Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1884-11-13
RUSSIA'S CORN PORT.
A Commercial Mart On the Black Sea and
Its Characteristic Features.

A Commercial Mart On the Black Sea and
Its Characteristic Features.
There are some towns, as there are
some faces, upon which the lapse of
years seems to leave no trace, and the
corn port of Russia is certainly one of
them. Its bombardment by the COM
bined fleets of France and England in
1854 might almost be considered a
blessing in disguise, as tending to
break, even if only for time, its dead
ly uniformity. But even setting it on
fire did it no permanent good. The
streets are just as straight, the butter
colored houses just as yellow, the sur
roundings just as outrageously modern
as when [ was last here in 1873. One
change, indeed, is apparent, VIZ: That
the names of the principal streets,
formerly written in Russian and Italian,
now appear in Russian alone. But in
all other points Odessa is Odessa still.
The statues s'after the antique" are so
long after it that it has forgotten all
about them. The gaunt, scraggy
church-towers look like overgrown
coffee-pots, and all the larger buildings
are so exactly alike that am in hourly
expectation of seeing newly-arrived
tourist swagger into the Town Hall or
the Public Library instead of his hotel,
shouting to the astounded custodian to
.'trot out the bill of fare"
But this universal unprogressiveness
is merely the natural and inevitable re-
suit of the peculiar temperament which
characterizes the Slavonian race.
Paradoxical as the assertion may APP
pear, there is not enough discomfort in
Russia. There is, indeed, misery
enough, and far too much; but, instead
of being thereby goaded into advanc-
ing, the sole idea of the suffering,
masses is to endure doggedly until the
evil day is past, and then to jog on in
the old ruts after the old fashion. The
Finn still inhabits the same log hut,
wears the same shoes of twisted bark,
feeds upon the same dried bread and
fish mixed with sawdust, which served
his forefathers in the days of Peter the
Great The Russian peasant, in an age
of railways and telegraphs, is still the
same careless, hospitable, thievish,
drunken, good-humored savage that he
was two centuries ago. The Tartars of
the Crimea, burrowing like rabbits
amid the ruins of Chersonesus or in the
caverns of the Inkerman valley, will
tell you, as they told Mr.. Kinglake in
October, 1854, that they were content
because their race has lived happily un-
der the czars for three generations. 1t
is not from such material as this that
great nations are wrought. The sheep
skin-frocked philosopher of the steppes,
a conservative by nature and fatalist
by creed, accepts without a murmur,
the coarse fare and log-built howell
which served his ancestors in the mid
die ages, content to remain as his
father was before him, and as his son
will be after him. To offer civilization
to such a race is like reading poetry to
an oyster.
But however morally backward she
may be, the great empire has visibly
advanced in material sense since the
day when / saw all Moscow mourning
for 'sthe good czarina" four years ago.
IL railways are indeed, as the we'll
known saying declares, the 'strue civil
izers of mankind" she has constructed
enough of them lately. Apart from
the famous military railroad from the
eastern shore of the Caspian eastward
across the Khiva desert-which has Just
received a fresh extension whereof
shall have more to say before long
the whole southeast of European Russia
is now being opened up in all direc-
TONS The prolongation of the Poti-
Tiflis Railroad to Baku and the new
petroleum fields has at last connected
the Black Sea with the isolated Caspi-
an. Along the northern slope of the
Caucasus, another line, running south
ward from the point where the Don
pours into the Sea of Azof, is already
open as far as V1adkavkaz, at the foot
OF the great central ridge, and working
its way slowly among the mighty pre-
cipices of the Darrell Pass and Mount
Kasbek to Join the. trans-C aucasiaa