Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1871-10-26
rhe Three Masked rIen.

.Yonder's the village, BARN, saya my
driver, pointing to few spots of HLh
that twinkle along the darkening sky line
and we'll be there in another quarter OF
an hour, if it please heaven. Lucky Ton
- that it's not winter-time, or we'd have
the 'gray-coats' (wolvee) at cur heels be
tore we got in.
Are there many of them about here il
winter ? ask |.
MANY of them ? A great deal too
mnry. Why, it was only last winter b
goes on, with a genuinely Russian love o
frightening himself and other people
that a sledge came into the village, which
had been attacked by wolves close by
where we are now, on dark windy even
ing Just like this one and they gobbIed
up the driver ard the horses, and every
thing but the sledge itself-and that was
good deal scratched.
But if they ate up the horses how did
the sledge get 10 the village ?
'Ah, BARN + answers the old rogue
with chuckle, that's not my affair
Our DAYS work has been q long and
hard one, % may be seen by the smoking
TANKS and quivering nostrils of our hor+es
and the country through which we have
passed is not such as one loves to lingeI
over Picturesqueness, in the ordinary
sense of the word, il sadly wanting tt
Russia proper. All her best scenery is t.
be found in regions lately wrested from
other Powers-Einland. the Caucasus, the
Crimea. Nor is the monotomy of her
boundless plains diversified by that abun.
dance of life which relieves the fl4tness o.
Holland and the Netherlands. Siberia j.
peopled at the rate of one inhatitant t.
three fquare miles. The vast prairies OF
Central Russia are lite if at all NOR,
populous The new railway from Kiev
TO Balta runs for at least half its length
through chaos Of uncleared forest. The
banks of the Volga, for leagues together
are silent and desolate AS those of the
Amazon. Along the whole course of the
Lower Don, from Kalatch to within few
hours sail of Rostov, there is not a single
town-hardly even a village worth cal
ing such-to break the monotony of The
voiceless solitudes through which it f)ws
And even upon the famous "black soil. "
every spadeful 4 which is worth king
ransom, one may travel for days withou'
seeing human habtitation except a stray
liquor shop, or meeting human bcirR
except an occasional robber.
And yet, to those who can appreciate
II, few sights are more impressive than
what the Russians expressively call the
bad steppe'-a limited waste of desolate
gray moorland, without warmth, without
coloring, without life, like the corpse cf
nature in her winding-sheet. Nothing
which imagination has conceived can
ba srI ~
ing d. sert. The sea is of one color, nut
it has boundless life and motion. The
great plain of the Dnieper, though lack
ing life and motion, has all the glorics of
earthly coloring in its measureless wealth
of flowers. The very deserts of Arabia,
grim and barren though they be, have a
kind of delusive animation in the dizzy
WalpurRisdsnce of their wind.tossed
sands. But in the dreary wastes of East
prn Russia, all these are wholly wanting.
The bad steppe has no dilnplng surf4ce,
no varied coloring, no waving grass, no |
ossipg sands to bresk the endless level
Iothing but tremendous passivity, elo.
,uent in it, terrible silence, against whose
gigantic injection al the energies of man
re as nothing; gray, unending waste,
wrapped in a sinister aud deadly stiffness,
ike some forgotten world blasted by the
ire of heaven ore time began, and still
earring, through endless ages, the brand
I gloomy and irre7ocable desolstion.
1t IL, therefore, not without feeling
natural relief that turn my back upbn
ne great waste that darkens slowly
round us, and watch the lights of the
illage coming nearer and nearer, till at