 remarkably cautious and polite ; they habi- 
 tually take off their hats to each other 
 with the most gentlemanly gracefulness. 
 (It may be that this practice of extreme 
 politeness is fostered and promoted by the 
 constant posturing of their religious obser- 
 vances.) But to see them at their best, 
 one should be the guest, as I have often 
 been, of some remote village, far from the 
 sound of wheels, where the name of a town 
 is hardly known; and there, while I have 
 been waiting, perhaps for the daylight, to go 
 bear-shooting in the woods, the members 
 
 K 
 
130 Russia in 1870. 
 
 of the community (the common council of 
 the place), hearing I was there, and having 
 some favour to ask, or some matter of 
 charcoal and labour to discuss, have waited 
 upon me. 
 
 Then we would all sit round the room, 
 and the spokesman of the party rise to 
 explain the wishes of his community. 
 Notice now the quiet and earnest manner 
 of the man, the deferential bend with which he 
 rises, the easy fluency with which he says what 
 he has to say; how clearly and pointedly 
 he states his facts, and how cleverly he 
 constructs his argument ; and when he has 
 sat down again with another graceful bow, 
 ask what sort of people they can be who 
 describe this man as an ignorant and bru- 
 talised savage, incapable of mental and 
 moral culture, a fit companion for a society 
 of Calibans and Orsons. 
 
 His ignorance is not his fault. The re- 
 
Russia in 1870. 131 
 
 proach recoils on his detractors ; but if his 
 appearance, parts, and temper be those of 
 a savage, give me savages I say, for my 
 workmen always. 
 
 They have their own strong ideas of 
 justice, and appreciate treatment in accord- 
 ance with those ideas, as a rather amusing 
 incident will show. 
 
 The estates I had under my management 
 had been administered in the old manner, 
 and the people placed under my authority 
 had a perfect mania for sending in written 
 documents, complaining of some real or 
 fancied grievance, or asking for some favour. 
 In most cases these petitions were of the 
 most trifling, frequently absurd, description ; 
 but I made it a matter of conscience to 
 read them all, that nothing of importance 
 might by any chance escape my notice. 
 
 In conveying my answer to one of these 
 petitions, my secretary told the petitioner 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to go to the devil. It is a place the people 
 were very well accustomed to be sent to. 
 Some time afterwards the man met me as 
 I was going out. "Ah, Barrin " (this 
 word, translated "Lord and master," was 
 the word always used in the old times by 
 the serf when addressing his owner), he said, 
 " so you wished me to go to the devil. Well, 
 I don't mind that : no doubt you know 
 best ; no doubt I shall go in time. But, 
 you see, what we like is this : you read our 
 petitions, and then tell us to go to the devil. 
 Now, in the old times, when we brought 
 a petition, they told us to go to the devil 
 before they had read it. That is what we 
 did not like : it was not fair." 
 
 The people would be better off if their 
 habits were less frugal often a few days' 
 work will suffice to keep them in laziness 
 for the rest of a week. Their principal food 
 is black bread and cabbage-soup, and quass 
 
Russia in 1870. 133 
 
 for their drink (quass is a fermentation of 
 black bread and water). Their clothes are 
 home-made. Each family has its own house, 
 with its strip of the common land, generally 
 about ten acres, more or less; its cow, 
 horse, sheep or two; in fact, its small 
 farm complete, really sufficient, if properly 
 farmed, for the support of the family, if no 
 other resources were to be found. I have 
 found frequently that the Russians were 
 among the best workmen to be met with in 
 any country. I do not mean that a Russian 
 can do anything like the same quantity of 
 work that an Englishman can, but he 
 can imitate anything. Give him a model 
 to be precisely reproduced, and he will 
 produce it whatever it is, from a padlock 
 to a watch. The speciality in which he 
 excels is carpenter's work. It is commonly 
 said that a Mujik is born with an axe in 
 his hand. He can do wonders with this tool, 
 
134 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and often uses no other in building and 
 furnishing his house complete. 
 
 The worst part of the Mujik's character 
 is his passion for vodky. In this respect 
 are all on a level, the otherwise most 
 respectable members of the community and 
 the universal ne'er-do-weels. 
 
 The Mujik does not drink constantly, nor 
 even every day, nor every week, but on great 
 occasions, such as a holiday or a feast, or an 
 influx of money to his pocket, the man 
 deliberately swallows as much vodky, and 
 this as quickly, as he can. It is not for the 
 sake of company that he does this. He 
 does not give himself time to pass through 
 a stage of elation, but he doggedly drinks off 
 tumbler after tumbler of raw spirit, without 
 a pause between the glasses, until at about 
 the fifth tumbler he is perfectly drunk. 
 Benches and tables of plain wood are pro- 
 vided in the " traktir," and here he sits 
 
Russia in 1870. 135 
 
 with his head between his hands, as long as 
 the proprietor chooses to allow, a period 
 measured by the amount of his custom or 
 the demand for space for his companions in a 
 similar condition. When the proprietor calls 
 "time," he is escorted to the door by a 
 
 A 
 
 waiter, who gives him a gentle push as he 
 dismisses him in order that he may not fall 
 on the threshold. The cold air knocks him 
 down like a sledge hammer, and he con- 
 tinues his drunken slumber in the street 
 until he is removed, in a town by the police, 
 in country places by his friends. 
 
 The Mujik is never, drunk or sober, a 
 quarrelsome man. In all my experience of 
 the country, I never remember to have seen 
 a downright fight between two men. 
 
 They are great liars, but in a harmless 
 way, telling insignificant falsehoods from 
 habit more frequently than from a wish to 
 deceive. It seems to be a part of their 
 
136 Russia in 1870. 
 
 nature to avoid the exact truth, and to find 
 a pleasure in the invention of plausible lies. 
 This habit, the inevitable consequence of 
 long subjection to tyranny, will give way 
 to the self-respect and independence pro- 
 mised them under the new regime ; for there 
 
 * 
 
 is no vice, and generally very little motive, 
 in a Mujik's lies. They are cunning in- 
 ventors of those little plans that the thieves 
 call "plants" in England, and, when they 
 get into trouble, try every double and dodge 
 to escape punishment. 
 
 I caught a number of men stealing wood 
 and iron from my premises, and impounded 
 their carts and horses, which I ordered to be 
 detained until the thieves had paid twenty- 
 five roubles each for the damage they had 
 done. The next day these rascals had a 
 consultation, and arranged the little comedy 
 they were to perform for my commiseration. 
 " Now, directly you see him," said one, 
 
Bussia in 1870. 137 
 
 "you must tumble on your knees and cry 
 tremendously hard, and swear you have not 
 a copeck in the world. I shall swear my 
 wife is starving, and you will see, if we do 
 it well, he will let us off cheap." Unfortu- 
 nately for them, this little plot was arranged 
 within my hearing ; so that, when they were 
 admitted, and had gone through the per- 
 formances precisely as arranged, they found 
 me stony-hearted as before. They persevered 
 as long as my patience lasted, and then gave 
 it up as of no use. 
 
 Then one of them quietly said : "If you 
 won't let us off we must pay," and pulled 
 out a purse full of money, and counted out 
 the fifty roubles on the table. 
 
 " Now, Ivan," I said, " the next time that 
 you try to humbug me, take care that I don't 
 know all about it beforehand." 
 
 The man poked his friend in the ribs, 
 with a laugh, and said, " See, Maxime, 
 
138 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the Barrin always knows what we are 
 about." 
 
 Neither of the men was in the least dis- 
 concerted at being found out. 
 
 On that occasion I administered my own 
 law. I was afterwards very neatly bam- 
 boozled by a peasant in collusion with the 
 local coroner before whom I brought him. 
 
 I was passing one evening on the high 
 road through a wood, when I heard a great 
 shouting and scuffling among the trees. 
 
 I ran in and found one of my head foresters, 
 a most reliable steady man, fighting with a 
 peasant whom he had seized by the collar. 
 Close at hand stood the cause of the battle, 
 viz.. the peasant's cart loaded with cast-iron, 
 which the man had stolen from the works. 
 We secured the peasant between us and 
 brought him before the coroner, a law official 
 appointed to make preliminary investigations 
 in criminal cases. The coroner heard what 
 
Russia in 1870. 139 
 
 I and my forester had to say, and called on 
 the prisoner to defend himself. " Oh, it is 
 all right," said Vassily. " You see, sir, I 
 was going through the wood along the road 
 with my cart empty, and presently the forester 
 called to me from out of the wood : c Hi ! 
 Vassily Vassilivitch 1 come here. I have 
 found a lot of cast iron among the trees. 
 Just lend me your cart to take it to the 
 works.' Of course, I did what he asked 
 me, always being anxiorte to do all I can 
 to assist the works. I took my cart into 
 the wood and loaded the iron. Directly the 
 iron was put into the cart you would hardly 
 believe it, Excellency I the forester collared 
 me, and said I had stolen the iron; and 
 then the Barrin came up, and they took 
 me away between them." 
 
 The honest and intelligent servant of the 
 Government professed himself satisfied with 
 this explanation : the man was discharged, 
 
140 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and my forester and I went home looking 
 foolish. 
 
 I was not grieved, shortly afterwards, to 
 lose the neighbourhood of that coroner, who 
 fell into trouble on his own account in a 
 question of forged bank-notes, and failing 
 to satisfy his judges on the subject, was 
 probably sent to Siberia. 
 
 It will be perceived from the above 
 anecdote, that scrupulous regard for the 
 rights of propertjf is not characteristic of 
 the peasant class. The Mujik, in fact, is 
 a habitual thief. But his thieving extends 
 only so far as it is justified by his ignorance. 
 It does not arise from any felonious inten- 
 tion, but from the simple reasoning of the 
 savage, who takes what he wants and sees 
 before him, because he is unable to under- 
 stand the right of the owner who claims 
 it. Beyond this degree there is less crime 
 in Russia than in other countries, and the 
 
Russia in 1870. 141 
 
 crime that exists is not relatively great 
 among the peasantry, the faults and vices 
 of whom all cry plainly for the remedy that 
 will efface them Educate ! 
 
 I have often met men with small pieces 
 of iron or wood in their hands, which they 
 had stolen from the works. They had 
 rather not be detected, but they are not 
 ashamed. " Well, Ivan," I have said, " What 
 did you steal that iron for ? " " Because I 
 wanted to make a new shovel for my wife, 
 and this is just the piece of iron for the 
 purpose." 
 
 As to such trifles as wood, charcoal, and 
 the like, they say, " God has given wood, 
 land, and water for all men alike ; " and 
 in acting up to this maxim, it is impossible 
 to convince them that they are doing wrong. 
 
 I have said all the evil that I know of 
 the Mujik, and I turn very willingly to 
 pleasanter reminiscences. 
 
142 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Hidden away in the midst of enormous 
 forests, scattered here and there at great 
 distances apart, are numbers of quiet and 
 self-sufficient little villages, whose inhabit- 
 ants never wander far from the place of 
 their birth, and scarcely know the name 
 of the nearest town. There it is that the 
 simplicity of the peasant character may be 
 studied at its heart. To such a retired 
 little village I used to go on my occasional 
 shooting expeditions after the bear and elk, 
 to be found in the neighbouring forests. 
 
 I always put up at the house of our 
 Starosta, a very old man, whose wife was 
 still active and lively at seventy years of 
 age, and used to interest herself vastly in 
 the conversation that passed between me 
 and the forester, who always went with me 
 on my hunting excursions. 
 
 This forester was a very remarkable 
 character, who, by intelligent industry and 
 
Russia in 1870. 143 
 
 perseverance, had raised himself from the 
 station of a common serf, to the management 
 of woods greater in extent than many a 
 German principality. Moreover, he had 
 contrived in the meantime to afford his son 
 a liberal education, and to establish him as 
 an artist at St. Petersburg ; and, finally, 
 by the help of those who appreciated his 
 laudable efforts to raise his family in the 
 social scale, he actually was enabled to 
 enter him as a student in the academy at 
 St. Petersburg, an enormous promotion for 
 the son of a serf! 
 
 The forester was a man of inquiring dis- 
 position, anxious to get information on all 
 sorts of subjects ; and our long discussions 
 of things in general, and the world's recent 
 history in particular, were vastly amusing, 
 if a little perplexing to the old lady who sat 
 and listened to them. 
 
 One morning I was smoking my pipe 
 
144 Russia in 1870. 
 
 before the stove, waiting for the day 
 to break, that we might set out after a 
 very large bear that the Starosta's son had 
 " rung " in the neighbourhood. The forester 
 and I were discussing the British Consti- 
 tution, and I mentioned our gracious Queen, 
 when the old lady broke into the discussion 
 with quite a little oration. " You will excuse 
 me," she said, " that I do not speak English. 
 It is very funny that I cannot do it, but I 
 cannot. I hear you always talking about 
 your Queen Victoria ; now, I want to know 
 what does she do for our Emperor, because 
 of course she lives at Petersburg?" "At 
 Petersburg ? " I said; "no, she lives in her 
 own country my country England." 
 " What part of Russia is England ? " said 
 the old lady. "England is not in Russia 
 at all; it is another country by itself." But 
 I could not convince her of that. She had 
 never heard of any other country that was 
 
Russia in 1870. 145 
 
 not Russia, and nothing would make her 
 believe in its existence. 
 
 She could not get over it for a long time, 
 and continually repeated to her husband : 
 " Only fancy, the Barrin trying to tell me 
 there is another country besides Russia ! >! 
 
 I had a friend with me who promised to 
 send her anything she fancied out of Eng- 
 land. What should it be ? 
 
 She asked for a handkerchief such as the 
 peasant women wear on their heads, " only 
 let it be a good one, silk, and plenty of 
 colour." In due time I brought her a flame- 
 coloured bandana from London, and told her 
 my friend had not forgotten her wish. She 
 admired the bright handkerchief immensely, 
 but never could understand where it came 
 from. I am sorry to have the following 
 incident to relate, showing how the demons 
 of discontent and greediness penetrated even 
 this peaceful paradise. 
 
146 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The old lady had a secret grievance in her 
 bosom her bath-house was not fine enough; 
 it was not even altogether weather-proof; 
 she determined to have a new house at my 
 expense. 
 
 One afternoon, just as the tinkling of my 
 horses' bells must have announced my arri- 
 val to the villagers, I saw before me a lurid 
 glare on the sky " a house on fire in the 
 village," I said to my forester. 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "it is the Starosta's 
 bath-house, and there is the old witch coming 
 out of it at this moment. Do you know what 
 she has done ? She has set fire to her bath- 
 house for you to see it burn, and she will beg 
 some wood of you to build a new one ; and, 
 most probably, she will ask you to give her 
 ten times what she wants for the purpose." 
 
 Sure enough, we found the old woman cry- 
 ing and wringing her hands. " Oh, my bath 
 is burned ! What shall I do ? "What shall I 
 
Russia in 1870. 147 
 
 do ? I must live and die dirty ! Oh, Barrin, 
 give me some wood to build another house." 
 
 I told her we had been talking about her 
 little game ; but ultimately she got the 
 wood, after making a full, free, and parti- 
 cular confession. 
 
 I have said the peasants have strong ideas 
 of justice. In the olden times they looked 
 on punishment simply as an act of tyranny 
 and caprice on the part of their rulers ; 
 now, on the contrary, they bear no malice, 
 but have a certain respect for a just se- 
 verity. 
 
 I had occasion to send a man to the 
 mayor of his village for gross misbehaviour, 
 and he was condemned to receive twenty 
 strokes with the rod. 
 
 He took the punishment patiently and 
 went , home. The next morning, however, 
 I was told, " the Mujik who was punished 
 yesterday wants to see you." 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Russia in 1870. 
 
 He had no thought of coining to revenge 
 himself, nor even to reproach me with his 
 punishment ; but he made his bow, with a 
 smiling countenance, and told me that, on 
 his way home, " after I received the beat- 
 ing," he said, he had found tracks of a bear, 
 which he had followed to its lair, and he 
 wanted me to come and kill it. Now, many 
 people would have been suspicious of such 
 a friendly invitation to accompany to the 
 solitudes of thick forests the man who had 
 yesterday been flogged at their instigation; 
 but they would have been mistaken. I 
 went to the wood alone with this Mujik, 
 and, after a long day's hunting, we killed 
 the bear between us. 
 
 As I have mentioned flogging, it is ad- 
 visable to explain the subject : The old- 
 fashioned "knout," with which the name 
 of . Russia has been so long in disgusting 
 connection, is done away with; but the 
 
Russia in 1870. 149 
 
 village community has the power to sentence 
 one of its own members to any number of 
 strokes, not exceeding twenty, to be given 
 with a rod, in the presence of the mayor 
 of the village. 
 
 That the punishment is not very severe 
 may be concluded from the fact that this 
 man was out with me hunting on the fol- 
 lowing day, and indeed tracked the bear 
 on the evening of his punishment. 
 
 I believe that the sudden abolition of 
 corporal punishment in Russia would not 
 be understood nor appreciated by the Mu- 
 jiks, who, unhappily at present, are still 
 degraded enough to prefer flogging to fine. 
 It must be borne in mind, that the sentence 
 comes from the culprit's peers, and this is 
 quite a different thing to the man's superior 
 having power to send him to be flogged as 
 it was in the old regime. 
 
 Whenever the peasants are thrown into 
 
150 Russia in 1870. 
 
 contact with more civilized people, they are 
 very quick, especially so the women, at adopt- 
 ing the manners and customs and dress of 
 the latter. This is particularly to be ob- 
 served in Zavod villages, where strangers 
 come and go daily (a Zavod village is a 
 village where a "works" is established, so 
 called to distinguish it from the agricultural 
 villages). 
 
 I allowed the people to walk in our park 
 on holidays, and there I have seen women 
 and girls dressed in white book-muslin and 
 wearing white kid gloves. 
 
 I have written thus fully about the Mujik, 
 with the object of giving a faithful sketch of 
 both sides of his character, and showing him 
 as he really is, and not as he is supposed to 
 be. I look upon him as the one upon whom 
 will eventually devolve the mission of deve- 
 loping the immense resources of his country. 
 
 In him you have the stuff of which, by 
 
Russia in 1870. 151 
 
 education, may be made a man of intelli- 
 gence and refinement. He is neither want- 
 ing in ambition or courage. Those who 
 have lived as I have, in the midst of the 
 Eussian peasantry, learned to know their 
 manners, to be indulgent to their failings, 
 to appreciate especially their " charity " and 
 kindness of heart, will join me in raising a 
 voice on their behalf for that education 
 which is the one thing wanting to raise 
 the Mujik and all Russia with him to a 
 proper place in the world. 
 
152 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TOWNS AND VILLAGES. 
 
 country towns of Russia are all 
 very much of one mould, and, with 
 the exception of the very largest, are 
 cheerless and miserable places. The houses 
 are generally of wood ; the streets unpaved, 
 and badly lighted; an impassable sea of 
 mud in wet weather, and enveloped in 
 clouds of dust in dry. 
 
 They are only comfortable for traffic in 
 the depth of winter, under a carpet of 
 frozen snow. 
 
 Every Government town boasts a large 
 
Russia in 1870. 153 
 
 barrack-like pile of building in which are 
 the Government offices ; a great heap of 
 stuccoed bricks and mortar, the residence 
 of the Governor; and a few other large 
 houses where live the rich merchants and 
 the Tchinovnicks, who are engaged in the 
 various offices of the State. 
 
 The rest of the better sort of houses are 
 those of the nobility, of minor stars of the 
 civil service ; finally, of the small merchants, 
 traders, &c., &c. 
 
 The houses in the country towns of Russia 
 are pretty much alike. 
 
 Principally wooden constructions, the en- 
 trance hall will lead to the " saloon," the 
 largest room in the house, with the least 
 amount of furniture in it a dozen and a half 
 of chairs, a couple of card tables, a sofa 
 couch, with a round table in front of it, a 
 piano, always a "grand," a small carpet 
 under the round table (the floor being par- 
 
154 Russia in 1870. 
 
 quet), two long looking-glasses mounted in 
 nut-wood (this wood is in universal use for 
 furniture amongst the middle classes), toge- 
 ther with three sconces for candles make 
 up invariably the quantum of furniture in 
 this the grand company room a big picture 
 of a saint, in the corner, and a petroleum 
 lamp, and cigar-ash holder on the table, are 
 the only ornaments about. This room leads 
 to what we should call the drawing-room, of 
 much smaller proportions, and a little more 
 showily fitted up ; minus the piano, the indi- 
 vidual pieces of furniture will be about the 
 same. This drawing-room leads to the 
 sleeping apartment of the master and mis- 
 tress, and if the owners are of a particularly 
 religious turn of mind, this room will be 
 noticeable from the collection of pictured 
 images in the corner, many of them liberally 
 adorned with precious stones, diamonds and 
 emeralds being the favourites. The other 
 
Russia in 1870. 155 
 
 peculiarities of this room will be tlie small - 
 ness of the bed, in which the fortunate 
 possessors snooze away a large proportion 
 of their day, and the absence of what we 
 should call the common necessary of a good 
 washstand. The idea in this way being, a 
 boil on Saturday night in the bath, and a 
 sort of sensation of a "dry wipe" on the 
 other six days of the week. Russians are 
 always astonished at what they consider the 
 immoderate consumption of water by Britons, 
 and a Russian servant will be a long time 
 understanding why one requires anything 
 more for his morning ablutions than the 
 tiniest brass basin and pint pot of water, 
 which he has been accustomed to serve for 
 the use of his native master. I travelled for 
 a long time with a great man, whose servant 
 every morning presented him with a small 
 silver pie-dish-looking basin and its accom- 
 paniment of a half pint silver mug of water, 
 
156 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and this was all the wash he gave himself 
 for a fortnight. 
 
 To return to the house, the dining-room 
 is peculiar in the respect of having no 
 furniture in it but what is absolutely neces- 
 sary, namely, dining-table, chairs, buffet, 
 and a side-table or two, and is never used 
 for other purposes than those of eating. A 
 few other bedrooms are stowed away out 
 of sight. The kitchen is generally outside 
 the house in the yard, and the servants sleep 
 where they can. The houses are well built, 
 with thick walls, and good roofs. 
 
 Many towns have also their small theatre, 
 their nobility club, generally supplemented 
 by a merchants' club, a hotel or two, several 
 fire towers, the indispensable " Gostini or 
 Dwor," or bazaar, of very oriental character, 
 where every kind of merchandize is exposed, 
 from lucifer matches to diamonds ; in the 
 streets a few independent shops, . away from 
 
Russia in 1870. 157 
 
 the bazaar; an extraordinary number of 
 churches, disproportionate to the population, 
 whitewashed and gaily painted on the ex- 
 terior with figures of their patron saints, 
 and generally a couple of monasteries, and 
 always dotted here and there miserable 
 sheds or huts, where the Butoschniks or 
 Russian police live. 
 
 The theatre generally depends for its per- 
 formances on the arrival of some company 
 of strolling actors, who pass their lives 
 travelling from town to town, making a 
 short stay at each. Their acting is superior 
 to that we are accustomed to expect under 
 such conditions. The Russians are all very 
 fond of the stage and are generally by no 
 means contemptible actors. 
 
 They have also for the most part a very 
 good taste for music, and most of the towns 
 are provided with a band, which performs 
 very creditably. 
 
158 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The club is generally opened only three 
 times a week, excepting in the largest towns, 
 where it is opened every day. 
 
 Its principal use is for gambling ; at cer- 
 tain intervals balls and bal-masques are 
 given. The bal-masque does not deserve 
 its name. It is a sort of converzatione, at 
 which the ladies only wear black masks and 
 dominoes ; the gentlemen in evening dress 
 or uniform, without masks, walk about with 
 them ; the band plays music, but nobody 
 dances at all. 
 
 The institution in my opinion is a dreary 
 failure, amusing enough perhaps among the 
 livelier nations of the South, but solemnly 
 performed by an assembly of stolid semi- 
 civilized Russians, its close resemblance to 
 a funeral party is appalling. 
 
 The hotels are generally detestably dirty 
 and uncomfortable, swarming with bugs; 
 but they are improving of late, and now, 
 
Russia in 1870. 159 
 
 in some towns, as Mjny Novgorod, Kazan, 
 and others of that class, they are clean and 
 comfortable, boasting of French cookery and 
 good clean beds. 
 
 It is a rash proceeding, however, to put up 
 at a country town of the ordinary sort, 
 unless you bring with you the materials for 
 your own Joeds, without which no Russian 
 of the better sort thinks of setting out on 
 his travels. 
 
 I was travelling about two years ago in 
 the south-central provinces, and after a 
 night passed on the road, was glad to arrive 
 at Tambov about five in the morning, and 
 looked forward to a few hours sleep at the 
 hotel of that town. 
 
 One of the grandees of the province, a 
 great proprietor, had passed me on the road, 
 and kindly undertaken to order that a room 
 should be ready for my arrival. We drew 
 up at the door of the hotel, which was orna- 
 
160 Russia in 1870. 
 
 merited with a board inscribed " Tabell Dot," 
 and I followed the waiter to my bed-room. 
 At my first glance at that miserable apart- 
 ment, I understood how illusory had been 
 the hopes that I had indulged of refreshment 
 and rest. All the furniture of the room was 
 a table, three chairs, a looking-glass that 
 must have been used as a target for some 
 heavy projectile and a sofa of moth-eaten 
 and dusty rusty appearance, insufficiently 
 stuffed and cushioned, and rickety in all its 
 joints. Bed and bedding were not : and I 
 planned to contrive with my railway rugs, 
 if the waiter would find me a sheet. Nothing 
 more simple ; he would fetch me a sheet 
 immediately. He was a long time doing so, 
 and in the end brought me a dirty table- 
 cloth. Deciding to forego the luxury of 
 sheets, I found that I must at least 
 have a pillow that article of furniture 
 which every Russian carries about with him 
 
Russia in 1870. 161 
 
 wherever he goes. A pillow was promised 
 immediately, away went the waiter to fetch 
 it. This time he was longer than before, and 
 returned with a bundle made up in a napkin, 
 which finally dispelled my wish to try to 
 sleep on the rickety sofa. 
 
 The Russian prince in the next room, who 
 had a whole baggage waggon full of his own 
 conveniences, was comfortable enough, and 
 found no fault with the accommodation of 
 the hotel. In the country Traktirs or inns 
 in Russia you are always told you can have 
 anything you wish to eat or drink. I went 
 to dine at a Traktir in a small town on the 
 Oka. The waiter came to take my orders, 
 and this was what we said 
 
 I. " Well, Ivan, what have you got ? " 
 
 Waiter. "Anything that your excellency 
 chooses to order." 
 
 I. " Fresh salmon, for instance ? " 
 
 W. " Certainly, excellency." 
 M 
 
162 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Now fresh, salmon were never brought 
 within three hundred miles of this place. 
 
 I. " Well, bring me some fresh salmon 
 and cucumber." 
 
 W. " Sichas I " (This is the Eussian 
 " Yessir." The words mean "this hour," 
 it is what the waiters always say. I have 
 determined its real meaning to be, "Don't 
 you wish you may get it ? ") 
 
 In three minutes my waiter came back 
 from the kitchen with, "Very sorry, sir; 
 but the cook has just served up the last of 
 the salmon." 
 
 I. " Well, Ivan, what have you now ? " 
 
 W. " Anything you choose." 
 
 I. " Then bring me roast mutton." 
 
 W. "Sichas!" 
 
 Another visit to the kitchen, and in a 
 short delay, another report, " Cook is very 
 sorry, but unfortunately he has got no 
 mutton to-day." 
 
Russia in 1870. 1G3 
 
 I. "Then tell me at once what you 
 have." 
 
 W. " Unfortunately, nothing but eggs 
 to-day." 
 
 Finally, he cooks me the eggs in my pre- 
 sence the kitchen fire and the cook being 
 as purely the creation of his imagination as 
 the salmon and cucumbers and Barmecide 
 roast mutton. 
 
 The monotony of life in the towns offers 
 nothing of interest to describe. It includes 
 much eating and drinking, a great con- 
 sumption of champagne in the richer towns, 
 and perpetual card playing. It is varied at 
 intervals by a performance at the theatre, 
 and the ball of the season at the club. In 
 a few of the large towns, where more of 
 the higher sort of government officers are 
 stationed, and the best of the nobility live, 
 the time can be passed agreeably enough. 
 
 Every town of any importance has its 
 M 2 
 
164 Russia in 1870. 
 
 prison. I believe these buildings are greatly 
 improved in late years. 
 
 Passing through Vladimir, the capital 
 town of the government of that name, I 
 called in to see the prison, and visited every 
 room. They have the custom of keeping 
 prisoners for minor crimes in large wards, 
 the sleeping accommodation being reclining 
 boards, fitted up in rows, in the same room 
 the day is spent in. These prisoners seemed 
 rather " jolly" than otherwise. Those crimi- 
 nals accused of graver offences were con- 
 fined, generally two or three together, in 
 cells in other parts of the building. I only 
 saw one man shut up by himself, and he 
 had murdered two people ; this fellow was 
 described as " secret," not at all implying, 
 as many have supposed, a political prisoner, 
 but the term is used for the worst sort of 
 criminals relative to the treatment they 
 receive in prison. 
 
Russia in 1870. 105 
 
 I noticed in this gaol a nobleman, locked 
 up for a sufficiently grave offence, who was 
 in ordinary costume ; and I was informed 
 that it was his " nobility " that gave him 
 the privilege of dispensing with the prison 
 dress. 
 
 The women's wards were on a separate 
 side, and the superintendent told me he 
 found it very difficult to keep their side as 
 clean as that of the men. 
 
 The kitchen was well kept (all prison 
 labour), and the food was good. Certainly 
 Vladimir prison gives one a favourable idea 
 of its management and of its superin- 
 tendent. 
 
 The country villages in the north and 
 centre of Russia are invariably cheerless and 
 ugly collections of grim timber boxes, called 
 houses, built entirely of wood, roofs and all, 
 without a bit of thatch, or a patch of green, 
 or a flower, or spot of colour of any kind 
 
166 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to enliven the sepia dulness of the place. 
 The interior of these wooden houses is 
 arranged with a regard to the extreme 
 vicissitudes of the climate; the part of the 
 house which, in summer, is the dwelling- 
 room of the family, is abandoned when the 
 cold weather sets in, and they retreat to the 
 neighbourhood of the great stove, used in 
 the warm season as a kitchen ; near the top 
 of the stove are their sleeping berths, sus- 
 pended at a distance of about eighteen 
 inches from the ceiling. Here the little 
 children climb up to roost, while the parents 
 and older members of the family make their 
 beds on the top of the stove itself. The 
 only furniture to be seen in these miserable 
 nomes is a table, and a large wooden bench 
 fixed round the walls of the apartment ; a 
 few pictures of the saints hanging in the 
 corners and invariably a large showy trunk, 
 painted in many colours, and bound round 
 
Russia in 1870. 167 
 
 and round with iron hoops. This trunk 
 contains all the treasures that belong to the 
 family ; a dress or two, brought to the day- 
 light on festive occasions, heir-looms it may 
 be of the mother; a few towels, which are 
 always handsomely trimmed with lace, by 
 which also the peasants set great store, 
 and with respect to which they observe 
 the following curious custom at their wed- 
 dings : 
 
 The bride and bridegroom, coming to pay 
 their respects to the Barrin, the bride hands 
 him such a towel on a plate, which he 
 accepts; and, in return, lays on the same 
 plate a pocket - handkerchief, with some 
 roubles in the folds. 
 
 Besides the drapery and towels, the 
 big chest may contain a loaf or two of 
 cake bread, a few groceries, and other small 
 articles. 
 
 A small corner near the stove is parti- 
 
168 Russia in 1870. 
 
 tioned off for cooking, and provided with the 
 necessary utensils. 
 
 Small and large insects increase and 
 multiply in the warmth and dirt of the 
 wooden huts. The people are superstitious 
 about a kind of cockroach, called in Russia 
 "tarakan," which are held to bring good 
 luck with their company. 
 
 The children of the peasantry run about 
 wild, and free from correction or training, 
 but are .always well treated by their parents. 
 In fact, I believe that no people can be 
 fonder of their children than the Russian 
 peasants are. 
 
 They are all strong and healthy ; like the 
 young Spartans, the hardship of their lives 
 kills all the weakly ones. Hence the whole 
 race is healthy and sound, and by the 
 severity of their " struggle for existence," 
 improving in every generation. In the depth 
 of winter the children are hardened or killed; 
 
Russia in 1870. 169 
 
 one moment in the biting air, the next in 
 the stifling room. A medical doctor, who 
 has had much experience among the Mujiks, 
 told me that from statistics he had carefully 
 collected, he found that two-thirds of the 
 children of the peasantry die before they are 
 a twelvemonth old. A bath is attached to 
 every house, in which all the members of the 
 family are boiled regularly every Saturday. 
 On the other days of the week they do not 
 use water for washing, except in compliance 
 with their very oriental prejudice, to wash 
 their hands before eating. They all sleep 
 in a portion of the clothes they wear by 
 day, which they never take off, except for the 
 Saturday bath. 
 
 In all their doings they are the bond- 
 slaves of precedent and routine (another 
 striking characteristic that they have in 
 common with the Asiatic nations). Thus, on 
 a certain day in the year, which is a holiday, 
 
170 Russia in 1870. 
 
 generally called among them " Apple-day," 
 the priests pronounce a solemn benediction on 
 their ripening fruit ; then, and only then, will 
 the people begin to eat apples ; nothing will 
 induce them to do so before, as they believe 
 that if they do they will get the cholera. In 
 the towns as well as in the country this rule 
 is observed ; and when the day for oranges 
 has come, they will on no account eat any 
 more apples, and you will find it hard to get 
 one anywhere. So, in the villages, they have 
 a fixed day in the year when they begin all 
 at one time the practice of bathing in the 
 lakes and rivers, and another fixed day when 
 they leave it off. I once saw a great quan- 
 tity of wild fowl, as I was being ferried 
 across a river by a sporting boatman, and I 
 asked him when the young ducks would be 
 ready to shoot. He named the day; of 
 course, one of their holidays ; and although 
 he might be tempted by any number of 
 
Russia in 1870. 171 
 
 "flappers" long before the time, he would 
 not think of shooting them until the ap- 
 pointed day arrived. 
 
 Among the practices with which the 
 people welcome Easter, the old Christian 
 custom of greeting one another on that 
 festival with a kiss, is carried to an in- 
 tolerable extent, and has lost all meaning. 
 For a week beforehand they are all busy 
 boiling and painting eggs, which they are to 
 present to each other with a kiss. Imme- 
 diately the clock strikes twelve, the privilege 
 or penance, as the case may be, commences. 
 Nobody then considers himself insulted by 
 the combined offer of a kiss and an egg. In 
 a few cases it may be confessed that the 
 trouble is a pleasure ; but when it comes, as 
 it did with me, to a long line of several 
 hundred workmen (mostly engaged in char- 
 coal burning, in the stoking and poking of 
 fires and chimnies, and other deeds of dark- 
 
172 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ness), the poetical and sentimental point of 
 view of the religious custom is completely 
 shut out and supplanted by the intolerable 
 annoyance. 
 
 One may talk of the Balaklava charge, the 
 storming of the Redan, and such exploits ; 
 think of the nerve that was required to stand 
 my ground before a bearded and vodky- 
 loving Mujik, with cinders in his beard, 
 and charcoal- dust in the pores of his skin 
 a man who had been breaking calcined ore, 
 perhaps, all night, and looking like the 
 doubtful progeny of an African negro or a 
 red Indian in his war-paint. Think of my 
 horror of suspense while one after the other, 
 a whole regiment of such smutty objects, 
 shuffled up to my place, each drawing a 
 dusty sleeve across his sooty mouth, each 
 diving to the bottom of his pocket for the 
 painted egg, prepared carefully for this occa- 
 sion, each taking off his hat and calling me 
 
Russia in 1870. 173 
 
 down to the punishment with the politest of 
 bows the most respectful of grins ; and 
 when the first hundred had kissed me three 
 hundred times in the aggregate, to know that 
 another hundred had to come after them. 
 Here were courage and endurance worthy of 
 a greater cause. But I should have done 
 wrong to avoid the courtesy, and very likely 
 deeply offended the people, to whom it was 
 often the expression of a long-cherished feel- 
 ing of gratitude for favours which I perhaps 
 knew nothing of, or had forgotten long 
 since. 
 
 There are no people who more cordially 
 appreciate the sympathy of their superiors 
 with their own festive and religious usages 
 than the Eussian peasants. 
 
 Russia has long been known as the coun- 
 try of bells, and these are heard with a 
 vengeance when they are sounded to usher 
 in Easter-day. Exactly at midnight, with the 
 
174 Russia in 1870. 
 
 last toll of the clock, a gun is fired, and, 
 at once every belfry peals forth loudly and 
 merrily in a chorus that shakes the air. 
 
 After a time the official ringers are tired 
 and give place to volunteers, and the belfries 
 are crowded with boys, who ring incessantly 
 throughout the day, deafening the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
175 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRIESTS, CHURCH, AND EMPEROR. 
 
 rilHE reverence which the Kussians, par- 
 ticularly the lower classes, have for their 
 religion is remarkable, but it is only to their 
 religion itself that their respect extends, by 
 no means to the priests, its ministers. 
 
 In Russia you will never see a village of 
 the slightest importance, that has not its 
 church, and many have two or three. It is 
 often a striking thing to see a miserably 
 poor and small village overshadowed by an 
 enormous church almost large enough to 
 contain the whole village in itself. 
 
176 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The churches are always built by the 
 landowners. They are much finer and more 
 plentiful in the centre of Russia than in the 
 north. The services are numerous, and for 
 these and the innumerable church holidays 
 and their vigils, the bells are perpetually in 
 motion. Fortunately the bells are always 
 of a very fine tone, and produce an effect 
 very different to the tinkling or dismal 
 metallic clang of the bells of some of our 
 country churches in England. The interiors 
 of the churches are all made gorgeous by 
 silver and gold, which give a brilliant 
 reflection to hundreds of candles during 
 service ; and pictures of the saints in 
 handsome frames hang from the walls and 
 columns. The Greek Church admits no 
 graven images within her sanctuaries. The 
 church is generally lighted with a great 
 number of candles burning on heavy or- 
 namental candlesticks of different sizes. 
 
Russia in 1870. 177 
 
 Musical instruments are forbidden by the 
 orthodox discipline, but the choir of male 
 voices is generally decidedly good, and fills 
 the building with a volume of sound, more 
 effective and more solemn even than the 
 tones of an organ. The congregation do 
 not take part in the singing, which is en- 
 tirely performed by persons attached to the 
 church. 
 
 In the robes of the priests and in the 
 whole arrangement of the accessories to 
 worship, there is a display of barbaric 
 splendour, that doubtless finds its response 
 in the nature of the semi-civilized people 
 whom it is designed to dazzle and attract. 
 
 The blessing of the Church is invoked on 
 every circumstance of Russian life. 
 
 Moving into a new house, building an 
 engine, laying the foundation of a factory, 
 or starting a locomotive ; finally, all special 
 occasions of change, or of beginning any- 
 
 N 
 
178 Russia in 1870. 
 
 tiling, are incomplete and unlucky, unless 
 they are made propitious by the spoken 
 blessing of the Church. 
 
 Every room in every house, whether it be 
 your own private dwelling-room, or public 
 shop, or, that scene of debauchery, the 
 village "traktir," contains the likeness of 
 a saint, who must be blind and deaf indeed, 
 or lead a horrid life of mental torture, one 
 would think, in presiding over the baccha- 
 nalian proceedings of the vodky* store. 
 Every orthodox Russian, as an indispensable 
 companion on a journey, puts his saintly 
 picture in his pocket before he sets out. 
 He would as soon leave his hat behind him 
 as his patron saint. 
 
 In his infancy a cross or image is hung 
 round his neck, which from that time to the 
 day of his death, never leaves him under any 
 circumstances, and is never taken off for any 
 purpose. I have said that although the 
 
Russia in 1870. 179 
 
 people have a deep reverence for their 
 religion, they have little or no respect for 
 their priests. It is fortunate for the country 
 and themselves that this is so, for if such 
 a superstitious people had the same blind 
 faith in their priests that they have in the 
 outer ceremonies of their Church, then the 
 destinies of the country would be in the 
 hands of as worthless, ignorant, and immoral 
 a set of hypocrites as the world contains. 
 
 There are two distinct orders of priests, 
 widely separted in character and position. 
 
 The upper class, the hierarchy or aristo- 
 cracy of the priesthood, from among whom 
 all the higher dignitaries of the Church are 
 appointed, are called the Black Clergy. 
 These are an educated body of men. 
 
 The lower order, who are shut out from 
 the loaves and fishes, and condemned never 
 to rise above the rank of a parish priest, are 
 by far the most numerous, and in general 
 
 N 2 
 
180 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the only clergy to be found away from the 
 capitals or towns and monasteries. Their 
 office is hereditary from father to son, and 
 they are not admitted to a* cure until they 
 are married, but are forbidden to contract a 
 second marriage if their first wife dies. The 
 monastic order adopt celibacy as their rule. 
 The village priests are a wretched, drunken, 
 immoral, altogether disreputable class. On 
 the great holidays of the Church, they are as 
 frequently drunk as any of their parishioners, 
 indeed, very often the priest sets the first 
 example of drunkenness. This is not to be 
 wondered at, as they are accustomed, on 
 such occasions, to make the tour of their 
 village, calling at every house to consecrate 
 anew the images and leave their benediction 
 with the family, for which they receive, in 
 each house, a small sum of money and a 
 glass of spirits. 
 
 If their self-respect were to prompt them 
 
Russia in 1870. 181 
 
 to discontinue this custom so degrading to 
 their sacred office, they might starve, as it 
 is by such means that they collect the prin- 
 cipal part of their living. They have hardly 
 any fixed income, no tithes or claim to 
 settled contributions, but depend upon what 
 they collect among their, frequently, poverty- 
 stricken parishioners. 
 
 
 
 Even the collecting-boxes placed in the 
 churches, to which every devout worshipper 
 will habitually contribute a few copecks from 
 time to time, are not exclusively for the 
 good of the priests, but applied to support 
 the church itself; and the most devout of 
 their flock give very grudgingly a few 
 copecks to their unfortunate priests, how- 
 ever liberal they may be to the church. 
 
 The opportunity of a great festival is 
 therefore not to be neglected by a needy 
 priest going round to sanctify the images; 
 and on the principle of his church, to require 
 
182 Russia in 1870. 
 
 payment for every sacerdotal function, and 
 so collect a few roubles for his needs. 
 
 The peasant is glad of the occasion to 
 renew the sanctity of his penates (somewhat 
 scandalised, as these last may be supposed 
 to be by the indulgences that they have 
 witnessed), and welcomes the priest with the 
 irrepressible hospitality of his nation, and 
 offers him something to eat and drink. A 
 priest fond of good living on a special 
 festival Easter for instance, must be 
 unusually strong in the head, if he can hold 
 out against the repetition of the slight re- 
 fection and spirits that he takes at all the 
 houses of his village. 
 
 The priest is also a welcome guest at all 
 family festivities, such as a marriage feast, 
 or a funeral dinner. Every funeral ends 
 with a dinner, and the more jolly and con- 
 vivial the guests, the greater honour to the 
 departed friend. 
 
Russia in 1870. 183 
 
 With all their faults, drunk or sober, the 
 priests never allow the appointed services 
 of their church to be neglected. There are 
 nearly always, at least, two priests to every 
 church, so that in the event of the incapacity 
 of one, the other may act ; and I never 
 heard of an instance when the Church service 
 was not punctually performed. 
 
 I believe that the fees appointed for the 
 ministrations of the Church, for marriages, 
 burials, &c., are very small, and a great deal 
 of bargaining takes place on the occasion of 
 a burial; the peasant's mind being then 
 divided between his desire to release his 
 departed friend from purgatory by a liberal 
 expenditure, and his mistrust of the price 
 the priest sets on the necessary masses. 
 
 The Russians are very liberal in this 
 matter, and will strip themselves to their 
 last copeck, to secure the offices of the 
 Church on behalf of their dead. I have 
 
184 Russia in 1870. 
 
 again and again been applied to by peasants 
 for the loan of a few roubles, when they 
 could not raise a sufficient sum to meet the 
 demands of the priest in such a case. 
 
 The priests are assisted in the services 
 of the Church by one or two deacons and 
 sacristans, who intone parts of the service, 
 and are generally selected on account of 
 their fine bass voices. The sacristans are 
 commonly without education, and sometimes 
 unable to read, but they know the services 
 by heart, and may be seen turning over the 
 leaves of the book before them, and feigning 
 to read the prayers that they chant, while 
 the book is upside down. The service is 
 not performed in the modern Russian lan- 
 guage, but in the old Sclavonic. The con- 
 gregation are not expected to be able to 
 follow the service verbally, but have a 
 general idea of the meaning of its different 
 parts. The churches contain no seats, and 
 
Russia in 1870. 185 
 
 the chosen attitude for prayer is erect, with 
 the head bowed. The prayers are accom- 
 panied with the incessant act of making the 
 sign of the Cross on the face and chest. 
 
 The litany is solemn and impressive, but 
 contains the most extraordinary number of 
 repetitions of one phrase, so that the priest, 
 for instance, will continue for a quarter of 
 an hour repeating as rapidly as his tongue 
 can form the sounds, such a phrase as 
 " Gospodi pomeelui." * 
 
 The marriage ceremony has been fre- 
 quently described. At its conclusion, after 
 the priest has declared the couple before 
 him to be man and wife, he takes in his 
 own the hands of bride and bridegroom, and, 
 walking backwards, leads them three times 
 round the church, in the face of the con- 
 gregation. This is the most solemn and 
 
 God have mercy upon us. 
 
186 Russia in 1870. 
 
 impressive feature of their wedding customs. 
 The rest have, more or less, a smack of 
 barbarism. The custom, for example, of 
 payment by the woman, or her parents, to 
 induce the man to marry her, has no resem- 
 blance to anything like dowry. The husband 
 is always (as it were) the "stalled ox" of 
 the family, privileged to frequent spells of 
 drunken rest ; while the wife labours always, 
 and usually does more than the man for the 
 support of the household. 
 
 For this convenience every peasant, as 
 soon as he arrives at marriageable years, 
 looks out for himself a strong, hearty, young 
 wife, an efficient beast of burden. These 
 are not scarce in a Russian village, the 
 young people are generally strong and 
 healthy; the feeble ones dying in their 
 infancy. When he has found the young 
 woman, the next question is, what will she 
 give for the privilege of becoming his house- 
 
Russia in 1870. 187 
 
 hold drudge, or what will her parents give 
 to be rid of her. He fixes a sum that he 
 considers adequate to compensate him for 
 the surrender of all his charms to one young 
 person ; and lets her parents know that if 
 they will pay him so much, he will marry 
 their child. For the lowest class of peasants, 
 the terms are generally about twenty roubles 
 a man, and a new suit of cloth clothes, 
 and a certain number (settled by treaty) 
 of cotton shirts, a hat, pair of boots ; in 
 fact, a complete equipment. The bride must 
 also bring her own trousseau, every article 
 of which is settled between contracting 
 parties before the wedding goes forward. 
 The extent to which the man is clothed at 
 the expense of his bride, is apparently in 
 proportion to the rank of the parties. 
 
 In the lowest ranks, as I have said, a 
 complete equipment is required ; but in the 
 highest classes the custom is observed by the 
 
188 Russia in 1870. 
 
 provision of a warm dressing-gown for the 
 gentleman, which is afterwards replaced as 
 it wears out from the wife's private resources. 
 The daughter of the chief shopkeeper of our 
 village, when she married the foreman of the 
 other shop, gave him, I know, among other 
 things, six dozen shirts. 
 
 When all financial preliminaries are satis- 
 factorily adjusted, the marriage of the pea- 
 sants proceeds, still at the cost of the bride 
 and her relations, who invite the bridegroom 
 and his friends to meet, at a succession of 
 family feasts, her own female friends. Thus 
 rewarding these last for any help they may 
 have given in making the bridegroom's 
 breeches and shirts, by affording them an 
 opportunity of picking up husbands for 
 themselves. At these entertainments the 
 principal amusements are dancing and play- 
 ing at a game resembling that which, in 
 England, is called " Kiss in the ring." 
 
Russia in 1870. 189 
 
 At the wedding they provide a great box 
 bound in every direction with iron hoops, 
 and gaudily painted ; in this the bride-offer- 
 in*g of apparel for self and husband is care- 
 fully packed, and carried about with them 
 through the whole of the day's proceedings ; 
 first to the church, and afterwards to the 
 traktir, to which they adjourn from the reli- 
 gious service, and at which they consume, in 
 drinking, a great part of the dowry of the 
 bride, until they sally forth intoxicated, and 
 with cat's music of castanets and saucepans, 
 parade the streets of the place with their 
 friends, disguised in ridiculous costumes a 
 miserable sight for all those who appreciate 
 the latent good qualities of their character. 
 
 Their bacchanalian diversions are repeated 
 for two or three days, probably until they 
 have spent the dowry and the amount of the 
 
 * 
 
 gifts of their friends ; when, at last, the big 
 box finds rest in its permanent home, and 
 
190 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the bride begins to settle down to serious 
 work. Altogether, a peasant's wedding can 
 only be regarded in the light of a nuisance, 
 and the sooner their practices on such occa- 
 sions are modified or changed altogether the 
 better for the people. 
 
 Even the better sort of peasantry, who do 
 not hold their feasts in a traktir, but at 
 home, and who also refrain from parading 
 the streets in their folly, dine and dance at 
 the house of the bride's father for twenty- 
 four hours unceasingly, assisted and kept in 
 countenance by the deacons of the church, 
 who distinguish themselves as well by their 
 agility as by their appetites. 
 
 All persons present at funerals carry each 
 a lighted taper in his hand. 
 
 Hired mourners are invariably employed 
 
 on the occasion of a death, and watch the 
 
 
 
 body alternately for three days and two 
 nights, which are allowed to elapse between 
 
Russia in 1870. 191 
 
 death and burial. The coffin is never nailed 
 down until the time when it is actually 
 deposited in the grave, and each of the 
 mourners kisses the forehead of the corpse 
 the moment before it is enclosed. In the 
 summer time this practice is obviously un- 
 healthy and disagreeable, and the smell of 
 the corpse is hardly counteracted by abun- 
 dant censing of the church. 
 
 They use interesting and peculiar ceremo- 
 nies, of whose meaning and origin I regret 
 that I can give no account, at the consecra- 
 tion of the altars in new churches. In the 
 first place, a clean wooden table, as white as 
 snow, is brought in, and a nail is driven into 
 each of its four corners ; then the priests all 
 put on large white aprons, and go through 
 the ceremony of washing the table, first with 
 soap and water, and then with red wine ; 
 the heads of the four nails are then covered 
 with wax, and the table is anointed with 
 
192 Russia in 1870. 
 
 scented oil, a strong perfume, and finally 
 covered with a snow-white linen cloth, and 
 over this a splendidly embroidered altar cloth 
 is laid. The congregation in the meantime 
 stand round, bearing each a lighted taper, 
 and crowd to the table to secure fragments 
 of the wax with which the heads of the nails 
 are covered, or to moisten their handker- 
 chiefs with the scented oil of anointment ; if 
 they succeed in either case, they rejoice in 
 the belief that they possess in the relic an 
 infallible preventive of pain or disease. 
 
 I have alluded only slightly to the one or 
 two ceremonies of the church which I acci- 
 dentally fell in the way of witnessing. Na- 
 turally, they are not of a class to come 
 frequently under my notice, and I believe 
 there are ceremonies which I have not seen 
 still more interesting and peculiar than those 
 I have tried to describe as I saw them. 
 
 A great addition is made to the priests' 
 
Russia in 1870. 193 
 
 revenues by the custom of processions of the 
 very holy images of their churches. At 
 Moscow, for example, there is an image of 
 the Virgin Mary, which is provided with a 
 carriage and four horses, and makes a daily 
 round of visits among the faithful of the 
 congregation. So great is the desire of the 
 people to receive this holy image into their 
 houses, that application is made several 
 months in advance for the privilege. 
 
 When it passes along the streets, its at- 
 tendants bareheaded, it is the universal 
 practice for everybody within sight to un- 
 cover in reverence for it. In the country 
 it is the custom for these images to make 
 annually a tour through their neighbourhood. 
 The one that passed through our village 
 every year came from a distant monastery, 
 and, on its arrival, was taken first to the 
 church, where a religious ceremony was 
 performed in its presence; after which, it 
 
 o 
 
194 Russia in 1870. 
 
 was carried from house to house, and the 
 priests collected fees at every visit. To 
 give it house-room for the night was, how- 
 ever, the greatest honour, bought by a con- 
 siderable fee. The amount collected upon 
 these excursions is astonishing. 
 
 I heard that in our village the offerings 
 amounted in ten days to about 4,000 s. r., 
 say, 500, more or less. 
 
 The procession starts from its shrine with 
 no other companions than a few priests and 
 women, and, perhaps, an imbecile man or 
 two ; and, in every village, all the beggars 
 and imbeciles attach themselves to it, until 
 a great crowd of ragged and pitiable people 
 is formed undesirable guests in any house. 
 They all crowded into my house once a year, 
 and when they left, the windows were neces- 
 sarily thrown open, and strong scents burned 
 in the rooms where they had passed. 
 
 The number of the saints was steadily 
 
Russia in 1870. 195 
 
 increasing in all parts of Russia to so un- 
 reasonable an extent, that the present Em- 
 peror found it necessary to issue a ukase, 
 which forbad that any more were placed in 
 the calendar. 
 
 It is not uncommon to meet men who 
 think and insist that the saints have visibly 
 appeared to them. I am inclined to attempt 
 to account for the superstition in the follow- 
 ing way : 
 
 Russia is a country where one continually 
 sees mirage. I was driving once over a part 
 of Russia not exactly steppe country, but 
 among extensive plains when my companion 
 and I saw a man in the fields. He was 
 standing still, but had a peculiar look about 
 him. I cannot describe what this look was ; 
 but although he was unmistakably a man, 
 he did not look exactly earthly. 
 
 So much was I struck with this singularity 
 of his appearance, that I kept my eyes on 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Russia in 1870. 
 
 him. I supposed I watched him thus for 
 about half a minute, when he gradually dis- 
 appeared. No doubt this vision was an 
 optical delusion, caused by mirage. When I 
 questioned my coachman about it, he ap- 
 peared to be somewhat frightened, and began 
 at once to say we had seen a saint. I have 
 no doubt a great many Russian saints can be 
 accounted for by a similar explanation, and 
 the following story bears out my opinion in 
 that respect : 
 
 The same coachman was driving me along 
 a road, about ten versts distant from a cer- 
 tain provincial town in the government of 
 Vladimir, where there is a small chapel, 
 which I had often noticed. 
 
 "What is that chapel for?" Tasked the 
 coachman. 
 
 " That is Elias's chapel," he replied. " One 
 day some people who were coming out of 
 town saw a saint on the road, and tried to 
 
Russia in 1870. 197 
 
 catch him ; but he disappeared. A few days 
 afterwards they saw him again, and tried 
 to catch him, but he again disappeared; 
 soon afterwards he appeared for the third 
 time, and again disappointed his pursuers 
 by vanishing in a small pool of water 
 that was there. Hereupon the faithful at 
 once subscribed and built this chapel over 
 the spot, and the anniversary of his appear- 
 ance is kept as a great holiday, and the 
 water in the pool has great healing powers 
 on those occasions." 
 
 I asked how long ago these appearances 
 happened ? " About forty years," was 
 the answer. No doubt this was a mirage 
 saint. 
 
 A priest or deacon, who had charge of the 
 chapel, lived in a small hut near, and I had 
 often noticed, across the road opposite his 
 house, a sort of wooden bird-trap fixed on a 
 post, about four feet from the ground, just 
 
198 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the sort of trap that boys make of bricks to 
 catch birds. I could not imagine what this 
 was for. One day, when the sound of my 
 bells must have just reached him, I saw the 
 old man pop out of his house and go to the 
 trap ; as I passed the trap, I saw he had put 
 a small cucumber in. I rattled by, and 
 turned my head again to see what this could 
 mean, when I saw the old priest run out 
 again, cross the road to the trap, and take 
 out his cucumber with an air of the greatest 
 disappointment. Then it dawned upon me 
 what the trap was for. The old man, find- 
 ing I never contributed to the empty trap, 
 baited it, when he heard me coming, with the 
 cucumber. I was sorry not to have under- 
 stood the poor old gentleman before, but 
 afterwards I began to throw in a small dona- 
 tion to the box as I passed. 
 
 Looking out of my window one morning, 
 I was astonished by the spectacle of three 
 
Russia in 1870. 199 
 
 suns, all of the same brilliance, so that I 
 could not distinguish the parhelia from the 
 real orb. But this phenomenon is not com- 
 mon, excepting in the extreme northern parts 
 of the Empire. 
 
 Great as is the reverence of the Russian 
 people for their Church, it does not surpass 
 that which they have for their Emperor. 
 
 The love of a Russian peasant for his 
 Czar is an indescribable sentiment. The 
 Czar is to him an incarnation of Providence 
 on earth an almost omniscient and perfect 
 being created for the special protection of 
 the peasantry, responsible for nothing that 
 goes wrong, but the source of every allevia- 
 tion that smooths the Mujik's rough road of 
 life. The peasants are perfectly childish in 
 this affection, with which no little super- 
 stition is mixed, so that prayers to the saints 
 are not seldom mingled with his majesty's 
 name, not only as the subject but as the 
 
200 Russia in 1870. 
 
 object also of their prayers. They believe 
 that the Emperor knows each one of them 
 personally, and takes a fatherly interest in 
 the welfare of every individual. 
 
 1 remember once going into a village and 
 saying to a very old woman, the mother of 
 the village : 
 
 "Well, old lady, I have been to Nijny 
 Novgorod, and shown the Czarevitch some 
 of our iron." 
 
 "Ah," she said, "did he think it was 
 good?" 
 
 " Yes ; he thought it was very good." 
 
 " He knew it was made with our charcoal, 
 I suppose ? " That meant the charcoal 
 burned by her husband and others. 
 
 " Of course," I said. 
 
 " Did he ask after my husband ? " 
 
 Not to spoil what I thought was a happy 
 illusion for the old woman, I nodded yes. 
 
 " Ah, yes," she soliloquized, " of course 
 
Russia in 1870. 201 
 
 the Czarevitch knew that my husband is the 
 foreman of the charcoal burnings." 
 
 It struck me that there was something 
 very significant in that notion, of the inti- 
 mate hold that the Emperor and his family 
 have on the hearts and minds of the pea- 
 santry. 
 
 But they have the most curious ideas on 
 this subject. They think, one and all, that 
 they have only to go to St. Petersburg, and 
 knock at the door of the palace, to gain 
 immediate access to the Czar, and a hearing 
 of any petition they want to lay before him. 
 
 More than once, for example, when I have 
 had some dispute with workmen, I could not 
 agree to their demands, or they were asking 
 for some absurdity, they would say : 
 
 " Never mind, we will go to the Emperor, 
 and tell him, and he will soon make you do 
 what we want." 
 
 And, in fact, I have known more than 
 
202 Russia in 1870. 
 
 once, a deputation actually to start off on 
 their mission " to the Emperor/' with some 
 absurd grievance for him to set right, and 
 only to return because stopped on the road 
 by some official person whom they trusted, 
 who would convince them of the absurdity of 
 their demands : not of their project of "ap- 
 pealing to Caesar." 
 
 I knew a very respectable Mujik, who was 
 at one time a rich man for his class, but 
 who, in an unlucky hour, had discovered 
 somewhere a deposit of iron pyrites, and, 
 deceived by the silver-gilt glitter of this 
 mineral, he concluded at once that it was 
 silver or gold, and his fortune was made. 
 He had wasted all his property in having his 
 treasure constantly watched for a long time, 
 when, at last, he came to me one day, with a 
 small bag full of his pyrites in his hand. 
 
 After he had carefully secured the door, he 
 looked all about the room and under the 
 
Russia in 1870. 203 
 
 table, to make sure there were no listeners 
 within hearing, and then produced his 
 minerals : 
 
 " What's that ? " said he. 
 
 " Sulphur and iron," I answered. 
 
 " Not a bit of it ! That is silver." 
 
 I put a piece on the fire, and all the sul- 
 phur burned out of it, and showed him there 
 was no silver in the residue ; but it had no 
 effect on his conviction that the pyrites was 
 silver. 
 
 " No ; " he said. " I see you don't under- 
 stand it. You have never seen our silver 
 ore here ; but I am going off to see the 
 Emperor, to show him my silver. Unfor- 
 tunately, I am short of money ; will you lend 
 me five roubles, to eat on my way ? " 
 
 I had a liking for the man, and, after 
 telling him he was a fool, gave him the five 
 roubles, and away he went, to walk to the 
 Emperor. 
 
204 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Several weeks after this I was driving 
 through our village, when I ' saw somebody 
 running after me, calling out. to stop. I 
 stopped, and picked up my old friend the 
 treasure-seeker, returning sobered from his 
 travels. 
 
 "Well, Feodor," I said, " did you see the 
 Czar ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, it was all a mistake. When 
 I got to Moscow, I saw my General 
 (the peasant did not belong to us), and 
 he took me to a clever man, who said 
 it was just the same that you told me ; 
 so I came home again. I only spent two 
 roubles thirty copecks of your money, and 
 here is the change," which he gave me. "I 
 have not done so badly, after all," he said ; 
 " whilst I was away, all the Mujiks were cer- 
 tain it was silver, and my wife has sold them 
 all I had, at three roubles a pound ! " 
 
 The Russian peasants may well carry their 
 
Russia in 1870. 205 
 
 love for their Czar to excess, and believe the 
 man who has done so much for them to be 
 something higher and holier than a fellow 
 human being. These thirty millions of slaves 
 whose chains he suddenly broke, have been 
 told that he did so ; and they, better than all 
 the world, know and appreciate the enor- 
 mous amount of opposition he must have 
 conquered in the nobles before he could do 
 it, as well as the enormous value of the boon 
 he has conferred on themselves by his vic- 
 tory. For I assert the final liberation of the 
 serfs of Russia to be the greatest and noblest 
 victory over prejudice and tyranny that the 
 will of one man ever won. 
 
 The liberated serfs are intoxicated with 
 their liberties, and their ideas on the subject 
 are very curious. They believe, as a Mujik 
 told me, " You see Barrin, things are 
 altered now. There was a time when I 
 and everything that belonged to me was 
 
206 Russia in 1870. 
 
 yours ; but now you, and everything that 
 belongs to you, is mine." 
 
 It is infinitely more healthy for the 
 ignorant people to hold that opinion, absurd 
 as it is, than to be in the abject state they 
 were before. It is better to be offended 
 by the outspoken bearing of free men than 
 disgusted by the falsehood of servility. I 
 overheard two Mujiks talking under my 
 balcony about myself. 
 
 " Ivan, who is that chap up there ?" 
 
 " Oh ! he is one of those German fellows 
 (all foreigners are called Germans) who have 
 rented the works. 5 ' 
 
 No serf would have dared take the measure 
 of his master German or Russian like that. 
 But the significance of the anecdote will be 
 lost upon those who have not known Russia 
 and the peasants under the old regime. I 
 am horrified when I read, as I do sometimes, 
 that the emancipation is a failure. Let 
 
Russia in 1870. 207 
 
 those who take interest in the question 
 whether millions of men should be slaves or 
 free, go to Russia and judge for themselves. 
 Let them go into the villages and talk with 
 the people hear what they have to say 
 on their own behalf; and then, even in 
 ignorance of their misery under their former 
 condition, I am sure they cannot doubt 
 that the Russian peasant deserves, and is 
 capable of using to good purpose, the rights 
 and advantages of liberty. 
 
208 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SPORTS AND PASTIME. 
 
 rpHERE is no country within the same 
 distance from our own which affords 
 such excellent sport as Russia; but the 
 Russians are not a sporting people; they 
 understand nothing beyond pot-hunting, 
 and their neglect of the game is perhaps 
 a reason why there is more for other 
 people. 
 
 In Russia we have every kind of game 
 known in England, and a great deal more 
 besides ; but pheasants are only found in 
 the Caucasus. Generally all over Russia, 
 
Russia in 1870. 209 
 
 are to be found partridges (grey and 
 Frenchmen), black game, capercailzie, rab- 
 chick or tree partridges, ptarmigan, snipe 
 of all sorts, hares, ducks, geese, swans, 
 woodcock, and all other kinds of wild fowl, 
 and bustards in the steppes. 
 
 Among the larger game are bears, elk, 
 wolves, and ]ynxes, and in the Oural roe- 
 deer. In the neighbourhood of the Altai 
 mountain range, tigers have been shot, and 
 some stuffed specimens are preserved in the 
 museum at Barnaoul. 
 
 These had no doubt found their way 
 across the Kirghis Steppe ; and so wandered 
 to the Altai provinces, to the south of 
 Semipalatinsk. 
 
 A good many owls of the large horned 
 sort, perfect monsters to look at, have been 
 found in the Oural mountains. 
 
 In the government of Nijny Nov- 
 gorod, and parts of Vladimir, I have seen 
 
 p 
 
210 Russia in 1870. 
 
 innumerable eagles of all sorts and colours, 
 and among them buzzards or fish eagles. 
 Some of the large black eagles I have seen 
 were wonderful to behold. I have a special 
 recollection of one very large one which I 
 saw on a tree, I unluckily had not my gun 
 with me. I made demonstrations to frighten 
 him off, which he did not notice for a long 
 time ; and, when he did condescend to pay 
 attention to my shouting and projectiles, he 
 looked so remarkably as if he was preparing 
 to make a swoop in my direction, that he 
 ended by frightening me off. 
 
 All the small game in those parts have so 
 little knowledge by experience of guns and 
 men, that they are as tame as Selkirk's 
 subjects, and one literally treads on the 
 birds ; and has to kick them up to be shot 
 at, like the pheasants in a good preserve 
 at home. 
 
 The bustards come on to the corn land 
 
Russia in 1870. 211 
 
 about the steppes after harvest. These 
 birds are particularly partial to peas. They 
 are very large, sometimes weighing up to 
 35 lb., and are hard to get at in these 
 steppes where there is no cover of any 
 sort, and the only way to get a shot is to 
 be covered up in a cart-load of hay, drive 
 as near as possible to the birds, and wait 
 patiently for a long shot with a pea-rifle. 
 
 These birds are sometimes miscalled wild 
 turkeys, but they have very little of the 
 turkey about them. They are not bad 
 eating, if you bury them twenty-four hours 
 in the earth before you cook them. 
 
 The Siberian animals, which are hunted 
 for their fur, as the sable, lynx, ermine, and 
 others, were,, doubtless, at one time common 
 in Russia too; and, as to beaver, I once 
 came across a very curious document relating 
 to them. 
 
 It was a privilege granted by Ivan the 
 p 2 
 
212 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Terrible, who reigned about 1560, to certain 
 peasants of a village in the present govern- 
 ment of Vladimir, to hunt and take beavers 
 in the neighbouring woods. The document 
 was doubtless genuine, and the country it 
 named was that which Ivan passed through 
 then a dense forest, unexplored, and 
 scarcely passable on his way to the siege 
 and capture of Kazan. The permission was 
 said to be given to the peasants to reward 
 them for guiding Ivan and his army through 
 the woods ; which for ages afterwards were 
 known by the name of Mourom Woods ; and 
 which to this day, although all cleared away 
 and cultivated, are mixed up in all legends 
 and rhymes as the dreaded haunts of rob- 
 bers and wild beasts. 
 
 Very few among the peasants shoot, but 
 here and there one is met with who is a 
 sportsman; and when that is the case, he 
 is always a thoroughly good one. In the 
 
Russia in 1870. 213 
 
 Oural, where shooting is rather more general, 
 the peasants always use an immensely heavy 
 pea-rifle, with which they shoot all kinds of 
 game. 
 
 There are game laws, and a close time 
 fixed, but very little attention is paid to 
 either, excepting in the neighbourhood of 
 large towns. 
 
 Generally, when a peasant in the country 
 is out with his gun, he shoots whatever he 
 gets a chance at; that is to say, anything 
 sitting he will very seldom risk wasting his 
 ammunition on a flying shot. 
 
 Almost every kind of shooting is con- 
 nected with some artful and unsportsmanlike 
 "dodge." Rabchick, for instance, which 
 are perhaps more plentiful than anything 
 else, are always got at by "calling." The 
 man sets himself down to imitate the bird's 
 own cry, upon a small quill, and as the 
 rabchicks in the neighbourhood come flying 
 
214 Russia in 1870. 
 
 up, and settle on a tree within range, are 
 "potted" in succession. Capercailzie are 
 followed into the woods by the sportsmen 
 in a sledge with a fast trotting horse, im- 
 mediately after the first fall of snow, when 
 they perch on the trees together with the 
 black game ; or, in spring, they are stalked 
 in a peculiar manner from tree to tree. 
 
 This bird is very wary and shy, and scared 
 at the slightest noise. He perches on the 
 top of a tall pine-tree, and utters a peculiar 
 cry at intervals ; while the bird does this he 
 shuts his eyes, and the peasant, who is 
 watching him from a distance, uses the 
 opportunity to get to a nearer shelter, and 
 wait for another cry, when he moves nearer 
 still, until at last he can get within short 
 yange of the capercailzie ; but he has to be 
 very wary and silent, for the slightest sound, 
 as the crushing of a twig, or a stumbling 
 step, will startle the bird from its perch. 
 
Russia in 1870. 215 
 
 Blackcock are shot in great numbers in 
 the spring, immediately after the disap- 
 pearance of the snow, when the power of the 
 sun begins to make itself felt. The cocks 
 then come out into the open glades of the 
 woods to fight; and when once they have 
 chosen a spot for this purpose, they return 
 to it morning after morning. Then the 
 peasant, who has marked their rendezvous, 
 goes there in their absence, and raises a sort 
 of hut among the branches of young trees, 
 which he carefully covers with the foliage, 
 making it look as natural as possible. This 
 hut is left there for a few days, until the 
 birds are supposed to have become accus- 
 tomed to it. Then, when the morning of 
 action is near, a few stuffed hens are cun- 
 ningly posted among the branches of the 
 trees round about, to convince the real black- 
 cocks of the innocence of the place ; and the 
 sportsman hides in his ambush during the 
 
216 Russia in 1870. 
 
 night, arranges himself comfortably, makes 
 a few peep-holes to shoot through, and 
 patiently waits for daybreak. With the first 
 approach of dawn, the birds arrive in the 
 twilight, with a great noise, and at once 
 get to busines-s, fighting and challenging 
 each other with a great crowing. 
 
 The peasant also gets to business, and, as 
 they come within range, murders them as 
 they stand on the ground, or perch with the 
 stuffed hens on the trees. With the first 
 appearance of the sun above the horizon, the 
 survivors fly off; but while they are on the 
 ground, they take no notice of the shooting. 
 So intent are they upon their fighting 
 among themselves, that I once shot one of a 
 pair that were so engaged, and, when he fell 
 to the gun, his adversary did not even look 
 up, but continued to spur the dead body, 
 until I knocked him over also. In the 
 above way very large bags are made. I 
 
Russia in 1870. 217 
 
 have killed as many as seventeen brace in 
 the short interval between daybreak and 
 sunrise. 
 
 Wild fowl are shot, as they come to feed 
 in the morning and evening, from hides 
 erected either on a boat moored in the 
 river or lake, or on the shores. They are 
 also bagged in great quantities, sometimes 
 as many as forty or fifty to one gun. 
 Woodcock, snipe, partridges, &c., not being 
 amenable to calls, rarely fall to the peasant's 
 gun. No one who has not been to the 
 country can imagine anything like the 
 abundance of this game, and the splendid 
 day's shooting that can be had upon it. 
 With the help of an old steady dog, a 
 moderately good shot can easily bag be- 
 tween five o'clock and noon, from twenty 
 to thirty brace. I have often known such 
 a man to bring home in August from twenty 
 to twenty-five couple of double snipe in a 
 
218 Russia in 1870. 
 
 day; and a greater treat for a gourmand 
 than the flesh of this bird I do not know. 
 
 Russia is a wonderful place for meeting 
 enormous flocks of birds of passage. I 
 once passed a lake that had all the water 
 drained out, and noticed nothing on it as 
 I passed ; but when I returned a few hours 
 afterwards, the bed of the lake was literally 
 covered with all kinds of large and small 
 birds, which had settled to rest on their 
 migratory flight. It was a curious sight. 
 The birds were so exhausted that they could 
 not get out of our way ; but we knocked 
 some down with sticks, and picked them up 
 in our hands. 
 
 In the spring time the numerous small 
 islands of the Gulf of Finland, very near 
 to St. Petersburg, . are crowded with red- 
 wings and ruffs ; and it is extraordinary 
 what a number of specimens can be collected 
 there. 
 
Russia in 1870. 219 
 
 I have been told that the study of natural 
 history in Russia has not been much pur- 
 sued. I am sure it offers a good field to 
 the student of ornithology especially. 
 
 Every Russian peasant builds a little 
 wooden bird-cot near his house, which the 
 starlings take possession of upon their 
 arrival in early spring, and occupy until the 
 approaching cold warns them southward to 
 milder climates. 
 
 Hares are also very plentiful. They are 
 generally of the blue sort, and very large. 
 The Russians do not care much for them, 
 and therefore seldom shoot them ; but some- 
 times, when snow has been falling in the 
 night and left off before morning, a peasant 
 will follow a hare's tracks through the 
 snow. 
 
 At a short distance from the form, the 
 track always describes a very small circuit, 
 and then the peasant makes ready his gun, 
 
220 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and soon after stirs up puss with the barrel, 
 and at the same moment blows a hole in 
 her body, which is usually fatal. I have 
 seen a whole cartload of hares taken by 
 boys in the spring time, when the rivers 
 rise and flood the country for many miles. 
 The boys pick out some rising ground above 
 the flood, which gradually diminishes as 
 the water rises, and the hares are, in con- 
 sequence, driven together in a corner, where 
 the boys follow and knock them down with 
 sticks. 
 
 Some of my readers will probably want 
 t know where all this good shooting is to 
 be found, and how they can get it. I can 
 only say that it is to be found almost 
 everywhere, at distances not too great from 
 the towns. Let anybody who wants sport 
 go to Moscow, and at the club there soon 
 get introduced to plenty of landed pro- 
 prietors, who will put him in the way of 
 
Russia in 1870. 221 
 
 getting what he wants. Nobody in Eussia 
 thinks of preserving, except the members 
 of a few clubs near St. Petersburg ; and 
 not only is the shooting comparatively open 
 to all comers certainly to any strangers 
 but hospitality and a hearty welcome are 
 sure to be offered besides. 
 
 Within 250 miles of Moscow, I have seen 
 game in greater quantities than anybody 
 can want ; and as the journey is performed 
 by rail, this is not too great a distance to 
 travel. I can fancy no more agreeable 
 amusement than that of shooting in such 
 a climate as that of central Russia in the 
 month of August. One is liable to be an- 
 noyed by mosquitos, and, for the benefit 
 of sportsmen there and elsewhere, I record 
 my plan of keeping them off. I carried in 
 my waistcoat pocket a small phial of salad 
 oil, in which I had mixed a few drops of 
 oil of tar, and when I found myself among 
 
222 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the enemy I rubbed this oil over my hands 
 and face, and scarcely one mosquito would 
 annoy me. The smell of the creosote is 
 not disagreeable, but the insects certainly 
 avoid it. 
 
 The large game that I mentioned before 
 are plentiful in the provinces of Vladimir 
 and Nijny Novgorod and Twer. 
 
 Hereabouts are plenty of bears, generally 
 two different species, large and small, of 
 the brown bear ; black bears are very rarely 
 met with, but I once saw as many as five 
 two old ones and three cubs together in 
 one place. The Russian sportsman in chase 
 of a bear sometimes adopts the following 
 plan of getting a shot. 
 
 Having found a place where a bear is 
 accustomed to pass, he looks for three trees 
 growing near together, in an arrangement 
 approaching the triangular. He selects 
 trees of such a growth that the top branches 
 
Russia in 1870. 223 
 
 of the three joined together will just about 
 support his weight, but are not strong 
 enough individually for the bear to climb up 
 after him. 
 
 Among these three tree tops he makes 
 himself a comfortable hiding-place, and then 
 fastens a cow-bell to a tree in the neigh- 
 bourhood, holding a string from the cow- 
 bell in his hand. 
 
 "When this is arranged, he climbs to his 
 hiding-place as well as he can with his gun, 
 and begins to ring the cow-bell by pulling 
 the string. The bear, when he hears the 
 cow-bell, begins to think of beef, and comes 
 stealthily towards the sound in search of 
 a meal. It is curious to watch him when 
 he comes under the bell and cannot find 
 the cow; his head twists round and round 
 like a windmill in motion; but presently 
 some movement in the hiding-place attracts 
 his attention, and he will come right under- 
 
224 Russia in 1870. 
 
 neath it and look straight up. Now is the 
 time to give him the contents of your gun ; 
 and if the peasant's gun will go off (which 
 it does about once in ten trials), it is a 
 bad chance for Bruin, as the gun will pro- 
 bably contain, on the top of a double charge 
 
 of powder, something like two bullets, a 
 
 ft 
 
 lump of iron, a small pebble or two, and 
 perhaps the ramrod. If the bear should 
 be only wounded by the discharge, he will 
 wait about the place a long time for his 
 revenge; in which case the Mujik must 
 stay in the tree, either till the bear goes 
 away of his own accord, or the Mujik' s 
 friends arrive and frighten him off. 
 
 As to all the traveller's tales about the 
 ferocity of the bear and his proneness to 
 attack men, I can only say that I have 
 always found the greatest difficulty in getting 
 near a bear. As a rule he is off at the first 
 notice he gets of your neighbourhood. 
 
Russia in 1870. 225 
 
 So it is with wolves also. I have seen 
 a great many in all situations on all sorts 
 of occasions, and I never saw but one that 
 showed any disposition to attack either 
 myself or the horses in my Tarentasse. 
 
 The peasants sometimes capture a bear 
 in his winter quarters, detecting these by 
 discoloration or air-holes in the snow at 
 the opening of their caves. A number of 
 peasants, armed with guns, poles, &c., 
 surround the spot, and rouse the sleeping 
 animal by calling him, or, if necessary, by 
 stirring him up with a pole. When at last, 
 sleepy and stupid, the bear puts his head 
 out of the hole, all the company fire at him 
 and run away, returning after a time to see 
 the result, and to repeat the attack if their 
 first attempt has been unsuccessful. But 
 bears taken during the hibernation are not 
 worth having. They are exceedingly lean, 
 and their hides are ragged and thin. 
 
 Q 
 
226 Russia in 1870. 
 
 It is carious to notice the aversion that 
 the bear has to music. I had a couple of 
 young bears about my house, which were 
 constantly in our sitting-rooms, but, imme- 
 diately that anybody began to play the 
 piano, they began to howl and cry, and 
 nothing could quiet them until they were 
 beyond hearing of the music. 
 
 I have only heard of two instances of 
 bears doing harm to anybody. In one case, 
 some men who were cutting wood in a forest 
 were told by a boy that he had seen a bear. 
 It was winter time, and the bear, asleep in 
 his hole, had probably been awakened by 
 the noise made by the wood-cutters. 
 
 One of the men went to the hole, and the 
 bear put his head out, whereupon the man 
 tapped the bear on the head with the axe, 
 and the bear retaliated at once by scalping 
 the man. Next day, near the same place, 
 some peasants saw a bear (it must have 
 
Russia in 1870. 227 
 
 been the same one) sitting half asleep in 
 the middle of the road. As he did not 
 move out of the way, the driver went up 
 to the bear and flogged him with his whip, 
 whereupon this Red Indian of a Bruin 
 scalped him also. 
 
 Both these men (although their scalps 
 were completely gone) were, I am glad to 
 say, cured in our hospital. 
 
 Lynxes, or, as the Russians call them, wild 
 cats, are often seen when the great battues 
 are made. On such an occasion I was 
 fortunate to see one. It was at a battue 
 about forty miles from St. Petersburg. I was 
 standing waiting in my place, tired and 
 rather dozing than otherwise, and I daresay 
 missing a number of chances of a shot, 
 when I suddenly woke up to a state of 
 liveliness on hearing the breaking of twigs 
 near at hand. Presently I saw something 
 coming towards me that startled me, and 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Russia in 1870. 
 
 I began to think I must still be asleep 
 and dreaming, for before me was an 
 animal such as I had never before seen 
 in a wild state. I imagined it to be 
 a young tiger or leopard ; it was the size 
 of a small mastiff, very strong in the 
 feet and legs, having a broad chest, a 
 large head, and of a reddish-grey colour, 
 spotted. 
 
 I had never expected to see such an 
 animal, and was so much astonished that 
 it did not occur to me to fire ; which was 
 fortunate, in fact, as my gun was only 
 charged with No. 4 shot, and firing this into 
 such an animal would have been useless. 
 He trotted slowly off, and as I looked after 
 him, I apprehended at last that I had had 
 the fortune to see a lynx at close quarters, 
 but I never saw another. A good many 
 bears and elks are trapped by the peasants 
 in large gins. The Russian peasant, who likes 
 
Russia in 1870. 229 
 
 this sport amazingly, is a wonderful hand 
 at a trap, which he will rarely set without 
 catching something. He will follow the 
 tracks of a herd of elk for week after week, 
 until he discovers where they have chosen 
 for themselves a resting-place. Near this 
 place, upon some path which * the elks 
 have made, and will use daily, the hunter 
 sets his gin and makes it fast to a tree with 
 a thick strong chain, then covers all lightly 
 with leaves and earth. 
 
 Among the troop of animals crowding 
 along the path, one is sure to tread on the 
 fatal snare and fall a victim to the hunter, 
 if he does not meet a still worse fate, poor 
 beast, and escape leaving his foot in the 
 snare, which happens very often. I do 
 not know whether elks survive this cruel 
 mutilation, but I know that bears do, as 
 I once shot one which had lost its foot in 
 that way, and the animal was perfectly 
 
230 Russia in 1870. 
 
 cured, running about on three feet almost 
 as well as if he had four. 
 
 When a bear is caught by the foot, he will 
 even try to bite it off above the trap. Of 
 this I have also seen an instance in my own 
 experience ; having shot a bear in a trap, 
 whose leg we found nearly bitten through 
 above where it had been caught. 
 
 Very capital sport is wolf shooting in 
 Russia. The sportsmen set off in a large 
 sledge, preceded by a smaller sledge, in 
 which are two men, one of whom holds the 
 reins while another carries a live pig in his 
 arms ; at the bottom of the sledge is another 
 pig muffled in a bag. Behind your own 
 sledge you trail a rope, about thirty yards 
 long, with a wisp of hay at the end of it, 
 which dances about like something alive over 
 the inequalities of the snow. Away the two 
 sledges gallop, not in the woods, but on the 
 plains in the neighbourhood of villages ; the 
 
Russia in 1870. 231 
 
 man in the leading sledge pinches his pig's 
 ear, and the pig wakes the echoes with his 
 shrieks, which resound far and wide through 
 the silent frosty night. Moonlight nights 
 are necessarily chosen for this amusement, 
 when the wolves can be seen from a great 
 distance. At first they appear like a crowd 
 of bounding shadows ; and as their gaunt 
 active forms become more and more outlined 
 against the snow, the excitement becomes 
 intense. The sledges, however, continue 
 their course to the music of the screams of 
 the pig, for if they were stopped the herd 
 of wolves would be dispersed in a minute. 
 At last the troop perceive the bounding wisp 
 of hay, and come down towards it with a 
 rush, while the air resounds with their short, 
 yelping bark, sounding chorus to the squeal- 
 ing pigs. 
 
 This is the critical moment ; sometimes 
 they detect the imposture of the hay, and 
 
232 Russia in 1870. 
 
 turn tail at a safe distance : more often they 
 cannot resist the hope of pork, and on they 
 come within range. Then, at a given mo- 
 ment, all the guns in the sledge are emptied 
 on them, and all but the dead or wounded 
 disperse like magic. Apart from the novel 
 sensation of being hunted by your game, 
 the act of shooting straight is by no means 
 easy under the circumstances. 
 
 The roads in the snow are never quite 
 even, and the sledge is sure to be rocking 
 from side to side. It is thus somewhat diffi- 
 cult to hold a gun straight ; and you must of 
 necessity shoot running, because the instant 
 that the sledge is stopped, the wolves are 
 gone out of range like lightning. 
 
 As to jumping out of the sledge in motion, 
 that is sometimes done ; but it is not an 
 easy thing to do, encumbered as you must 
 be with a heavy fur coat and colossal boots 
 loose and lined with fur. 
 
Russia in 1870. 233 
 
 I have heard it said that wolves are very 
 cunning ; now I do not think so, and for the 
 following reason : I once fastened on my 
 trailing rope two wisps of hay instead of one 
 only, at a distance of about ten yards apart, 
 wishing to see what a wolf would do when 
 he came to the first for pork and found it 
 "gammon." 
 
 To my surprise, a wolf bounded up to the 
 first piece of hay, smelt it, and immediately, 
 instead of turning tail, pounced towards the 
 second wisp, before he reached which, how- 
 ever, he was rewarded for his stupidity by 
 the contents of my gun. 
 
 On the other hand, I have always found 
 that we were sure to draw a blank, let our 
 pig squeak ever so melodiously, if we went to 
 any neighbourhood where we had shot, say, 
 a week previously, and had let any wounded 
 wolves escape us. 
 
 The best bait of all for catching wolves is 
 
234 Russia in 1870. 
 
 a live dog. This animal to a wolf is an 
 irresistible temptation. If one can only 
 train a dog to run about twenty yards 
 behind a sledge, and bark as he runs ; and, 
 when the wolves come upon him, to draw 
 gradually nearer and nearer to the sledge, 
 all the wolves in the neighbourhood may be 
 exterminated. 
 
 I believe that wolves travel great dis- 
 tances in search of food. I once particularly 
 noticed in a pack a large wolf, who had 
 only half a tail, which he carried in a very 
 peculiar manner ; and on the following night 
 I saw him again at a distance of more than 
 tMrty miles from the spot where I had seen 
 him on the previous one. 
 
 They also hunt wolves by battues, em- 
 ploying sometimes as many as two hundred 
 beaters. But it is cold and tame sport to 
 wait on one spot until something comes 
 towards you. 
 
Russia in 1870. 235 
 
 Wolves appear to be difficult to tame. I 
 have tried to do so with several young ones, 
 but I never succeeded. They invariably 
 strangle themselves in their collars and 
 chains; but they are tamed sometimes. 
 At Ekaterienberg I saw two chained up 
 in a yard in the house of the head of 
 the Mining Department, which do the duty 
 of watch- dogs; and are tame enough to 
 allow those who know them to go up to and 
 pat them. 
 
 In the Oural are what are called by the 
 natives wild goats ; they are pretty plentiful, 
 I believe, but I was never fortunate enough 
 to see one of them. I cannot think, how- 
 ever, they are goats. They are most pro- 
 bably a species of deer. The roe-deer, in 
 fact, is very plentiful in the southern parts 
 of the Oural Mountains, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Ufallen. 
 
 The fishing in Russia is nil. There are 
 
236 Russia in 1870. 
 
 plenty of fish, which are not worth angling 
 for, excepting the pike ; and as the largest 
 of these are in the lakes, which are always 
 more or less full of stumps and roots of 
 trees, it is impossible to spin for them; or 
 the constant loss and breakage of your 
 tackle takes away all the pleasure of the 
 sport. In the Oural there are a few trout 
 in some of the streams, which we should 
 call black, or mountain trout, but not in 
 sufficient quantity to make fishing for them 
 worth while. 
 
 Far away in the Oural there are grayling 
 worth fishing for, but this is too remote to 
 mention. 
 
 In most of the northern rivers, and in the 
 Volga, we find the sterlet, a fish remarkable 
 for the richness of its flavour, which cer- 
 tainly cannot be overrated; but they offer 
 no sport to the angler. 
 
 With the above exceptions, the fish are all 
 
Russia in 1870. 237 
 
 common white fish, such as roach, rudd, 
 bleak, &c. ; these abound in rivers and 
 lakes ; and as the Russians are great fish 
 eaters in consequence of their frequent 
 fasts, large quantities are taken. It is all 
 the same to a Russian how and when he 
 takes them, they are never out of season : 
 and, as I have often seen nets made of bass- 
 mats, it is wonderful that any fish are left, 
 as fry and all go into the pot. 
 
 In the Neva a good many salmon are 
 taken by netting, but it is not a river that 
 can be fished with the rod. 
 
 Also in the river Oural, and some of the 
 Siberian rivers, there are vast quantities 
 of salmon ; but these places are at present 
 too far off, and inaccessible to tempt the 
 sportsman. 
 
 Finland has also plenty of trout. 
 
 The Russians are clever at fishing with 
 the net. They may be seen on a frozen lake 
 
238 Russia in 1870. 
 
 in the winter in a regular surveying party, 
 measuring here, ^digging holes there, and 
 planting red flags in another place ; the 
 result of which scientific proceedings is, that 
 they will empty the lake of every fin of fish 
 that it contains. 
 
 The greatest part of the fish, which may 
 be called the staple article of food in the 
 fast times, comes from the lower ends of 
 the Volga and the Don; I mean such fish 
 as sturgeon, beluga, accitrina, &c., wnich 
 are all large fish, weighing from 60 Ib. up- 
 wards. 
 
 All over Eussia a good many fish are 
 taken, as in all northern countries by 
 spearing; and a very pleasant amusement 
 it is on a still summer night, to sit and 
 watch the fires on the water ; and while you 
 admire their glowing reflection and listen 
 to the plaintive songs of the distant fisher- 
 men (for all Russian music has a very 
 
Russia in 1870. 239 
 
 peculiar plaintive sound), you can almost 
 envy the quiet and contented life of the 
 Russian Mujik. 
 
 The people have very numerous holidays. 
 According to the calendar these ought to 
 come about twice a day, but they are prac- 
 tically reduced to at least forty in the year, 
 not including Sundays. But they have very 
 few amusements. Sometimes, but very 
 seldom, a few boys may be seen playing 
 a game something like hockey. Generally, 
 on a holiday, the girls get together in groups 
 and amuse themselves by singing their 
 mournful national songs. But the grown 
 up people lounge about with idle hands, 
 doing literally nothing; sit on the ledge 
 outside the house ; or lie flat on their faces 
 to have their heads cleaned by the rest. 
 (Another strikingly oriental practice). Some 
 of the men will be taking their fit of 
 drunkenness at the Traktir on every 
 
240 Russia in 1870. 
 
 holiday. Like all people who are fond of 
 shirking their work on any pretence, they 
 do not know what to do with themselves 
 without it. If they were men who had 
 energy to find rational amusement, they 
 would not require so many holidays, and 
 would be ashamed to make their religious 
 observances a mere pretext for idleness and 
 debauchery. As it is, they doze away their 
 holidays in complete inactivity ; even in 
 winter, when one would think that they 
 must do something to keep themselves 
 warm, it is all the same. They lounge 
 about listlessly with nothing to do and 
 nothing to say. 
 
 Occasionally an individual is seen on the 
 ice hills ; but, as a general rule, if you go 
 to the expense of making one of those very 
 Eussian institutions, you will very seldom 
 see it used. 
 
 In other oriental countries, where the 
 
Russia in 1870. 241 
 
 people cannot read, they are fond of having 
 stories told them ; but this is not a general 
 amusement with the Mujiks. I have noticed 
 a group, now and then listening to some 
 narrative, but the practice is by no means 
 common. 
 
 In every rank of society the boys and 
 girls are without any sort of games by 
 which they can amuse themselves rationally. 
 Excepting a mild game at ball, they 
 know nothing of the sort, and a fight 
 between boys is an unheard - of thing ; 
 the boys are throughout too effeminately 
 reared, as I have remarked in another 
 place. 
 
 The carnival is a great time for the 
 Russians. Then, in the larger Zavods (in- 
 dustrial villages), all the population pro- 
 menade in all sorts of vehicles, from the 
 master in his well-appointed sledge, to the 
 labouring miner in his clumsy ore cart. In 
 
242 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the evening they all disguise themselves 
 in masks and fancy dresses ; and making 
 the round of the village houses, dance a 
 little, drink a little, and pick up an accession 
 to their party at every house. 
 
 It is now three years since I entertained 
 such an assembly in my house in a great 
 Zavod village. 
 
 The servants decorated the great hall for 
 the occasion; the village band a violin 
 and violoncello were in attendance, tuned 
 and impatient to begin before the first 
 maskers arrived. These represented a man 
 leading a dancing bear. The bear leader 
 was got up in the proper costume, with 
 regular professional tom-tom; and the bear 
 wore his skin like an old hand. These two 
 maskers were two of my " Dvorniks " (house 
 porters) . 
 
 They were followed by all the others in a 
 crowd. First, a ferocious little gentleman, 
 
Russia in 1870. 243 
 
 in a uniform rather postal than military, 
 carrying a sword which he tells me decapi- 
 tated ever so many Turks in the Crimean 
 war, and with a helmet said to be the spoil 
 of an English dragoon, but plainly that of 
 the fireman who stands bareheaded by the 
 door. It is delightful to see this courteous 
 warrior drink a glass of champagne, with 
 the masked and dominoed lady in the white 
 kid gloves who leans on his arm. It is 
 amazing to be told that the warrior is my 
 butler's son, a warehouseman in the works 
 at 12s. 6d. a week, and his fair com- 
 panion one of the work girls of the house. 
 Presently the band of stringed instruments 
 strike up a dance, and the Mujiks fall into 
 position for a French quadrille. This they 
 perform decorously and seriously, without 
 noise or vulgarity; in fact, as a quadrille 
 should be danced solemnly. 
 
 The quadrille finished, a lady is prevailed 
 B 2 
 
244 Russia in 1870. 
 
 upon to sing, and she gives us, to piano 
 accompaniment, a plaintive Russian melody, 
 sung with precision and feeling in a very 
 musical voice. My house, by this time, is 
 crowded with the company of the villagers 
 continually arriving and leaving. A side- 
 board has been laid out with light eatables 
 and drinkables, including champagne, and 
 here there is no more crowding or noise 
 than elsewhere. The whole proceeding from 
 beginning to end, was perfect in exemplary 
 decency and good behaviour ; and yet there 
 were as many as 250 masked people in the 
 house, and every one of them had been a 
 " serf." An Englishman who was visiting 
 me at the time, exclaimed: "Why, this 
 is the most wonderful sight I have ever 
 beheld I " 
 
 A similar taste of tlje people is for illu- 
 minations, which they are very fond of. It 
 is a pretty sight on Easter-day, to, see the 
 
Russia in 1870. 245 
 
 churches completely covered with little 
 lamps, that trace out the lines of their 
 architecture against the sky. 
 
 The priests have no hand in this decora- 
 tion, which is entirely managed by the 
 people. The mayor generally goes round, 
 and begs on behalf of the community for 
 the necessary quantity of tallow for the 
 purpose. 
 
 The bazaars- as their weekly markets 
 are called are very interesting; generally 
 held upon a Sunday in the village of the 
 greatest importance within a radius of fifty 
 versts. In our village which was the 
 greatest centre of industry for very many 
 miles one of the largest bazaars was held : 
 always on a Sunday, when about 5,000 
 strangers would assemble. 
 
 There would always be more in winter 
 than in summer, because of the better roads. 
 It is not only the people who have business 
 
246 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to do who come to these gatherings, but 
 all who can do so come also, for the sake 
 of company, to have a chat with their 
 friends, and to see "the world." The 
 peasants in their best suits of clothes, and 
 the women in their liveliest colours, come 
 in troops along all the high roads, radiating 
 towards the fair. At a short distance from 
 the bazaar, the women sit down to put on 
 their clean shoes and stockings, which they 
 have carried hitherto, and take off again at 
 the same spot when they turn their steps 
 homeward in the evening. There is no 
 limit to the variety of articles bought and 
 sold at these bazaars ; not only all articles 
 of food, but of dress also : in fact, every- 
 thing that is useful, not to the peasantry 
 alone, but to the middle classes, includ- 
 ing articles of ornament and amusement for 
 the interior of decent households. Some 
 of the very national manufactures are well 
 
Russia in 1870. 247 
 
 worth notice. The pottery articles, the 
 water bottles, mugs and jugs, are often 
 quite classically modelled from patterns 
 handed down from sire to son through 
 many generations. These potteries are 
 quaintly coloured in oriental fashion. In 
 wood they make beautiful bowls for cooking 
 and eating, such as the Mujik always uses 
 at home ; but these are all curiously painted 
 and varnished, which seems less clean and 
 nice than the plain wood ; and wooden trays, 
 which are like Japan ware, and in colour 
 almost rival the commoner sorts. Other 
 antique looking objects of painted wood, 
 are the tops made to fix. on to their spinning 
 machines. Sometimes in these bazaars, 
 among old curiosities, may be picked 
 up quaint and ancient picture images of 
 the saints, which, however, are never for 
 sale. That would be irreligious, but the 
 owner of them would not object to 
 
248 Russia in 1870. 
 
 exchange them for other commodities, or 
 money. 
 
 A good deal of vodky is consumed at 
 these gatherings of the peasants ; but they 
 are cheerful and good-tempered in their 
 cups an example in this respect to our 
 English peasants : one never sees any quar- 
 relling or brawling, and all who are not 
 occupied in dealing, are busy in discussing 
 the affairs of their several villages. 
 
 A great deal of grain, seed, and other 
 produce is brought to the bazaars, where the 
 small merchants collect a great quantity of 
 the produce that is ultimately exported. 
 The peasants are very honest in their deal- 
 ings ; they will sell cartloads of stuff by one 
 sample, and always deliver what they sell of 
 equal quality. In this I think they are an 
 example to the peasants of many other coun- 
 tries. The bazaars, or the places where they 
 are held, are generally the property of the 
 
Russia in 1870. 249 
 
 owners of the village, to whom every cart 
 that enters pays a small tax, and the vendors 
 of general goods pay a rent for the ground 
 they occupy with their stores. 
 
 The ground is often so farmed out and 
 sub-let by some village speculator. 
 
 The owner of the soil has another similar 
 privilege with respect to licensing vodky 
 dealers, who cannot obtain their patent from 
 the Crown without the license first had of 
 the proprietor. 
 
 Large sums are paid for these licenses in 
 places where much money circulates. 
 
 From our head village, with a fixed popu- 
 lation of not more than 4,000 souls, we 
 received 250 a year for letting licenses to 
 sell vodky. 
 
 It is astonishing to see what can be 
 bought in these villages. I know one with 
 a population of 4,000 (a thousand miles from 
 St. Petersburg), in the shops of which can 
 
250 Russia in 1870. 
 
 be bought almost everything that you can 
 wish for, including such things as black 
 velvet, English cloth, French silks, truffles, 
 champagne, Lafitte, and good cigars ! 
 
251 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MANUFACTURES AND TBA1)E. 
 
 T)ROBABLY the manufacture which fifty 
 years ago was the most important one 
 in Russia, referred to metals. Let me dwell 
 for a moment on its history. 
 
 About 180 years ago there lived two 
 blacksmiths at Tula, who had heard of the 
 immense quantities of iron that lay, scarcely 
 covered by the soil, throughout the Empire ; 
 of the abundant forests, that seemed to offer 
 an inexhaustible supply of fuel ; and of the 
 advantages offered by the Government to 
 any who would take in hand the development 
 of those stores of wealth. 
 
252 Bussia in 1870. 
 
 The names of the two blacksmiths, Demi- 
 doff and Botacheff, are now household words 
 through the length and breadth of the Em- 
 pire. Both were men of great genius and 
 extraordinary energy ; when one looks at 
 the work they did, and consider the diffi- 
 culties they had to contend with, we do not 
 know whether most to admire, the magnitude 
 and boldness of their conceptions or the 
 patient energy and perseverance of their 
 conduct. They both prospered nearly alike. 
 
 Demidoff, branching out from his first 
 works which he established at Neviansk, in 
 the north of the Oural, had soon availed 
 himself of every spot where water could be 
 collected, and founded an iron works there. 
 
 No authentic record, I believe, exists, of the 
 precise number of foundries which he built ; 
 but Botacheff, who, it is known, followed 
 closely in his wake, left behind him twenty- 
 five large works, extending over something 
 
Russia in 1870. 253 
 
 like, a million and a half of acres, and em- 
 ploying a population of upwards of fifty 
 thousand souls. 
 
 After the death of Demidoff and Botacheff, 
 their properties were cut up and divided, 
 constantly increased by their successors, 
 and again partitioned in another genera- 
 tion ; and so the iron industry of Russia 
 has spread from those two fountain-heads 
 to its present great proportions. Copper 
 mining was not undertaken in the country 
 until a later date. The now famous mine of 
 Nijny Tagil, the first of any importance that 
 was opened, was not worked on until 1814. 
 It was on the site of one of DemidofFs 
 original works, and is owned by the 
 descendants of DemidofFs family to this 
 day. It was soon discovered that all the 
 country, on the Asiatic side of the Oural 
 mountains, from a point a long way to 
 the north of Tagil to another close upon 
 
254 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Orenburg in the south, abounded with 
 copper ore. A number of mines were quickly 
 opened on this line of country and many 
 copper works erected. 
 
 So much for the rise and progress of the 
 mineral industry. We have now to consider 
 its decline and fall, for it has fallen off to 
 a great extent from its greatest develop- 
 ment. The immediate descendants of the 
 two great blacksmiths, of Demidoff and of 
 Botacheff, found themselves enormously 
 wealthy, beyond all necessity of enterprise 
 or exertion. They acquired great influence 
 in the Empire, were raised to the nobility, 
 and appointed to high offices of state by 
 the Imperial Government. Their attention 
 was thus withdrawn from the sources of 
 their greatness, and the management of 
 their mines left to the hands of subordinates, 
 deteriorated. As time rolled on, other 
 people began to open copper mines and 
 
Russia in 1870. 255 
 
 iron foundries, in competition with theirs ; 
 prices and profits were reduced, but the 
 two families, accustomed to greatness, 
 neither applied themselves to maintain the 
 efficiency of their mines, nor to reduce their 
 personal expenditure which exceeded the 
 incomes they derived from them. They 
 soon began to borrow large sums on the 
 mortgage of their properties, chiefly to the 
 Government, but in part to anybody who 
 would make them a loan. 
 
 The families of the DemidofFs and Bota- 
 chefls, in their system of borrowing at all 
 hands, were soon embarrassed to meet the 
 payments of interest as they fell due ; and 
 Government readily took advantage of their 
 default, by taking the estates and works 
 of the insolvent families into its own 
 management ; nominally, still for the benefit 
 of the proprietors, but in the first place for 
 the satisfaction of the claims of the Govern- 
 
256 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ment, under the control of a Committee of 
 Tutelage, or so-called, " Tutor." From this 
 time the ruin of the old mining families 
 was very rapid, and is now, in many cases, 
 complete, so that the nominal owners of vast 
 properties are in fact quite impoverished. 
 The system of government tutelage never 
 answered in the management of mines, and 
 from the time it became common, the profits 
 derived from the mines have diminished and 
 the works deteriorated. 
 
 Year after year the department of mines, 
 although possessing some of the richest and 
 most convenient works, which ought, under 
 proper management to have yielded a great 
 revenue, found an increasing balance at the 
 debit of their accounts. 
 
 Of course the corruption inseparable from 
 Russian official life was the cause of the 
 failure of the tutelage system. Large pro- 
 fits were, in fact, earned by the mines, 
 
Russia in 1870. 257 
 
 but these never reached the coffers of the 
 Government. As usual, the department 
 underpaid its officers, whose principal ener- 
 gies were consequently directed to the 
 earning of their own living, by " com- 
 missions," on the affairs entrusted to them, 
 or otherwise. It is difficult to condemn 
 them, knowing that their salaries were not 
 enough for them to live upon. The system 
 was radically wrong. I have known per- 
 sonally many of the higher officers among 
 these men, who would conscientiously ex- 
 haust their energies in the attempt to check 
 the peculations of their subordinates ; but 
 they were too few for their duties, spread 
 over so vast an expanse of country. 
 
 The whole system of government traffic 
 and manufacture is rotten throughout. Even 
 where a manager is capable and anxious to 
 do his duty, he is baffled by the process of 
 red-tapeism, which all his requirements have 
 
 s 
 
258 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to undergo, and induced to give up ener- 
 gising in disgust. I knew an officer, who, 
 in other matters a perfectly honourable man, 
 said to me in reference to his works, as he 
 was showing them to me, 
 
 " You must not expect to see here such 
 good work as you are accustomed to. The 
 fact is, the Government offers us no induce- 
 ment to work. Here am I, after long ser- 
 vices, after rising step by step to my present 
 rank, in the receipt of seventy roubles (about 
 10) a month, and the responsibility of 
 the whole of this concern upon me. You 
 see, I just make it pay and, in fact, that 
 is all I care about. If I were to double the 
 profits, I should not be thanked." 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the morality 
 of this sentiment, it is an extremely natural 
 one. It is a rule or custom of the service, 
 that the manager of a government works 
 keeps his position so long only as he can 
 
Russia in 1870. 259 
 
 "make both ends meet;" but if once he 
 required help, however meritorious he may 
 be, or however prudent his management, he 
 is promptly superseded. Consequently the 
 most ingenious manoeuvres are resorted to 
 by managers of unremunerative concerns, 
 to make them appear in the books to be 
 self-supporting. In the course of my in- 
 quiries at one of the government works, 
 originally built by the great Demidoff, now 
 practically ruined, I came to the conclusion 
 that the cost of the iron that was made 
 there was considerably in excess of the price 
 it could be sold at. I pointed this out to the 
 manager, and asked for an explanation. He 
 admitted at once the fact that the property 
 was ruined beyond redemption; but, he said, 
 
 "I can still return a profit to the Govern- 
 ment." 
 
 When I pressed him on the subject, he 
 added, 
 
 s 2 
 
260 Russia in 1870. 
 
 " Yes, I don't make the profit out of my 
 manufacture ; but my brother is the manager 
 of some government works not far from here, 
 and he buys my raw iron." 
 
 The fact was, his brother paid him a 
 sufficient price for his raw iron about 
 double its marketable value to enable him 
 to cover the losses on his manufacture, and 
 still return a nominal profit to the Govern- 
 ment, and thus retain his appointment and 
 so the Government was swindled annually out 
 of a large sum of money for the good of his 
 family. These abuses are worthy of serious 
 attention, by reason of the great political 
 importance of the mining question to the 
 Russian empire. Many thousands of the 
 population, spread over immense extent of 
 country, have nothing but the mines to 
 depend upon for their livelihood. From 
 father to son, now through several gene- 
 rations, these people have lived by mining, 
 
Russia in 1870. 261 
 
 and know nothing else, and are fit for no 
 other industry. So long as there is work 
 to be had at the mines and foundries, the 
 people are contented and comfortable ; but 
 when these come to a standstill, the result 
 
 is starvation, discontent, and finally uproar. 
 
 
 
 In some parts of Siberia difficulties 
 have arisen, quite recently, from such a 
 cause ; and the peasantry have refused to 
 pay the taxes. In one large Zavod village, 
 with a population of 12,000 souls, these 
 disturbances have become serious. -Several 
 hundreds of the people stoutly refused to 
 pay the amount of taxes they were rated 
 at ; and this was the reason they gave, they 
 said, 
 
 " A man had been round to them all 
 with a book, written in letters of gold, 
 which told them they were not to pay these 
 taxes." 
 
 Now, these people lived upon some of the 
 
262 Russia in 1870. 
 
 works, which are in process of being ruined 
 by a Government tutelage. If the works had 
 been going forward as they should do, the 
 people would have had no time to care for 
 such nonsense as the above. 
 
 The Government are now awake to the 
 necessity of introducing complete reform in 
 the Department of Mines, and have deter- 
 mined to get rid not only of all the private 
 works, which have come to them by mort- 
 gage, but also of those set in operation by 
 themselves; and only to reserve one or two 
 which are serviceable, in a manner, as 
 arsenals. 
 
 The " works/' as they are always called 
 in Russia, are of a character peculiar to the 
 country, and such as are not to be met 
 with in other parts of the world ; in their 
 enormous proportions, and their modus 
 operandi, they are a peculiarly Russian in- 
 stitution. 
 
Russia in 1870. 263 
 
 Many of the establishments extend their 
 operations over a space containing from 
 three-quarters of a million to a million and 
 a half English acres ; erect their works here 
 and there, where a favourable site exists, 
 and thus form little principalities, containing 
 numerous villages, which are entirely sup- 
 ported by the labour of the mines. It is 
 easy to perceive that the proprietor of such 
 an estate has immense influence over his 
 dependent people, and that great misery 
 is caused when the " works " are badly, and 
 great comfort and happiness to the people 
 when they are well, managed. 
 
 In the olden times the " Barrin " lived in 
 
 almost princely style in a palace sur- 
 
 i 
 
 rounded by highly ornamental gardens and 
 extensive parks, laid out with the most 
 excellent taste. In his gardens were hot- 
 houses, vineries, and orange-houses, erected 
 at great expense. Frequently he had a 
 
264 Russia in 1870. 
 
 private theatre of his own, a band of music 
 in constant attendance; and I know of at 
 least one of the ironmasters of the last gene- 
 ration, who supported a company of actors 
 and actresses, collected from among his own 
 Mujiks, whom he sent to Moscow and St. 
 Petersburg to be educated expressly for his 
 own stage. Such a man, in the days of serf- 
 dom, had all the state and authority of a 
 monarch, enjoying unlimited and irrespon- 
 sible power among his servile dependents. 
 Of course, the condition of these last was 
 regulated by the character or caprice of 
 their master : some were cruel ; but, on the 
 other hand, some governed their people with 
 
 a kindness and discretion wonderful to think 
 
 
 
 of in men brought up as they had been. As 
 an instance of cruelty, I know of a pro- 
 prietor who caused a man, who had offended 
 him, to be locked up in an iron cage, and 
 kept him confined in it for a length of time. 
 
Russia in 1870. 265 
 
 At last, while lie was absent on a journey, 
 the case of his wretched prisoner came to 
 the knowledge of the governor of his pro- 
 vince. The governor caused the man, cage 
 and all, to be brought to the government 
 town. He also despatched a messenger to 
 intercept the tyrannical proprietor on the 
 road, with an invitation to dinner. . This the 
 proprietor, flattered by the courtesy, ac- 
 cepted very willingly, and presented himself 
 at the . government house at the appointed 
 time. 
 
 There was a curious fashion in Russia at 
 that time of keeping live quails, whose notes 
 were greatly admired by connoisseurs in the 
 peculiar fancy. The governor was famous 
 for his collection of these singing birds the 
 dinner was very good, and the company 
 very merry. 
 
 After the cloth was removed, the governor 
 addressed his guest, 
 
266 Russia in 1870. 
 
 " Now, Ivan Simonovitch, I know you are 
 very fond of quails ; and I have a beauty, 
 which I don't mind selling you." 
 
 " Very well, excellency ; if the bird is not 
 too dear, I will buy him of you." 
 
 "Bring in the quail," said his excellency 
 to the attendants. 
 
 A very ordinary sort of bird, in a wooden 
 cage, was introduced. 
 
 " Now I wan't to sell you that bird for 
 ten thousand roubles," said the governor. 
 
 The ironmaster could not understand the 
 joke, but declined the bargain, as he thought 
 the bird was a little too dear. 
 
 "Well," said the governor, "I will show 
 you a better bird than that, and I think 
 you'll buy him." 
 
 " Have the other quail brought in." 
 
 Folding-doors flew open, and the iron cage 
 with its miserable captive was set down 
 before the astonished guest. 
 
Russia in 1870. 267 
 
 " Now," said the governor, " what do you 
 think of that for a quail ? but this is a very 
 expensive bird ; I want 20,000 roubles for 
 him ! " 
 
 "All right," said the alarmed proprietor; 
 " I will buy this one, send him down to my 
 works without the cage, and your messenger 
 shall bring back the amount." 
 
 The matter was thus pleasantly settled, 
 and the company adjourned in undisturbed 
 harmony to their papirosses and coffee. 
 
 History does not add that the poor pea- 
 sant benefited by any part of the 20,000 
 roubles. 
 
 The gold workings are important enough 
 to have a great influence on the future wealth 
 of the nation. 
 
 Until quite recently the Crown, as owner 
 of the soil, kept the monopoly of digging for 
 gold over a great extent of country, and the 
 work was in consequence badly done ; a 
 
268 Russia in 1870. 
 
 great deal of the gold was stolen ; and, what 
 was worse, the rest was negligently washed 
 and much wasted. 
 
 In this matter of gold digging as in every 
 branch of industry we consider, our reflec- 
 tions always lead us naturally to the con- 
 clusion, that free-trade and the complete 
 abolition of the absurd restrictions remain- 
 ing on industrial enterprise, will effect an 
 incalculable change in the wealth and 
 resources of the country, which nobody even 
 among the most intelligent Russians them- 
 selves is able to measure as yet. 
 
 I have mentioned Russia's wealth in one of 
 the subjects of our own country's boasting 
 iron ; and could show that she possesses also 
 another of our resources of wealth in the 
 various kinds of coal scattered about her 
 vast territory. From the black coal on the 
 Kama, near Perm, the immense deposits of 
 the Don basin, the anthracite of the Sea of 
 
Russia in 1870. 269 
 
 Azov, to the common gas coal found in the 
 Caucasian mountains and on the borders of 
 the Caspian Sea. With similar stores of 
 such wealth, Britain has once climbed to the 
 supreme rank in commerce, and those who 
 are watching the social progress of Russia 
 predict a like career of prosperity for her. 
 
 The manufacturing industry of Russia 
 increases rapidly, whilst it is curious to 
 observe, that although a Russian workman 
 is capable of imitating everything that is 
 shown to him, his power of initiation is 
 generally nil. Still, there are manufactures 
 in which the Russians excel. 
 
 Their printed cloths, for instance, are 
 unique, well made, and of good design ; well 
 known in the eastern markets throughout 
 Central Asia and China. 
 
 In the manufacture of woollen goods also 
 they have made some progress, and a very 
 respectable kind of cloth is now produced in 
 
270 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Russia, which has superseded the manufac- 
 ture of our own country in many Oriental 
 markets. China, Afghanistan, Persia, and 
 the north-western borders of India are now 
 supplied with the produce of Russian looms, 
 which, if not so good in quality, is as well 
 liked by the Eastern peoples as English 
 cloth, and is considerably cheaper, taking 
 quality for quality. 
 
 Her manufactures in the precious metals 
 are celebrated throughout the world for 
 elegance and beauty. Her productions in 
 leather are unrivalled, and the versatility 
 of her manufacturing genius is so unbounded, 
 that it would be difficult to name an article 
 of modern invention that is not made some- 
 where or other in the Empire. 
 
 And with all this, it must still be remem- 
 bered that the manufacturing industry of 
 Russia is not yet fifty years old. It required 
 nursing at first under a system of protection, 
 
Russia in 1870. 271 
 
 but is now so far developed as to admit a 
 great deal of free competition, and the gra- 
 dual introduction of a liberal policy. 
 
 The great annual fairs of Nijny Novgorod 
 'and Irbit are now crowded with Russian 
 manufactures. In the former alone the turn- 
 over exceeds seventeen millions of pounds. 
 
 Everything is now done to stimulate 
 trade ; every inducement held out to en- 
 courage manufacture ; a more liberal tariff 
 obliges the manufacturers to compete closely 
 with the foreigner ; and Russia is straining 
 every nerve to be as much as possible 
 independent of the world for useful manu- 
 factures. 
 
 The anomalies that used to be seen are 
 passing away ; for instance, raw skins would 
 be sent from the same place as the bark 
 grew to tan them with ; both were sold at 
 the fair at Nijny? (mind, only once a year), 
 taken somewhere to be tanned, and then 
 
272 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ready leather sent back perhaps a thousand 
 miles, to the place where they came from, to 
 be sold as finished skins. 
 
 Tallow would be sent two thousand versts 
 from where it was produced to be made into* 
 candles, and these returned to where the 
 tallow came from ; now the people are arous- 
 ing themselves, and many manufactories are 
 springing up. 
 
 The Russians can adapt themselves to any 
 work. The English manager of a British- 
 owned paper-mill, which even I was as- 
 tonished to find established amongst the 
 Oural mountains, was recounting to me that 
 in England it was thought necessary for a 
 man to have served his time for a term of 
 years to make him a good workman; but 
 that three months made his men capital 
 paper-makers, just as good as Englishmen of 
 the same class. 
 
 Although the principal manufactories in 
 
 IT 
 
Russia in 1870. 273 
 
 the interior are in the hands of Russians, 
 Russians, as a rule, do not like commencing 
 any new industry, and are shy of doing so ; 
 this is why it is so desirable for the Govern- 
 ment to encourage foreigners to settle in the 
 country, as I have before remarked, and these 
 once having set the example, it will be fol- 
 lowed ; but one must not look to Russians to 
 commence. 
 
 At one time almost all the managers, and 
 what may be called leading hands in Russian 
 manufactories, were foreigners, either English 
 or German ; but as these gradually got into 
 business for themselves,' their places were 
 filled by natives. This is as it should be, for 
 without doubt a Russian workman generally 
 prefers a native to a foreign master. 
 
 Russian manufactured articles are cheap, 
 and in several, quality for quality, she can 
 successfully compete with foreign nations ; 
 but, generally, her goods are not made for 
 
274 Russia in 1870. 
 
 those markets which require the best articles. 
 Russia looks to the East to be her greatest 
 customer, and it is for the Eastern market 
 that articles are specially made by her. 
 
 As a matter of course, as her trade increases, 
 her exports will materially increase, and with 
 them her importations of raw material. 
 
 A better system is adopted of doing busi- 
 ness, the terms of credit are lessened, and 
 increased confidence amongst traders is 
 visible. 
 
 Greatly in praise of Russian probity is it, 
 that the long credits given were not much 
 abused : a merchant, for instance, who 
 bought goods of an internal trader, was in 
 the habit in many cases of paying all the 
 money in advance to the seller, who would 
 go thousands of miles away to collect his 
 wares ; this man would never be seen again 
 until a year afterwards, when he returned 
 with the goods, and it rarely happened that 
 
Russia in 1870. 275 
 
 lie failed to complete his bargain. In selling 
 
 
 imported goods to the country dealers, a 
 
 credit of fifteen or eighteen months was 
 very generally given. A great portion of 
 the business even now done at Nijny and 
 Irbit fairs is on the terms of giving the 
 goods, and taking payment for them at the 
 next fair. 
 
 In the absence of railways it was impos- 
 sible to do business otherwise ; the goods 
 were so long in getting to their destination, 
 that under a year a buyer could not get a 
 return. 
 
 Fabrics are now springing up fitted with 
 native made machinery. Branches of in- 
 dustry are started, which before were thought 
 to be impossible for Russian ingenuity to 
 master, and trade flourishes as it never 
 flourished before. Ever since the Crimean 
 war, the amount of the interchange of com- 
 modities has been increasing; this, in the 
 
 T 2 
 
276 Russia in 1870. 
 
 face of a tariff that was the worst in Europe, 
 must show what a power this Empire has in 
 herself. 
 
 I have always held the idea that the 
 increase of railways in the south of Russia 
 would considerably influence the price of 
 wheat in Western Europe, and that in con- 
 sequence Russia would turn out a powerful 
 rival to America in the quantity the two 
 countries supplied to England. The effect 
 of the railways has hardly began to be felt, 
 and yet the imports of wheat from Russia 
 to this country during the past year have 
 exceeded by one-third those of the preceding 
 one. 
 
 For one article of manufacture, that of 
 sugar from beetroot, Russia possesses more 
 establishments than any other country in 
 the world, true I shall be told that this 
 industry has become necessary, in conse- 
 quence of the import duty on foreign sugars 
 
Russia in 1870. 277 
 
 being prohibitory. I admit it, but still it 
 shows that as the Russians can go ahead in 
 this production, they can do so in other 
 things. 
 
 As a proof, the imports of sugar to Russia 
 have fallen off from 7,000,000 roubles in 1866 
 to 800,000 roubles last year. 
 
 Look what they have done in cotton 
 spinning ; there are now upwards of three 
 hundred establishments in which this staple 
 is prepared, and where something like four 
 hundred thousand bales of cotton are worked 
 up annually. The import of raw cotton last 
 year was one quarter more than in 1868. 
 
 The productions in this article are very 
 creditable, the prints capital in quality and 
 beautiful in design. I think, taking the 
 same quality, the designs are far prettier 
 and neater than our own, and from ex- 
 perience the Russian prints wear as well 
 as ours. 
 
278 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The manufacture of silk has attained con- 
 siderable proportions, and in Moscow and the 
 neighbourhood, are some two hundred esta- 
 blishments where this industry is developing 
 itself; here the quality, as a rule, is not so 
 good as the foreign make, and there is much 
 room for improvement ; satins are however 
 made in Moscow superior to French manu- 
 factured ones. 
 
 All commerce is on the advance, and no 
 one in travelling can fail to be struck with 
 the advantages which offer for the export 
 in increasing quantities, of various articles 
 when the facilities of transport come into 
 more general operation : such, for instance, 
 as linseed, hemp, flax, rape-seed, tallow, 
 leather, &c. 
 
 Banks are now being established in many 
 towns. The Bank of State is also increasing 
 the number of its branches, this all gives 
 a great impetus to commerce and causes 
 
Russia in 1870. 279 
 
 money to circulate more freely ; this is one 
 of the things much wanted. Banking insti- 
 tutions used to be so few and far between, 
 that small money was very difficult to 
 obtain ; I do not mean specie, but notes ; 
 this of itself was a great drawback amongst 
 small traders. 
 
 The improvements in a country like Eussia 
 must be more observed by the traveller than 
 by reference to statistics, which are neces- 
 sarily very imperfect ; the extent of country 
 is so great and the ignorance of the officials 
 in many parts equally so, that the most 
 curious absurdities are to be seen very often 
 in the returns. 
 
 I have always considered one great sign 
 of the improvements in the general manu- 
 factures of a country, is to be noticed in 
 watching how they improve in the manu- 
 facture of small articles. Now it may appear 
 trivial to many observers, but I mention 
 
280 Russia in 1870. 
 
 such little things as small cutlery, pins, 
 tapes, cottons, even lucifer matches, hooks 
 and eyes, elastics, and other such bagatelles, 
 that have in the last few years much im- 
 proved. 
 
281 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WAYS AND COMMUNICATIONS. 
 
 T)EFORE the introduction of railways, 
 the system of water communication 
 throughout Russia was already very won- 
 derfully effective and complete. Most of 
 the navigable rivers were connected by a 
 system of canals so perfect that she com- 
 manded a safe and inexpensive means of 
 direct carriage, by which her grain could be 
 sent from the south to the north of Europe, 
 and her mineral productions from Siberia to 
 the port of Cronstadt ; and the same barges 
 that loaded metals in the Oural mountains 
 could discharge their cargoes at choice either 
 
282 Russia in 1870. 
 
 at Cronstadt or Astrakhan. Excepting the 
 distance across the Oural range, between 
 Tinmen in Siberia and the river Kama in 
 European Russia, and other smaller breaks, 
 the water communication from east to west 
 was facile across the Empire ; that is to say, 
 from the Neva to the Amoor, from the Black 
 Sea to that of Japan ! Tea and other China 
 produce came great part of their journey 
 into Russia by water carriage ; and from 
 other nations, lying on the eastern and 
 south-eastern frontiers, she already received 
 a considerable carrying trade. 
 
 Now, although this method of transport 
 was cheap and convenient, and did very well 
 in our grandfathers' slower days, yet the 
 loss of time in the delivery of the more 
 valuable kinds of merchandise was a con- 
 siderable drawback to trade, and as time 
 went on there arose a great cry for railways. 
 This cry has been wonderfully responded 
 
Russia in 1870. 283 
 
 to during the past few years to such an 
 extent as can hardly be believed. 
 
 The first railway that from St. Peters- 
 burg to Tsarskoe Selo was commenced 
 in 1836, and is quite a short line. It was 
 followed in 1837 by the Petersburg-Moscow 
 road ; and this again by the Warsaw- Vienna 
 in 1859. So that in twenty years there were 
 only about 950 versts of railroad made. 
 But from the year 1861 the Russians have 
 made up for the time lost before. Com- 
 mencing then from 1861 to the present time, 
 there have been actually finished about 
 10,000 versts, and there are now in course 
 of construction some 4,000 versts besides ; 
 amounting together to about 9,000 miles ! 
 
 Doubtless, one thing that facilitated the 
 making of these railroads was the specu- 
 lative mania raging on the St. Petersburg 
 exchange two years ago, and hence the 
 desire of everyone to obtain shares in the 
 
284 Russia in 1870. 
 
 different companies. As a result of this 
 speculation, the two most remarkable ex- 
 amples were those of the Kineshma-Ivanovo 
 Railway, which invited subscriptions for 
 12,000 shares, and received application for 
 three and a half million, and the company 
 for transport of goods, called "Dvigatel," 
 which applied to the public for 500,000 
 roubles, and received applications for sixty- 
 four millions, all paid up at the time of 
 application. 
 
 Railways are now in active operation from 
 St. Petersburg to Odessa, to the Azov, 
 and to the Volga among the great corn- 
 producing countries of central Russia. Direct 
 routes are laid from Moscow to Western 
 Europe. Poland is opened up, and the great 
 corn marts of Moorshansk and Rybinsk are 
 connected with ports of shipment, which fact 
 alone has given an impetus to the corn trade, 
 that must affect the price of bread in Western 
 
Russia in 1870. 285 
 
 Europe. With one more railway across the 
 hiatus I have already alluded to from Tobol 
 in Siberia to the Kama in Europe the 
 continuity of connection between the West 
 of Europe and the extreme eastern limits 
 of Asia will be through the whole breadth 
 of Russia complete and direct ! From 
 Samara again, the line now being laid across 
 the steppe towards Orenburg, will facilitate 
 
 the communication with Central Asia. 
 
 * 
 A railway across the Caucasus will connect 
 
 the Black Sea with the Caspian, and bring 
 Persia into closer connection with the South 
 of Europe ; and another line from the 
 Caspian to the Sea of Aral, will make it a 
 short journey from St. Petersburg to Khiva. 
 When Russia controls all these proposed 
 lines of communication, her influence in the 
 commerce and policy of Asia must needs be 
 immensely increased. 
 
 But the navigation of her rivers continues 
 
286 Russia in 1870. 
 
 to increase ; every year the number is added 
 to of the steamers that ply on them. 
 Strangers would be surprised at the elegance 
 and comfort of the passenger steamers of the 
 Volga, that ply to Czaritzin, or even to 
 Astrakhan. 
 
 Steam -tugs, also, have superseded the 
 extraordinary, clumsy, and slow mode of 
 progression formerly in use upon the rivers. 
 Imagine a large barge, with a house on 
 deck, in which the captain and his family 
 live, and a sort of shed abaft for the men, 
 to shelter in also. On the fore part of 
 the deck is an enormous capstan, worked 
 sometimes by men, sometimes by horses. 
 A large anchor is put into a tender, which 
 then rows with it some distance ahead of 
 the barge, and throws it overboard. It is 
 attached to the barge by a very thick 
 cable, which is hauled round the capstan 
 until the barge is brought up to its 
 
Russia in 1870. 287 
 
 anchor, which is then picked up and rowed 
 out again ; and by this tedious process the 
 barges would be dragged up all the rivers. 
 
 Even yet this system is not abandoned 
 altogether, but it is fast giving place to 
 steam-tugs or horse-power on the banks. 
 
 The barges are very large ; many of not 
 less than 50,000 poods (800 tons) burthen. 
 
 The manner of making arrangements for 
 towing by horses is rather curious. The 
 proprietors of the barges travel round to 
 the villages in winter time, and bargain 
 with whole villages, to supply a certain 
 number of men and horses from each. Only 
 enough men are kept at home to do the 
 necessary work of haymaking and harvest- 
 ing, and all the rest set out for the whole 
 season to journey up the rivers with the 
 barges. The pay is very poor ; but the 
 peasant is secured by a sum of hand-money 
 down at the time of making the bargain, 
 
288 Russia in 1870. 
 
 which enables him to be lazy and enjoy 
 himself for a short time, until the early 
 spring, when he sets out to work with the 
 barges, and returns at the end of the cam- 
 paign not one copeck richer than he was 
 when he started. The inland carrying trade 
 by barges and steamers is very profitable 
 and much competed. It is not an unusual 
 thing for a steamer to pay for herself in one 
 year's work. 
 
 The steamers now are almost all Russian 
 built ; a good many large yards are esta- 
 blished on all the principal rivers, and the 
 quality of Russian iron being very good, 
 some very good boats are turned out. As 
 a rule they are not very highly finished, 
 being only intended to be used as tug-boats ; 
 but they are not the less useful and profit- 
 able, and their numbers increase every year. 
 All the shipbuilding yards on the internal 
 rivers have their hands full of work, and 
 
Russia in 1870. 289 
 
 new yards are now being set up on many of 
 the rivers in Siberia. If the fleet of steamers 
 on the Siberian rivers continues to increase 
 as fast as that on the Russian rivers, the 
 business will be immense. 
 
 The smaller rivers of Russia have an 
 attribute which renders them more useful 
 than those of warmer climates. It is this : 
 although in summer they may not have 
 water to float an ordinary barge, yet by the 
 melting of the snow in the spring time, their 
 waters are so much increased that they' carry 
 the largest and deepest laden barges on their 
 stream ; and it is surprising to see with 
 what neatness and ease the peasants handle 
 what appear to be unmanageable hulks. 
 Freight by these barges is very cheap; the 
 wood for building costs nothing, and the hire 
 of the labourers is very small. 
 
 Goods can be sent from the Oural moun- 
 tains to Nijny Novgorod, a distance of 2,000 
 
 u 
 
290 Russia in 1870. 
 
 versts, for 25s. per ton, including all the 
 charges for shipment and delivery. The 
 large rivers, such as the Volga and the Oka, 
 are not so well maintained as they ought to 
 be. The Government levy an ad valorem 
 toll on all goods shipped on these rivers, of, 
 I believe, a half per cent. This must amount 
 to an immense annual sum; but in those 
 parts of the river that I know best, I know 
 that nothing has been done with this money 
 for the good of the navigation, within the 
 memory of the " oldest inhabitant." 
 
 The pretext for the tax is the maintenance 
 of the navigation ; but as nothing whatever 
 is done to that end, the rivers are gradually 
 getting choked up with sand-banks ; and the 
 Oka, one of the most important arteries of 
 water-communication in the Empire, rising as 
 it does in the government of Orel, and pour- 
 ing into the Volga at Nijny Novgorod, used 
 to be navigable for almost its whole course of 
 
Russia in 1870. 291 
 
 650 miles ; but now, in summer time, it is in 
 many places almost impassable, entirely for 
 the want of a little dredging in season. 
 
 This matter, like many others, wants the 
 attention of the heads of departments ; sub- 
 ordinate officers exist, whose business it is, 
 and who have received the funds to do all 
 that is needful : what they have done with 
 them is another question. An official of 
 high position said to me, "I don't know 
 where the money goes to, but I know it does 
 not go into the Treasury." 
 
 Posting along the high roads (about 7,500 
 versts are kept up by the Government, and 
 therefore in moderately good order), although 
 not the most comfortable, nor the quickest, 
 nor cheapest way of travelling, is yet ar- 
 ranged on the whole very well, and in a 
 country of such vast extent as Russia can 
 never become obsolete. The roads, it is 
 true, are bad ; this is the inevitable result of 
 u 2 
 
292 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the great changes of the climate ; the con- 
 veyances are built therefore with more regard 
 to strength than easy motion; still, excepting 
 at the season of the breaking up of the frost, 
 and towards the end of the warm weather, it 
 is no great hardship to travel in this way. In 
 a good season of the year, one easily covers 
 about 200 versts in twenty-four hours. The 
 post-horses along the principal routes are 
 nowadays better than they used to be, and 
 the relays are ready at the stations ; and in 
 many other respects improvement is mani- 
 fest, resulting from the increased number of 
 travellers on the roads. 
 
 In the wildest parts it is perfectly safe to 
 go unarmed ; and all the stories that one 
 reads of the necessity of revolvers, &c., are 
 pure romance. Although I always carried a 
 revolver as a matter of habit, in all my 
 travelling in Russia, I never had more than 
 one or two occasions to produce it, and 
 
Russia in 1870. 293 
 
 would as soon go unarmed through the 
 length and breadth of the Empire as I would 
 through London streets. When we halted at a 
 post-house for tea or any meal, we were accus- 
 tomed to leave all our effects in the Taren- 
 tasse at the door, with nobody to look after 
 them. There were wrappers, furs, and other 
 articles lying about, but I never had any- 
 thing stolen. 
 
 This absence of robbers, however, is only 
 to be noticed in Russia proper. When I was 
 travelling in Poland some years ago, my 
 experience was of the contrary sort there I 
 lost two-thirds of my baggage by thieves 
 before I got to the end of my journey, and I 
 have heard other travellers complain of the 
 same inconvenience. 
 
 The regular charge for post-horses on the 
 Government road is three copecks a verst for 
 each horse. As three horses are necessary, 
 this is equivalent to fourpence halfpenny per 
 
294 Russia in 1870. 
 
 mile, and there is a gratuity to be paid to 
 the post-boy, of about sixpence for the stage 
 of twenty versts, more or less. The carriage 
 is called a " Tarentasse." a sufficiently com- 
 modious but cumbersome vehicle without 
 springs, but mounted on the top of four or 
 six long poles, which break the force of the 
 jolting to a certain extent. 
 
 In Siberia, beyond Tiumen, the charge for 
 horses is about half that of the Russian 
 tariff. There the roads are very good, and 
 it is possible to travel as much as 250 versts 
 in a day's journey. 
 
 The expense of railway travelling is not 
 much more than half of what it is in Eng- 
 land. For example, the distance from Peters- 
 burg to Moscow is about 614 versts (425 
 miles), for which the first-class fare is nine- 
 teen roubles (or 2. 7s. 6d.), and for 5s. extra 
 one gets a comfortable bed at night. The 
 cars are built on the American model, and 
 
Russia in 1870. 295 
 
 should rather be called luxurious than merely 
 comfortable. Cards, chess, and dominoes 
 are supplied, on demand by the attendants, 
 and, greatest luxury of all, the means of a 
 good wash in the morning. 
 
 The centre of each car is fitted as a saloon, 
 with velvet settees, a good fire, several 
 tables, candles in sconces, a clock, and all 
 that is usual in the furniture of a small 
 drawing-room of the better sort. 
 
 Many of the stations have handsome re- 
 freshment-rooms, well supplied ; but the 
 long stoppages at these places are tedious. 
 
 The Russians have not yet learned the 
 value of time, and do not understand our 
 desire to push on expeditiously to the end of 
 a journey. They generally think it neces- 
 sary to be at their stations of departure 
 about two hours before the train is to start. 
 But a short time ago, at a station on the 
 new line from Moscow, I found the peasants 
 
296 Russia in 1870. 
 
 from a village close to the line, already wait- 
 ing for their train, which was due six hours 
 afterwards. 
 
 It is not remarkable that some of the 
 Russian railways have not been well built, 
 and there seems a difficulty in getting men 
 capable to manage them properly. This is 
 not astonishing, so many railways having 
 been built at one time. All the lines are short 
 of rolling-stock, and, in consequence, goods 
 intended for forwarding, accumulate at all the 
 termini. The old people of the anti-progress 
 party point out this fact as a proof that the 
 old methods of transport were better; but the 
 great good that railways have already done, 
 is apparent everywhere, and the extraordi- 
 nary rise in the value of land is a great fact. 
 
 The authorities have taken up an excellent 
 idea now that they have arranged the out- 
 lines of their network of railways, of making 
 them serve intermediate districts better by 
 
Russia in 1870. 297 
 
 the aid of a system of tramroads acting as 
 feeders to the main lines. These can be laid 
 down at a cost that will not devour the pro- 
 fits of the main lines as the costly branch 
 lines of most of our English railways did. 
 
 It has been a practice in writing about 
 the Russian railways, to describe most of 
 them as merely military lines laid down for 
 strategical purposes. This is, however, not 
 their character. It is true that one or 
 two may be said to be political roads, 
 such as the line projected from Kiew to 
 Warsaw, or the one from Kiew to Wilna, 
 or from Samara to Orenburg, and the 
 Caucasian railway. These, I believe, cannot 
 yield any profitable return for many years ; 
 but I have no doubt and nobody who has 
 travelled the country and seen the riches of 
 it, can have a doubt that most of the other 
 railways will be made to pay handsomely 
 when their managers understand their 
 
298 Russia in 1870. 
 
 business, and the rolling-stock is efficiently 
 increased. They have one important circum- 
 stance in their favour their cheapness. 
 
 Some years ago, the Englishman who had 
 accepted the concession for the Sebastopol 
 line, at the rate of over 100,000 roubles the 
 verst, forfeited the caution-money rather 
 than go on with the undertaking ; but, now, 
 many contractors would be glad to carry it 
 out for less than half the price. 
 
 No doubt a great number of foreigners 
 will be induced to travel about Russia now 
 that the facilities for doing so are so great ; 
 and many among them will be men in search 
 of profitable enterprise in the way of indus- 
 try and commerce, of whom Eussia has great 
 need, and for whom she offers great opportu- 
 nities just now. Such ideas were more in 
 the mind of the great promoter of the new 
 railway undertakings, than any of conveying 
 troops from place to place. 
 
Russia in 1870. 299 
 
 It is easy to travel in Russia, even in 
 ignorance of the language. The Russians 
 are very quick at appreciating pantomime, 
 and I am sure that anyone who wishes to 
 travel through Russia and see for himself 
 the wonders it contains, can, by the help of 
 a Russian servant, get along perfectly well. 
 
 The system of telegraphs is now being 
 rapidly extended, and the universal tariff 
 system of sending messages is adopted. 
 They are very well worked, as, for ex- 
 ample, in out-of-the-way places in Siberia 
 messages can be sent in French or German ; 
 and in many places even in English. 
 
 In the olden time travelling was not an 
 easy affair in Russia, any small irregularity 
 in a passport caused the unhappy bearer a 
 host of trouble, as the following story will 
 show : 
 
 Two travellers, say X. and Y., arrived at 
 the frontier station on the Petersburg-Berlin 
 
300 Russia in 1870. 
 
 line, and were waiting to receive back their 
 passports, which had been handed to the 
 proper officials to be stamped, when the 
 director of the department called and in- 
 formed them that they could not leave 
 Russia, as they had not got the permission 
 of the police to do so. The travellers ex- 
 plained that they were ignorant of the for- 
 malities necessary, but having given the 
 passports to the hotel-keeper and received 
 them back again with some Russian writing 
 inscribed thereon, naturally thought the 
 matter was all right. 
 
 It was no use, the great man was implac- 
 able, and just as Y. had finally diplomatized 
 the matter (which consisted in squaring the 
 rouble question), X. upset the proposed settle- 
 ment of the difficulty by exclaiming aloud, 
 " Give him twenty-five roubles, he will let 
 you go then ! J3 
 
 The officer looked pleasantly at X., told the 
 
Russia in 1870. 301 
 
 travellers to fetch their baggage out of the 
 train, and wait at the station until the train 
 returned to St. Petersburg. They did not 
 fetch their baggage out, but asked their 
 fellow-travellers in the same carriage to look 
 after it as far as the Prussian station, and if 
 they did not arrive there before the train left 
 to give their luggage to the Prussian station- 
 master. 
 
 Finding out the train did not return to St. 
 Petersburg until evening, Y., in the politest 
 of tones, demanded permission of his ex- 
 cellency the aide to receive back the pass- 
 ports, as being hungry, they wished for 
 breakfast, and thought it might be disagree- 
 able walking about the town without these 
 very necessary adjuncts. They were imme- 
 diately handed over, and by this time the 
 train could be seen safe over the frontier. 
 
 A help to the memory of a porter in the 
 shape of a three rouble note, informed them 
 
302 Russia in 1870. 
 
 that there was a small stream, which, if 
 followed up half a verst in a certain field, 
 could be easily crossed, and that this stream 
 was the frontier. Our two disconsolate 
 travellers therefore began to roam about, 
 always towards the coveted point. When 
 the semaphore telegraph between the station 
 and guard-house went to work, the result of 
 this "conversation" was soon visible in the 
 flesh: two sturdy Cossacks, fully armed, com- 
 menced a march in the steps of the travellers, 
 who by that time were following the bendings 
 of the boundary stream, amusing themselves 
 on the way by picking up stones, playing at 
 hop-scotch, and other innocent devices, until 
 the two warriors had fulfilled what were pro- 
 bably their orders of " marching up that 
 
 river." 
 
 Having allowed the two soldiers to head 
 them by some sixty yards, they jumped into 
 and crossed the stream. On the opposite side 
 
Russia in 1870. 303 
 
 the bank was a little high, and as X. and Y. 
 were crawling up it on their stomachs the 
 military arrived just opposite to them, and 
 addressing our travellers in Russian (of 
 which they understood nothing), made a 
 great row. X. who was a more acquatic 
 bird than Y., and therefore not so much dis- 
 abled from the water and mud, ventured to 
 look over his shoulder, and observed the 
 warriors had their guns at the " present." 
 
 " Oh, you blackguards, you daren't shoot, 
 we are in Prussia now." 
 
 This was no good. Y. then suggested as 
 X. was the " banker" for the journey, "Why 
 don't you throw them some money ?" 
 
 " All very well talking," said X., " but how 
 is a fellow to get his hand in his pocket when, 
 if he moves, very likely he'll get a bullet in 
 his : ' (well never mind where) . 
 
 With a little engineering however he 
 managed to extract a three rouble note, 
 
304 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and wrapping a stone up in it, threw it 
 over his shoulder across the stream (it was 
 very narrow) to the implacable military. 
 
 Now the army were puzzled between look- 
 ing wistfully at the fortune at their feet, and 
 their officer, who was also watching the en- 
 gagement from the look-out on the guard- 
 house ; however, as I have remarked before, 
 a Russian is generally up to an emergency 
 (particularly if that should be a pecuniary 
 one) ; one brother gives the other the order 
 to march, and with his foot judiciously impels 
 the covered stone. 
 
 A corner is soon reached which covers the 
 view of the general on the look-out from his 
 army, who then expressed to the weary and 
 benumbed travellers that they had better be 
 off as quickly as possible. The army returns 
 to their discomfited commander and announce 
 a defeat, and no doubt the general in charge 
 has long since sent the umbrella which X. 
 
Russia in 1870. 305 
 
 lost in the engagement to the Kazan Cathe- 
 dral, as a trophy of the brilliant victory of 
 the army of Wirballen over the English. X. 
 and Y. arrived at the Prussian station rather 
 moist and muddy, in plenty of time for the 
 train, and to take their hats off to his ex- 
 cellency the director. 
 
 Nowadays the difficulty is more easily 
 got over. A year ago I was a fellow - 
 voyager with an individual, dressed in the 
 European fashion, with a great deal of very 
 red beard and very little hair on his head ; 
 his luggage, he informed me, consisted of 
 the small black bag in his hand, which con- 
 tained a clean shirt and comb (he remarking, 
 what is very probably the truth, that it is 
 less inconvenience to purchase what you 
 want where you stay, than to incommode 
 yourself with luggage, which generally travel- 
 lers -find only goes to recruit the exhausted 
 wardrobes of chambermaids and waiters), 
 
 x 
 
306 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and a silk handkerchief full of oranges, which 
 he was continually munching (he had no 
 teeth). Arriving at the frontier it was 
 found he had no permission either to go 
 in or out of Russia on his passport, I 
 therefore presume he had come in under- 
 ground, as there was an underground way 
 into Serf-Russia, as there used to be an 
 underground way out of Slave- America. 
 
 The director informed him he could not 
 pass. In broken English he exclaimed, " I 
 not pass ? I'm a Pasha ! Pasha not pass ? 
 that is very bad ; I shall write to Con- 
 stantinople," and immediately produced out 
 of the black bag a large document with his 
 titles all set out (as I suppose what he said 
 was true, although nobody could understand 
 the hieroglyphics on it). He could only 
 speak a few words of English and a very 
 little French. I tried to explain to him, 
 that his passport was very much out of 
 
Russia in 1870. * 307 
 
 order, but no, he was a Pasha, and could 
 do as he liked. 
 
 I spoke to one of the many mercantile 
 agents who are established there, and who 
 are always obliging, and wishing to help 
 a stranded foreigner, and he told me to 
 direct the Pasha to the chief of the police, 
 who, on an explanation of the circumstance 
 would most likely let him pass. He galloped 
 off to him, and arrived over the frontier, 
 with the necessary permission, in time 
 for the train. And as this circumstance 
 happened some years after the former, I 
 think it proves that travelling facilities have 
 improved. 
 
 X 2 
 
308 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SIBERIA. 
 
 TF the other parts of Russia are com- 
 paratively unknown to foreigners, Siberia 
 is still more so ; and such remarkable ideas 
 prevail in England about that country, that 
 I am anxious as far as possible to correct 
 them. I believe that to the minds of many 
 people, the word "Siberia" conveys the 
 idea of a vast frozen wilderness, inha- 
 bited only by political prisoners, whose life 
 is passed in an unceasing struggle for the 
 mastery with the bears who dispute the 
 forest with them. 
 
Russia in 1870. 309 
 
 Let ine try to correct some of these 
 mistakes, by giving the result of my own 
 observations. First, then, as regards the 
 climate. A country upwards of five thou- 
 sand miles in length, by about two thousand 
 three hundred in breadth, containing six 
 millions of square miles of land and water, 
 and calling among its boundaries such 
 widely sundered names as the Arctic Ocean, 
 the Sea of Japan, and Chinese Tartary, 
 extending thus : from latitude 45 30' to 
 77 40' K, and from longitude 52 30' to 
 190 E., must necessarily have great varieties 
 of climate within its boundary line ; from 
 Italian mildness in its most southern limits 
 (about the same degree of latitude as Venice) 
 to perpetual ice in the regions of the Arctic 
 
 Ocean. 
 
 At Irkutsk, half-way to the Eastern 
 frontier, near the great inland lake Baikal, 
 which the Russians call the Holy Sea, the 
 
310 Russia in 1870. 
 
 mean annual temperature is 31 Fahrenheit ; 
 and the mean temperature of the winter 
 months is 1 below zero. 
 
 In the valley of the river Bnisei (which 
 empties its water into the Arctic Sea), 
 owing to the shelter of the high land, very 
 severe cold is unknown ; and in the south 
 towards the confines of the Altai mountains, 
 cattle graze all the year round in the open 
 air. In all this part of Siberia, then, south 
 of 57^, the air is very dry and the severity 
 of the cold is not much felt ; and it is in 
 this latitute that the great bulk of the 
 population are assembled, and here that 
 the industry of the country is best ex- 
 emplified. 
 
 At Ekaterienburg, near the Oural, I 
 found very little, if any, difference between 
 the climate and that of Moscow, which lies 
 two degrees further south ; while at Semi- 
 palatinsk, near the Altai mountains, in 
 
Russia in 1870. 31.1 
 
 latitude 50 40', or even anywhere south of 
 Krasnoyarsk, the climate is beautiful. 
 
 All about the southern parts of the Oural 
 mountains is also healthy ; and no fault can 
 be found with the severity of the cold in 
 any of those parts of Siberia that I am 
 now discussing. The extreme northern or 
 eastern latitudes are not desirable places to 
 live in. 
 
 I travelled in many parts of Siberia, in 
 which the climate was everywhere more or 
 less temperate and endurable, never suffering 
 myself from its severity, nor finding it any- 
 where worse than the climate of Moscow. 
 A great deal of the land I saw to have a fine 
 agricultural soil, a rich, deep black loam, 
 where anything would flourish. The method 
 of husbandry, however, must exhaust it very 
 much, and could not be followed, if land were 
 not plentiful and population scarce. 
 
 Year after year the crop of corn is the 
 
312 Russia m 1870. 
 
 same, with no manure, and much of it never 
 lying fallow, and yet the crops are abundant 
 enough to indicate the enormous production 
 that might be worked out of the soil by a 
 little intelligent industry. In the Oural moun- 
 tains I saw maize that had ripened well in 
 the open air, and some beetroot, and some 
 potatoes which had grown to an extaordinary 
 
 size. 
 
 
 
 In those parts -of Siberia where the soil is 
 less fertile, great quantities of rye are still 
 grown, and a pood of rye-flour was quoted 
 last year twenty copecks, or sevenpence for 
 thirty- six English pounds. 
 
 The woods in the summer are beautiful ; 
 although the long days are hot, the evenings 
 are always cool and rather damp ; then the 
 wild flowers grow everywhere in great luxu- 
 riance. Strawberries and raspberries, cur- 
 rants, cherries, and many other kinds of wild 
 edible berries are gathered from the woods 
 
Russia in 1870. 313 
 
 in great quantities, and sent off to supply 
 the markets of neighbouring towns, which 
 receive all their fruit from these wild 
 growths. 
 
 The common necessaries of life are cheap 
 here, more so than they are in other parts 
 of Russia, where, however, they are cheap 
 enough. 
 
 I obtained the following quotations, among 
 others : beef, 2d., and veal, l^d. the pound ; 
 a goose, 12d. ; a large turkey, 2s. 6d. ; game 
 of all kinds birds, hares, &c., altogether at 
 Id. or l^d. a head all round, without regard 
 to size ; potatoes, 7d. the bushel ; oats, 3s. 9d. 
 the tchetvert ; hay, IJd. the pood of thirty- 
 six English pounds. 
 
 The roads in Siberia are as good as those 
 of any part of the Empire, and, beyond 
 Tiumen, they are better, and indeed equal 
 to any ordinary post-roads in Europe. Tra- 
 velling is, therefore, in that respect, not 
 
314 Russia in 1870. 
 
 uncomfortable. The horses are celebrated 
 for their speed. The posting-houses are 
 tolerably good, much better than those of 
 many parts of the centre of Russia, and in 
 many of them it is possible even to get an 
 eatable dinner. I was astonished at a post- 
 house in one remote village, which was a 
 model of cleanliness and comfort in other 
 respects, to find this also : that the waiter 
 offered me the selection of my dinner from a 
 carte, supplemented by a list of wines of 
 several varieties. 
 
 The peasants of Siberia are found to be 
 far more civilized and better educated than 
 those of the other parts of Russia. This is 
 doubtless due to the influence of the political 
 exiles who, from time to time have been sent 
 from the centres of civilization to live among 
 them, and many of whom, having no business 
 to occupy them, spent their time in the 
 charitable occupation of teaching the children 
 
Russia in 1870. 315 
 
 of the peasantry of their neighbourhoods. 
 There being less ignorance there is also less 
 bigotry in religious matters. The churches 
 are fewer in number, and, of course, the 
 number of priests is also proportionately 
 smaller. In Siberia, one is struck with the 
 scarcity of churches, so different to the 
 superfluity existing in other provinces of 
 Russia. 
 
 The peasantry of Siberia are cleaner and 
 better dressed, altogether a finer class of 
 men than the peasants of other parts. They 
 seem to talk and express their opinions with 
 more freedom from restraint, and also to be 
 better informed of what is passing in .the 
 the world than their countrymen of further 
 south. Altogether they seem to have been 
 more liberally educated and trained, and the 
 traveller cannot fail to be struck with the 
 improvement he must notice in the general 
 condition and appearance of the people as he 
 
316 Russia in 1870. 
 
 advances further north towards the Siberian 
 deserts. 
 
 The rise of the scale of civilization in 
 Siberia is indicated by the improved con- 
 dition of the females of the population. In 
 central Russia the woman is treated as all 
 uncivilized people treat women, with neglect 
 and tyranny. She is left to do the hard work 
 an,d slave at field labour, while her lord and 
 master alternates the amusement of drinking 
 and sleeping. 
 
 The Mujik, in spite of his many amiable 
 qualities, is decidedly reprehensible in his 
 treatment of his womankind. Often in the 
 glaring heat of a summer's day the women of 
 the family may be seen toiling in the hay field, 
 with nothing on but their shifts, whilst the 
 men are quietly taking a snooze sheltered 
 from the sun under a house of green 
 branches made for the purpose. Ask one 
 of these lords of the creation if he is mar- 
 
Russia in 1370. 317 
 
 ried, he may answer, " No, not yet ; I am 
 looking out for a good strong working girl, 
 when I can find such a one that will work 
 for me I shall marry, and not before." 
 
 Now in Siberia this evidence of bar- 
 barism is not so prominent. There the 
 woman takes her proper place, looking after 
 her household and her children, whilst th8 
 man attends to his proper duties also. 
 
 The finest town that I have seen in Siberia 
 is Ekaterienburg, the frontier town between 
 European and Asiatic Russia, a position 
 which gives it many advantages, and in 
 respect of which it possesses certain trading 
 privileges. It is the chief centre of the 
 government mining department, and is in 
 near proximity to many valuable metallurgical 
 undertakings, from which circumstances it 
 derives much importance, and an increased 
 population. Irkutsk is also a nice town, 
 but Ekaterienburg has the superiority in 
 
318 Russia in 1870. 
 
 several respects. It contains a population 
 of 25,000 souls, and is handsomely built, 
 possessing several fine churches, and a great 
 number of brick and stone houses ; among 
 which some deserve to be called rather 
 palaces, also a mint, and large mechanical 
 works belonging to the Government. It has 
 &lso a theatre, a club, and two really good 
 hotels ; and on the whole is as unlike a city 
 on the outside borders of civilization and in 
 the close neighbourhood of Asiatic barbarism 
 as it is possible to imagine. I am sure that 
 when eating the " diner a la carte," supplied 
 by M. Plotnikoff at the best hotel, I found 
 myself as closely surrounded by the externals 
 of civilization as I could be in any European 
 city. 
 
 There is plenty of refined society to be 
 met with in all Siberian towns, and the 
 time of one's sojourn there always glides 
 away pleasantly ; the regularity and evenness 
 
Russia in 1870. 319 
 
 of the climate being an addition to the enjoy- 
 ment of life. 
 
 As to the inaccessibility of Siberia, the 
 dangers, discomforts, and annoyances of 
 the journey, its great expensiveness, and 
 so on, the world has been much deluded by 
 travellers' tales, and by the romantic imagi- 
 nations of those who sympathise much with 
 Siberian exiles. 
 
 Nijny Novgorod is now accessible 
 enough, and has become quite a fashion- 
 able rendezvous during the great fair. 
 From this place a line of steamers plies 
 daily to Perm in Siberia, doing the distances 
 pleasantly in a week. The boats are not 
 large, and their accommodation must not be 
 compared with that of the floating palaces of 
 the P. and 0. Company,' but they are kept 
 very clean, and cannot be called bad quarters 
 for travellers. 
 
 Their provisions are plentiful and good, 
 
320 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and their tariff of charges is moderate. On 
 the whole a very pleasant week may be spent 
 by an observant man on this river journey. 
 The few towns passed on the way break the 
 monotony of the voyage, and the scenery is 
 not without its peculiar recommendations ; 
 though I cannot endorse the opinion of those 
 travellers who say that the river Kama, which 
 we enter a short distance below Kazan, is 
 splendid. Such eulogists must measure 
 their admiration by a lower standard of 
 beauty than I. Beyond Perm the journey 
 is easy enough to any part of Siberia ; it is 
 certainly a little tedious, but even that depends 
 in a great measure on a man's own resources 
 for amusement, because there is plenty of 
 pretty scenery, hill, wood, and water, which 
 are a delightful compensation for- a little, 
 jolting about, especially to a traveller from 
 that flatter part of Russia, where even as 
 much as a mole-hill upon the horizon is a 
 
Russia in 1870. 321 
 
 natural curiosity, and the wearied eye looks 
 round in vain for a relief to the everlasting 
 monotony of the interminable sandy or grass 
 grown steppe. 
 
 Excepting that small tract in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Oural mountains, which 
 lies between the two watersheds of Europe 
 and Asia, say between Perm, in Europe, 
 on the Kama, and Tiumen in Asia, on the 
 Tura, near its junction with the Tobol; 
 the rest of Siberia is intersected by a net- 
 work of water communication in the great 
 rivers Obe, Enisei, Irtish, Lena, and Amoor, 
 navigable everywhere, and flowing through 
 the country in all directions, and so connect- 
 ing one end of Siberia with the other. If 
 the small hiatus over the Oural passes, from 
 Perm to the Tobol, were only connected by 
 a rail, then goods would go from the ex- 
 treme end of Eussia in Europe all over 
 Siberia by railways and water carriage. 
 
 Y 
 
322 Russia in t 1870. 
 
 All the chief towns of Siberia are con- 
 nected by telegraph wires with the capital, 
 and from thence messages are forwarded to 
 all other telegraph stations in the world. 
 
 Looking at the map of Asia, at the short 
 step from Irkutsk to the tea districts of 
 China ; at the navigable Amoor, so close to 
 the wealth of J apan ; carrying the eye down 
 again to the Russian outposts near Cabul, 
 and to those between the Black Sea and 
 the Caspian, one is struck with the reflection 
 that the development of Russia's system of 
 internal communication would direct all 
 Eastern trade from its existing channels, 
 and perhaps place the city of Moscow at 
 the centre of the carrying trade for the 
 Eastern world. The resources of Siberia 
 are immense. Few people have any idea 
 of their importance. Her mineral wealth is 
 almost unexplored ; in the few places where 
 it is worked it is so, most unsatisfactorily. 
 
Russia in 1870. 323 
 
 and under the worst possible management. 
 To judge of the importance of this part of 
 the wealth of Bussia, consider only the Oural 
 mountains, which extend from north to 
 south a distance of 1200 miles, and their 
 slopes are known to contain more or less 
 gold along the whole extent of them. Yet 
 they are only worked in a few places, and 
 there not as they ought to be. Consider, 
 again, the large tract of copper producing 
 country, and how few are the works scattered 
 here and there upon it. And so it is with 
 iron and all other minerals, they are all 
 comparatively neglected. It is very sad- 
 dening to travel through this country, and, 
 knowing the stores of mineral wealth it 
 contains, see its poverty and deplorable 
 neglect of those stores. 
 
 Whenever I travel about Siberia, I always 
 think why is it that our countrymen are 
 sent all the way to the Antipodes in search 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 Russia in 1870. 
 
 of a colony. I speak of those who set out 
 with a small capital in their pockets. Here, 
 nearer home, they can get better land 
 cheaper than in many of our colonies ; they 
 can live more cheaply, can hire labour 
 cheaply, and enjoy many advantages of 
 civilization which they would want in the 
 colonies. While paying trifling taxes, or 
 really no taxes at all, they would be under 
 the watchful protection of the most paternal 
 of governments, and in no danger of being 
 devoured by wild Indians or Maories. And 
 all these benefits against one drawback, 
 that of being settled in a country where the 
 inhabitants speak another language, and 
 the forms of government are of another na- 
 ture than they have before been accustomed 
 to. Again, an emigrant to the western 
 prairies of America, or the sheep-runs of 
 Australia or New Zealand, has no neighbours 
 at all ; but in Siberia he would have plenty. 
 
Russia in 1870. 325 
 
 and among them quite a number who spoke 
 several languages besides Russian. I know 
 a small works hidden among the Altai moun- 
 tains, where two at least among the workmen 
 speak the English language. 
 
 Not only does farming here, but all other 
 industrial enterprises likewise, offer a good 
 occupation, and the promise of a fortune 
 to a man who courageously and judiciously 
 inaugurates and carries them through. In 
 short, I can think of no other country in 
 the world which offers the same advantages 
 to a young man with a small capital as 
 Siberia. I could give several examples of 
 successful enterprise. It does not much 
 matter what a man has been brought up 
 for ; if he only has a " head on his shoulders " 
 he must get on, and that rapidly. Most of 
 the merchants settled in Siberia are self-made 
 men, in fact, there are very few who are not 
 so. Such a man said to me a short time 
 
326 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ago : " Twenty years since, I came to this 
 town with 800 roubles (100), and I have 
 made that into five millions ; it is a good 
 country to work in." 
 
 Siberia has begun to move forward a little, 
 of late. To-day on her rivers may be seen 
 thirty steamboats, exactly the same number 
 that were on the Volga and Kama only 
 seventeen years ago, w and now on the Volga 
 and Kama are 370. 
 
 Siberians build their own steamboats ; they 
 make rails, cloth, cotton goods, paper, &c. ; 
 they are much developing their carrying 
 trade, and, year after year, navigating new 
 rivers. 
 
 ' The Siberian aristocracy cherish two espe- 
 cial weaknesses: the first is, for playing 
 cards ; the other, for drinking champagne. 
 As to card-playing, it is no longer an amuse- 
 ment to them it is a serious business ; 
 and the Siberians are the most immoderate 
 
Russia in 1870. 327 
 
 gamblers that I have ever known, even in 
 Russia. In the hotel, in the room next to 
 mine, four men sat down to play at 11 o'clock 
 in the morning on Monday, and continued 
 their game without interruption for sleep, 
 but only now and again a few minutes' re- 
 spite for refreshment, until the Thursday 
 following ! In the meantime, the individual 
 who kept the bank had been cleared out 
 with a loss of forty thousand roubles. At 
 these settled and prolonged gambling orgies, 
 one holds the bank against all the others, 
 and the game is continued until either the 
 bank is broke or the adversaries. What a 
 picture of misery such a party must be about 
 the third day ! with blinking, blood-shot 
 eyes and aching heads, trembling fingers and 
 hands too weary to pick up the cards and 
 money ; propped up with cushions like so 
 many paralytics, and kept alive by perpetual 
 stimulants one would find it a little more 
 
328 Russia in 1870. 
 
 cheerful to be working with a pick at the 
 bottom of the deepest mine in their neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 At Irbit a great fair is held in February, 
 which is largely attended by all the Siberian 
 merchants, and here the gambling is univer- 
 sal and furious. A number of Jews and 
 card-sharpers come to this fair from Kowno, 
 Wilna, or even greater distances, in order to 
 share in the immense plunder which changes 
 hands at the card-tables on these occasions. 
 
 As at California and Australia, the fortu- 
 nate gold-digger is the general victim of the 
 gamblers, and, in one night, will clear out 
 the whole gains of his gold expedition, and 
 be sent off sobered and penniless on the 
 following morning to dig again for more. 
 
 The sumptuary arrangements of the respec- 
 table residents in Siberia are made on a scale 
 of extravagance and ostentation. As large 
 incomes are earned, so large establishments 
 
Russia in 1870. 329 
 
 are maintained, and hospitality is unbounded. 
 The traveller from place to place, and among 
 the Zavods, where no hotels exist, always 
 drives immediately on his arrival to the 
 " Gospotsky Dom," or gentleman's house, 
 where he receives accommodation, as a 
 matter of course, whether the proprietor of 
 the house be at home or not. 
 
 On one of the steamboats between jSTijny 
 Novgorod and Perm, I had made a passing 
 acquaintance with a gentleman who lived far 
 up among the slopes of the Oural, where he 
 combined the occupation of merchant and 
 gold adventurer on a large scale, and he had 
 pressed us to push our journey as far as his 
 settlements, and come there and pay him a 
 visit. One day, therefore, when I found 
 myself passing at no great distance from his 
 residence, I determined to make a short 
 detour, that I might drink a cup of tea with 
 this gentleman, and then push on further. 
 
330 Russia in 1870. 
 
 But I had reckoned without my host ; as 
 will be seen from the following story of my 
 visit : 
 
 We arrived at about seven in the evening, 
 and our summons at the bell was answered 
 by the appearance of a very old man dressed 
 in the universal sheepskin, who I thought 
 passed for the Dvornik, or house-porter. He 
 demanded who we were, and our post-boy 
 called out that we were two English princes ! 
 This was the result of an act of extravagance 
 of my companion (who for the want of small 
 change had given our previous post-boy 
 25 copecks instead of 5, which was his 
 proper fee). 
 
 The old gentleman at the gate made a low 
 salaam, and threw both gates of the porte 
 cochere wide open. We crawled out of our 
 Tarentasse, and followed him to the grand 
 entrance of the house, where he left us to 
 ourselves. 
 
Russia in 1870. 331 
 
 We found our way inside the house : our 
 travelling friend at home, and a friendly 
 welcome. So we were soon seated down 
 to a glass of tea. I was describing the 
 astonished appearance of the old Dvornik 
 outside, and how he left us at the foot of 
 the steps, when the door of the room was 
 thrown open, and the same old gentleman, 
 who acted Dvornik, of whom I was speaking, 
 entered. He had discarded his sheepskin 
 garment, and put on a magnificent Persian 
 silk dressing-gown, and our friend intro- 
 duced him to us as " My papa." 
 
 I may mention that " Papa " had been, 
 in his generation, one of the most cele- 
 brated and successful merchants of those 
 parts. Conversation went round pleasantly ; 
 but, after about two hours, we began to 
 show signs of taking our leave ; this was 
 far from our host's intention. We must 
 first have " Sarkuska" (Sarkuska is the ante- 
 
332 Russia in 1870. 
 
 dinner, all sorts of dried fishes, hams, cheese, 
 caviar, radishes, &c., with Schnapps of all 
 sorts). Then a little sleep. On waking up, 
 dinner was just ready at ten o'clock. More 
 eating accordingly, and a deal more drinking, 
 followed by cigars, as fine in flavour, said 
 my companion, who had lived in Havana, 
 as he had ever found in the West Indies. 
 
 Then it was too late for travelling further, 
 so we went to bed. However, early on the 
 following morning, I sent my servant to 
 have the horses put to, that we might get 
 away quickly, and make up for lost time. 
 The servant came back with a message from 
 the postmaster, that " We could not have 
 any horses to-day." The fact being, that 
 our host had forbidden him to forward our 
 journey, that he might keep us a little 
 longer the captives of his oriental hospi- 
 tality. It was no use abusing the post- 
 master, he was too much afraid of our 
 
Russia in 1870. 333 
 
 tyrannical host to do anything to offend 
 him. We had to wait his appearance in 
 patience. Presently he came down, dressed 
 in full evening costume, as he had left us 
 on the preceding night, and his father in 
 similar gala apparel. I explained to him, 
 with all appreciation of his hospitable in- 
 tentions towards us, that nevertheless it was 
 absolutely necessary for us to go forward 
 at once. I wasted words, he would not 
 listen to it ; and we were obliged to spend 
 another day in feasting and conversation, 
 varied by the amusement of looking over 
 the house, and admiring everything it con- 
 tained, which was brought before us to 
 admire, and fix a value on. 
 
 It is a very favourite amusement of such 
 people to exhibit all their treasures to every 
 stranger whom they entertain. We were 
 fortunate enough to get released towards 
 evening from the pressing, but unaffected, 
 
334 Russia in 1870. 
 
 hospitality of our kind entertainers, and 
 the above is only one of a great many 
 similar instances of hearty welcome and 
 genuine hospitality for which I have been 
 indebted to Siberian merchants. 
 
 The old gentleman (" my papa ") who 
 appeared to us first in the simple peasant's 
 dress, was, until 1861, a serf; and yet, in 
 1869, I find him such as I have described. 
 
 His little grandson, ten years old, was 
 getting a good education, and already spoke 
 French. 
 
 His son, the active master of the business 
 and household, was a very shrewd, well-in- 
 formed man, who discoursed sensibly of the 
 political parties in London and Paris, as well 
 as a't St. Petersburg, and who received his 
 newspapers every day. 
 
 Where the extraordinary ideas come from 
 concerning the prisoners and exiles in Siberia, 
 I know not. There are two distinct classes 
 
Russia in 1870. 335 
 
 of detenus : criminal prisoners and the poli- 
 tical exiles, and these again are subdivided 
 into several divisions. 
 
 First as to the criminal prisoners. 
 
 The worst culprits only are sent to work 
 in the mines mostly in the silver mines of 
 the Nertchinsk district. As these are always 
 the worst sort of criminals, guilty of 
 murder, or other similar crime; and as 
 the work in the mines is not particularly 
 hard nor injurious to health, they may be 
 considered to be a good deal better off than 
 they deserve to; moreover, all the people 
 working in the mines now live above 
 ground. 
 
 Another class of criminals are those sent 
 to various kinds of forced labour above 
 ground. 
 
 And the remainder are only exiled to 
 certain spots, where they are obliged to 
 live under the surveillance of the police : 
 
336 Russia in 1870. 
 
 formed into little colonies among them- 
 selves, and I am told it is not advisable for 
 strangers to pitch their tents among these 
 colonies of criminals. 
 
 I have never heard any reason why the 
 Russians should be said to treat their 
 criminals worse than other nations. We 
 hang our murderers ; the French guillotine 
 theirs ; the Russians more wisely and hu- 
 manely, in my opinion, use theirs for certain 
 kinds of labour, and take the greatest care 
 of their health. As an evidence that the 
 prisoners are not enfeebled by their confine- 
 ment, I may here note, that during these last 
 months I have read of two escaped convicts 
 taken at St. Petersburg, who had managed to 
 tramp on foot all the way from Nertchinsk. 
 
 As to political offenders, they are subject 
 to no further punishment than is involved in 
 their compulsory residence within a certain 
 distance of some given centre. So long as 
 
Buss-ia in 1870. 337 
 
 thfey do not go beyond their allotted circle, 
 they are in all other respects perfectly free. 
 Many among them have entered the employ- 
 ment of the Government, entirely of their 
 own accord. Many of them also are. now in 
 a better position in Siberia than they would 
 be in their own country, and have no wish 
 to return home. Some, on the other hand, 
 are in indifferent circumstances. One miner 
 told me lately that in his works he was em- 
 ploying two men who had been colonels in 
 the army, at eighty copecks a day for each. 
 I do not believe that there is one instance of 
 a political exile, properly so called, working 
 in the mines, or doing any other kind of 
 forced work for Government account. 
 
 It has been too common a custom to mix 
 up some of the criminals with political pri- 
 soners in speaking of them. So you may 
 hear that a certain prisoner is a " political," 
 and, on going carefully into his case, you 
 
 z 
 
338 Russia in 1870. 
 
 will find, that although the man may have 
 been mixed up with politics in some way 
 or other, yet he was sent to Siberia for 
 some crime quite distinct from his political 
 tendencies. 
 
 I am not only giving my own opinion, 
 which, like that of other travellers, is very 
 liable to error, but I am speaking the 
 opinions of men educated and living on the 
 spot, honest in their opinions, and well able 
 to judge ; and I think it only honest, as I 
 have had unusual opportunities of collecting 
 information on the subject, to record what I 
 have heard and seen. 
 
 It is not my business to justify the act of 
 banishing men from their homes, often for a 
 mere expression of opinion. Their lot is 
 doubtless unhappy enough, in the mere fact 
 of their exile from all that is near or dear to 
 them. It does not need to be painted in 
 blacker colours than the truth will justify, 
 
Russia in 1870. 339 
 
 nor exaggerated by false statements of cruelty 
 and sufferings which do not exist. 
 
 Of late years, a great improvement has 
 been made in the means of transporting 
 prisoners of all kinds to their destinations. 
 Formerly they walked on foot the whole 
 distance, and months were consumed on the 
 journey, and many fell victims to the fatigue. 
 Now, steamers carry them to Perm, and 
 from Perm they are sent on to their des- 
 tination by carriages. So carefully are they 
 looked after now, that in winter they do 
 not travel on the roads. Five years is the 
 shortest term of banishment. The worst 
 kind of criminals have their heads shaved, 
 some on one side only and some all over. 
 I do not know the reason for this dis- 
 figurement. 
 
 Many prisoners make their escape, and 
 find their way with comparative ease through 
 the woods to the great towns. There they 
 
 7 *> 
 
 /> A 
 
340 Russia in 1870. 
 
 exist for a time, until they are found to be 
 without passports, identified and returned to 
 their punishment. These runaways, while 
 hiding in the woods by day, come down to 
 the villages at night to seek for something 
 to . eat ; and so great is the goodness of 
 heart of the Russian peasant, and his sym- 
 pathy with anything like misfortune, that in 
 many villages the peasants will every night 
 leave food and drink outside the window of 
 their cabins for these people to feed upon : 
 although they know as well as possible that 
 these may be some of the greatest villains 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Never does one see in Russia a troop of 
 prisoners clanking along the road or in the 
 streets, without at the same time observing 
 all sorts and classes of people giving them 
 money and food. The Russian, particularly 
 the peasant, has a very soft heart. 
 
 A curious variety of Tchinovniks is met 
 
Russia in 1870. 341 
 
 with in Siberia, as it is the head-quarters 
 and centre of all metallurgical undertakings 
 of the Government ; it is full of the officers 
 of the department of mines. 
 
 Amongst all Russian Government servants 
 the mining engineers are the most intelligent 
 and accomplished. Amongst the chiefs you 
 find especially highly talented men, and men 
 who are conscientiously trying to forward 
 the interests of the Government in spite of 
 the difficulties they have to struggle through. 
 Among which inefficiency of their subordi- 
 nates is the chief, but when the plan is 
 carried on of transferring all these properties 
 to private hands their development will be 
 something very different to what it is now. 
 Siberia, as I have said, is the important 
 centre of Russia's mineral wealth, which it 
 would be impossible to give an idea of within 
 the limits of a chapter. There are gold, 
 silver, copper, lead, iron, coal, and salt, 
 
342 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and dense forests still undisturbed. I have 
 travelled over miles of mineral wealth ; for 
 day after day through interminable woods ; 
 I have looked from the highest mountains, 
 and from horizon to horizon, and seen 
 nothing but thickly timbered forests covering 
 the hills and valleys. All this is yet to be 
 utilized, there it stands idle, as abundant as 
 man can want, and only waiting for the axe 
 of the emigrant, when the tide of coloniza- 
 tion shall set towards Siberia, under the 
 auspices of the liberal policy recently in- 
 augurated by the Russian Government. 
 
343 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE GREAT FAIR OF NIJNY NOVGOROD. 
 
 IVrOTHING can give a stranger a better 
 insight into the manners and pecu- 
 liarities of the frontier population of Russia, 
 than a visit to the great annual fair at Nijny 
 Novgorod. 
 
 There Europe and Asia meet in harmony 
 on the common ground of trade and mutual 
 interests. 
 
 There the extreme eastern terminus of 
 European railways is extended to the con- 
 fluence of the great rivers, which bind the 
 whole Empire of Russia in a net-work of 
 water communication. 
 
344 Russia in 1870. 
 
 The fair begins some time in July, but it 
 is at its most crowded and busy culmination 
 from the 12th to the 28th of August (old 
 style). 
 
 Let us leave the fair, cross the Oka and 
 mount the hills at the back of the town ; 
 thence we can get a bird's-eye view of the 
 fair, which is held about the angle where the 
 Oka runs into the Volga. 
 
 It would have been impossible to select a 
 better spot. On the Volga are barges which 
 have sailed down the Kama from the Oural, 
 laden with the produce of Siberia : iron, 
 copper, lime-tree bark, rags, &c., and des- 
 tined for the long journey to Astrakhan and 
 the Caspian Sea, there to tranship their 
 cargo to other vessels which will carry it to 
 the ports of Persia. On the Oka are deep- 
 laden barges destined to Moscow, or the 
 centre of Russia, far away. Look at that 
 barge seeming like a large merchant ship, it 
 
Russia in 1870. 845 
 
 is freighted with 800 tons weight of corn for 
 St. Petersburg. There is a strange Asiatic 
 craft, curiously carved and coloured, and 
 hung with extraordinary square banners, for 
 it is a holiday and all the vessels are dressed 
 with flags. 
 
 These big square banners are covered 
 with devices in gold and silver and many 
 colours, under the protection of whose 
 cabalistic sentences the superstitious mari- 
 ners sleep secure. 
 
 Watch the busy steamers, puffing in and 
 out among the shipping, and looking 
 dwarfed in the distance. There they all 
 meet together, some from the gloomy re- 
 gions of pine trees and snow in Siberia, 
 some from the glowing borders of the Volga, 
 where sandy deserts reflect the rays of 
 dazzling sun. 
 
 The railway, type of the civilization 
 of the West, stretches along the plains 
 
346 Russia in 1870. 
 
 at our feet, and the representatives of 
 Europe and Asia meet about its terminus to 
 trade. 
 
 There are two barges passing one another, 
 we can see from the gorgeous image of his 
 favourite patron saint on the two flags that 
 they belong to the same owner. 
 
 One of those barges contains tea from 
 China ; the other is laden with cloth goods 
 and European notions addressed to the 
 Chinese markets in return. 
 
 There is a barge towed by thirty horses, 
 which is filled with petroleum from the 
 Caucasus ; another barge by its side is 
 loaded deep with iron and copper from the 
 Oural mountains. 
 
 Yonder, on the bridge of boats, which con- 
 nects the town with the fair, is a heavy 
 lumbering Tarentasse drawn by six horses, 
 and escorted by a light cloud of very 
 irregular cavalry, Cossacks, riding with their 
 
Russia in 1870. 347 
 
 chins on their knees, and their long lances 
 in various angles in the air. 
 
 That banditti-looking body-guard suggest 
 a quis custodiet custodes ? The carriage con- 
 tains gold washed in the Altai mountains, 
 and now on its way to the mint at St. 
 Petersburg to be coined. A dusty and 
 much enduring officer in charge has made 
 the interior of the carriage into as comfort- 
 able a bedroom as circumstances would per- 
 mit; and must have found outyby concussion, 
 every knob and angle of his compartment 
 in the course of his unbroken journey of 
 about six weeks. 
 
 Another carriage is crossing the bridge ; 
 an open one this time. What lord of creation 
 sits so pleasantly alone on the back seat, 
 puffing his cigar ? 
 
 A countryman of our own evidently, for in 
 addition to his umbrella spread, there is on 
 his knees the inevitable red-bound handbook. 
 
848 Russia in 1870. 
 
 That cigar will bring him into trouble. See ! 
 I thought as much ! His Isvostchick sud- 
 denly gallops as hard as he can make his 
 horses go. ^ Cossack is after him ! Another ! 
 The deluded Briton looks .round and smiles 
 on his escort of Cossacks. He thinks it is a 
 compliment. It will cost him a fine of 
 25 s. r. for breaking the regulation against 
 smoking on the bridge and in the fair. 
 
 That row of small wooden huts painted 
 blue, which seems to be pitched in the 
 middle of the river, is built in effect upon 
 a sand-bank in the Oka, which with the most 
 accommodating and convenient regularity, 
 always appears above the water in time for 
 the annual fair, although it is hidden beneath 
 the surface in the winter and spring. 
 
 It is called the Siberian or Iron line. 
 
 The immense piles of iron that we see, 
 and the contents of those other barges, now 
 unloading the freight they have brought 
 
Russia in 1870. 349 
 
 from the north, and of many more barges to 
 follow, will be sold and sent away during the 
 fair. Already there are a number of barges 
 loading for the south ; and so important 
 is this part of the trade that the railway is 
 brought across the water by a temporary 
 bridge, right into the centre of this insular 
 hive of industry. In a few months the sand- 
 bank will again be hidden by the waters, and 
 not a mark will remain to record the passing 
 importance of the ground that they cover. 
 
 Still, taking advantage of our commanding 
 point of view (on the hill before mentioned), 
 we can form an idea of the plan upon which 
 the permanent part of the fair, the fair 
 proper, has been built. 
 
 Yonder regular -shaped, bazaar - looking 
 place, with its radiating alleys or streets, 
 was originally sufficient for the itinerant 
 merchants who frequented it, and year by 
 year it has been increased round the same 
 
350 Russia in 1870. 
 
 centre. The large house in the very centre 
 (like the spider in the middle of his web) is 
 the palace of the governor-general of the 
 place. The governor resides permanently in 
 the upper town, and only here during the 
 fair. 
 
 The approach to it from the back con- 
 trasts with the narrow passages of the fair. 
 It must be a pleasant escape from the dust 
 and heat of the crowds, to emerge into that 
 handsome broad boulevard with the shady 
 trees. The boulevard ends in a handsome 
 church. There is a smaller church, a great 
 favourite with the people, built just opposite 
 the governor's house, and facing the river ; 
 that little church the merchants of the fair 
 built, to commemorate the Czar's escape 
 from the dastardly attempt that was made 
 on his life in April, 1866. 
 
 On each side of the chapel is a flag, of 
 Chinese appearance ; these two flags indicate 
 
Russia in 1870. 351 
 
 the continuance of the great fair, and are 
 hoisted with many ceremonies at its com- 
 mencement, and remain floating until its 
 close. 
 
 Looking now beyond the fair to the banks 
 of the Volga, you may see some small brown 
 mountains on the shore. Some of these are 
 rags from Siberia, others the bark of the 
 lime-tree, used for making what we in England 
 call bass mats. Near them is an enormous 
 heap of grindstones from the Oural, enough 
 to serve the magic mill that grinds the salt 
 for the sea ; but all those tons of millstones 
 will be shipped away to-morrow, and another 
 quantity piled in their places. 
 
 The Exchange is yonder wooden-building 
 with a blue-painted roof, near the other side 
 of the bridge ; of the great crowd of men con- 
 gregated there, nearly all are owners of the 
 various craft ready to be chartered for the 
 Oural mountain's or the Caspian Sea, St. 
 
352 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Petersburg, or Astrakhan (where you will), 
 along the silent highways that are the main 
 arteries of the Empire's life and strength. 
 These are the men to carry your purchases 
 home for you ; their barks are on the shore, 
 and the traktir is handy, where you may 
 clench your bargains over a glass of tea. 
 
 It is worth while now to look round for 
 the signs of manufacturing industry and 
 progress. At some distance on the right 
 you will see a ship-building yard ; that is 
 Kolschin's. He has a great many boats in 
 hand, and has just laid the keels of three 
 steam- vessels, which will be plying next year 
 on the Tobol in Siberia. 
 
 On the other side of the Oka, just above 
 the fair, you may notice a large red-brick 
 building with a tall chimney ; that is a saw- 
 mill hard at work cutting planks, which will 
 be made into railway waggons. Higher up 
 you see larger works, with a deal of fire 
 
Russia in 1870. 353 
 
 coming out of the chimneys ; that is a large 
 blistered steel works. Its owner is a levia- 
 than in trade, who has a capital of ten 
 millions of roubles, but who is so very- 
 stingy in small matters, that, if you receive 
 a letter from him in answer to yours, you 
 will see that he has turned your own enve- 
 lope inside out, to use again. 
 
 When we have taken thus a bird's-eye 
 view of the fair, we will come down from 
 our point of vantage and plunge into the 
 thick of it at once. In the crowd the dust 
 is horrible, and the heat of the sun very 
 oppressive. 
 
 It is the 15th of August, the day on 
 which the business of the fair reaches its 
 greatest importance, when the excitement is 
 at fever height ; finally the day when all 
 outstanding drafts must be honoured. 
 
 The fair has a singular appearance from 
 the immense quantities of goods which are 
 
 2 A 
 
354 Russia in 1870. 
 
 piled up in store outside the shops, and 
 covered up in mats to protect them from 
 the possibility of damage from rain ; for it 
 does occasionally rain here copiously, and 
 then the streets are more than ankle-deep 
 in floating mud, which has its desagrement,- 
 but is preferable to their present condition, 
 by which we are blinded in clouds of fine 
 dust. 
 
 There is a part of the fair where almost 
 all the goods are Russian produce ; among 
 them, those many - coloured trunks with 
 metal bindings, are an institution of the 
 country, and every peasant, man and wo- 
 man, aims at the independent possession of 
 such a chest, in which he can store away 
 his little " all," and still have room for 
 more. 
 
 Those copper and polished urns for 
 making tea are called " Samovars." They 
 come from Tula, on the Oka, not far from 
 
Russia in 1870. 355 
 
 Moscow, along with the comical intricate 
 padlocks, by their side; a Eussian loves a 
 trick, or an artful dodge in everything, and 
 despises a plain, straightforward padlock, 
 with an ordinary key, so these are made to 
 suit his taste ; many of them require one or 
 two springs to be touched before the key-hole 
 is visible; others have a visible key-hole 
 which will not admit the key until the hole 
 has been moved by a spring. The generality 
 of the Eussian padlocks have a screw for a 
 key, the worm of which is so made as only to 
 fit its particular lock. 
 
 Here are carpets made of long coarse wool 
 from Siberia, altogether peculiar in material 
 and pattern. They are generally used by 
 the better class of peasants to hang over the 
 backs of their sledges, and are quite a 
 Eussian manufacture, although I have seen 
 one hanging outside a shop in London with 
 the label, " Persian rugs," which I recog- 
 2 A 2 
 
356 Russia in 1870. 
 
 nized as one of a parcel which I had sent 
 home from Nijny Novgorod, and which had 
 been made at Tinmen in Siberia. 
 
 You are astonished at the neatness of the 
 patterns of those wall-papers ; it seem to be 
 a manufacture for which the Russians have a 
 very pretty taste. 
 
 That thick hairy-looking stuff which yonder 
 native of little Russia is cheapening, is called 
 " Voilok." It is a felt, made of cow's hair, 
 compressed, and is a very useful article to a 
 Russian. Amongst other purposes a sheet 
 of "Voilok" is everywhere the peasants 
 bed, and of this he also makes his winter 
 boots. 
 
 As we are now in his house and in- 
 formed he is at home, let us go and pay our 
 respects to the governor. 
 
 While our names are taken in, we are 
 ushered into an ante -room already full of 
 officials, who are waiting to be summoned 
 
Russia in 1870. 357 
 
 in rotation to their interviews with the 
 great man. These officers are all in court 
 costume, with cocked hats and swords, and 
 wear all the orders they possess. Among 
 them are some uniforms that probably seldom 
 see the light of day, and whose wearers 
 are uncomfortable scarecrows in their un- 
 accustomed finery. I see by -my side one 
 such character, whose features are distorted 
 into an unalterable smile, that would be 
 symptomatic of downright idiocy, if it were 
 not equally attributable to nervousness and 
 discomfort. He seems to be dressed in the 
 cast-off and worn-out uniform of a Cabinet 
 Minister, which fits him much too tightly 
 across the chest. He has a cocked hat 
 under his arm, and a court sword between 
 his legs. His darned and shining kid gloves 
 smell of turpentine afar, and even these are 
 too tight for him. Altogether he is so 
 strapped up and strapped down, and starched 
 
358 Russia in 1870. 
 
 and pomaded, that he looks as if he could 
 not wink without bursting his buttons. He 
 is the procureur of a small country town, 
 and is waiting to consult his excellency 
 about an " affair." I had seen this official a 
 short time before on " business," when his 
 costume (civilian) and the way he did his 
 business reminded me of Hampton Races, 
 and the thimble-riggers there. This man's 
 evident tremor of nervousness gives my 
 friend a wrong opinion of the governor, 
 which is soon set right when I introduce 
 him to a jolly-looking, middle-aged general, 
 beaming with good humour and kindness, 
 who chats agreeably with us for a long 
 time ; tells us all the news of the fair, and 
 gives my English friend a high opinion of 
 the Russian officials. 
 
 His virtues are not confined to the 
 amenities of social life, but he is active and 
 efficient, and honest in his government also. 
 
Russia in 1870. 359 
 
 If all the provincial governors in Russia 
 
 resembled General in these respects, 
 
 things would go on much better than they 
 do now. We take our leave and return to 
 the scene outside. 
 
 The basement of the governor's house is 
 arranged as a bazaar, divided into stalls 
 occupied by specimens in an ethnological 
 museum. First, we come to a counter 
 stocked with old familiar Swiss chalets, 
 churches, chamois, goats, and other objects 
 carved in horn from Switzerland. The 
 Teutonic proprietor recommends his wares 
 in the patois of the Oberland. 
 
 In the next stall a bearded disciple of the 
 false prophet, a native of Bokhara sits in 
 silent state among silks, Cashmeres, scarves, 
 and other Indian haberdashery. 
 
 Opposite to him is an eager, vulture- 
 featured Tartar, who has brought turquoises 
 from Persia; next, a gigantic Russian from 
 
360 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Ekaterienburg, in Siberia, a leviathan in 
 enterprise as well as in stature, with a 
 valuable store of precious stones ; by his 
 side a delicate - featured and long - haired 
 Circassian, in the picturesque costume of his 
 country, with a store of silver filagree work ; 
 then a fire-worshipper from Shiraz, with 
 a display of Persian carpets of his own 
 manufacture ; a Parisian with kid gloves from 
 Paris ; a soi-disant Englishman, with a shop 
 full of German toys ; a spectacle-maker and 
 optician from Berlin : and so round the 
 bazaar, with a new nationality represented 
 in every stall we approach. 
 
 And all these people are busily at work, 
 lying hard in each other's faces, and trying 
 to cheat the public. Your haberdasher from 
 Bokhara keeps his Persian silks beneath 
 the counter, until he has tried to sell you 
 Moscow made counterfeits. Your Circassian, 
 for his silver filagree work, has imitation 
 
Russia in 1870. 361 
 
 ware of Tula, which is not so durable nor 
 so costly as his own ; and the pious and 
 dignified Persian has carpets to sell to the 
 uninitiated, which do not carry the leaden 
 stamp of the Custom House, by which 
 all genuine foreign goods are distinguished. 
 In brief, they are all rogues alike, and he 
 who would deal in the fair must have a 
 sharp eye, or a good knowledge of his 
 goods, or a resignation to submit to a certain 
 amount of fraud. 
 
 "Well, well," I hear my reader exclaim, 
 as he buttons up his pocket again with a 
 tolerant smile, " it is worth being cheated 
 of a fqw pounds to have dealings with the 
 representatives of so many great nations 
 assembled in one great exchange." 
 
 It is cruel to destroy the illusion, but I 
 must now do so. 
 
 The interesting beauty from Circassia is 
 an Armenian merchant, well known and 
 
362 Russia in 1870. 
 
 indigenous at St. Petersburg. The true 
 believer is a native of Nijny Novgorod itself. 
 The Tartar with the turquoises, whose savage 
 features suggested an existence of perpetual 
 danger or violence, is a peaceable citizen of 
 Moscow, who keeps a small shop int the 
 Gostinoi Dvor of that city. But my Siberian 
 giant is better than some of his precious 
 stones ; he is no sham, as I have seen him 
 in Siberia, where, it is to be supposed, he 
 also picks up his stones for sale. 
 
 The carpet manufacturer, also, is a genuine 
 personage ; a great merchant in his own 
 line of trade ; a man of education. I 
 suggested to him that he would sell his 
 Persian carpets better in London than here. 
 "Yes," he said, " I send plenty to London ; 
 but for thirty-five years my family have 
 attended the fair, and we don't like to give 
 it up. It is a holiday, and we see the world, 
 and know what is going on ; the trade we 
 
Russia in 1870. 363 
 
 do here does not pay us, but we should not 
 like to give it up." (He did not say any- 
 thing about those carpets that have no leaden 
 seal of the Custom House ; perhaps they 
 pay expenses better than the legitimate 
 trade). However, he is very polite, and as 
 I have never in my previous visits made 
 the acquaintance personally of them, I ex- 
 press a wish to see the interiors of the 
 Persian line. He formally makes me known 
 to a coterie of grave and courteous gentle- 
 men in high black caps, saying that I am 
 a Christian, but one who has no disrespectful 
 intentions towards themselves ; and so re- 
 turns to his occupations, which I interrupted, 
 of smoking cigarettes, and winding his long 
 moustachio gracefully round the forefingers 
 of his hands. * 
 
 The Persian " notions " are silk, fruits, 
 and carpets from Persia in great number 
 and variety ; rugs of long wool from the 
 
364 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Caucasus ; drugs from Central Asia ; gor- 
 geously embroidered slippers from Teheran ; 
 shawl - patterned dressing gowns of warm 
 and vivid colour from Meshed; turquoises 
 from the neighbourhood of Herat. All the 
 goods in this line appear to be genuine 
 articles, but of very wide range as to quality. 
 The Persians do not bargain and chaffer 
 about prices like a Russian dealer ; their 
 form of swindling tampers with the quality 
 of their goods rather than with the price. 
 For example, I took up a roll of red silk, the 
 price of which I was told was twenty-five 
 copecks the arshine (tenpence a yard), and 
 on looking inside it, I discovered that the 
 silk became thin by degrees and beautifully 
 less as it wound towards the centre ; so 
 that from & moderately thick web on the 
 external layer, it gradually dwindled to a 
 mere transparency of muslin. When I 
 diffidently called the attention of the very 
 
Russia in 1870. 365 
 
 gentlemanly dealer to this arrangement, he 
 shrugged his shoulders, and replied in- 
 differently: "What can you expect for 
 twenty-five copecks the arshine ? " 
 
 The furniture of all their private rooms 
 is alike and simple enough; a raised bench 
 for a divan, with plenty of cushions and 
 carpets, are all that they require. 
 
 Let us now leave these Persians, and 
 turn into the "line" that is frequented by 
 the Bokhara traders. We are arrested at 
 the first counter by an exhibition that would 
 make the fortune of any wax- work establish- 
 ment in the world. 
 
 Five Bokharians of distinction sit cross- 
 legged on the counter, in front of a cotton 
 store, in the form of a crescent ; they have 
 fine manly countenances, copper or snuff- 
 coloured skin and jet black hair, and their 
 quick, sharp, black eyes leap forward, flash- 
 ing to meet you. All five were handsomely 
 
36G Russia in 1870. 
 
 hung in robes of silk, with lots of jewellery ; 
 but the chief who sat in the centre was 
 distinguished by a Caftan of many colours, 
 and a silver girdle round his waist, which 
 was literally overloaded with precious stones, 
 principally turquoises. Their attention was 
 evidently concentrated on the beauty of their 
 own personal appearance to the detriment 
 of their business. I asked the old image 
 in the centre how much he wanted for a 
 .piece of silk that hung for sale behind him, 
 and I was rewarded by a magnificent stare 
 out of ten beady black eyes, but all the 
 five traders disdained to reply. Afterwards, 
 a servant came forward and explained to 
 me that those great lords in the fine clothes 
 were in the wholesale line of business, and 
 the silk trade was a retail speculation of 
 himself their servant. 
 
 These gentlemen had come to Nijny in 
 their finest clothes, to sell a crop of cotton 
 
Russia in 3870. 367 
 
 and carry back sheet iron in exchange. If 
 they had only set up a wholesale trade in 
 their own photographs, I would like to be 
 their agent for London and Paris, at a low 
 rate of commission. 
 
 To the left of the Bokharian line is a row 
 of shops, full of the Russian speciality called 
 " Tissues," fabrics of gold and silver thread, 
 or woven in various colours, and used for 
 the vestments of the priests, and the orna- 
 ments of the churches ; also finer and lighter 
 fabrics, which are exported all over the East, 
 and most largely to Persia, to make the 
 ladies trousers of. 
 
 There is a Tartar line, full of many- 
 coloured leather boots, slippers, &c. One 
 of the dealers objected to sell me a pair of 
 what he called "Mosque slippers," "be- 
 cause," he said, "I never went to the 
 Mosque, and therefore did not want them." 
 It took a little perseverance to convince 
 
368 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Mm that that was my business and not 
 his. 
 
 Here also we find a great miscellaneous 
 collection of Oriental and Russian produce 
 of every kind ; caviar, rhubarb, isinglass, 
 betel nuts, a list too long to glance at of 
 Russian manufactures, nick-nacks without 
 end, from Paris and London, of every kind, 
 and of the newest as well as of the older 
 inventions ; in fact, almost anything saleable 
 that the mind of a merchant can conceive, 
 and a great deal more than he could discover 
 any quotation for in a trade circular, is here 
 offered for sale. 
 
 The business transacted is genuine and 
 immense ; quickly done too, and without 
 unnecessary chaffering. 
 
 Among the merchants of the Siberian line 
 is a gentleman with whom I had much 
 business, and who has honoured me with an 
 invitation to dinner. Although his trans- 
 
Russia in 1870. 369 
 
 actions at Nijny are carried on in only a 
 very small shed of a place, one of the blue- 
 topped ones I have described, yet he is 
 actually one of the richest and most enter- 
 prising merchants of Kussia, who, with 
 twenty million roubles of capital, trades 
 from one end of the Empire to the other ; 
 and answers those, who inquire of him 
 where he has agents, with the magnificent 
 reply, " In every town between Archangel 
 and Astrakhan." 
 
 His dinner party is a reunion of many of 
 the leading merchants of Russia, and owners 
 and managers of many great industrial 
 undertakings. Altogether, I calculate, that 
 properties covering more than five millions 
 of acres were represented at that table. 
 
 Among the company sat one fine patri- 
 archal old gentleman who had a long white 
 beard. He had formerly been the coachman 
 of the founder of the firm, the father of 
 
 2 B 
 
370 Russia in 1870. 
 
 his host ; but now for thirty-five years had 
 been aide-de-camp and chief manager in the 
 business. He belongs to what is called the 
 Old Faith. He is considered to have been 
 one of the shrewdest hands at a bargain, in 
 the Empire ; and has a cunning habit, very 
 prevalent among his class, of assuming 
 deafness when he is engaged on matters of 
 business, so as to get more time to consider 
 his answers to the questions, he troubles 
 you to bawl into his ears. However, once 
 on a railway, I whispered very softly to 
 him, 
 
 " Michael Michaelovitch, let us have a 
 glass of tea!" 
 
 " Come on," he answered, without a 
 symptom of deafness. 
 
 He is a tea-drinker who would astonish 
 anybody. I have seen him take twenty 
 tumblers of tea at a sitting, and feel no bad 
 effects from it. 
 
Russia in 1870. 371 
 
 The dinner was well chosen and well 
 cooked. Our host's kitchen was in the 
 hands of a chef from Paris, and no luxury 
 that Nijny, Moscow, or Petersburg could 
 supply, was absent from the repast; and 
 this I must add, was not considered an 
 exceptional festivity, but a dinner of daily 
 routine during the fair, when open house 
 is the rule, and perpetual feasting the 
 custom, among all who are connected by 
 any ties of trade. 
 
 After dinner we paid a flying visit to the 
 Pagodas of the so-called Chinese line ; where 
 however we found no celestials, but veritable 
 Mujiks and their masters from Moscow. 
 
 A number of bald-headed Tartars were 
 about the streets, who looked like shaven 
 maniacs as they grimaced at each other 
 vehemently in conversation. 
 
 We looked in at the theatre as we passed. 
 It is a decently built house, poorly attended, 
 2 B 2 
 
372 Russia in 1870. 
 
 where we saw a scene from the Russian 
 translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet ; pro- 
 nounced there " Gamlet," there being no 
 aspirate in the Russian language, its duty 
 is always overdone by the letter G. 
 
 There is better fun in Nijny than the 
 half empty theatre. The traktirs are all 
 crowded and full of life ; we selected that 
 called Barbadienkoes, where the real Zin- 
 gari perform. 
 
 The room was crowded with many ranks 
 of people, but among them scarcely any 
 uniforms of civil or military officers. 
 
 In the capitals of Russia, there are more 
 Government employes than civilians at all 
 public places of entertainment ; but at the 
 great fair of Nijny commerce reigns supreme. 
 
 Rough-looking, bearded merchants were 
 consuming champagne like water, nothing 
 but champagne or tea was on the tables. As 
 our friends at other tables became aware of 
 
Russia in 1870. 373 
 
 our presence, glasses of wine were brought 
 to us from various Ivans and Michaels, who 
 were holding up their own glasses to catch 
 our eye and challenge us. This custom of 
 sending a glass of champagne to a friend 
 while you drink his health, is prevalent 
 through all ranks of Russian merchant 
 society. 
 
 The guests were already noisy and talkative 
 enough, but there were not many drunk yet. 
 That would come. 
 
 Now silence for the gipsies, who were 
 taking their places on the stage. 
 
 They arranged themselves in two half- 
 circles ; the women sitting in front on 
 chairs, and the men standing behind. The 
 leader of the band took his place in the 
 centre, with a guitar. 
 
 The women were gaudily dressed in bright 
 colours, wearing many ornaments. Their 
 beauty has been often celebrated, and, I 
 
374 Russia in 1870. 
 
 think, deservedly. They resemble in features 
 the English type, but stamped with more 
 intellect and refinement. 
 
 The older women of the party, however, 
 had lost that delicacy of outline by which the 
 younger ones were distinguished. Among 
 the men I was struck with their resemblance 
 to Jews. 
 
 When the audience was hushed with ex- 
 pectation, the leader gave a signal by jerking 
 his arm and guitar, and one of the women 
 broke out into a low, plaintive song, which 
 elicited a shout of admiration from the 
 audience. 
 
 She sang quietly and without effort, her 
 bright black eyes wandering to all the cor- 
 ners of the room meanwhile ; and, it may 
 be, the furore with which her song was 
 received, was as much due to the fascination 
 of her glancing eyes, as to the music of her 
 song. I saw the same woman sing the same 
 
Russia in 1870. 375 
 
 song once again, at an entertainment which 
 the merchants of the fair gave to the Grand 
 Duke Vladimir, and her success then was 
 as great, or greater. 
 
 She was followed by a chorus, in which 
 the whole band joined ; and the vehemence 
 with which this was performed by all of 
 them, was a great contrast to the plaintive 
 tranquillity of her previous solo. The per- 
 formers worked themselves up to frenzy 
 pitch, shouting, hallooing, snapping the fin- 
 gers, setting.^ the whole body in a quivering 
 motion, as the Eastern dancing girls are 
 taught to do; while the leader with the 
 guitar, who was a neatly built, little man, 
 kept revolving on a pivot most gracefully in 
 time to the music, his little black eyes 
 flashing on each part of the room as he 
 gyrated. Altogether, we were a good deal 
 astonished at the gipsy performance. 
 
 Some ethnographical student would do 
 
376 Russia in 1870. 
 
 well to study the gipsies in Russia, as there 
 is certainly more than one class of them. 
 Nothing extraordinary is found in the type 
 of the majority of those generally met with 
 in the neighbourhood of the large cities, 
 such as Moscow and Kazan ; the women 
 being much of the race found in other 
 countries, and the men with a strong Jewish 
 resemblance, particularly to the Karaim 
 Jews, who principally live in the Crimea. 
 But in travelling about, I have sometimes 
 met with quite a distinct class, much darker 
 in colour, longer curling jet-black hair, thick 
 lips, and straight nose ; in fact, a very 
 Egyptian type of countenance. I have found 
 this class decidedly less fond of gay dresses 
 than most of the tribes, and a more working 
 people than the generality of gipsies. 
 
 I met such a tribe once on the road, 
 the other side of the Oural mountains, and 
 I noticed a great peculiarity in their women, 
 
Russia in 1870. 377 
 
 some thirty or forty ; their dresses were all 
 alike, old and young wore the same dark- 
 coloured material, with long cloaks also 
 uniform in colour, and apparently of some 
 sort of cloth ; but more curious still, these 
 cloaks were all fastened with brooches alike, 
 and made of a circle of copper as large 
 as small tea-cups. This singularity of dress 
 was so striking, that in the distance I had 
 mistaken them for some prisoners on the 
 march, and sent the Starosta from the 
 post-house (where we were changing our 
 horses) to give them some copper money. 
 I shall not easily forget the sequel. The 
 gipsies literally tore the poor fellow's clothes 
 to pieces, to get the copecks, and would not 
 believe in the emptiness of his pockets when 
 he had scattered the money he had in his 
 hands, which he was glad to do to escape 
 from their clutches. Some of the younger 
 of the women were passing beautiful, but 
 
378 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the older were veritable hags. Their per- 
 tinacity in begging was astonishing, but in 
 that even they differed from the regular 
 gipsies ; they did not try the usual plaintive 
 whining or fortune-telling style, but boldly 
 asked for what they wanted. 
 
 On another occasion I observed the same 
 peculiarity as regards sameness of dress. 
 This may be, perhaps, a type of the original 
 gipsy that, according to Grellmann, came 
 from Hindustan. It is no doubt true, from 
 my observation, that this particular type 
 of the race is to be found in those parts of 
 Russia bordering upon Central Asia ; and in 
 support of Grellmann's supposition, -it is a 
 fact, that the gipsies I have alluded to do 
 not speak the Russian language correctly, 
 although they must have had four centuries 
 in which to acquire it. The manners and 
 customs of these gipsies without doubt 
 assimilate in many respects to those of 
 
Russia in 1870. 379 
 
 the Indians ; but, on the other side of the 
 question, the fact must not be lost sight of 
 that these tribes, in common with all others, 
 designate their chief as "Waywode," de- 
 rived no doubt from the Sclavonic. It is 
 very observable of all the Russian dancing 
 gipsies, that although as elegant in their 
 movements as their compeers in other parts 
 of the world, they are decidedly not nearly 
 so lascivious in their movements. 
 
 We went next to a remote corner of the 
 fair, or rather, I should say, to an adjacent 
 village beyond the town, to see the tipsy 
 people wallowing in a barbarous scene of 
 debauchery and degradation. Their orgies 
 are beyond all description, and those who 
 know most of them say, 
 
 " There is no viler hell upon earth than 
 Nijny Novgorod, in the fair time, for those 
 who choose to make it so." 
 
 Returning to the more decent amusements 
 
380 Russia in 1870. 
 
 of the fair, we entered another traktir, where 
 the national dance of Eussia was being per- 
 formed in appropriate costume. This cos- 
 tume consists of red skirts, black velvet 
 knickerbockers, and polished boots, and a 
 felt cap on the head, very much like the 
 flat cap worn by the Beefeaters at the Tower 
 of London. 
 
 The dancers were mostly boys and young 
 men, and the dance, performed squatting on 
 the haunches, with the arms a-kimbo, must 
 be a violent muscular effort, much more 
 athletic than graceful. This entertainment 
 is very much patronized by your genuine 
 Russian of whatever rank, and among the 
 company was a large proportion of highly 
 respectable and very solvent merchants. 
 Among them I found an acquaintance, a 
 well-dressed and quiet-looking young man, 
 but who was drinking as much as was bad 
 for him, and sending glasses of champagne to 
 
Russia in 1870. 381 
 
 all comers. Before him on a table stood 
 in a row at least a dozen bottles of Rce- 
 derer; he had two waiters attached to his 
 especial service, and they were dressed, not 
 in cotton, like the other waiters in the room, 
 but in Persian silk. This extravagant 
 young gentleman is one Karl Karlovitch, 
 the only son and partner of one of the 
 largest tallow merchants in distant Siberia. 
 He was just "twenty-two, and had come down 
 to Nijny on business, to sell a quantity of 
 tallow, and, as he called it, to " see the 
 world," which, being interpreted, appears 
 to signify, to make a tipsy fool of himself, 
 and distribute his father's commercial capi- 
 tal among the hotel - keepers and worse 
 characters of Nijny. 
 
 The story of the gross of green spectacles 
 is eclipsed by his exploit at this present fair 
 as I heard some time afterwards. His con- 
 fiding parent and partner had the incalcu- 
 
382 Russia in 1870. 
 
 lable rashness to entrust this young man 
 with tallow to the value of 25,000 sterling, 
 and, as if the boy's natural propensities 
 were not in danger enough among the temp- 
 tations of the fair, and in the possession 
 of such a sum of money, he charged him 
 to be very particular about the sale of the 
 tallow, and to keep all his papers in order ; 
 and, when his business was done, to enjoy 
 himself at the fair before returning. This, 
 I am told, is a common ordeal for the 
 Russian youth entering manhood ; the idea 
 being that after one wild and unrestrained 
 debauch he is likely to settle down sickened 
 to a quiet life in his native town. 
 
 On these occasions very large sums of 
 money are frequently squandered ; often as 
 much as 5,000 sterling in a short time ; 
 but Karl Karlovitch punished his father 
 more severely still. 
 
 He arrived home in due time, and was 
 
Russia in 1870. 383 
 
 immediately called on for his accounts, which 
 he produced in perfect order, and all very 
 satisfactory. Thereupon the old man praised 
 his son, and asked for the money. 
 
 "As to that," said Karl Karlovitch, "I 
 have not brought home any money ; I have 
 spent every copeck at Nijny." And so he 
 had ; it had all melted away in amusements. 
 
 Since then, I hear, he has become wiser, 
 and is now considered one of the steadiest 
 and cleverest merchants of Siberia. 
 
 Another young merchant of my acquaint- 
 ance was in that traktir. He was a much 
 more modest youth of the type of the old 
 school of Russian merchants, also from Si- 
 beria. His mother asked me if I thought 
 a visit to London would do the dear youth 
 any good ; and I strongly recommended it, 
 as calculated to enlarge his views of the 
 world and society. Accordingly he came, 
 and I happened to be in London myself 
 
384 Russia in 1870. 
 
 when lie arrived ; so I met Mm at the 
 London-bridge Station, and took him at once 
 to the midst of the crowds. 
 
 Here he was so utterly astonished and 
 frightened, that he could do nothing but 
 cross himself continually. At last he said 
 to me, " Would you believe that my poor 
 dear old mother told me that Moscow was 
 a much greater place than London ! " 
 
 The visit to the last traktir ended our day's 
 amusement, and we retired to bed. A few 
 years ago there was not a decent hotel in 
 the town ; now there are two, " The Hotel 
 Post 55 and " Soboleff's, 55 which are both 
 very clean and comfortable. Those who 
 have travelled much in Russia know how to 
 appreciate a comfortable bed and clean, free 
 from the bugs and fleas which abound in 
 most Russian hostelries. 
 
 Next morning being a beautifully bright 
 day, we took a stroll on the river side, 
 
Russia in 1870. 385 
 
 among the Tartars and Mujiks at work, 
 loading and unloading the craft. They all 
 work peacefully and cheerily together, nearly 
 all singing, and are as happy over their work 
 as so many children at play. Brawling or 
 fighting are not seen ; they do not work very 
 hard nor very steadily. 
 
 Here is a party of Russians from our own 
 province of Tambov unloading a barge com- 
 manded by one of our peasants. We will 
 go on board and shake hands with him, by 
 which he will see the difference between a 
 Russian and a foreign master. Your Russian 
 owner would about as soon think of shaking 
 hands with a peasant as he would of walking 
 half a mile afoot, which is the strongest 
 improbability I can bring to compare. 
 
 Meanwhile the crew have knocked off work 
 for their breakfast ; they all stand round in 
 a ring, take their hats off, and ask a bless- 
 ing, crossing themselves at least ten times ; 
 
 2 o 
 
386 Russia in 1870. 
 
 after which, they all sit down round a great 
 wooden bowl of soup. Then the foreman 
 hands each a lump of black bread, and a 
 wooden spoon is placed before each, some 
 salt is on the deck before them, which they 
 sprinkle on their pieces of bread ; then the 
 foreman takes a spoonful from the bowl and 
 lays his spoon down again ; each of the others 
 follows in regular order, laying his spoon on 
 the deck as soon as he has swallowed his 
 soup. So they go on quietly until the bowl 
 is empty, when they all rise together, say 
 another prayer, crossing themselves, put on 
 their caps, and are ready for work. This 
 decency of behaviour at their meals, and the 
 manner of them, is another very oriental 
 trait in the character of the Russian pea- 
 santry. 
 
 We just peep on board the steamer start- 
 ing for the Don. The table d'hote is laid 
 with a clean white cloth, and shining plate 
 
Russia in 1870. 387 
 
 and glasses for luncheon, and the waiters 
 standing round in their clean cotton dresses, 
 carry as fine a polish as the mahogany fix- 
 ings of the sofas. 
 
 We return to the fair and try our hand at 
 " catching a Tartar." 
 
 " How much for these skins, Ivan ? " 
 
 " Twenty roubles." 
 
 " Twenty roubles ! Why you must be a 
 robber to ask such a price ! )S 
 
 " By G d they cost me eighteen roubles. 55 
 
 " Til give you five." 
 
 " Now, Barrin, you are laughing at me ; 
 but there, Til take fifteen roubles ! " (more 
 swearing) " They cost me thirteen. 55 
 
 " Now, Til give you ten roubles. Not a 
 copeck more ! " 
 
 Well, I get them, rather suddenly at this 
 
 price, and think them certainly a bargain, until 
 
 Ivan has safely pouched his money, when he 
 
 offers me twenty more of the same sort for 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 Russia in 1870. 
 
 eight roubles ; and, as I reject this, he finally 
 says I shall have them for five. Then I 
 begin to doubt whether the skins are worth 
 anything at all. 
 
 However, I have bought them, and the 
 next step is to have them properly packed 
 and sent to my inn ; no difficulty in this. A 
 Tartar has his eye on me already. He is 
 one of a guild of artizans whose trade it is to 
 pack; and very well indeed they do it, in 
 the open street in front of the shop. 
 
 Here are some curious little brown cakes 
 of a substance like asphalte. They are what 
 is called " brick tea," a favourite beverage of 
 the Calmucks and Tartars, who make it into 
 soup by boiling it in a pot with mutton, 
 fat, onions, &c. When it is cooked they 
 pour it into a bowl, and drink it with wooden 
 spoons. 
 
 We meet a great number of Armenians all 
 over the place. They are the Jews of the 
 
Russia in 1870. 389 
 
 East ; awful men to drive a close bargain ; 
 but a wonderfully industrious people. All 
 the embroidery work that is so plentiful in 
 the bazaar is the work of the women of the 
 Armenian provinces of the Caucasus. 
 
 It is very striking to see what polite, well- 
 informed, and gentlemanly men the Persians 
 are. If their nation is fairly represented in 
 the fair they must be a highly polished race. 
 
 In a silk shop a Mujik merchant is buying 
 a dress for his wife and calls us to counsel 
 him. This is an important business ; the 
 dress is probably meant to last the lady's 
 life, and to be transmitted as an heirloom to 
 her descendants. He is hesitating over a 
 yellow moire antique ; but he cannot under- 
 stand the name of the stuff, and asks me to 
 tell him what it is. I tell him that it is an 
 English manufacture, which settles him at 
 once. He buys it. 
 
 In the meantime an old woman is bargain- 
 
390 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ing for a silk handkerchief for her headdress. 
 She has fixed the price of one which for 
 colour is something like a rainbow broken up 
 in a kaleidoscope. But still she asks the 
 patient dealer for a pattern with more 
 colours in it. The shopman, who is a quiet 
 wag in his way, answers very earnestly, 
 " There are no other colours invented but 
 those which are in the handkerchief." 
 
 Turning into the (par excellence) res- 
 taurant of the fair, where Nikite Bgoroff 
 dispenses everything that is good ; all that 
 is in, and all that is out of season ; we order 
 a pheasant for lunch, and take our places at 
 a window looking into the poultry yard. In 
 a moment we see our waiter and others in 
 full chase of the pheasants : from which we 
 conclude that ours will not be likely to be 
 well hung, but the chase is a long one, and 
 we hope the exercise will make him tender. 
 
 Meantime we overhear much interesting 
 
Russia in 1870. 391 
 
 comment on the dealings of the fair. How 
 P. has bought three millions poods of iron ; 
 that Bokhara cotton won't sell ; that tea is 
 dearer ; and that the Russians still stick to 
 the caravan tea, in preference to all sea-borne 
 sorts ; several new railways, we hear, have 
 been concessionized ; money is cheap ; trade 
 generally good, and Russia prospering. 
 
 After lunch, a cigar in the sewers. All 
 smoking is prohibited in the fair, but the 
 sewers are arranged in regular streets, lofty 
 and ventilated, entered by small round 
 towers, with staircases built at intervals, 
 flushed regularly, and on the whole kept 
 very clean. Here the Mujik descends to enjoy 
 the weed forbidden in upper day, and while 
 he enjoys himself, fumigates an objectionable 
 atmosphere. Our curiosity in the sewers was 
 exhausted sooner than our first cigar. 
 
 We emerge near a money-changers ; the 
 booths of these men are of eastern appear- 
 
392 Russia in 1870. 
 
 ance, open in front ; they are doing a great 
 business, and the amount of coin and money 
 in circulation in the fair must be immense. 
 All these money - changers are either 
 Armenians or men of the old faith, and 
 of the detestable sect called Scoptsi. They 
 are, however, generally honest in their deal- 
 ings ; although, I am told, they are always 
 ready to give a certain price for forged paper 
 money, which I believe they sell again as a 
 forgery. 
 
 The military band is playing at the back of 
 the governor's house, and we sit for a 
 moment on a bench to watch the evening 
 promenade on the boulevards. Here we see 
 the more idle sort of visitors to the fair, sun- 
 ning or airing themselves, generally walking 
 in small parties up and down beneath the 
 trees, speaking little to each other, but ap- 
 parently absorbed in the universal flood of 
 business. 
 
Russia in 1870. 393 
 
 Many droschkies are prancing along the 
 parade, harnessed with two horses in the old 
 
 
 
 Russian style, one horse in the shafts and 
 the other, dresse a volee, running loose at the 
 side. This, at Petersburg and Moscow most 
 aristocratic style of equipage in use, and 
 singularly enough still used in all towns of 
 any note by the chief of police, is surren- 
 dered at Nijny to the women of the demi- 
 monde. 
 
 We have still a few hours to loiter away 
 before our train leaves for Moscow, and we 
 take another run round the fair, noting some 
 of the different lines and the goods they 
 contain ; here is one line all drugs and 
 chemicals ; here another for the sale of skins ; 
 silver goods have a line to themselves ; and 
 so on, all orderly arranged, well kept and 
 clean swept. 
 
 Mounting a convenient church-tower we 
 take a parting bird's-eye view of the place, 
 
394 Russia in 1870. 
 
 lying on an angle of land formed by the 
 junction of the Oka and the Volga, and 
 
 
 
 so supplied with miles of wharfage by the 
 banks of the two crowded rivers. 
 
 The last thing we turn to see, having still 
 a few minutes to dispose of, is a circus, 
 where we are sure to find a number of 
 Tartar women among the audience ; and 
 there they are in fact so closely enveloped 
 in shawls that it is difficult to understand 
 how they can see anything or endure the 
 heat of the place. 
 
 But the engine whistles, the train is ready, 
 and we have to take our places in haste. In 
 the railway Europe and Asia shake down 
 together ; a party of six Mussulmans from 
 Bokhara go through long devotions soon 
 after starting, praying no doubt to the 
 Prophet to protect their wandering steps 
 among the infidels of the West ; and looking 
 forward no doubt to a speedy return from 
 
Russia in 1870. 395 
 
 these ends of the world to their own home 
 again. We, on the other hand, anticipate 
 our arrival in five days or so at Charing 
 Cross or Cannon Street Station. 
 
 Now Ihave written down my observations in 
 this fair the more lengthily that it is possible 
 that the glories of Nijny are destined to an 
 early diminution. Just now it is the greatest 
 and most wonderful trade gathering in the 
 world, where during the two months of its 
 continuance upwards of 200,000 people cir- 
 culate about seventeen millions of pounds 
 sterling, mostly in direct purchase and sale 
 of commodities lying on the spot between 
 the buyer and seller ; a system that time has 
 destroyed in all other great marts and ex- 
 changes, a system that the advance of rail- 
 ways will probably soon upset at Mjny, where 
 however from its unique position, on the 
 frontier of two worlds so to speak, a greater 
 variety of produce and of purchasers assemble 
 
396 Russia in 1870. 
 
 than could be gathered in any other one 
 place in the world, and where for forty-five 
 years prices of certain commodities have 
 been dictated to the rest of Europe. 
 
397 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE CENTRAL ASIAN QUESTION. 
 
 TN making a few remarks upon what is 
 termed the encroachments of Russia 
 in the Asiatic provinces bordering upon our 
 north-western Indian frontier, I must dwell 
 for a moment upon the proceedings of the 
 Imperial Government of former days, as 
 well as of the Khans themselves, in order 
 more correctly to arrive at the position of 
 the question of to-day. 
 
 The first recorded official act is, that the 
 Khivans sent an ambassador to Ivan the 
 Terrible in 1557, asking leave for their 
 
398 Russia in 1870. 
 
 traders to barter with the Russians, and 
 they followed this up by sending other 
 envoys during the latter portion of the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 At the commencement of the seventeenth 
 century, the Khivans complained of the 
 inroads of the Oural Cossacks, who had 
 taken advantage of their trading facilities 
 to absolutely conquer Khiva ; but they did 
 not long enjoy their triumph, and were soon 
 conquered in their turn. 
 
 In 1622, the Khan being again alive to 
 his own interests, sought protection from 
 the Czar Michael, but it was not until 1702, 
 that, in answer to a petition sent to Peter 
 the Great, that Czar took the Khan under 
 his "protection," and received the allegiance 
 of the Khivans. 
 
 Peter the Great, then, it was, who first 
 showed a desire to open up through these 
 steppes a route which his subjects could 
 
Russia in 1870. 399 
 
 use to trade with India, as in 1715 he 
 dispatched a party, via Khiva, to trade 
 with India ; and it will not be out of place 
 to mention here, as helping to show what 
 Peter's idea was, that about the same time 
 he also sent a trading party to China. 
 
 This monarch also, a few years after, 
 dispatched another envoy to the Khan, who 
 however did not do any good, was finally 
 murdered, and his suite were sold for 
 slaves. 
 
 The object more particularly desired by 
 this embassy, was to find out the truth of 
 the reports which had been conveyed to 
 Peter, relating to the riches in gold which 
 were stated to be lying on the banks of the 
 Oxus. Subsequent researches did not verify 
 the statements, and on Peter's decease the 
 relations between Eussia and Khiva re- 
 mained pretty much as they had been before, 
 namely, continual receptions of envoys from 
 
400 Russia in 1870. 
 
 the Khans for the purpose of making trading 
 treaties, which were no sooner made than 
 they were broken by the Khivans. 
 
 One important act may, however, be 
 attributed to Peter the Great, and that was, 
 he commenced the building of the trading 
 forts on these Asiatic frontiers, at Semi- 
 palatinsk in 1718, under the strong feeling 
 of the absolute necessity of opening up this 
 quarter of the world to his traders. 
 
 The succeeding monarchs, Elizabeth and 
 Catherine II., received more envoys, always 
 with the same stories and the same results, 
 and, about the year 1800, not only did these 
 overtures of the Khivans terminate, but they 
 actually threw over all pretended allegiance 
 to the Czars of Russia by electing as Khan 
 a prince who refused to have anything 
 whatever to do with the Russians, and, in 
 fact, began to commit depredations on the 
 Russian frontier. This policy came to a 
 
Russia in 1870. 401 
 
 climax in 1802, when the Khivans refused 
 to allow a Russian envoy to pass through 
 their country on a mission to Bokhara. 
 
 This country had for years been more 
 friendly to the Russians ; probably being 
 farther from them there was not the same 
 reason for the disputes which were always 
 springing up with the Khivans. 
 
 The Emperor Paul, in the face of these 
 proceedings of the Khivans, ordered the 
 seizure of Khiva, and for this purpose as- 
 sembled an army of 50,000 men at Oren- 
 burg, to make the campaign. 
 
 Paul dying just at this time, his warlike 
 intentions were frustrated, and his suc- 
 cessor, Alexander, who at first intended to 
 carry out the project, altered his mind, and 
 disbanded the Orenburg army. 
 
 In 1835, however, active operations were 
 again commenced, and in 1839 the Emperor 
 Nicholas dispatched an army and issued his 
 
 2 D 
 
402 Russia in 1870. 
 
 memorable Orenburg Manifesto. In 1840, 
 the Khan came to his senses, and during 
 1842 the first real working treaty was 
 concluded with Russia and Khiva. Con- 
 tinual bickerings, however, still occurred. 
 For several years a sort of guerilla warfare 
 was kept up, and it was not until the year 
 1856 that the country could be considered 
 as moderately quiet. 
 
 The Khans of Bokhara had sent many 
 envoys to Russia during the commencement 
 of the present century, always with one 
 object, to persuade the Russians to trade 
 with them ; both the Khanates of Bokhara 
 and Khiva, and indirectly Khokand, de- 
 pended absolutely upon receiving many of 
 the commodities they most required such 
 as metals, dyes, hardware, gold, &c. from 
 Russia, and this fact alone made them 
 endeavour to cultivate the good offices of 
 the Russians, although their continual in- 
 
Russia in 1870. 403 
 
 ternal warfare and neighbouring jealousies 
 made it a very difficult matter for the 
 Russians to conduct any barter trade with 
 them. 
 
 From the foregoing historical sketch what 
 can be gathered ? Are we justified in saying 
 that the Russian policy has been leading up 
 to the attempted conquest of India ? My 
 opinion is we are not. In the first place all 
 the transactions with these Khans go to 
 show that it was they who wished to enter 
 into trading relations with the Russians, not 
 the Russians who wished to subjugate them, 
 and I believe nobody can suppose that Peter 
 the Great or Catherine II. could have had 
 any idea of conquering India or any part 
 of it. Peter's mind was far too commercial 
 for him not to see that even if such a 
 feat were accomplished, he would ruin his 
 already formed plans of consolidating his own 
 country, and most certainly Catherine II. 
 2 D 2 
 
404 Russia in 1870. 
 
 was far too anxious to possess Turkey, to 
 turn her attention seriously to the conquest 
 of India ; this was shown to be the case by 
 the fact, that immediately after the Crimea 
 had been declared independent of Turkey by 
 the treaty of Kanardiz, and Catherine had 
 taken that Khan under her " protection," 
 the conquest of Constantinople was declared 
 to be the policy of Russia. 
 
 There was a sound reason for the Russians 
 primarily looking to the Central Asian pro- 
 vinces as an outlet for their commerce ; and 
 a sounder one for looking with coveting eyes 
 on India as a place of trade ; but it would 
 appear that only the later monarchs of 
 Russia paid much attention to this idea of 
 Indian commerce, as after Peter's first essay 
 before mentioned, nothing further seems to 
 have been attempted with India direct until 
 many years afterwards. I cannot, however, 
 see any historical facts to prove +hose as- 
 
Russia in 1870. 405 
 
 sertions which are so frequently made, that 
 Russia's traditional policy has been, and is, 
 the conquest of India; on the contrary, I 
 contend that all facts show that policy is 
 one of trade and commerce only. 
 
 Even the Asiatic deserts, boasting as they 
 do of some of the most fertile oases in the 
 world, could produce many articles valuable 
 to Russia. Cotton, an article of great im- 
 portance for Russia to receive from her own 
 possessions, or overland via a tributary state, 
 is one of those necessities which every nation 
 would strive to acquire ; and there is no 
 reason why, with Bokhara quiet, it should 
 not supply sufficient of this staple for all 
 the Russian looms. 
 
 Many other useful productions, as silk, 
 &c., could also be expected in quantity, and 
 all these would help to balance the trade 
 that must ensue by these people becoming 
 buyers of Russian manufactures. 
 
406 Russia in 1870. 
 
 As I have before remarked in this book, 
 the manufactures of Russia are more suited 
 for Eastern marts than any others ; it is a 
 well known fact that for them a particular 
 fashion is necessary, which fashion the 
 Russian manufacturers excel in, the Asiatic 
 taste has become moulded on many of their 
 productions, and they find in these people 
 their best customers. It was not only then 
 these provinces that would so directly benefit 
 the Russians, but the much extended trade 
 that .they might expect to inaugurate with 
 countries of whose conquest they could 
 never hope. 
 
 Through what is called Little Bokhara, 
 Russia could open a way to a part of that 
 mighty Celestial Empire, whose enormous 
 population might be counted upon with cer- 
 tainty to demand a host of Russian manufac- 
 tured articles, and who, in return, could 
 supply her with raw materials far more 
 
Russia in 1870. 407 
 
 facilely than by the extreme north-eastern 
 route of Maimatchin and Kiatchta. India 
 was a golden opportunity ; did she not pro- 
 duce indigo, cotton, coffee, and drugs ? The 
 very neediest necessities for such an Empire 
 as Russia. Was not this an opening that 
 could not be lost to a people gradually 
 waking to commercial views ? 
 
 In exchange for these invaluable commodi- 
 ties, Russia would barter with her cloths and 
 cotton goods, cutlery, and knick-knacks, and 
 thus keep a splendid trade in her own hands. 
 
 In spite of all I constantly read, I here 
 wish to record the fact, that Russia can 
 and does compete with other European 
 manufacturers in several articles cloth, for 
 instance, the Russian sends this overland 
 to China across the circuitous Kiachta route, 
 and sells it in Pekin cheaper than the Eng- 
 lish can, though their cloth goes across the 
 sea instead of the land. 
 
408 liussm in 1870. 
 
 Again the Russians are, from necessity, 
 a great carrying people ; perhaps no people 
 in the world understand this business so 
 well, or do it so cheaply, and they would 
 naturally look to the great benefit to be 
 derived from the transport of Indian goods. 
 Once subjugate these Asiatic hordes in the 
 lowlands, and they might hope to carry a 
 mass of goods Indian for England, and 
 English for India. This could not be at- 
 tempted with the present difficulties in the 
 way ; but it is quite possible to utilize the 
 Sir Daria and Amu Daria, and by these 
 means of navigation to bring the price for 
 transit down to a reasonable figure ; even 
 now, with land carriage, the whole distance 
 excepting a short journey on the Volga from 
 Samara to Nijny Novgorod, silk can be 
 brought from Bokhara to St. Petersburg for 
 2d. per pound. 
 
 I maintain then that the commercial in- 
 
Russia in 1870. 409 
 
 terests of Russia negative the assertion of 
 those who state she has an eye on our 
 Oriental jewel from a military point of 
 view, it seems to me more improbable still. 
 Russia, with her eighty millions of square 
 miles of territory, has at least a sufficient 
 frontier to guard, without placing the moun- 
 tains of India between a half- conquered 
 horde of savages and her own territory. 
 Her soldiers are of all nations the most un- 
 suited to an Indian climate, and such an 
 exploit as sending an army the other side of 
 the Hindu Kush, would be only a repetition 
 of Napoleon's march to Moscow, and with 
 the same result. 
 
 Russia could not administer such a coun- 
 try as India she has not the people fit for 
 it. It took England years before she could 
 even educate a staff, which after all, then 
 did little better than misrule instead of 
 govern. 
 
410 Russia in 1870. 
 
 Again, before the Russians could reach 
 British India, the Affghans must be set- 
 tled with, an undertaking by itself which 
 the Russians would be unwilling to at- 
 tempt, and undesirable also, when the 
 roaming inhabitants of the Khanates would 
 be between them and their base of opera- 
 tions. 
 
 If the Russians had this idea of conquest, 
 why should they have taken the trouble 
 to go through these different Khanates, 
 when they could get to India in less 
 time from the Caspian than they could 
 from Bokhara, and with this advantage, 
 that the Caspian would be a safe base of 
 operations. 
 
 It may be true, as M. Vambery says, that 
 Russian monarchs.are carrying out the idea 
 for the formation of the great Tartar king- 
 dom as imagined by Ivan Vassilyvitch, in 
 1500, by annexing the three Khanates ; but 
 
Russia in 1870. 411 
 
 I again repeat and maintain, that there is no 
 excuse for asserting that Russia has any de- 
 signs upon India, and that commercially, 
 politically, and from a military point of view, 
 it is impossible she should entertain any 
 such wishes. 
 
 It is without doubt difficult in Russia for 
 the people to arrive at the policy of their 
 Government, as no public discussions arise 
 upon the intentions of their Ruler, or the 
 wishes of the Ministry ; but from what may 
 be gathered from the press, the general 
 opinion is, that the Government exercised a 
 wise discretion in taming these uncivilized 
 hordes, with the sole idea of benefiting na- 
 tional trade, but- all ridicule the notion of an 
 advance upon India, both upon military and 
 commercial grounds. 
 
 Touching what has actually been done by 
 Russians in Central Asia, the Russians fail to 
 see any other policy than that of England in 
 
412 Russia in 1870. 
 
 India. They point out the truth of the 
 remark of one of their able writers who said, 
 " The English in Asia represented the com- 
 mencement of civilization and humanity, 
 they put an end to the reign of brigandage 
 and replaced it by one of justice and order ; 
 the English have been the saviours of India, 
 they appear as the defenders of the rights 
 of humanity; the bloody era terminates 
 with the conquest of the English, and 
 though their government has not been an 
 example of perfection, it is impossible not 
 to admit that it has been decidedly more 
 inild, humane, and just, than any other 
 government under which Hindoos have ever 
 lived." 
 
 This, then, is a Russian tribute to our 
 proceedings in India, and Russia claims a 
 similar acknowledgment for her humanizing 
 influence in those Asiatic steppes, where, 
 through her means, Christianity has already 
 
Russia in 1870. 413 
 
 broken the chains of the most bigoted 
 Mahommedanism, the most blind intolerance, 
 and the most lascivious life that was pro- 
 bably to be found in any nation in the 
 world. 
 
414 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 T HAVE, in the preceding pages, attempted 
 to give a fair account of the existing 
 state of affairs in Russia. I wish to con- 
 clude by mentioning a few general im- 
 pressions. 
 
 In endeavouring to show the good side 
 of the subjects treated upon, I have not 
 shut my eyes to that reverse of the picture 
 which still, in many cases, undoubtedly 
 exists. I look upon Russia as a country 
 now going through that crisis which must 
 
Russia, in 1870. 415 
 
 always occur in the history of every great 
 nation, when it is changing from a state of 
 backwardness and sluggishness to one of 
 progress, and when the intelligence and 
 honesty of the country are combatting with 
 the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the 
 retrogrades. 
 
 Amongst the institutions the police, for 
 instance whose very name used to be a 
 bugbear to all classes, are now a decent and 
 respectably behaved class, and although not 
 particularly active they attend fairly to their 
 proper duties. 
 
 The press, not free, but as much so as 
 that of France under Napoleon the Third, 
 discusses pretty liberally the politics of the 
 day. 
 
 A considerable improvement is to be 
 noticed amongst the priests ; they are 
 decidedly better looked after, and a better 
 
416 Russia in 1870. 
 
 educated class of men is appearing amongst 
 them. 
 
 The young nobles are no longer brought 
 up with the idea of the positive necessity 
 of ".serving ; " as a result, many an educated 
 young man now turns his attention to other 
 matters besides the glory of the Imperial 
 Eagle becomes a resident on his estate, 
 and looks after the management himself, 
 instead of leaving the same to the tender 
 mercies of some rascally Russo-Germanic 
 intendant. The benefit conferred upon the 
 local population by these resident landlords is 
 immense. 
 
 The cry for education has at length been 
 raised. The people are awakening to the 
 fact that knowledge is as necessary to a man 
 as his daily bread. 
 
 Russia has a future before her so great, 
 that no man can realise what she may 
 
Russia in 1870. 417 
 
 become; whether her power will be used 
 for good or for evil must depend on the 
 minds of her future rulers. With peace, she 
 holds in her hands a destiny unequalled for 
 its greatness in the pages of history ; let us 
 hope that future generations will admit that 
 this destiny has been wielded for the good of 
 mankind. 
 
 The people have much to thank their 
 present ruler for, who, by his own will, 
 through his choice of able and honest 
 advisers, has done so much for them. 
 
 When called away from his sphere of 
 usefulness, history shall record and recount 
 the goodness of heart of Alexander Mchol- 
 aievitch. When those who are now children 
 read the pages which will tell them who 
 they have to thank for the benefits that 
 they enjoy, the whole civilized world will 
 join in bearing witness to the justice of the 
 
 2 E 
 
418 Russia in 1870. 
 
 prayer, which now nearly thirty millions 
 of emancipated serfs offer up to their Maker, 
 when they daily say : 
 
 " GOD BLESS OUR LORD THE CzAR ! " 
 
 THE END. 
 
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Post 8vo. Cloth boards. Price 5s, 
 
 RUSSIAN 
 METALLURGICAL WORKS: 
 
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 PRESS NOTICES. 
 
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 however, in size alone. Its merit is in an inverse ratio 
 to its brevity. It is full of valuable, statesmanlike, in- 
 teresting information. Athenceum. 
 
 The book fully answers to its title ; and it is moreover 
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 A valuable little book upon the Metallurgical Works 
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 look with considerable interest to what the Russians are 
 capable of doing for themselves. A very interesting 
 volume. Iron Trade Circular. 
 
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