Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1871-09-27
THE THREE MASKED MEN.
From Chambers journal.

0O~>AAA~As
"Yonder's the village, Barin," says
my driver, pointing to few spots Of
light that twinkle along the darkening
skyline; and we'll be there in an
Other quarter of an hour, if it please
Heaven. Lucky for Us that it's not
winter-time, or we'd have the gray
coats Cwolves) at our heels before we
got in.
care there many Of them about here
in winter?" ask I.
Many of them? A great deal too
many. Why, it was only last winter, -
he goes on, with a genuinely Russian
love of frightening himself and other
people, that a sledge came into the
village which had been attacked by
wolves close to where we are now, on a
dark windy evening Just like this one ;
and they gobbled up the driver and
everything but the sledge itself, and
that was a good deal scratched" F"
'FBut if they ate up the horses, how
did the sledge get to the village?"
"Ah Barin!" answers the old rogue
with a chuckle, Ftthat's not my affair. -
/ Our days work has been a long and
/ hard one, as may be seen by the gmok-
/ ing hanks ana qJlly 6ring n0striis Of our
| horses, and the country through which
we have passed is not such as one loves
to Inger over. Picturesqueness, in the
ordinary sense of the word, is sadly
wanting to Russia proper. All her best
scenery is to be found IN regions late
| ly wrested from other rpoWers-Finland,
! the Caucasus, the Crimea. Nor is the
monotony of her boundless PLAIN di-
versifed by that abundance of life
which relieves the fiatness of Holland
and the Netherlands. Siberia is
peopIed at the rate of one inhabitant
! to three square miles. The vast prai-
ries of Central Russia are little if at
all more populous.
The new railway from Kiev to Balta
runs for a6 least half its length through
a 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 with
in few hours sail Of RostOv, there is
not single town-hardly even vii
lage worth calling such-to break the
monotony of the vciceless solitudes
/ through which it flows. And even up
on the famous "black SOIL every
spadeful of which is worth a kings
ransom, one may travel for days with
out seeing a human habitation except
a stray liquOr-shop, or meeting a hu,
man being except an occasional robber
And yet, to those who can appreciate
it, few sights are more impressive thar
what the Russians expressively cal
the bad Steppe'-a limitless waste O
desolate gray mOcrland, without
warmth, without coloring without life
/ like the corpse of nature in her winding
sheet. Nothing which imagination has
conceived can equal the weird loneli.
ness of this everlasting desert. The
sea is of one color, but it has boundless
life and motion. The great plain oi
the Dnioper, though lacking life and
motion, has all the glories of earthly
coloring in its measureless wealth ot
flowers. The very deserts Of Arabia,
grim and barren though they be, have
kind of delusiye animation in the
dizzy Walpurgisdance of their wind
tossed sands.
But In the dreary wastes of Eastern
Russia all these are wholly wanting
The bad steppe has no dimpling sur
face, no varied coloring, no waving
grass, no tossing sands to break the
endless level nothing but tremendous
passivity, eloquent in it's terrible
silence, against whose gigantic inactior
all the energies of man are nothing
gray unending waste, wrapped in a sin
lister and deadly stiffness, like some
forgotten world blasted by the fire O.
heaven ere time began, and still bear
ing, through endless ages, the brand O
gloomy and irrevocable desolation.
It is. therefore, not without feeling
of natural relief, that [ turn my bach
upon the great waste that darkens
slowly around us, and which the lights
of the village coming nearer and near
Ell, till at length we scurry into the
single street which it possesses, (almost
deserted at this hour, through fear O.
the 'Domovoi'') and halt III front of {
long, low, substanti2l-looking cottage
the abode of the "starOsta," or head
man of the village, with whom we pro
pose to take up our quarters for the
night There is no lack of hospitality
about the Russian peasant; and al
most before my driver can explain who
we are, [ find myself seized by both
hands and dragged into the house, my
dusty coat and boots pulled off, and
and myself seated in a place of honor
beside the immense stove, with q brim.
ming tumbler of tea in front of me
while the driver, a little further off,
lights his pipe with complacent air
as if he took to himself some credit fol
my being there at all.
While slipping my tea, and munching
the black bread wherewith my hosts
wife, a stout, fresh-looking woman Of
/ five and-thirty, supplies ane ad ibitum,
glance round the room, which is
merely an enlarged and ornamented
copy of what [ have seen in every ham,
let on OF my road The heavy cross, beams
of the roof, the rough-hewn chairs and
tables, the huge tea-urn-the gilt-edged
picture of saint in the far corner,
with small lap burning before 1.-THE