The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1872-04-17
THREE MASKED MEN.

ing skyline, "and we'll be there in an
other quarter of an hour, if it please
Heaven. Luckily for US that it's not
winter time or we'd have the gray
Fcoats, (wolves) at our heels before we
got in"
care there many of them about here
III winter?" asked I.
"Many of them? A great deal too
many. Why, it was only last winter"
he goes on, with genuinely Russian
love of frightening himself and other
people, "that sledge came to the viii
liage, 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 the horses, and everything but the
sledge itself-and that was good deal
scrached."
"But if they ate up the horses, how
did the sledge get to the villiage?''
"Ah, BARN !" answers the old rogue
with chuclSle, "that's not my affair."
Our days work had been a long and
hard one, as may beseen by the smok-
ing TANKS and quiyering nostrils of our
horses, and the country through which
we had passed is not one such as one
loves to linger over. Picturesgueness,
in the ordinary sense of the word, is
sadly wanting in Russia proper. All
her best scenery is to be found in re-
gions lately wrestled from other pow
ers-sFinland, the Caucasus, the Cri-
mea. Nor is the monotony of her
boundless plains diversified by that
abundance of life which relieve the
hatness of Holland and the Neither
lands. Siberia is peopled at the rate
of one inhabitant to three square miles.
The vast prairies of Central Russia are
little if at, all more polulous. The
new railway from Kilcy to Balta runs
for, at least, half its length through a
chaos of uncleared forest. The banks
of the Volga for leagues together, are
as silent apd desolate as those of the
Amazon. Along the whole course of
the lower Don, from Kalatcl to within
few hours sail of Rostoy, there is not
a single town~hardly even a village
worth calling such-to break the mon
otony Of the yoiceless solitude through
which it flows. And even upon the
famous "blaek soil, every spadeful of
which is worth a kings ransom, one
may travel for days without seeing a
human habitation except a liquor shop,
or meet human being except an oc-
casional robber. - naI n se .faa8
And yct,ito those who can Appreciate
it, few sights are more impressive than
what the Russians expressively call
''the bad steppen-a linhtless waste of
desolate grey moorland, without any
warmth, without coloring like h Q
corpse of nature in her winding sheet.
Nothing which imagination has con-
ceiyed can equal the wierd loneliness
of this everlasting desert. The sea is
of one color, but it has boundless life
and motion. The great plain of the
Dniper, though lacking life and mo-
ton, has all the glories of earthly
coloring in its measureless wealth of
flowers. The very deserts Of Arabia,
grim and barren though they be, have
kind of delusive animation to the
dizzy Walpurgis dance of their wind
tossed sands. But in the dreary wastes
of Eastern Russia all these are wholly
wanting. The bad steppe has no dip
ping surface, no varied coloring, no
waving grass, no tossing sands to
break the endless level-nothing but q
tremendous passively,. eloquent in its
terrible silence, against whose inaction
the energies Of man are as nothing; a
fgray, amending waste, wrapped in a
sinister and deadly stiffness, like some
forgotten world blasted by the fire of
heaven ere time began, and still bear
ing through endless ages, the brands
of gloom and irrevocable desolation.
1t is therefore, not without feeling
of natural relief that.I turn my back
upon the great waste that darkens
slowly around us, and watch the lights
of the village coming nearer and near
er, till at length we scurry into the
single street which it possessed (al-
most deserted by this hour, through
fear of the 'sDomovi''y and halt in front
of long, low, substantial-looking cot
tage--the abode of the "starosta," OF
head mans of the village, and where
we propose to take our quarters for
the night. There is no lack of hospi-
tally about the Russian peasant; and
almost before I can explain who we
are. find myself seized by both
hands and dragged into the house, my
dusty coat and boots pulled off, and
seated in the place Of honor beside the
immense stove, with trimming tum-
bier of tea in front of me; while the
driver, little further off; lights his
pipe with complaeent air, as if he
took to himself some credit for my be,
ing there at all. 40 'i-.- ''.'.l t''
While slipping my tea and MUNICH