THE CAPITAL OF POLAND.

85

phesy what may be the future fate of a race that has
shown so indestructible a love of independence, and
such elasticity of spirit under misfortune.

Meanwhile, for Russia's sins and her own, Poland is
an integral part of the Russian Empire, and the patriotic
instincts of Warsaw are held sternly in check by a large
Russian garrison. In the castle, to which Sigismund III.
transferred the royal residence from Cracow, Russian
authority has established its head-quarters. From the
citadel, built by Czar Nicolas, the length and breadth
of the Polish capital can be surveyed, and the Russian
guns could batter the city to ruins were the townsmen
again to rise against the Muscovite. It is the hand of
Russia on the throat of Poland; and not for an instant
can the ruling power afford to slacken the grasp.

The left bank of the Vistula, on which Warsaw is
chiefly built, is high, and the city, with its stately lines
of streets, wide squares, and spacious gardens, is pic-
turesquely disposed along the brow of the cliff and on
the plain above. Across the broad sandy bed of the
stream, here "shallow, ever changing, and divided as
Poland itself," is the suburb of Praga or Prague, which
has never recovered from Suvaroff's savage handling in
1795, and where lines of houses are thinly scattered amid
wide spaces of waste ground. The Vistula, which is to
Warsaw and Poland what the Dnieper is to Kiev and
Little Russia, is crossed by the railway and old wooden
bridges; and lying against the banks are lines of timber
boats and rafts laden with grain, which the hardy raftsmen
navigate, by means of long poles, from the sources of the
river in the Carpathians to its mouth at Danzig, arriv-
ing at their destination "lean, long, and brown," having

86

THE MONUMENTS OF WARSAW.

often, it is said, eaten almost nothing on their river voyage. The castle also commands a view of the Sigismund Place, where, on the 8th April 1831, the conqueror of Moscow and Smolensk looked on from his marble pedestal while Russian steel and lead cleared the square of Warsovian citizens. The Czar Nicolas's jealous fears caused the removal of Thorwaldsen's group in bronze commemorating the brilliant career of Poniatowski; but the statues of Copernicus and John Sobieski still keep alive memories of which Poland is proud. Other public monuments in Warsaw, such as that in the Saxon Square in honour of the Polish generals who remained faithful to the Czar at the time of the great insurrection of half a century ago, are, it is needless to say, the work of Poland's masters, and on these patriots look as the visible tokens of national degradation.

Many are the palaces, patrician mansions, churches, and public buildings of Warsaw; but on the whole there is little that is distinctly Polish, such, for instance, as one finds at the old capital, Cracow, now part of Austrian territory. Still less is there to remind one of Russia, except in the badly-paved condition of the streets, and the way in which magnificence and squalor are jumbled together. The architecture is showy, often meretricious; but the taste displayed is Western, and founded mainly on French canons. The Zamek, the palace of the old sovereigns, contains many art treasures, and is redolent in the associations of the time when Poland was a powerful state. Connected with it is the great hall where the members of the Diet sat, and squabbled and "vetoed" away their country's liberty. Other palaces are reserved for the transaction of the

COUNTRY HOSPITALITY AND COUNTRY INNS. 87

business of the government; and few cities are so highly favoured with public parks, drives, promenades, and gardens. Most notable of these latter are those of the Belvidere Palace, whence the Grand Duke Constantine fled when all Poland rose against his harsh rule, and where Prince Gortchakoff died while the country was in the throes of a new rebellion.

Many of the country residences around Warsaw, especially at Ujazdov, and at other spots along the course of the Vistula, vie in internal magnificence, and in the rich park and forest scenery that surrounds them, with the environs of the proudest capitals in Europe; and the high culture, fascinating grace of manner, and warm-hearted hospitality of the old Polish families who in-habit these stately piles, are proverbial.

Warsaw itself, in spite of all its misfortunes and humiliations, ranks as the third city, in point of popula-tion, in the empire. It has excellent hotels, a brilliant society, and numerous devices for killing the time pleas-antly. It is his own fault if the visitor finds his stay here profitless and wearisome. Away from Warsaw, however, and the country houses of the proprietor class, Poland has few attractions to show. The accommoda-tion for travellers at the small country inns, generally kept by Jews, is execrable. The condition of the roads is so notoriously bad that there is a German proverb that runs, that there are "five elements" in Poland—earth, air, fire, water, and slush. The scenery has so much of flatness and sameness, that one sympathizes a little with the French soldier who exclaimed, on seeing that Poland of which he had heard the "exiles" raving so ecstatically, "And these beggars call this a country!"

88

SCENERY AND MANNERS.

The ground is not so heavily timbered as is the case farther to the east and north, and the population is more dense. But large spaces are covered with forest, and the cultivated land often consists of clearings made in the heart of the woods, generally near a little lake or a stream. Then there are wide stretches of sand and heath, where the country seems an interminable dead level, though the whole land has a gentle slope towards the north. Interspersed among these barren or wooded tracts are areas containing some of the finest corn-bearing soil in Europe, whence, since time immemorial, vast quantities of grain have been sent for shipment to the ports on the Baltic.

Polish agriculture, however, can hardly be described as in a thriving condition, judged, at least, by the appearance of the peasantry. Picturesque enough they look in their holiday costume, of which a long, braided military tunic, with sash, high boots, and jaunty hat with feather or tassel, frequently form part; and their bearing has a dignity and grace which their German neighbours can never hope to acquire. Their everyday dress, however, is often ragged and meagre enough, and, like their miserable dwellings, speaks only too truly of poverty and wretchedness. Still more sad is the tale told by their cringing manners before superiors, when they grovel on the ground and kiss the hem of their lords' garments. The Polish peasant is charged with being lazy and thriftless. He is said to be much too fond of the potato brandy which is extensively made in the country. He is as fond of flocking on pilgrimages to holy shrines as his brother of Russia—with the difference that his petitions are addressed to the saints of

THE FRONTIERS OF LITHUANIA.

89

the Roman Catholic calendar, instead of the canonized
of the Orthodox Church; and there are many other
points of resemblance between the two peoples in char-
acter and habits. But the political union that has for
a hundred years existed has done anything but foster
good feeling between these two allied races. While we
linger in Poland, we are on soil that is more than ever
it was alien to Russia.

At Warsaw is the parting of two main routes—one
running north-eastward to St. Petersburg; the other
more to the southward, for the old capital of Ivan the
Terrible on the Moskva. Or we may choose another
road, which will carry us south-eastward to the venerable
precincts of Kiev, which we have lately left. By which-
ever route we proceed, the frontiers of Lithuania—a name
that once represented a great fact, but is now hardly
even a "geographical term"—are reached at a distance of
some one hundred versts from Warsaw. And then new
changes come to view. We are plainly a stage nearer Asia.
Poland was a civilized power, with a brilliant and cultured
court, when Lithuania, its dependency, was a semi-barbar-
ous state, with a population barely reclaimed from pagan-
ism, and when Muscovy was still crouching abjectly at the
feet of the Tartars. A certain brightness and lightness
which seem to form part of the Polish landscape, in spite
of its monotonous lines, gradually fade from the scene.
Something more harsh, neglected, and savage takes their
place. A corresponding eclipse is observable in the faces
of the people. The fiery vivacity of the "French of the
East" slowly obscures into Lithuanic stolidity. It is a
race, one can see, in whose history misfortunes have been

90

"WHITE" AND "BLACK" RUSSIA.

largely mingled up; who have so long had to bend their necks under a heavy yoke of servitude, that they can scarcely straighten themselves up and believe that they are men.

By the route that leads to St. Petersburg and to the pushing, ambitious Russia of to-day, we cross parts of the governments of Vilna, Kovno, and Vitebsk; by that which proceeds to Moscow and the soul of the old conservative Russia that is passing away, Grodno, Minsk, and Moghilev are traversed. These six governments compose what is generally known as Western Russia, though Volhynia and Podolia are for departmental purposes included. Their area extends to one hundred and eighteen thousand square miles—larger than the kingdom of Italy—and they have a population of six and a quarter millions of souls. The first three are on the northern side of the water-shed, and are drained by the Niemen and Dwina; the three latter are, for the most part, on the upper streams of the Dnieper and its tributary the Pripet. All were comprehended within the ancient limits of Lithuania, which in the time of its greatest extension also included, in addition to Poland, Little Russia and large parts of Great Russia, of the Baltic Provinces, and of Austria. The eastern districts, chiefly peopled by Slavs, are known as "White Russia;" and the western, Grodno, Minsk, and Vilna, where Lithuanians most abound, as "Black Russia." Mingle these two peasant races together, in greater or less proportion, with an overflow of Poles on that frontier, sprinkle thickly throughout with Jews, and place on the top a Polish or Polanized landlord class—generally non-resident, and seldom in sympathy either in religion or race with their dependants—place them in a

A BORDER LAND OF CREEDS AND RACES.

91

flat and uninteresting country, where fertile lands are
mixed up with vast tracts of swamp and forest, unre-
claimed heath and sandy barren, and you will have an
idea of the population and condition of Lithuania of
to-day.

It is a border land of races and creeds which has
unfortunately no natural border. During one short
period of its political history, when its two neighbours,
Poland and Russia, were weakened, it suddenly grew
into the leading power in Eastern Europe, and threat-
ened to absorb them. But it ended in being crushed
between them, and was then leisurely swallowed by
Russia. It was the last great stronghold of pagan
worship in Europe, and here Western Catholicism and
Eastern Orthodoxy had a long, noisy, and bloody settle-
ment with each other, before heathenism was extirpated,
and the landmarks of the two Christian religions laid
down. In the end Russian influence triumphed in the
religious as in the political struggle; and the Greek
Uniate body, which represented the temporary compro-
mise between the two Churches, has lately been dragged
in a very summary way into the Orthodox fold. Pro-
testantism, however, has here gained a footing which it
possesses in few other parts of the Russian Empire, and its
adherents are chiefly to be found in "Black Russia."

Poles and Muscovites, Turks and Tartars, Germans,
Swedes, and French have marched across this land, and
chosen it as a field on which to settle their quarrels;
and whichever side won, the unfortunate inhabitants
were certain to be losers. Glimpses will be got of the
chief episodes in these intricate and prolonged struggles
as we pass along, but there is first something to be said

92

MILDEWED PROSPECTS.

of the general aspect of the country and mode of life
of the various peoples that occupy Western Russia.

There have been improvements of late years, and
especially since the abolition of serfage; but the main
impression still gathered from a run across Lithuania is
that of a land where man has, as yet, made but feeble
efforts to tame the savageness of nature, and where even
the works of his own hands show signs of dilapidation
and decay. In the south of the country there is perhaps
more marshy land than forest, and in the north more
forest than morass; towards the eastern side the little
townships scattered over the waste of heath and wood
seem to be sprinkled rather more thickly, and some im-
provement in the direction of tidiness and cleanliness
may be detected in the dress and habitations of the
people.

But such changes as these are proceed gradually,
and do not alter the sense of oppressive dulness. The
improvements only show how much has still to be done
before a decent standard of prosperity and comfort
is attained. The traveller draws back his head from
the carriage window long before the lights have faded
from the bare downs or the sombre shadows have
darkened under the pine-woods. He gets tired of
catching peeps of squalid groups in the dirty, crooked
streets of the little towns; of long-coated peasants
trudging homeward by the side of their waggons; of
fantastic little village spires breaking the horizon; of a
stream winding its slow way seaward, or a canal with
a barge laden with rye or timber, bound on a similar
journey; of rickety, unpicturesque bridges and roads
in all stages of disrepair; in short, of a general air of

THE PAN AND THE MOUJIK.

93

blight and impoverishment; and he wraps himself up
as comfortably as possible in his corner, and fervently
wishes that Lithuania were well behind him and Moscow
at hand.

Several causes might be assigned for this mildewed
look, which perhaps, after all, is only made specially
visible here from the close neighbourhood of this region
to the active, bustling life of Western Europe. There
has never, for one thing, been much sympathy between
the tillers of the soil and their lords and masters. Be-
tween the *pans* and the serfs there has always been a
great gulf fixed; and nowhere has the yoke of servi-
tude pressed with more unmitigated weight upon the
neck of the *moujik* than in Lithuania. Elsewhere in
Russia there were close bands of religion and race unit-
ing the two classes. Here the landowners for centuries
professed a creed that the body of their people exer-
crated as heresy; if they were not actually of alien race,
they were in language, feeling, and civilization Polish.
The boyards in the Volga and Oka countries differed
from their bondsmen mainly in social rank. Till a com-
paratively recent date there was little in their education,
their tastes, or even the surroundings of their life to
distinguish them from the peasantry around them. Mr.
Mackenzie Wallace, in his lively sketch of the "small
laird," such as still exists in the more out-of-the-way
corners of Russia, exhibits him as but little exalted in his
views of life or refinement of manners above his humblest
neighbours—that he is a Russian of the Russians,
bigoted in his orthodoxy, superstitious, intensely con-
servative of old prejudices and customs; with many traits
of medieval rudeness and coarseness lingering about his

94

THE WOLVES AND THE SWINE.

person and his mansion, and with his vision bounded by
the narrow interests of his family and his district.

But the Lithuanian nobles since the days of the
Jagellons, and to a great extent still, have been the
representatives of another culture. Their lives were
mostly spent amid the diversions of Warsaw, or Cracow,
or Vilna, where a close imitation was attempted of the
brilliancy and gaiety of the French court, where art
and literature were cultivated, and where life sped on
in a round of pleasure and intrigue, of which their un-
lucky serfs could have as little conception as participa-
tion. They held themselves not only as immeasurably
superior in social station, but scarcely even of the same
flesh and blood. There was little in the scenery or
society of their vast domains to tempt them down to
them. Each magnate had his dreary residence scores of
miles distant from that of his next neighbour of rank.
Sport in the forests, or the collection of the rents and
dues gathered with unsparing hand by his Hebrew
stewards, was often the only errand that brought the
noble down to his lands. They were not much loved
by their people, these Polanized noblemen, and they
scarcely deserved to be. The state of rich and poor
was very much what an American writer has some-
what unjustly described as that of existing Russian
society—a company of "wolves and swine." There
were risings of the peasantry in districts where their
tyrants were more than ordinarily cruel and rapacious,
but they were generally of an isolated and local char-
acter. There were race and religious divisions among
the people themselves, and their spirits were cowed by
long familiarity with oppression. The irksome and

JEWS AND GENTILES.

95

heavy burden of Polish supremacy, however, had an im-
portant effect in disposing the inhabitants to accept with
resignation the transfer of their country to the rule of
the Czar of Muscovy as the close of the long struggle
between that state and Poland.

But besides his Sarmatian master, another figure has
sat on the shoulders of the heavy-laden peasant of
Lithuania and White Russia, and clung to his neck with
the tenacity of an Old Man of the Sea. This is the
Jew. We found him a familiar feature of the towns of
Volhynia and Podolia; and here he is in even greater
force. The scent grows steadily stronger as we ap-
proach the frontiers of Poland proper. The race has
been proverbially a down-trodden, persecuted, and
abused one for some two thousand years. Here for
some centuries the Jews had enjoyed comparative fav-
our, or at least immunity from oppression. One wishes
to trace some pleasant fruits of their prosperity in their
condition and influence. But it must be admitted that
even the most impartial and most well-disposed of tra-
vellers have been able to furnish only meagre materials
for so attractive a picture.

The Jew is not loved by the Gentiles among
whom he dwells without mingling; and in some re-
spects he is even more offensive to the moral and
physical senses of outsiders. He is keen-witted, frugal,
patient, long-suffering, persevering, capable of intense
application and mental study; an unrivalled hand at a
bargain; learned often, after his way, in the law and its
"interpretation," and in many cases scrupulously guiding
his conduct by these lights. To his own people he is
generally charitable and even open-handed. He is

96

FAITH AND MANNERS.

tenaciously attached to his faith, deeply reverent to-
wards his spiritual superiors, and cherishes a touching
affection for the distant land of his fathers, in which, if
possible, he contrives to have his bones laid. But his
charity seldom goes beyond the bounds of his race, or
rather of his sect.

The physique of the typical Israelite bears an un-
mistakable impress of his mode of life. He is meagre
and undersized of frame, with a weak chest, stooping
shoulders, and eager, shambling gait. He lives in stuffy,
unwholesome dens, cooped up with unknown swarms
of his relations and dependants in filthy, undrained lanes
and streets. The occupation of his tribe for centuries has
allowed no free play for the muscles or exercise of the
lungs. Unwholesome air, innutritious and insufficient
food, late vigils, and an unslaked thirst for gain, have
pinched and paled his features. Their dress con-
sists of a linen shirt and drawers, covered by a long
black robe dangling loosely about their legs, and fastened
in front by silver clasps, and on the head they wear
a fur cap or round broad-brimmed hat. The Jew
rarely learns a handicraft; he is hardly ever known to
devote himself to agriculture. Attempts have been made
to found Jewish agricultural colonies in remote parts of
the Russian dominions, but they have been miserable
failures. The race are true dwellers in the towns, and
have neither calling nor pleasure in the country. Some
occupations are almost set apart for them—such as those
of butchers and innkeepers; but they are mostly such
as exercise the wits rather than the hands. They are
the stewards, the factors, and the factotums of the
nobility; the store and provision dealers, the post-hirers,

THE "JEW'S PARADISE."

97

ferry contractors, the distillers, the money-changers, and, of course, the money-lenders of the community. Cases have been issued to prevent the wholesale im-putation by them of the old clothes of Western Europe. They have a finger or a whole hand in every trade and most men's business.

When they first began to gain footing in this quarter
it has not been accurately traced. They came from all
ints of the compass, but chiefly, perhaps, from Ger-
any, during the times of persecution. The rulers of
thuania and Poland needed money for war and plea-
re, and were not scrupulous as to the sources from
which they obtained aid. The Jews, while opening
their purse-strings, were able to make conditions on be-
half of their co-religionists. New privileges were granted

them in the time of Casimir the Great of Poland,
those favourite, a beautiful Jewess named Esther, exerted
erself, like her namesake of old, to obtain favour for
the chosen people; and Poland and Lithuania became
the "Jew's Paradise." The race, it is said, is increasing
pidly, in spite of its weakness physically, through the
early marriages which are contracted—the youths often
marrying when they are fifteen or sixteen years of age,
and girls still earlier. The total Jewish population of
the Russian Empire is now estimated at not far short of
three million, and is chiefly collected in these western
overments. They toil not, neither do they spin; they
add little directly to the producing power of the country;
but they exercise a great and secret influence in society
and in the state, and—if you take the word of a cer-
tain school of Russian politicians—an influence at least
is much for evil as for good.

(718)

7

98

ANTI-JEWISH RIOTS.

All this, of course, does not excuse the brutal and cowardly persecution to which the Jews have recently been exposed in these eastern countries. The anti-Jewish riots which broke out at Kiev, Odessa, Elisabetgrad, and other towns in the south-west, afterwards spreading to the Polish provinces, must to all right-thinking minds appear as a disgrace to modern civilization. Men, women, and children were murdered; the houses in the Jewish quarters plundered and burned, and the inmates turned homeless into the streets; and the worst scenes of the mob ferocity and intolerance of the middle ages re-enacted at the end of the nineteenth century. There are not wanting ugly proofs that these atrocities were deliberately planned, and that the anti-Jewish feeling had no higher root than vulgar envy and greed. A heavy share of the discredit of these scenes falls on the Russian authorities, who, if they did not actually encourage, took little pains to prevent, to suppress, or to punish these displays of Christian resentment.

The peasantry of Western Russia are mostly of that shade of the dominant race of the empire known as "White Russians." Outward appearances and popular opinion do not assign them a high place among the Slav peoples. They are, as a rule, smaller of stature, ruder, and more ignorant than the average Russians. The national faults are slightly exaggerated and the national virtues slightly obscured among them. They bear signs of generations of oppression by foreign masters in their character, as well as in their physique and their industrial and social state. Superlative cleanliness, truthfulness, and temperance have never been among the strong points of the Russian; and the White Russian

THE "WHITE RUSSIAN."

99

assuredly is not a shining example of any of these
virtues.

But there is much to excuse him. It is not
fair to try him by our standards. In judging of his
honesty of word and deed, it must be remembered how
short a time it is since he escaped from thraldom, how
much he is brought into association with low stand-
ards of commercial morals, and that there are already
signs of improvement. It may be that his indulgence
in strong drink is only regulated by his opportunities;
and it is true that the quantities of spirits manufac-
tured, after making allowance for what is exported,
seem to provide the population with more liquor than
is good for them. But we ought to bear in mind how
monotonous is the daily routine of his life, how cheer-
less and comfortless his surroundings, and how few are
his opportunities of partaking of more healthy and in-
tellectual amusements, were his taste so far educated as
to enjoy them.

Side by side with the White Russian is an individual
to whom the fates have, if possible, been still more un-
kind. This is the Lithuanian, whose characteristic figure
and language are gradually, it is to be feared, becoming
more rare in Lithuania. At present the race count, it is
believed, some one million of souls in the division of Western
Russia, including in this number the Lett branch of the
family. Over half a million more—for the most part
Letts—are found in Livonia and other parts of the Baltic
provinces. The district of Augustowo, in the Kingdom
of Poland, and Gumbinnen, in East Prussia, are also
Lithuanian; indeed, the aboriginal inhabitants of the
Prussian provinces bordering on the Baltic were of this

100

THE LITHUANIANS.

stock, and their language has only in recent times become extinct. The Lithuanians are, as a rule, tall men, of rather clumsy build, blue-eyed, and fair and even flaxen-haired, with prominent and well-formed features, and a stolid expression. The women among them possess not seldom the gift of beauty, of a robust and blooming type.

Like their Slav cousins, they are tillers of the soil; their characters and habits have been moulded in the same hard school of toil and endurance. Less quick and impulsive in temperament than the Russians, they are credited with being even more inert and lazy at work. In their capacity for hard drinking, they will not yield the palm to any Slav. Many are Protestant; some belong to the Catholic faith; the bulk of them are Orthodox. But if you could take one of these big, slow-moving, slow-thinking Lithuanian peasants, and analyze his religious beliefs and ideas, you would probably be surprised to find how large is the alloy of ancient heathenism mixed up with his Christianity. It is not perhaps that he is more ignorant and superstitious than his Russ neighbour. Both have in a nearly equal degree a belief in signs and marvels, in dreams and omens, in magic and witchcraft, in sheeted spectre and grim were-wolf. Both are apt to make a "fetish" of the observances of their faith, which are often relics of traditional pagan practices. But to the Lithuanian the old gods are more near and more real than to almost any other European people. Perkun, the thunder god, the equivalent of Perun of the Slavs, still exacts a secret homage; the sacred groves of their ancestors, if they are no longer objects of worship, are feared and shunned as spots where demoniacal influences are potent; their popular sagas, tales, and

THE LAST STRONGHOLD OF PAGANISM.

101

riddles not only relate the great exploits of their national heroes, but the wonderful deeds of the gods and goddesses of their mythology, who are no less real to them than the historical personages.

The Lithuanians were pagans for three or four centuries after the peoples about them had been converted to Christianity by apostles from the Greek or the Latin Church; and the most glorious period of their history was that in which they started suddenly into power, in resistance to the proselytizing efforts of the soldiers of the Cross. Little is known of them till the eleventh century, when we find them a rude and poor people, paying tribute of birch bark and brooms, the only produce their woods and marshes afforded, to the Russian princes of Polotsk, Smolensk, or Galitch. That they were the Ostrogoths that followed Odoacer into Italy, and brought back to their own wild lands some of those soft musical tones that distinguish their tongue from that of their kin, it would be rash to say. But it seems certain that they belong to the Slavonic branch of the great Aryan family tree, but several degrees farther removed from the Russians than even the Poles and Bohemians; and it is said that their language has a closer resemblance to the Sanscrit mother-tongue than any other in Europe.

Lett, Lithuanian, Pruss, and Yatshwing, they dwelt in the depths of their forests, under the rule of their high priest or *krive*, who had below him lower orders of priests and female votaries, worshipping the sacred fire that burned constantly in front of Perkun and the enchanted serpents; or scouring forth on raids, mounted on their hardy ponies of the breed for which

102

THE SWORD-BEARERS.

this country is still famous, armed with clubs and staves,
and blowing barbaric blasts on their long trumpets.

Then in the Crusading times Adalbert, the Bishop of
Riga, in Livonia, organized his Order of the Sword-Bearers,
who set to work with fire and sword to Christianize these
heathen people; and by-and-by the Sword-Bearers were
joined in the holy work by the famous Teutonic Knights.
Provinces on the Baltic were conquered; towns and vil-
lages captured and burned far in the interior; and the
people slain or enslaved. They speak of three hundred
thousand having been slaughtered or sold in this
crusade. But the Lithuanians were stubborn in their
attachment to their ancient divinities. Time after time,
after having been dragged within the pale of the Church,
they jumped into their rivers to wash off the stains of
baptism so soon as the oppressors' backs were turned.
The long spears of the German knights began to penetrate
the inmost recesses of their sacred groves. Despair
pricked them to action; and they had learned something
of the new weapons and modes of warfare from their
enemies.

A certain Mindvog arose early in the thirteenth
century, and gathered the broken tribes into a kingdom
of Lithuania, and waged a not unequal strife both with
Germans and Russians. But it was a century later ere
the great Lithuanic hero Gedimin came forward to
avenge his race on their foes, by carrying the war into
their own territory. He conquered the Russian provinces
to the east and south, incorporated Volhynia and Little
Russia in his territory, and entered Kiev in triumph.
His capital—the new capital of Russia it may be called,
for the Tartar now held all the Volga countries—he fixed

LITHUANIC HEROES.

103

at Vilna, the centre of old Lithuania; and here and at his other residence of Novogrodsk he allowed Greek churches to be built. A tolerant as well as an able man was Gedimin; and though he remained a pagan, he encouraged both Roman and Orthodox Christianity, and invited workmen and artists from the west to beautify his capital and teach his people trades. When he died, his body, after the manner of his ancestors, was "burned in a caldron, with his war-horse and favourite groom." The descendants of Gedimin share with those of Ruric the right to the title of knyaz, or "prince," in Russia.

A still more redoubtable warrior was his son Olgerd, who reduced the proud republics of Novgorod and Pskov to submission, made the Crimea his vassal, cleared the lower Dnieper countries of the Tartars, and marched three times in triumph to the gates of Moscow. His son was Jagellon, who, marrying in 1386 Hedwig, the heiress of Poland, united that country to Lithuania, and was the founder of a dynasty. It was he that effected the Christianization of his people, in the same summary fashion that Vladimir some four hundred years earlier had converted the Slavs of Kiev. "They were divided," says M. Rambaud in his "History of Russia," "into groups, and the priest then sprinkled them with holy water, pronouncing, as he did so, a name of the Latin calendar. To one group he gave the name of Peter, to another that of Paul or John. He overthrew the idol Perkun, extinguished the sacred fire that burned in the castle of Vilna, killed the holy serpents, and cut down the magic woods."

But from Jagellon's days the Lithuanians count the decadence of their greatness; henceforth they were more or less an appanage of Poland. One more great hero

104 WITOUT AND THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS.

they had—Witout, the grandson of Gedimin, who headed the national cause, and compelled Jagellon to yield him the government of the grand-duchy. Witout captured Smolensk, and conceived the grand scheme of driving out the Mongols, and uniting the whole of Russia under his sceptre. But his great army, composed of Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, and Russians, was utterly defeated by the Khan of the Golden Horde on the Vorskla, near Poltava, almost on the site of Charles the Twelfth's disaster; and the ambitious Witout turned his attention to the west. At Tannenberg, in 1410, he completely broke the power of the Teutonic Order, which so long had been a thorn in the side of Russia. He intrigued and negotiated with Pope and Emperor, and had strong hopes of being anointed and recognized as a Catholic king. Grand fêtes were given by him at Vilna, where, we are told, he was attended by grand-duke and hospodar, by the King of Poland and the Khan of the Crimea, the Metropolitan of Moscow, the Master of the Teutonic Knights, and the ambassadors of the Emperors of the East; and where each day "seven hundred oxen, fourteen hundred sheep, and game in proportion" were consumed. In the midst of this revelry, the word came to the old man of eighty that the crown for which he had angled and fought was not to be his, and he died of the disappointment. With him the separate history of Lithuania came to an end; it gradually merged in Poland, the Treaty of Lublin completing the union in 1569.

Vilna, which has been the centre of most of the great events in Lithuanian history, is still a place of considerable size, situated at the junction of the Vilia and the Vileyka rivers, tributaries of the Niemen. By that

VILNA.

105

stream, and by the railway lines from Königsberg and Warsaw leading towards the old and new capitals of Russia, a good deal of trade reaches Vilna, and it is also the seat of large leather and textile manufactories and extensive distilleries. Of its population of 60,000 or 70,000, one-third are said to be Jews, who have got the commerce of the place mainly into their hands. Other importance Vilna no longer possesses. Its star, like that of the other seats of empire we have been visiting, has set. On the castle hill above the river are the ruins of the old palace of the Grand Dukes, where Gedimin, Olgerd, and Witout feasted, and where the "sacred fire" was kept alive till quenched by the Jagellons. The oldest of the sacred places where modern Vilna worships is the Cathedral of St. Stanislas, built in 1367, when Olgerd was thundering at the gates of Moscow.

The University of Vilna, founded first as a Jesuit college in 1578, was suppressed by an imperial ukase in 1832, and the great library of two hundred thousand volumes was transferred to St. Petersburg. Learning and literature deserted Vilna in the train of political power, and it has been abandoned, as has been said, to the Jews. A false gleam of returning grandeur shone on it for a few weeks in 1812. The "grand army" crossed the Niemen at Kovno, and marched upon Vilna—the Russians, whose head-quarters had been at the old Lithuanian capital, falling back before it. Napoleon entered the city in triumph, the nobility crowded around him with ardour, and the restoration of the old Lithuanian state was proclaimed.

A far different entry was that which was wit-

106

THE FRENCH AT VILNA.

nessed a few months later, when the city gates
opened to receive the miserable remnants of that
once magnificent warrior host, thus far on their way
back to France. Reduced to forty thousand men, they
had crossed the Beresina, a tributary of the Dnieper, in
the province of Minsk, in front of an enemy one hundred
and fifty thousand strong, that dared not attack the
desperate men. Hardly had they reached the shelter of
the walls of Vilna, where they hoped for a short reprieve
from exposure, fatigue, and fighting, when the guns of
the Russians were heard, and they had to continue their
flight, abandoning the thousands of sick and wounded,
who, it is said, were flung out of the windows and
trampled to death in the streets, while the Cossacks fell
upon and massacred the camp-followers. Thirty thou-
sand bodies, according to Rambaud, were burned on
piles.

There is little to attract us to Kovno, which has just
been mentioned. It is a place of some eight thousand
inhabitants, dating back to the twelfth century, contains
the usual large proportion of Jews, is the capital of a
government, and does a considerable trade by the Niemen,
on which it is situated. Grodno, higher up the Niemen,
and adjoining Vilna on the southern side, is a government
to which more interest attaches. The town of Grodno is
almost as celebrated in Lithuanian annals as Vilna itself.
It was one of the earliest of the cities in the grand-
duchy, dating back to the twelfth century. Even at
that early period it had become an appanage of the
family of Ruric; and a church arose in this heathen
quarter dedicated to St. Boris and St. Gleb, the two
murdered sons of the apostolic Vladimir, who are so

THE LAST POLISH DIET.

107

inseparably associated together in the secular and ecclesi-
astical legends of Russia. A convent—that of St. Basil
—was founded about the same time, and still exists.

The great King Stephen Batory of Poland took much
interest in the welfare of the Orthodox of Grodno, and
interfered to prevent the destruction with which they
were threatened by the Jesuits. There were other Polish
monarchs who did not scorn to make it an occasional
residence. The celebrated John Casimir had his château
in the neighbourhood at Bialystok, a magnificent struc-
ture in Italian style, once known as the Versailles of
Poland, but now become a ladies' school. August III.
built here a palace; and it was for some time the head-
quarters of Charles XII. of Sweden during his Lithuanian
campaigns. It was at one period appointed that the
Polish Diet should meet here for every third session,
and it was at Grodno that the representatives of the
ancient kingdom decreed its dismemberment, and the
last phantom monarch, Stanislas Augustus, signed his
abdication. Apart from these historic reminiscences,
Grodno is a dull little town; it boasts no trade to
speak of, and the botanic gardens, founded by Stanislas
Augustus, are no longer an attraction to men of science.

In this province of Grodno there is a broad domain
set apart for an "aborigine" of even earlier date than
the Lithuanian, and who probably was in full possession
of the deep thickets and brakes of this forest region for
thousands of years before the human fancy had begun to
people them with gods and demigods, and to set them
apart for the worship of Perkun and the sacred serpents.
The wood of Belovegie, occupying an area of many
square miles around the sources of the river Narev, a

108

IMPERIAL HUNTING-PARTIES.

tributary of the Niemen, still protects the last representatives of the aurochs, the wild ox that in the Roman days had a wide range over Europe, and is believed by some to be the original stock from which our domestic cattle have sprung. It is supposed that a thousand head of these wild cattle still rove at will in the marshy recesses of Belovegie; and they are protected by strict forest laws. It was a favourite hunting-ground of the kings of Poland, and the Czars have occasionally visited it in pursuit of royal sport after the urus and the bear.

These imperial hunting-parties, which in the government of St. Petersburg have become almost a part of the state ceremonies, are brilliant and imposing affairs. The appointments for the chase, which takes place early in the spring, when Bruin has just awakened from his winter's sleep, leave nothing to be desired in the matter of completeness and splendour. Not only the imperial hunters themselves, but the attendant nobles and great civil and military dignitaries are enveloped in the richest furs, and outshine each other in the stylishness of their sledges and their arms. Only one feels that the poor bear has hardly a fair chance among such an army of beaters and hunters. The urus, however, is rarely disturbed in his retreat at Belovegie. By imperial ukase it is even forbidden to cut wood in the forest; and it is to be hoped that this old inhabitant, with his massy front, grand horns, and tawny bison-like mane, will long be preserved as a living relic of the Europe of the past.

Another striking natural feature of this region are the Marshes of Pinsk on the Pripet, in the neighbouring province of Minsk, itself a territory larger than Ireland. There is here, perhaps, the largest extent of fen

MOGHILEV AND VITEBSK.

109

country to be found in Europe. Much of this tract has
probably not been seen by a stranger since the beginning
of last century, when Charles the Twelfth fought and
waded his way through it with the fury of a Norse
Berserker, cutting a path alternately with his axe and
his sword, as his progress was opposed by thick forest
or by Russian enemies. Eastward of the marshes is the
Beresina, a branch of the Dnieper, famous in the mili-
tary annals of Charles as well as of Napoleon; and on
a tributary of the Beresina is the town of Minsk, where
any one who strays so far out of the beaten track of the
tourist will be surprised to light upon a small theatre,
in addition to the cathedral, archiepiscopal palace, and
numerous churches that are the necessary features of
every provincial capital, and the narrow, crooked, dirty
streets that invariably mark an old Polish bourg. If
he move farther eastward to the main stream of the
Dnieper, and light on Moghilev, the chief town of the
government of that name, he will come on evidences
of improving conditions of industry and social well-
being. Here he will find a considerable trade in a town
containing within its decayed ramparts many fine build-
ings grouped round the great central square, and the
importance of which is attested by its being the head-
quarters of the Roman Catholic Primate of Poland and
Russia.

A short step northwards by Orcha takes us across the
watershed to the valley of the deep and muddy Dwina,
on which is Vitebsk, the principal town of the most
northerly of the West Russian provinces. Or the journey
may be made by water by one of the canals which in
this as in other parts of Russia connect the head-waters

110

THE RESOURCES OF WEST RUSSIA.

of the various streams, and are the main channels of traffic.

Farther down the Dwina are Polotsk and Duna-
burg, important military posts in their day, holding the
line of the river, and often subjected to siege and assault
by Russians and Poles, Swedes and Livonians. Polotsk
is one of the most ancient of Russian towns, having a
history reaching back beyond the times of Ruric; Duna-
burg was alternately a strong place of the German
knighthood and a bulwark of Russia against them. The
stormy past of the city of Vitebsk also may be read
on the ancient walls and towers along the left bank of
the Viteba river, and the crumbling remains of its strong
castle on the opposite side of the stream. The three
places are now rivals in collecting the raw products and
the manufactures of this and the neighbouring provinces,
and forwarding them to the port of Riga, at the mouth
of the Dwina.

The railways and canals have done much to stimu-
late the half-slumbering energies of the Western Russian
provinces. These countries are full of undeveloped
riches; prominent among which are the immense forests
of pine, oak, ash, beech, and maple; and groves of lime
are abundant in the government of Vilna, where bee-
keeping is an extensive industry. Even the marshes
and heaths can be made productive with a little care;
and this part of Russia will erelong hold a more
important agricultural and commercial position than it
does at present.

CHAPTER V.

THE VOLGA.

F the Dwina is followed for a little way beyond Vitebsk, we are brought back to our starting-point in the Valdai Hills. Its sources are in the sequestered valleys, steep hillsides, and wood-fringed lakelets of that prettily broken country, and its "taproot" is within a verst or two of the lake in which the great river Volga has its beginning. From this point to the outlet of the Volga in the Caspian is a distance of over nine hundred miles as the crow flies: following its great north-eastward and eastward sweeps and its many windings, we have a length of two thousand four hundred miles—greater by nearly a thousand miles than the Danube—the next largest European stream. No one can fully comprehend the phenomena of Russian history and civilization who does not have in his mind an adequate conception of the magnitude and the importance of the Volga.

With the Russians themselves it is the "Mother Volga,"—the great river of the world. It has moulded their destinies, shaped their national character, and influenced incomparably more than any other natural feature of the country their social and industrial con-

112

THE "SPINAL MARROW" OF RUSSIA.

dition. It has been said that the history of Russia may be resolved into the history of four rivers and four towns in their basins—the Volkhov, and Novgorod the Great; the Dnieper, and Kiev; the Volga, and Moscow; and the Neva, and St. Petersburg: and the greatest of these is the Volga. It is the vertebral column, or rather the spinal marrow of Russia. Two hundred years ago, probably nine-tenths of the subjects of the Czars dwelt upon it; and a majority of the Russian race are still settled in its basin. It drains an area of five hundred and fifty-eight thousand square miles, equal to five times that of the British Islands. One of its affluents, the Kama, is only second to the Danube among the rivers of Europe. The Oka and its tributaries—on one of which is situated the world-famous city of Moscow—water a territory of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand square miles.

The breadth and the volume of the great stream are worthy of its magnificent length. Its channel is navigable to its source; its width from bank to bank in its middle course is little less than a mile; and it discharges its waters into the Caspian by over seventy mouths. By the comprehensive system of canals that connect the head-waters of all the important Russian rivers, it communicates with the White Sea, the Baltic, and the Euxine. Thus a canal from Tula, on the Upa, a branch of the Oka, connects the Volga with the Don; and it is proposed to form another water-way joining the two main streams at the point on their lower courses where they approach within fifty miles of each other. A double link unites the Volga to Kiev—through the upper Dnieper and through the Oka and Desna; and by the same channels there is continuous water-carriage to the Niemen and the

A NETWORK OF CANALS.

113

Baltic. An alternative route to the Baltic may be chosen by way of the Dwina. Most important of all are the routes leading under the walls of St. Petersburg to the Gulf of Finland. Leaving the Volga at Tver, the Tvertza may be followed until it merges, at Vishni-Volotchok, into the Msta, a canal-like stream that conducts to Lake Ilmen and the Volkhov; or following up the Mologa, a lower tributary of the Volga, the head stream of the Sias can be reached; or, again, ascending the Szektna, the Bielo or White Lake may be entered, which also reaches an arm to Lake Ladoga and its outlet the Neva. The Neva, indeed, has become, as it were, a second or European mouth of the Volga, and the set-off to its Asiatic mouth at Astrakhan. Lake Ladoga has canal communication with the White Sea; and the great eastern tributary of the Volga, the Kama, has independent connection with the Dwina and the Arctic Ocean.

With this bewildering network of channels all feeding the main avenue with their contribution of trade, one may imagine how extensive and how varied is the commerce of which the Volga is the centre. It still continues to be a great extent the principal route by which the products of Northern and Central Asia are exchanged for those of Europe; but it is as the medium for the collection and distribution of the internal riches of the Russian world itself that it possesses its chief importance. No fewer than fifteen thousand vessels of various classes ply upon its bosom. In the summer season a quarter of a million of workmen from other parts of the empire resort thither. The waters are churned into foam by the paddles of five hundred steamboats. The long lines of wooden wharves are piled with

(718)

8

114

RIVER TRADE AND LIFE.

merchandise in course of being landed or shipped; and
the extensive depôts are being rapidly emptied and filled
again with grain and other produce of the rich provinces
on the Oka and Volga.

As the great fair at Nishni-Novgorod approaches,
the bustle and activity on the river and along its
banks become more intense. Merchants from Odessa
and Riga; native and foreign speculators in every
variety of merchandise exchanged between the East
and the West; Russian peasants and German colonists,
anxious to sell the surplus produce of their fields;
dealers in furs and peltries from Paris or Vienna, come
to do business with rough trappers from the Kama or
Siberia; travellers for Manchester and Sheffield houses;
carriers of brick tea from the Chinese frontiers; Per-
sians, Bokharians, and Turcomans, with silks or horses
for sale; venders of precious stones and metals from the
Ural range and Tobolsk; Finnish lumbermen; Tartar
packmen; Kirghiz and Kalmuk shepherds and horse-
rearers; fabricators of axes, nets, sheepskin coats, sad-
dles, fur-caps, boots, each from the little villages de-
voted to these special industries along the Volga and its
branches; with a sprinkling of professional sightseers
from Western Europe and America,—are all on their flight
by routes innumerable to the great mart that draws
together for a few weeks one hundred thousand strangers
from the ends of the earth.

The conveyance of all these passengers and their wares
was formerly attended by fearful toil and suffering. The
motive-power of the current could generally be employed in
transporting goods down stream, but it was different where
the rivers had to be ascended. The rafts of timber, the

WINTER TRAVEL ON THE MOTHER VOLGA.

115

barges filled with grain, hides, bales of merchandise, and
cattle, were dragged by tow-ropes up the stream by ill-
treated, broken-spirited horses or oxen, or by the main
strength of the *borlaks*, a class of men noted for their
herculean frames and their brutalized condition. Steam
has changed all that. The human beasts of burden are
no longer a feature of the Volga life. Instead, powerful
tug-steamers will be met breasting the current, and
drawing behind them a whole flotilla of barges and
other river craft.

With the setting in of winter all this busy life is sus-
pended. The stream is frozen over from its source to its
mouth, and sometimes an icy covering extends over a
large portion of the salt waters of the Caspian Sea.
Steamers and sailing ships are laid up for a season; the
quays are deserted, the storehouses are closed, and the
whir of the saw-mills is silenced. Traffic goes to sleep
until the spring freshets break up the ice, and leave the
channel again clear for navigation. But even in the
winter the Volga is the centre of such movement as there
is. Its frozen surface is the favourite route for travel-
lers whose hard fate compels them to journey in the
season of ice and snow; and its ghostly white banks
echo night and day to the ring of the passing sledge-
bells.

In the ordinary season of travel, nothing specially
impressive can be promised to the voyager in the way
of natural scenery, beyond what is afforded by the flood
of waters itself rolling between its shores fringed by pine
and oak. Whatever effect this may have on the mind,
the interest wears off as the prospect is repeated with
a few changes in detail at every turn of the river.

116

A FOREST LAND.

Though the woods are partially cleared near the margin,
the scenery in the upper and middle courses of the river
retains the features of a forest land. Scores of thriving
towns, hundreds of villages and hamlets, are scattered
along the stream; but the distances are so immense that
plenty of room is left between the clearings for long
stretches of timber-covered shore. The left bank is
generally flat, and often marshy; the right, against which
the current bears in making its wide semicircular sweep,
is more high and abrupt.

The upper Volga lies within the favourite habitat
of the fir, the larch, and the spruce, and pine-woods
are the predominating feature of its scenery. Then,
in the government of Kazan, the "Oak Belt" is reached,
stretching across a great part of Russia, between the
fifty-sixth and fifty-third degrees of latitude; and the
place of the dark and rigid forms of the cone-bearing
trees is usurped by fine specimens of the oak, the beech,
and the maple, that change their hues with the chang-
ing year.

In this part of its course the Volga cuts through
the Zhigulinsky range of hills, which have been highly
praised for their picturesque outlines and the pleasing
variety of their wooded slopes. A recent visitor to
the region admits that the scenery here may be called
"pretty," especially when the trees wear the delicate tints
of spring, or when they are arrayed in the painted glories
of autumn; but it is such an agreeable surprise to meet
with anything resembling a range of hills in these parts,
that the traveller is willing to be easily satisfied.

Lower down, the banks become bare and shingly. The
river receives no more important tributaries, and its chan-

SCENERY OF THE LOWER VOLGA.

117

nel is interrupted by frequent sand-banks and shoals. From the top of the sandy slopes that bound the view from the river to right and left, the eye may range over a wide steppe, from which all trace of the higher forms of vegetable life has vanished, and where the short grass is cropped by herds of sheep, horses, and camels, guarded by their Tartar owners. Near the river are the snug homesteads and well-filled granaries of the German colonists, who have been settled in this country since the time of the Empress Elizabeth, side by side with the untidy and ramshackle habitations of the Russian peasants—generally schismatics banished to these wilds for their heresies. Here and there is a small colony of Cossacks, keeping an eye over the movements of the half-nomad dwellers of the steppe; and the glaring dome of the Greek church, the neat spire of the Lutheran chapel, and the blind walls of the Mohammedan mosque testify to the variety of the prevailing creeds. Barer and barer grows the steppe as we proceed, and more and more Eastern the aspect of the scenery and the population, until near the Caspian we find the river girt in by an arid desert, roamed over by Kirghiz and Kalmuk tribes, dwellers in tents, and—the Kalmuks at least—worshippers of Buddha and his living incarnation the Grand Lama of Thibet. The river is already many feet below the level of the ocean, when it begins to break up into branches that form innumerable islands before discharging themselves by seventy mouths into the Caspian.

The principal industry practised on these islands is the sturgeon-fishery. The Volga is the most noted haunt of this noble fish, and from its source, where the

118

STURGEON FISHING.

sterlet that furnishes the caviare most prized at the tables of the rich is bred, to the Caspian Sea, which yields gigantic sturgeon of weights running up to two thousand pounds, it has the full run of its waters. The capture of the sturgeon is practised in many different ways, according to the seat of the fishery—with the hook, the harpoon, and the net, from the shore and in large and small boats, by single fishers and by large incorporated companies. Sometimes "flying camps" of fishermen, counting many hundred tents, follow the fish in their migrations up or down the river; and they are accompanied by large moving establishments for extracting the roe and preparing the caviare.

When the first ice begins to cover the river, the sturgeon rush for the sea; but many of them are too late in their movements, and become blockaded in deep pools in the rivers Ural and Volga, where they crowd together in almost solid masses. This gives the opportunity for the first fishing of winter, before the ice breaks up. Crawling over the frozen surface, and peering through the ice covering and the clear water beneath, the Cossack fishermen discover the winter hiding-place of the sturgeon, which are then captured with little trouble. By traditional custom, the yield of this day's fishing is dispatched immediately to the palace of the "Father Czar." Many other varieties of fish are taken in the Volga, and they form an important item in the dietary of the population.

The chase of the seal, on the shores of the Caspian, is also a pursuit that yields a considerable profit to the Kalmuks of the government of Astrakhan. It may seem strange that an animal whose presence we are accustomed

AN ODD BLEND.

119

to associate only with Arctic and Antarctic climes should
be found in a sea the southern portion of which washes
the shores of Persia and is in the latitude of Northern
Africa. But in the neighbourhood of the Volga we are
constantly meeting with puzzling anomalies and unex-
pected contrasts. It carries us from under the Arctic
circle to semi-tropical lands; from the feeding-grounds
of the reindeer to those of the camel, from the neighbour-
hood of the white bear to the haunts of the lion and
tiger; in a word, from Northern Europe to Central Asia.
Asiatic and European races have alternately held sway
on the river; and representatives of most of them are
to be met with in its neighbourhood.

The traveller is sure to chance upon some indi-
vidual or incident in which the past and the present,
the culture of Europe and the barbarism of Northern
Asia are oddly blended. For instance, Mr. Schuyler,
in journeying down the stream, discovered that one
of his fellow-passengers was Prince Ghenghiz, a lineal
descendant of his conquering namesake Ghenghiz
Khan. This son of the last khan of the Bukeief
Horde was found to be a polished and educated gentle-
man, who for the greater part of the journey was
deeply absorbed in the pages of a French novel. A still
more incongruous experience was that of Mr. Mackenzie
Wallace, whose hair nearly stood on end when, while
travelling in the steppe between the Caspian and the
Sea of Azov, he was accosted by a venerable person of
Circassian lineaments and costume in the broadest Scottish
dialect. It turned out that the "Circassian Scots-
man" was a scholar educated by the missionaries sent
out to this region by an Edinburgh association early in

120

FINNS AND TARTARS.

the present century, and which had thriving stations at Astrakhan and Karass half a century ago.

The aboriginal inhabitants of the Volga countries, peoples of the widely-spread Finnish race, are certain to attract the notice of strangers by their distinctive dress, language, and features. On the main stream of the Volga itself, and chiefly in Kazan, are the Tcherimis—whom Dr. Latham would identify with the famous Arimaspi of the Greek poets—the Tchuvashs, and the Mordvins, all speaking distinct but allied tongues, and holding themselves strictly aloof from mixture with the surrounding Slavs. They are dark-complexioned, shy, taciturn people, who seem to know that their day is hopelessly past, and that their best chance of preserving their ancient languages and customs lies in adopting an attitude of suspicious reserve towards all strangers.

A more promising subject is the "Tartar" inhabitant of Kazan and the neighbouring provinces, who seems to have laid aside most of the barbarous proclivities of his ancestors, and compares not disadvantageously as a merchant, an agriculturist, and a peace-loving citizen with his Russian neighbour. The chances, indeed, are that the Tartar village furnishes a model in cleanliness, in the neat and substantial character of its architecture, and the trim and well-kept condition of the surrounding fields, which the adjoining Slav hamlet might do well to copy.

Greek proselytism has made little way among these stanch adherents of Islam, and Mohammedanism is tolerated by the state; so that the mosque of the faithful may be seen in each of these timber-built villages, and at morning and evening the cry of the

MOHAMMEDANISM ON THE VOLGA.

121

muezzin is heard on their walls, and echoes strangely amid the pine and oak avenues of the Northern forest. At the stated hours for prayer a certain proportion of the voyagers by the Volga steamer, or travellers waiting the change of horses at the wayside post-houses, will be seen to spread their strip of carpet, cast themselves reverently into an attitude of prayer, and remain absorbed in their devotions for several minutes; and it will be noticed probably that these are not the least intelligent-looking and civilized among the motley crowd. The Tartar—he is much more a Turk by descent and in his physique than a Mongol—has still, however, implanted in him some of the roving tendencies of his forefathers. He is the beau-ideal of the peripatetic merchant of the East, and roams far and wide with his pack of bright-coloured wearing apparel, wonderful jewellery, and nicknacks suited to male and female taste—alert, indefatigable, and full of resource, with vivacity sparkling in his keen dark eyes, and persuasion hanging on his nimble tongue.

These and other races, once omnipotent on the Volga, have sunk, however, into insignificance before the encroaching Slav; but while religion will long interpose a formidable obstacle to the absorption of the Tartar population into the general body of the Russian people, the process of Russification will probably be complete in a few generations in the aboriginal Finnish districts. Mr. Mackenzie Wallace has described the method and the rapidity with which this change is taking place in a passage which is worthy of quotation.

"During my wanderings in these northern provinces," he says, "I have found villages in every stage of Russification.

122

THE PROCESS OF "RUSSIFICATION."

tion. In one, everything seemed thoroughly Finnish; the inhabitants had a reddish olive skin, high cheek-bones, obliquely-set eyes, and a peculiar costume; none of the women and very few of the men could understand Russian, and any Russian who visited the place was regarded as a foreigner. In a second, there were already some Russian inhabitants; the others had lost something of their pure Finnish type; many of the men had discarded the old costume, and spoke Russian fluently, and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In a third, the Finnish type was still further weakened; all the men spoke Russian, and nearly all the women understood it; the old male costume had entirely disappeared, and the old female costume was rapidly following it, and intermarriage with the Russian population was no longer rare. In a fourth, intermarriage had almost completely done its work, and the old Finnish element could be detected merely in certain peculiarities of physiognomy and accent."

Even more significant than the influence of the Volga on the commercial development of Russia has been its influence on the political destiny of the country in all periods of its history. The capitals of no fewer than nine of the modern Russian governments—Tver, Jaroslav, Kostroma, Nishni-Novgorod, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, and Astrakhan—stand on the banks of the main stream itself. Ten other seats of provincial authority in Great Russia are situated on its tributaries—Perm and Viatka, in the basin of the Kama; Penza, on the Sura; and Orel, Kaluga, Tula, Riazan, Tambov, Vladimir, and the great city of Moscow itself, on the Oka and its branches.

THE RUINS OF EMPIRE.

123

Between the new and growing emporiums of trade are
scattered the mounds and ruins marking the sites of old
and fallen empires—Atel, the capital of the mysterious
Khazarian kingdom, with its Judaized monarchs and pre-
cocious civilization; the head-quarters of the people who
founded the Bulgaria of the Danube, Bolgary, the “great
city,” among the rubbish of which are still picked up
Greek, Arabic, and Armenian coins and fragments of
artistic pottery and carving; Sarai, the seat of Baty
Khan and his descendants, lords of the Golden Horde,
whose swarms of Mongol horsemen devastated and wrung
tribute from all the provinces of Eastern Europe as far
as the Oder; and old Kazan, the head city of the Tartar
khanate that held Russia in vassalage till the latter
half of the sixteenth century.

It was under such rough masters that the young
Russian nation on the Volga grew to manhood. Something
has already been told of its infancy and early youth—
how the nomad incursions from the East into the pleasant
steppe lands on the Dnieper, the pressure of the rival
Polish, German, and Swedish peoples on the west, and
the chronic anarchy and civil war among the crowd of
princes struggling for the supreme power, drove great
hosts of the Slavs to seek shelter and security in the
deep forests of the Volga; and how they there founded
new states that absorbed the Finnish peoples, and waxed
powerful and populous in proportion as the elder princi-
palities and republics were weakened, until at last they
were able to pluck away the palm of pre-eminence from
Kiev itself, and carry off the insignia of political and
ecclesiastical superiority to the banks of the Kliasma.

124

THE PRINCES OF SUZDAL.

It was on the banks of this stream, a tributary of the Oka, that the Russian colonies in the forests first began to consolidate, and the city of Suzdal erelong became the centre of power. It had many rivals—Rostov and Murom (the original appanages of the martyred Boris and Gleb), Tver and Jaroslav, Kolomna and Riazan. But Suzdal was the kernel from which the great trunk and spreading branches of Russian autocracy arose, though its princes soon deserted it for the neighbouring city of Vladimir.

As yet, Moscow and Nishni-Novgorod were not. It was George Dolguruky of Suzdal who, while "exploiting" the country watered by the Moskva river, was struck by the commanding site occupied by a few huts on the left bank of the stream; and slaying the owner on some pretext—which the Suzdal princes had never any difficulty in inventing when lands were to be seized—he founded on the spot a log-built town, that afterwards became the capital of the Russian Empire. It was this George, it may be remembered, who first humbled the pride of Kiev, and his successor Andrew Bogoliubski who stormed and plundered that venerable city, depriving it for ever of its leading place among Russian towns. Andrew also was the first Russian autocrat; for he began systematically to bring together by every means, good or bad, the broken fragments of the Russian power and weld them into one, and patiently and mercilessly to tread down every influence both within and without that could compete with that of the prince. Following him in Suzdal was another George, who, descending the Volga on a military excursion about 1220, noticed that nature had marked out its junction with

THE MONGOL INVASION.

125

the Oka as the site of a great commercial metropolis, and here arose Nishni or Lower Novgorod. The traditions of the Finnish inhabitants preserve the memory of the rapidity with which these "backwoods" colonizations proceeded. "The Russian prince," they sing, "descended the Volga: where he threw a handful of earth on the bank, a town sprang up; where he threw a pinch of earth, a village was born."

But an unparalleled, perhaps an irreparable calamity, was about to fall upon Russia. The Mongol hosts of Ghenghiz were already on the march when the piles for the foundations of Nishni-Novgorod were being driven. The Volga princes left their southern brethren to fight alone when the Tartars first appeared on the steppes; but on their second coming, a few years later, under the nephew of the Grand Khan Oktai, they followed a more northerly track, and the barbarian wave broke with irresistible force on the new cities of the Oka and Kliasma. For three years, 1238-40, the land was surrendered to slaughter and pillage; Moscow, Vladimir, Tver, Riazan, all the chief towns and villages, were burned, and the inhabitants massacred or driven into the woods. Grim tokens of Mongol success were sent to the Great Khan by his lieutenants in the shape of sackfuls of human ears; princes of the house of Ruric were "drowned in blood;" atrocities before undreamt of were perpetrated, not in single instances, but in a wholesale manner. The unfortunate Russians could not believe that their terrible enemies were of the human race, but regarded them as demons sent as forerunners of "Anti-christ."

All Russia bent and groaned under the storm; but

126

THE VASSALS OF THE GRAND KHAN.

when Baty Khan withdrew from the borders of Germany to the Lower Volga, and began to build his capital at Sarai, it began slowly to right itself and adjust itself to its new burden. Half of Christian Europe had become the slaves of a horde of savage heathen horsemen. The heads of the princely houses had to make long journeys to the seat of the Khan of the Golden Horde to intrigue and plot for his favour, to grovel in the dust before him, to wed the daughters of the invader, and to sell their own daughters and sisters to the Tartar lords. Often they had to face the terrible experiences of a journey to the head-quarters of the Grand Khan, on the banks of the Amoor river, at Karakorum in the Desert of Gobi, or at Kambalu, the modern Pekin, traversing the snowy wastes, stony and sandy deserts, dense forests and great chains of mountains, in the hope of securing the *jarlikh* or investiture of their barbaric suzerain, without which their title to rule in their own state was not recognized.

These expeditions to the court of Mangu or Kublai generally occupied two or three years. Arrived there, the aspirant for favour often found that he had travelled the breadth of Asia in vain, and that a more nimble rival had already borne off the coveted honour. Sometimes the weary voyager never returned to Russia, his bones being left in some unknown spot on the way, where fatigue or hunger or robbers had overtaken him. Such a shameful journey was made by Alexander Nevski, one of the heroes of Russian history —who had defeated the Swedes on the Neva, near where the famous Nevski Prospect of St. Petersburg now runs, and the Livonian Knights on the frozen

MUSCOVY AND ITS GRAND DUKES.

127

surface of Lake Peipus—and his example was followed
by the Grand Princes of Vladimir and Moscow who suc-
ceeded him.

These same princely personages fell into the posi-
tions of farmers-general or tax-gatherers for the Tartar
khan. They collected his tribute for him—which was
in the shape of a poll-tax—gaining his countenance by
humbling their turbulent nobles and grinding in the
dust their unlucky people. There are not many noble
or heroic traits in their character. The gay, light-hearted
chivalry of the cavaliers of the Dnieper, or the stern, sober
patriotism of the republicans of Novgorod, is not to be
looked for in the early history of the Muscovite princes;
and as for the more modern culture that had spread
eastward as far as Poland, they would probably have
scorned it had they known of its existence. They were
rude, unscrupulous, ambitious, grasping men, who stuck
at no crime or baseness to accomplish their ends, and
yet who claim from us a certain admiration for their
remarkable astuteness, ability, and tenacity of purpose.

By such qualities the Grand Dukes of Muscovy, from
the time of Alexander Nevski to that of Ivan the Ter-
rible—but most notably of all that other Ivan surnamed
"the Great" and "the Binder"—extended the limits of
their little principality on the Moskva until it embraced
not only all the lands on the Upper Volga and its
branches above Nishni-Novgorod, but also the Upper
Don countries, parts of the old Slav states on the
Dnieper, Novgorod and its vast dominions on the slope
to the Arctic Sea. They had done this so quietly and
gradually as to excite the minimum of resistance from
the states absorbed, and of jealousy from their Tartar

128

THE VICTORY OF THE DON.

masters. The methods they employed were fraud and finesse, treaties, marriage alliances, assumption of guardianship over minors, steady, persistent extensions and pretensions of authority—any means rather than force, but force if other means failed, as they often did.

While the vassal was becoming strong, the Tartar overlord was growing decrepit. One united and chivalrous attempt only had been made to throw off the barbarian yoke. The Mongol Horde of Baty had adopted the faith of Mohammed; had had its day of great power; and was now breaking up into contending factions, and seemed on the point of dissolution. The Russian princes thought their opportunity had come. A great army was assembled under the Grand Duke Dimitri Donskoi, and marched out to battle, amid miracles and omens and priestly blessings—St. Vladimir in person, it was said, appearing at their head and leading the charge. The Kipchaks and their allies were totally overthrown in a battle fought in 1380 in the plain of Kulikovo on the banks of the Don. The victory happened in an unlucky hour for Russia. Another—and the last—devastating swarm from Central Asia swept over it. Again Moscow and the chief cities were burned—this time not by Mongol tribes from the Altai, but by the Turki tribes from Turkestan, under the orders of the conquering Tamerlane; and the place of the Golden Horde was taken by the three Tartar khanates of Crim Tartary, Astrakhan, and Kazan, the last of these falling heir to Russia's allegiance.

It was not till Ivan the Terrible's time that Muscovy was strong enough to throw off the last shackles of the Tartar domination; and by the conquest of Kazan in

THE RESURRECTION OF RUSSIA.

129

1552, and of Astrakhan in 1554, the first substantial instalments were paid of the heavy debt of retribution which Asia had accumulated in Europe. The destinies of Russia were again in its own hands. Europe stared at the wild creature that issued forth from the woods and claimed a place in the commonwealth of Christian nations. There was so much that was rude and Oriental in the government, the laws, the customs, the religious ideas, and the superstitions of the Muscovites, that it was small wonder that the western peoples hesitated to admit them within the civilized pale. It was not so much that Russia had not had a fair start, like the others, but that it had passed through a long period of suspended animation, while they were enjoying an active and progressive social life. Its sudden resurrection and appearance "in the councils of Europe," after three centuries of hibernation in the forests of the Volga, was as if a rough feudal baron of the Front-de-Bœuf type had presented himself at the board of Queen Elizabeth, and taken a seat between Sir Philip Sydney and Lord Bacon.

Travellers, merchants, and diplomatists from the west, who began to flock to the capital of the Czar, wondered and laughed over the astonishing rudeness of the court manners, the extreme brutality and ignorance even of the highest nobility, and the primitive abasement of the people; and the remarkable doings of the Russian ambassadors at the European courts were observed with the half-amused, half-contemptuous interest with which we would regard the behaviour of a deputation from the Negus of Abyssinia. The descriptions given by early English travellers and traders to Muscovy

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9

130

MUSCOVITE COURT MANNERS.

are full of almost incredible details concerning the manners of the capital, and even of the Czar's palace, the uncouth and barbarous demeanour of personages of the blood-royal, the gross savagery and turbulence of the boyards, and the extreme enslavement of the peasants.

The crack of the knout was heard in the court as well as in the humblest hut in the land; and down to our own day it has continued to be an ominous symbol of Russia's degradation. Not only the old Grand Princes, but Czars of the Romanoff line were in the habit of publicly whipping personages of the highest rank with their own hand. Ivan the Terrible beat and slew his boyards, and killed his eldest son Ivan with blows of his "iron staff."

It is recorded of the Czar Alexis I., the second of the Romanoffs, that so mild and easy of temper was he that he never allowed himself to go beyond "kicks and cuffs." His son, Peter the Great, had his first wife, Eudoxia, repeatedly knouted by his orders; and his only son, the Czarevitch Alexis, died under the lash. Of an aristocracy according to our notions, or of aristocratic feelings, there was indeed none in Russia. During the three hundred years of Tartar rule the blood of the noble families had received large accessions from Mongol and Turkish stocks, though little of such admixture had taken place among the lower orders. Tartar *mirzas* were in many cases appointed lords of the Russian soil and peasantry, and gradually embraced Christianity. The great noble was rather after the Eastern than of the Western model. Under an autocratic government every effort has been made to bridle the power of the nobility and remove out of the way all danger of pos-

IGNORANCE AND BARBARISM.

131

sible rivalry from this source, with the result that the Czar has become, in a more literal sense than other Christian sovereigns, the sole "fountain of honour," and rank in Russia a matter of official position rather than of hereditary claim.

With the higher and highest ranks of society so bar-
barous and uncultured, it may be left to imagination to
picture the depths of ignorance and superstition in which
the body of the Russian people were steeped. In the
course of three centuries the iron of the Tartar fetters
had entered their souls. They had broken the links of
foreign oppression, but the chain of ancient habit still
bound them. They had been shut out from all pro-
gressive influences, and thrown on their own resources,
and these had not sufficed to keep them abreast of the
times; for the Russians are more distinguished for their
quickness in imitating the arts and industries of their
neighbours than in originating new movements in
thought or labour. If they looked towards the west,
they met only the averted and hostile faces of rivals—
Poles, Swedes, and Germans—opposed to them on
grounds of nationality and religion. The more distant
countries of Europe—England and France—which had
not as yet begun to feel jealousy or apprehension of the
new nation that had just achieved its emancipation, were
too remote to have a powerful influence on their develop-
ment, though English merchantmen began to navigate
the White Sea, and our flag even floated on the Caspian,
while the faces of many of our countrymen—agents of
the Muscovy Company, under the protection of the Czar
—were to be seen in the crowds that thronged the
streets of Moscow. But away from the seats of com-

132

PETER THE GREAT.

mercial movement the customs, ideas, and beliefs of
times anterior even to feudalism—a patriarchal type of
society, which had elsewhere been long obliterated—
existed in almost unimpaired strength; and, fostered by
many causes, they have continued more or less in force
down to the present day.

The chief of all the European streams is almost the
only one that does not mingle its waters, with those of
the other rivers of the earth, in the great circumfluent
ocean, pouring them instead into a salt lake of Inner
Asia. The Russian people also—the most powerful, in
numbers, at least, of the European nations—had their
faces long turned in the same direction as the current of
the Volga, and dwelt, first by reason of an evil destiny,
and afterwards from prejudice and ignorance, a race apart
from others, and taking little share in their interests
and aims.

At length, however, a giant in energy and intellect
arose in their midst—a man who had at once the
keenest vision for their defects and the most ab-
solute power over their persons and property. Peter
the Great seized the lagging Russian nation fiercely
and roughly by the throat, and dragged it from its
moping seclusion in the Volga forests into the full light
of modern civilization. Keeping a vice-like hold upon
it, he entered on one of the most stupendous "matches
against time" ever witnessed in the history of the world,
spurning it forward with savage blows and kicks, until
he had worn out in the struggle his own herculean
strength, but had launched his country on the track of
progress on which the nations of the west had already
embarked.

OLD AND NEW RUSSIA.

133

From that moment the political supremacy began to
leave the banks of the Volga; but Moscow long continued,
and still remains, in the most essential respects, the
centre of Russia's social and religious life, as of its com-
mercial and industrial activity. In the neighbourhood
of the great river is still to be found all that is most
characteristic of Russian nature and feelings, observances
and prejudices. "Old Russia"—the Russia of Czar Ivan
the Terrible, before Peter came with his "reforms" to
change the fixed and venerated features of the ancient
national life—may be discovered with little trouble
under a covering, sometimes a very thin covering, of
modern civilization. Moscow has been robbed of much
of its importance by its rival, but it is still the symbol
and the nucleus of the conservative Muscovy of the
past, which is not extinct, but only slowly yielding
to the influences of inevitable change. St. Petersburg
may be the capital of Russia, but Moscow is still the
most remarkable, the most typical, and the most interest-
ing of Russian cities.

CHAPTER VI.

MOSCOW.

HERE is little in the environment of Moscow
that announces to the traveller his approach
to a populous metropolis. No large and
busy towns cluster round the capital, acting
as its feeders, and threatening to be its rivals in trade.
There is little trace of the increased density of popula-
tion and cultivated land, the quickening of the current
of commerce, the intersecting roads, the chimney-stalks,
the forges, and the villas that are usually grouped about
a great seat of luxury and business. The old capital of
the Czars comes upon the traveller as a surprise. It
seems to have dropped down upon the empty waste out
of the clouds. Around it, and almost up to its very
walls, stretch the interminable plain and forest—the
woods more thinned, perhaps, and the scattered villages
larger and more closely set than usual, but the scene
differing in no material feature from the ordinary aspect
of solemn monotony and silent and empty vastness that
elsewhere characterize the Russian landscape.

Moscow is the geographical as well as the political
and intellectual centre of Great Russia. It is situated
on the Moskva, chiefly on the left or northern bank,

A PICTURE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY.

135

half way between the Oka and the parent stream of the Volga. Around it are grouped the old Russ principalities, which the ambition of the Grand Princes of Moscow added one by one to their dominions, until they had gathered in their hands a power capable of grappling with their old Asiatic conquerors, and of rivalling the kingdoms of Europe. Moscow grew at the cost of the surrounding cities, many of which were its elders in date by hundreds of years. It was the policy of its princes to focus here the power, the prestige, and the sanctity with which they surrounded their throne. The impetus and the importance which it obtained in these days have preserved to it, down to our own times, the long lead that it took of its rivals. Though it has been discrowned and almost deserted by its Czars, it is a city of six hundred thousand souls, a metropolis that in wealth and population exceeds nearly tenfold any other city of Great Russia.

The aspect of Moscow is not unworthy of the glorious memories and strange and terrible vicissitudes of its past, or of the important rôle it still plays in history. Built, like Rome, on seven hills, it does not yield, in the eyes of half of Europe at least, to that imperial city itself in the grandeur and sadness of its associations, or in the beauty and sacredness of its monumental remains. Venice does not present aspects more unique, bizarre, and magnificent to the lover of the picturesque. Paris has not witnessed more tragic scenes of unmuzzled human passion and high-strung heroism, of national glory and humiliation. Moscow is a picture of Russian history and the Russian character limned in timber and in stone. It is the true growth of the soil,

136

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW.

the highest development, so far, of the national genius;
for St. Petersburg—a mere European city, an imitation
of modern Paris—is no more to be compared with it in
historical interest and suggestive individuality of type
than it is in antiquity. The first glimpse of “Holy
Mother Moscow of the White Walls” surprises, delights,
and puzzles the visitor, however much he has familiar-
ized himself beforehand with the tale of its marvels and
its charms.

Looking down upon Moscow from the belfry of one of
its hundred towers, or from its flanking hills, we seem
to gaze on a scene that is half in the dreamland of
fable, and half founded on a solid base of gross earth—
on a city that has been the joint product of the labours
of Eastern afreets and unlettered rustics. Broad and
long, like the realms of the Great White Czar, the wilder-
ness of roofs stretches out below you, with wide blanks
here and there between the masses of building that
speak of space and loneliness in the midst of a teeming
population.

No order or plan can be traced in the arrange-
ment of the crooked streets and lanes, and of the
broad squares, crescents, and places; and no standard of
taste with which we are familiar has regulated the pro-
portion and the form of the buildings. Bewildering
contrasts of colour, fantastic combinations of all styles—
Asiatic and European, old and new, barbaric and civilized
—everywhere meet the eye. The sun blazes on the
gilded crosses, balls, vanes, and crescents, the silver-
tipped minarets, and the domes—green, azure, and ver-
milion, or spangled with stars—of four hundred Chris-
tian churches, many of which might easily be mistaken

MOSCOW CONTRASTS.

137

for Mohammedan mosques. Fortress, temple, and tri-
umphal arch; campanile, steeple, and cupola; grim palaces
of boyards of the old regime; gloomy convent walls;
Greek porticos of seminaries, theatres, and literary and
scientific institutions, and light and airy edifices for the
treatment of disease or the succour of the orphan or the
aged poor, are mingled together, as if with set purpose to
bring out the wonderful diversity between ancient and
modern canons of taste and modes of living. The green
painted metal roofs of the houses, the orchards of fruit-
trees, the avenues of lime, maple, and elm, the grassy
slopes and green lawns offer a grateful relief to the eye
that ranges over this city of palaces, hovels, and gardens.
Through the midst of the buildings flows the Moskva,
bearing barges loaded with farm produce or manu-
factured wares, crossed by handsome bridges, and over-
hung by the walls and towers and sloping banks of turf
and greenery of the famous Kremlin.

If we descend into the streets, and thread our way
through the busy, winding thoroughfares, the impression
made by the general view of the city is deepened rather
than removed. The contrasts of types and ideas is
visible in the people as well as in the houses, though it
is true that the progress of "modern improvement" is
every day stealing from Moscow some feature that
marked its half Oriental individuality. Riches and
poverty live "cheek by jowl." The cottage of the
humble citizen is next door to the spacious mansion of
the noble. The lowly wooden booth of the small trader
stands between the glaring front of the Orthodox church,
surmounted by its towering belfry, and the imposing
residence of some great city merchant. The endeavour to

138

THE KITAI-GOROD.

discern plan and symmetry in the direction and connection of the streets is more difficult even than when viewed from above. You may roam by the half-hour through crooked lanes and humble thoroughfares, that look as if they had been removed bodily from some small and decaying country town, and suddenly emerge on a broad avenue or handsome boulevard, thronged with a well-dressed crowd, and lined with fashionable shops that would be an ornament to any capital in Europe.

The city has been rebuilt since the great "burning" of 1812. The materials are new, but the old lines have been followed and the old types generally perpetuated; a proof of the strong conservatism that is so striking a feature in the character of the people of Moscow. But though at first sight there is no more sign of method in the arrangement of its streets than is shown in the threads of a spider's web, a closer examination reveals, if not a plan, at least indications of a process of growth.

Like a tree, it shows its age by the concentric rings that surround its core—the Kremlin. Close under the eastern walls of the citadel is grouped the Kitai-gorod, the "Chinese City," as some translate it, while others derive the name from that of the natal town of the mother of Ivan the Terrible, in Podolia. This is the mart and place of business of Moscow, and is filled with shops, warehouses, stores, and offices, besides containing the Great Bazaar, where the riches of Asia are exchanged for the products of Western countries. Forming an envelope around the Palace of the ancient Czars and the Kitai-gorod, but not crossing to the right bank of the river, is the Bielo-gorod, or "White City," the part of the town chiefly affected by the older families of Moscow,

THE "WHITE CITY" AND "EARTHEN CITY."

139

and where are situated many of the modern public buildings, such as the Town Hall, the University, the Mint, and the great Riding-school, where, under a roof five hundred and sixty feet in length by one hundred and fifty-eight feet in breadth, unsupported by pillar or prop of any kind, the troops of the Emperor may be exercised and reviewed during rain or deep snow. Beyond the "White City" is an inner line of boulevards, marking the old city boundary; and an outer line, surrounding the Kremlin at a distance of a mile and a half from that centre, encloses the Zemlianoi-gorod, or "Earthen City," so called from the earthen bulwarks with which it was defended. In this part of the city are many of the more fashionable streets and squares, and also many of the most squalid and poverty-stricken localities. Outside of all these, but within the modern line of fortifications, which are no less than twenty-five miles in circuit, are the "suburbs," where there are still great unbuilt-on spaces, occupied by gardens, parade-grounds, parks, and ponds.

If Moscow is the crown of Russia, then the Kremlin is the crown of Moscow. What scenes it has witnessed since the site of the "Church of the Redeemer in the Wood"—the most central of the group of palaces and cathedrals—was part of the primeval forest! What torrents of blood have flowed here since Prince George Dolguruky, coveting the land, slew the owner, and stuck his spear in the grassy bluff above the Moskva in sign of possession! Here the political power that had fled from Kiev, and had found temporary refuge first at Suzdal and then at Vladimir, was at length established in a suitable stronghold, where it could maintain itself and grow in strength for many centuries. Here the

140

THE KREMLIN.

kindred plants of autocratic and sacerdotal authority
throve and twined themselves together, sending their
united roots deep down into the natures of a super-
stitious and conservative people; and a Tartarized court
and a priesthood saturated with Byzantine ideas became
the moulders of the destinies of one of the most power-
ful races in Europe.

The walls of the Kremlin are two miles in circuit,
and the space enclosed within them is triangular in
shape, and bounded on its three sides by the Moskva,
the Bielo-gorod, and the Kitai-gorod. Seen from the
river, or from any point of vantage within the city or
in its outskirts, the high, white, crenellated walls, the tall
and massive palace fronts, the clustering domes and
spires of the cathedrals, monasteries, nunneries, arsenals,
treasuries, senate-houses, and patriarchal residences that
are crowded together on this spot, make a brave and
majestic show.

From the "White City" the Kremlin is separated
by tastefully laid out shrubberies and walks, and
from the Kitai-gorod by the wide space of the "Red
Place." It is here that the principal entrances to
the citadel are found, most notable of all being the
"Holy Gate" of Our Saviour of Smolensk, over which is
the miracle-working image to which all that enter, from
the humblest peasant to the highest in the land—the
Czar himself—must do obeisance. Other celebrated
portals are those of St. Nicolas of Mojiask, before which
oaths were taken in former times; and the Gate of the
Trinity, built, like the tower over the Saviour Gate, by
a Scotchman named Galloway, in the pay of the Czar
Michael Romanoff.

INVADERS AT THE GATES.

141

Strange tales these walls might tell, if they could speak, of the scenes they witnessed while Russian history was being written in blood and flame at their feet. A score of times the invader battered at these gates; and often he gained an entrance, but always to retire at last worsted by the patience and devotion of the faithful Moscovites. In 1233 and 1293 the city was sacked by the Golden Horde; three times towards the close of the fourteenth century it was assailed by Olgerd and the Lithuanians; in 1381 it was captured and laid waste by Tokhtamish, the lieutenant of Tamerlane; in 1571, Devlet Ghirei, Khan of Crim Tartary, seized and burned it nearly to the ground; in the "Time of Troubles" that followed the extinction of Ivan the Terrible's family it was held alternately by Zaporogian and Don Cossacks, Tartars, and Poles; and between 1682 and 1698 it witnessed the sanguinary insurrections and massacres of the "Streltsi," or national guards.

Often the guardians of the Kremlin gates watched armed men fighting in every street, or the whole city wrapped in flames that licked the topmost pinnacle of its towers, melted the lead from the roofs of the most sacred churches, and brought the consecrated bells and blazing rafters crashing to the pavement. In the conflagration that followed the incursion of the Nogai Tartars, no fewer than one hundred thousand of the citizens are said to have lost their lives. Terrible pestilences have visited Moscow in the train of fire, war, and civil commotion; and during a visit of the plague last century thousands of the people knelt day and night in the Red Place before the holy image on the

142

CALAMITY AND TRIUMPH.

principal gate, praying in agony that the pest might be
removed from their homes.

Scenes of triumph and peace as well as of horror have
been enacted here. The vetché bell of Novgorod and the
insignia of the Grand Princes of Kiev have been con-
veyed hither, as was, at a much later date, the throne
of the Polish kings. Solemn counsel and rude wassail
were held within by the old Grand Princes amid their
boyards and okolnitches; and through the gateway of
the Kremlin, Sophia Palæologus, daughter of the Emper-
ror of the East, entered to become the wife of Ivan the
Great, bringing with her foreign tastes for arts and
refinement, artists, architects, and musicians, and the
germs of a renaissance in Russia such as had already
been transplanted from the East to Italy and France.
Ivan the Terrible bore through it the spoils of the con-
quered khanates of the Volga, and, with the aid of his
Italian artificers, erected in front of the Holy Gate the
famous Church of St. Basil the Blessed, in memory of
the overthrow of Kazan.

The triumphs of Peter the Great and Catherine II.
have been celebrated here; but the supreme crisis of
Moscow's fate, the saddest and most glorious hour in her
eventful history, was when the "grand army" under Na-
poleon, cresting the "Sparrow Hills" to the west of the
city, came in sight of its leagues of glittering spires, and
filed in through the Nicolas Gate into the citadel of the
Czars. It is a poor heart that can read without a thrill
of conflicting sympathy and pity the story of how, in
October 1812, the citizens of Moscow set fire with their
own hands to their holy and beautiful city, the pride
of many generations, thus offering, as has been said, the

THE BELLS OF MOSCOW.

143

grandest sacrifice ever laid on the altar of patriotism;
and how the discomfited invaders, after blowing up
part of the buildings of the Kremlin, were compelled to
abandon the prize that had brought them so far only to
turn to ashes in their grasp, and begin that terrible
retreat in the dead of winter which so few of them
were to survive.

The central shape that lifts itself above the group on
the Kremlin is the Tower of Ivan Veliki—"John the
Great"—built, however, not by that aggressive prince,
but by the Czar Boris Godunoff, the chosen of the boyards
when the line of Ruric failed. Boris has left many
monuments; for though termed a "usurper," and though
he fastened the yoke of serfage on the necks of the
people, he was a great patron of art. None of his
works, however, is so imposing as this. The tower,
measured to the top of the cross, is three hundred and
twenty-five feet in height, and from the uppermost of
its five stories a magnificent view is obtained of the city.

A great chime of bells, the largest weighing sixty-four
tons, is suspended in the tower; and when at midnight
on Easter-eve these monsters "give tongue," mingling
their deep voices with the fainter sounds of the innu-
merable other bells of Moscow and with the deafening
roar of the batteries of artillery, and when all the popu-
lation of the city seem gathered in the "Great Place"
below, bearing lighted tapers in their hands, it needs an
effort on the part of the spectator to realize that he is
actually living in the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and that the people around him are not, as Mr.
Wallace almost fancied them to be, a gathering of the
ancient citizens "called out to repel a Tartar horde

144

THE CHURCHES OF THE KREMLIN.

thundering at their gates.” The Russian people have a passion for bells, but the most unwieldy product of this national taste is the “Czar Kolokol”—the Czar of Bells —whose damaged form rests on a pedestal of stone at the foot of the Tower of Ivan Veliki. It is said to have been tolled at the birth of Peter the Great; but for nearly two hundred years past it has rested on the ground, with a piece weighing eleven tons broken out of its side. The total weight of the bell is no less than four hundred and forty-four thousand pounds—about two hundred tons—and its height is upwards of nineteen feet.

To the west of Ivan Veliki, and between it and the ancient Palace of the Czars, are the most famous of the ecclesiastical buildings in the Kremlin enclosure,—the Cathedral of the Assumption, where the Emperors of Russia are crowned, and where are the tombs of the sainted metropolitans of Moscow; the Cathedral of Michael the Archangel, where are the last resting-places of the line of Czars down to Peter the Great; the Cathedral of the Annunciation, with its floor paved with agates and other precious stones, and in which the former rulers of Russia were baptized and married; the Church of the Redeemer, the first Christian church in Moscow, and where repose the ashes of Stephen of Perm, the earliest Russian martyr; and the Sacristy, or Meeting-place of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church, an immense building, wherein are preserved, amid other curiosities and treasures, the robes, ornaments, and relics of the old patriarchs, and the “sacred oil,” transmitted from Constantinople by the first Christian missionaries, with which the Emperors are anointed.

THE CZAR ON THE "RED STAIRCASE."

145

It is on the occasion of this ceremony of coronation
that Moscow regains for a little time the semblance of
its old self. At other times, the halls of the ancient
and modern palaces on the Kremlin are silent, except to
the tread of the sentinel or the sight-seer. For weeks
and months beforehand the city has been on the tiptoe
of expectation, and the loyal ardour of the people has
been at fever heat. Civil and military officials, deputies,
ecclesiastics, troops, visitors from every part of the
empire, have gathered thither to witness or take part in
the fêtes and religious exercises that are conducted with
the utmost splendour and solemnity, and with a punctil-
ious regard to the minutest detail of the old established
forms.

First, the uncrowned Czar comes to take up his
quarters at the Petrovsky Palace, a large Gothic struc-
ture outside the city, in the direction of St. Petersburg.
After three days comes the entry in state into Moscow.
The city dignitaries meet their Emperor at the Tverskaia
Gate; the military authorities of the Kremlin receive
him at the Holy Portal, where he doffs his hat reverently
to the sacred figure that guards it; the senate await
him in front of the Cathedral of the Assumption, and
the members of the Holy Synod, with the Metropolitan,
salute him within the porch. He makes the round of
the tombs of the old Czars in the Church of the Arch-
angel; and then, ascending the steps of the Red Stair-
case leading to the palace of his ancestors, he turns
round upon the terrace at the top to show the people
"the light of his eyes." It was down these steps that
the "false Dimitri," Gregory Otrepief, a monk of the
Miracle Monastery at the Holy Gate, who simulated the

(718)

10

146

THE IMPERIAL PALACE.

murdered son of Ivan the Terrible, after being lifted
into the throne by the wave of popular favour, was
flung by the boyards, and stabbed to death in the court
below. The insurgent Streltsi, in the troublous early
years of Peter the Great, entered the palace by this
way, and cut to pieces the great minister Matvief, and
other relatives and friends of the young Czar, before the
eyes of his mother; and by the Red Staircase also
Napoleon and his generals formally entered the imperial
residence. Within is the Gold Court, where was an-
ciently the audience chamber of the Czars, and where
many a turbulent and bloody scene has been enacted, as
when Ivan the Terrible transfixed with his iron staff the
foot of the messenger sent to him by his old general
Kurbski, after the latter had taken refuge with the
Poles.

Such reminiscences as these, however, are out of
place on an occasion like the coronation of the Emperor
of All the Russias; and we pass with the stately proces-
sion to the portion of the palace facing the Moskva,
and which, like the Gold Court, and the great halls of
the orders of St. Andrew and St. Alexander Nevski,
and the picture gallery connected with them, has been
renovated or entirely rebuilt by the Emperors Paul and
Nicolas.

In the Great Palace fronting the river—a stately
and lofty structure, in the composition of which a
great many diverse styles are oddly mingled—the Em-
peror resides while the indispensable preliminaries to
the coronation—the military reviews, the proclamations
in the Red Place, and at market and city gates, the vigils
and fasts at the holy shrines of the patriarchs—are duly

OLD "TEREM" LIFE.

147

gone through, and the regalia of Russia—the orb, the sceptre, the imperial robes of purple, and the great and little crowns—are removed in state by the grandees of the realm from the Palace of Facets. This last is the only portion of the old pile that has survived the ravages of fire and time. Below are the banqueting hall and the throne, and the upper chambers formed the “Terem,” where the females of the imperial family were formerly immured.

In these darkling vaulted rooms did many generations of Czarinas and elderly spinsters of the blood-royal pass their days in more than Oriental seclusion. In the imperial family the old Russian ideal of woman's domestic virtues and position—an ideal derived not from the Mohammedan conquerors, but from Byzantine sources —could be carried out to the letter. Down to the days of Peter, it was treason even for high officers of state to see the wife or the daughters of the Czar. If a medical man were called in to prescribe for one of the ladies, the windows were darkened, and he had to feel the pulse of his patient through a covering of gauze. No subject was thought good enough to espouse a daughter of the Lord of Muscovy, and ignorance and prejudice were still barriers strong enough to keep out all foreign suitors. So these high-born princesses pined and soured and shrivelled in loneliness; filling up the hours by religious exercises, and such small intrigues and jealousies as will naturally arise among a score or so of women of any rank who are cooped up together with nothing better to do; and scandal said that they occasionally solaced themselves with vodka, and even found means, in spite of the guards set over them, of receiving visits from their lovers.

148

CHOOSING A CZARINA.

It was Peter's mother — Natalie Naryskin, wife of the Czar Alexis—who first, to the horror of the sticklers for old customs, drew aside the corner of her carriage curtains when she appeared in public; and it was Peter himself who opened the prison doors to these forlorn captives and let in the light of day upon the Terem, savagely shaving the head, knouting, banishing to a nunnery, and finally divorcing his wife Eudoxia because she clung stubbornly to the conservative notions of the imperial family life. The Grand Dukes and Czars had a singular and thoroughly Eastern method of choosing a mistress of the Terem, and when it was thought right that the "father" of the people should marry, the pick of the maidens in the empire were sent to Moscow, and from among these, after preparation such as Esther had to undergo before being admitted into the presence of Ahasuerus, and careful comparison, the royal choice was made. Peter, though he chose as his second mate the Livonian peasant girl who was crowned in the Kremlin as Catherine I., definitely laid aside this archaic practice—which was surely more honoured in the breach than in the observance—and the Empresses of Russia have since been chosen from the princely and royal families of Germany.

This reminds us, however, that their imperial highnesses are waiting in the Palace of Paul I. for the coronation ceremony. Moving in grand procession, accompanied by the insignia of state, and with the eyes of all Moscow fixed upon them, the actors in this imposing pageant descend again the Red Staircase and enter the Cathedral of the Assumption. The Emperor and Empress walk under a canopy supported by thirty-two general officers.

THE CHURCH OF THE ASSUMPTION.

149

The "royal doors" are passed, and the High Priest and King of Holy Russia is within the most sacred of Moscow's fanes. For once the Church of the Assumption has thrown off its air of shadowy mystery and gloom, and the pictures, images, and icons of patriarch, saint, and evangelist gleam in the light of a thousand tapers. Small as this building is in size and grotesque in decoration and arrangements, it is perhaps the most interesting church in Russia, and is the central spot round which Russian religious feeling revolves. "So fraught is it with recollections," says Dean Stanley, "so teeming with worshippers, so bursting with tombs and pictures from the pavement to the cupola, that its smallness of space is forgotten in the fulness of its contents."
And M. Rambaud, describing its normal appearance, says: "One can hardly believe that the Assumption is of the same date as the luminous churches of the renaissance. The architect"—the Italian Fioraventi—"or those who inspired him, has here tried to reproduce the mysterious obscurity of the old temples of Egypt and the East. The cathedral has no windows, but only close-barred shot-holes, which admit into the interior a doubtful light, like that which filters through the hole of a dungeon. This pale glow touches the massive pillars covered with a tawny gold; on the tarnished background stand out, severe and grave, the faces of the saints and doctors; it dwells here and there on the relief of the golden iconostase (altar-screen), covered by miraculous images, sprinkled with diamonds and jewels; it hardly lights the representation of the 'Last Judgment' and the 'End of the World' painted on the walls. All the upper part of the temple is partly enveloped in

150

A SELF-CROWNED AUTOCRAT.

shadow, like the crypts of the Pharaohs; the pictures
which cover the vault can hardly be distinguished. The
artist has evidently made them for the eye of God, not
for that of man."

In the centre of the nave, facing the high altar, a
platform is placed, on which are set the two thrones
of Ivan the Great and Michael Romanoff, and on
these the Emperor and Empress solemnly take their
seats. Then his majesty, having made his public "con-
fession of faith," invests himself with the robe of purple
and other symbols of royalty, and, as the sole fountain
of power and authority in the realm, places the crown
upon his own head. At the same moment the great
bell in the Tower of Ivan Veliki rolls out his ponderous
notes, which are responded to by the four hundred lesser
chimes of Moscow, the roar of the cannon, the cheering
of the populace, and chanting of the cathedral choir, all
announcing, by a deafening and impressive volume of
sound, that the Autocrat of the Russias, King of Poland
and Grand Duke of Finland, has formally assumed to
himself the duties of the lord and father of his people.
At the foot of the altar the Emperor is anointed with
the "holy oil," and the procession having returned to
the palace, the solemn ceremonies of the day end with
the coronation banquet in the great banqueting hall,
where the Czar sits enthroned, apart, clad in his imperial
robes and adorned with sceptre and orb, while his nobles
feast around him.

Behind the central masses of buildings—the palaces,
cathedrals, senate houses, and courts of law—and stretch-
ing along the side of the enclosure adjoining the Bielo-
gorod, are the Treasury and Arsenal of the Kremlin. The

THE TREASURY AND SACRISTY.

151

former is a vast museum of the treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones, and the objects of historical and antiquarian interest, gathered here by the monarchs of Russia from time immemorial. Nowhere, perhaps, can such a collection of "barbaric pearl and gold" be seen. Thrones, crowns, and coronation robes, crusted with rubies, diamonds, and sapphires; drinking-cups, caskets, candelabra, ewers, and flagons of massive silver; jewellers' and goldsmiths' work of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, military standards and trophies of war, old armour and weapons; horse-trappings and antique carriages; relics of dead Czars and Czarinas, and mementoes of glorious or disastrous events of Russian history, are arranged in a long suite of apartments, through which the visitor might roam for days and still find that he had barely seen the moiety of the rich and curious objects they contain. Some of these one would have fancied the head of the state would have preferred to have hidden from public sight as too suggestive of the dark stains of Russian dynastic history and the evanescence of royal splendours—such, for instance, as the murderous "staff" of Ivan the Terrible, and the boots with which Peter the Great kicked many a refractory noble.

In the Sacristy is a similar collection of ecclesiastical relics of great antiquity and rarity, comprising mitres, rosaries, mantyases, omophorions, sakkos, and other episcopal vestments, crosses, reliquaries, panagias, images, icons, church plate, croziers, and the rest of the sacerdotal paraphernalia, many of them of great value and elaborate workmanship, the gifts of pious Czars, boyards, or commoners to the Church or its dead patriarchs and bishops.

152

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. BASIL.

The most notable object in the neighbourhood of the Arsenal is the Tzar-Pushka — the monster or “Czar” cannon—cast in the reign of Feodore, brother and predecessor of Peter the Great, and which weighs nearly forty tons. Along the walls are arranged the ordnance captured by the Russians in war, many of them pieces taken from the French during the retreat from Moscow.

But we have already lingered too long within the enclosure of the Kremlin, though we have only peeped into the interior of one or two of its thirty churches, and barely glanced at the associations, sad and terrible, glorious and revolting, with which its palaces are thronged. It is time to pass out again from the deserted halls of the Czars into the din of the city; and emerging into the Red Place, an object strikes the eye that is fitted to dazzle and stun the most phlegmatic of sightseers.

The Cathedral of Vassili Blajennoi (“St. Basil the Beatified”) lifts up its whimsical shape and flaunts its gorgeous plumage almost in front of the Holy Gate. Travellers, historians, and archæologists have cudgelled their brains to find something wherewith to liken this amazing edifice. Théophile Gautier describes it as a church surmounted by six or eight round cupolas, all of different heights and forms, “some beaten into facets, others cut; these carved into diamond points, like the ananas, those in spirals; others again, marked with scales, lozenge-shaped, or celled like a honeycomb.” From its topmost turret to the pavement, Vassili Blajennoi is daubed with glaring and crude colours; in plan and decoration it is more like the insane dream of the architect of the peacock throne of Ava than a sober Christian sanctuary. Rambaud figures it as “the most

THE MONUMENTS IN THE RED PLACE.

153

brilliant bird of tropical forests that had suddenly taken
the shape of a cathedral;" and Haxthausen compares it
to "an immense dragon with shining scales, crouching
and sleeping."

The architect was an Italian artist, well acquainted
with the grand, grave, and simple church edifices of
his own land; but we seem to see more here of the
distorted and fanatical character of its founder, Ivan
the Terrible, and of the crude and barbarous tastes
of Tartarized Russia, than of any foreign genius. It
was built in commemoration of the conquest of Kazan,
above the bones of an idiot saint and miracle-worker,
whose shrine is shown within; and so pleased was Ivan
with the work that, as tradition says, he rewarded the
architect by putting out his eyes, "in order that he
might never build another like it."

Another noticeable object in the Red Place is the "Lobnoe Mesto," or tribune of stone, supposed to have originally been a place of execution, and from whence the Czars harangued the people, and the Metropolitans blessed the Muscovite armies ere they marched out to war. In front of it took place a scene of blood, in which a Czar—Peter the Great—wielded the axe of the headsman,—the wholesale execution of the Streltsi, that put a final end to that body and their dangerous uprisings and intrigues. Finally, in the Red Place, and facing the Kremlin wall, is the national monument to the boyard Pojarsky and the peasant—butcher Minin, whose patriotism saved Russia in the terrible "time of troubles" that followed the extinction of the old line of Czars, the appearances of the "false Dimitris," and the invasion of the Poles, and led the way to the establishment of a new royal race in

154

SIGHTS OF MOSCOW.

the person of the child Michael Romanoff, the descendant
of a family of Prussian immigrants. The old Romanoff
House, where Anastasia, wife of Ivan the Terrible, was
nurtured, where her nephew, the Patriarch Philarete,
lived, and his son, the Czar Michael, was born, is shown
in one of the neighbouring streets in the Kitai-gorod;
and the curious may still see there the arrangements and
furnishings of an ancient boyard household.

The other sights of Moscow we must pass over quickly,
though many of them are of great interest:—for instance,
the chapel dedicated to the Iberian Mother of God, the
miraculous picture in which is to this day carried period-
ically through the city to heal the sick and bring bless-
ings; the Church of Our Lady of Georgia, erected in
commemoration of the first Russian annexations beyond
the Caucasus; the Temple of Our Saviour, an immense
structure near the stone bridge over the Moskva, begun
in 1812, to celebrate the repulse of the French, and never
likely to be finished, as it has been found that its foun-
dations have been laid on a bog; the Suwaroff Tower,
erected by Peter the Great, and often the scene of his orgies
with his foreign favourites, and now used as a reservoir
of the city water supply; the Red Gate, a grand trium-
phal arch erected by Peter on his return from the Azov
expedition, by which Russian territory was first made to
touch the basin of the Black Sea; the Empress's Palace
on the Smolensk road; the University, the Public Library,
and museums, etc. Neither must we forget that pecu-
liarly Muscovite institution, the Foundling Hospital,
where every year twelve thousand infants who have
been abandoned by their mothers are admitted and
nurtured at an annual cost to the state of some £20,000.

HISTORIC MONASTERIES.

155

Many monastic institutions are scattered round the suburbs of the city, and in former times they often served it as outer fortifications against the inroads of Tartar and Pole. Celebrated among these is the Sunonoff Monastery, founded five centuries ago by the famous St. Sergius of Troitsa, who here blessed Prince Dimitri before he set out to overthrow the Golden Horde on the banks of the Don. From the top of the belfry (three hundred and thirty feet high) of this monastery, which stands on the most elevated site near Moscow, a magnificent sight can be had of the city and its surroundings. In the Novo Deviche Monastery, close to the Moskva, Boris Godunoff took refuge in the "troubles," and was hence called by the boyards to reign for a time over Russia; and it was here that the Regent-Princess Sophia was compelled to retire when her strong-willed brother Peter was old enough to seize the power from her ambitious hands.

But better worth study than any of the ancient monuments or modern sights of Moscow are the citizens of the old capital. They entertain many strangers. Visitors come from enormous distances and settle down in their midst; and few places present such opportunities of studying the costume, physiognomy, and manners of Asian and European races as the Great Bazaar at Moscow. The Tartar element in the population is considerable; and there is a strong body of German artisans and merchants, with a sprinkling of many other nationalities. But the people of each race dwell as a rule apart, and form little coteries among themselves.

The true Moscovite does not care to mingle with them except in the places of trade. He is proud and not a little

156

THE CITIZENS OF MOSCOW.

jealous of the honour of being a citizen of Holy Moscow
and a subject of the White Czar; and he does not consider
that any stranger or pilgrim that is within the city's
gates is worthy of that high distinction. Even the mer-
chant prince of Moscow is ultra-national in political
sentiment, and ultra-orthodox in religion. You find
him, perhaps, polished and courtly in manner; shrewd,
well-informed, and intelligent in business; a charming
and entertaining companion, well read not only in
Russian books but in the literature of other countries;
and a lover of hospitality, which he dispenses with over-
powering lavishness. He has a pronounced taste for
good cheer, music, and jollity; probably also for art and
science; and seems to be a man who away from business
heartily enjoys existence without taking too grave and
deep a view of its duties and burdens.

On a surface view, you might easily mistake him, apart
from the clumsy and archaic cut of his winter raiment
and the amplitude of his beard, for a favourable specimen
of his class as it is found in Western countries. You little
suspect how thin often is the crust of modern fashion,
and how deep the abyss of obsolete ideas and beliefs that
is yawning beneath. He has secretly armed himself
with a triple mail of prejudices—prejudices of race, of
nationality, and of religion—before trusting himself into
the paths of progress; and guarded by this ancient
armour he is safe from any influence that might harm
the Russian spirit within. A little friction is enough
frequently to reveal most unexpected forms of medieval
enthusiasm and fanaticism; and you are puzzled to tell
whether the cultured gentleman who can discuss with
you the merits of Wagner's music, or the theories of

THE HEART OF RUSSIA.

157

Darwin, is not, after all, a "survival" of the Middle Ages. To the typical Moscovite the Emperor is still the "divine figure," ruling, by an unquestionable right that it would be sacrilege to deny or oppose. With the same blind fervour he cherishes the national faith, and patriotism and religion have become so bound together in his belief that they are inseparable. It is his boast that the great "heart" of Russia throbs within the walls of his ancient city, and that all truly national movements have their beginning there. As the latest and not least important instance, the agitation that preceded the Russo-Turkish War had its first and most significant displays in Moscow.

If the Moscovite has obsolete faults, it must also be admitted that he has some obsolete virtues. Of hospitality, as has been said, he is a royal dispenser. Within his means nothing is too good to be set before his guest; and there is an old-fashioned heartiness and earnestness in his welcome which is rarely met with in these days, when travelling is universal and hotels ubiquitous. When you can penetrate to his heart of hearts, too, the citizen of Moscow is said to prove a stanch friend, who sticks to you through good and evil report and all vicissitudes of fortune.

But changes are at work even in the ancient capital of the Czars. The ferment of new ideas has worked into the very centre of old Muscovy. Russia is full of vague aspirations and hopes, half-formed and impracticable theories of social and political perfection, and of the restless, excited, uneasy feeling that precedes the time when "the old order changes, giving place to new." The bonds of the loyalty to the Czar, and to the creed introduced by Cyril and Methodius, seem to be partially

CHAPTER VII.

HISTORIC SITES IN GREAT RUSSIA.

N the neighbourhood of Moscow are many interesting historical sites and pretty bits of scenery—pretty at least for Russia, which is not too richly endowed with the beautiful in landscape. Along the banks of the Moskva especially, both above and below the city, there are numerous pleasing views of wood and water, cultivated land and handsome country seats; and the fleets of barges, boats, and rafts that ply on the stream add animation to the scene without detracting from its pictorial effect. But the two spots in the vicinity of the city that are, perhaps, best worth a visit are associated, not with the industrial enterprise of the old capital, but with the ecclesiastical and religious life of the country, which in every age of Russian history has been intimately mixed up with all the important affairs of state, and with the daily existence of the humblest peasant. One of these is the Voskresenski, or Resurrection Monastery, better known as the "New Jerusalem," situated about twenty-five miles from Moscow, on the main route to St. Petersburg.

Its founder, the famous Nicon, Patriarch of Moscow, sleeps here, after a busy and stormy life, which had,

160

THE "NEW JERUSALEM."

perhaps, more influence on the development of the
Russo-Greek Church than had that of any of her other
children. In the midst of the patriarch's labours for the
reform of the ritual and correction of the canonical
and liturgical books of the Church, and of his struggles
to retain that predominating political power which the
patriarchs had obtained under the first Romanoffs, Nicon
found time to build on the Istra, a little tributary of
the Moskva, a model or exact counterpart of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, copying not merely
its shape and dimensions, but the smallest details of its
construction and ornamentation, so far as they could be
ascertained in his day, and working at the building with
his own hands like a common mason. The Istra was
rebaptized the Jordan, and a tributary brook the Kedron;
a village in the vicinity was named Nazareth; and a
chapel marking the spot where the Czar Alexis I. stood
at the consecration of the church in 1657, Eleon.

Nicon pushed his pretensions to temporal power too far, and was disgraced and banished to a monastery on the White Lake, in a remote corner of the province of Novgorod. Later he was pardoned, but died before he could resume his schemes of aggrandizement and reform; and his tomb is now shown in the Chapel of Melchizedek, at the foot of "Golgotha," in the monastery which he raised. His reforming zeal also was too ardent, in the view of many of the Russians of his day, lay and cleric. The changes that he introduced in the ancient usages of the Church—especially in "crossing" with three fingers instead of two, the reading of Iēsous (Jesus) with two syllables in place of three, the repetition of the Hallelujah thrice instead of twice in the service, and the

RUSSIAN SCHISMATICS.

161

substitution of a cross with two transverse beams where formerly there were three—produced deep and terrible schisms in the Russian Church, which are still unhealed.

These schismatics (*raskolniks*) are not to be con- founded with the heretical sects that have also arisen in the bosom of Greek Orthodoxy. Their contention is that they are more orthodox than the Orthodox Church, and alone preserve pure and undefiled from modern cor- ruptions the ancient faith of their fathers. With these Old Believers (*Starovertsi*) the shaving of the beard is still regarded as a mortal sin, and the Czar himself, as following in the footsteps of that arch-fiend and reformer Peter the Great, is looked upon as little better than Antichrist. An extreme type of the *Starovertsi*—real Old Seceders—are the “Priestless People,” the *Bezpo- poftschins*, who despise the concession made by their less stanch brethren in accepting priests ordained by established bishops.

The cruelties and persecutions to which the reforming zeal of Alexis and Peter subjected these unhappy schismatics only made them more fanatical and extreme in their resistance. Torture, fine, and imprisonment were imposed as a penalty for wearing a beard; and the leaders of Russian nonconformity were hunted down, knouted, or burned alive. Under these circumstances, the *raskolniks* fled with their faithful prophets and priests to the woods and solitudes, and there founded new communities and spread abroad the Russian race. Villages of them we will meet with in the depths of the forests of the Dwina and Petchora and by the shores of the Arctic Sea, on the southern steppes, in obscure nooks of the Urals, or in remote corners of Siberia. More extreme

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162

THE TROITSA MONASTERY.

varieties there are of Russian schism and heresy—Philip-
ists, Fugitives, Wrestlers with the Spirit, Milk-Drinkers,
Scoptsi, and the like—whose eccentricities of practice and
belief would take more time to describe than we can spare.

Still more noteworthy than the New Jerusalem Mon-
astery is that of Troitsa, the shrine of the holy St.
Sergius, the altar on which was kindled the first flame
of Russian patriotism in the dark days of Mongol
domination; the bulwark of the nation against usurping
pretenders and Polish and Tartar invaders; the refuge of
the young Czars Peter and John, when the turbulent
Streltsi of Moscow, like the Prætorian bands of Rome,
threatened to take the fate of the empire into their
keeping; and the quiet retreat where Dionysius, Politzin,
Platon, and other learned and pious men, studied and
laboured, laying the foundations of a national literature
and culture.

The “Trinity” Monastery, or, to give it the full
title, the “Crown of Saint Sergius, under the Invo-
cation of the Holy Trinity,” is situated about forty
miles from Moscow—a mere stone-throw in Russia—
near the line of railway leading north-eastward to
Jaroslav on the Volga. It is ranked next in sanctity
after the Petschersk Monastery at Kiev, which it far
exceeds in richness and historical importance: in these
respects, indeed, it has few rivals even beyond the bounds
of Russia. Many other monastic establishments, how-
ever, are its seniors in age; for it was only in 1337 that
the pious Sergius, removing with a few disciples from
the abodes of men, built for himself here, in the heart of
the forest, near a little stream flowing into the Kliasma,
a cell and a small church of wood: and devotees, hearing

ST. SERGIUS AND HIS SHRINE.

163

of his sanctity, the miraculous cures he wrought, and the beatific visions of the Virgin and holy apostles that were granted to him, began to gather round the lowly hermitage.

A spectacle far different is Troitsa at the present day. It stands on a high situation, overlooking its domain of plain and forest and populous villages for many miles. Walls varying from twenty to fifty feet in height, and three-quarters of a mile in circuit, protected by fosses and flanked by massive and handsome Gothic towers, surround it. Within the convent enclosure are ten churches, with numerous chapels and refectories, an imperial and an archiepiscopal palace, hospital, libraries, a seminary for students, handsome ranges of apartments for the archimandrite, rectors, prefects, and other monastic functionaries, with extensive storehouses, kitchens, and other offices, all solidly built of hewn stone.

The most celebrated church is the Cathedral of the Trinity, within which is the shrine of St. Sergius, weighing nearly one thousand pounds in pure silver. Massive images and ornaments of silver and of gold, adorned with precious stones, surround the shrine, or are grouped in other parts of the church. Here Dimitri Donskoi was blessed and consecrated for the "holy war" against the Tartars; and the convent sent forth along with him two redoubtable champions from among its alumni, who contributed much to the oft-mentioned victory of the Don. Ivan the Terrible, who has left so many grim and fantastic impressions of his sign manual on the page of Russian history, was baptized in the Trinity Church, and often returned hither with gifts and honours in his hands; for he was a religious fanatic

164

THE TREASURES OF TROITSA.

as well as a man of "blood and iron," and in all his campaigns, even when under the ban of the Church for his crimes, he carried about with him a small chapel consecrated to St. Sergius. The "soul" of Russia may be said to have transported itself to Troitsa when the Poles occupied Moscow. The monastery was besieged for four months, but it was gallantly defended; and then, as on all subsequent occasions, it proved impregnable to a foreign foe. It was through the invocations and reproaches of Dionysius and Politzin that the Russian lords and commons, under Pojarsky and Minin, were stirred up to cast out the invader and choose for themselves a new national head. Under the high altar the young Peter the Great lay hidden when the insurgent Streltsi attacked the place.

The Church of the Assumption, within which are the tombs of the Czar Boris Godunoff, and of Dionysius, the precursor of the Patriarch Nicon in the Russian Church reformation, is also an immense and interesting building; and in its great belfry, rising to a height of nearly three hundred feet, are hung probably the largest chime of bells in the world. The most ponderous of the bells weighs nearly sixty-five tons, and one of the others is nearly half that weight.

The treasures of Troitsa in jewels, plate, sacred relics, church robes and paraphernalia, paintings, sculptures, and ancient books and manuscripts, are scarcely less rich and varied than those of the Kremlin itself, and many of them are the gifts of emperors, empresses, and great nobles. The monastery is said to possess two bushels of pearls, to which Mr. Lansdell would add "an estimated pint of diamonds, to say

THE CITIES OF THE KLIASMA.

165

nothing of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires innumerable.”
In palmier days than the present, ere the Empress Catherine II. curtailed its revenues, the monastery had no fewer than one hundred and six thousand serfs attached to it, and its territorial possessions were of prodigious extent. Even yet it is a wealthy and powerful institution; and its rich revenues and broad lands, its high walls binding as in a sheaf its tall spires and towers, its cupolas of gilded copper covering its treasures of gold, silver, and pearl, its memories of miracle and siege, of martyrdom and pageant, make it, perhaps, the most remarkable of the many strange manifestations of the religious feelings of the Russians.

The Troitsa Monastery is on the highway to an interesting part of Muscovy. The valley of the Kliasma, at the head of which it stands, was the centre of Russian history long before Moscow began to be heard of, and the country between that stream and the Volga is scattered over with the remains of renowned cities. Commerce has found for itself more convenient channels. Moscow has drained them of their fame and importance; and now Rostov and Suzdal, Pereslav and Vladimir, are left high and dry, deserted by the crowds of traders that once frequented their streets, and seldom visited even by the wandering tourist.

Rostov, the oldest of these venerable cities, is one whose modern estate is among the most reduced and forlorn. It was a town of the Merians, a Finnish tribe of repute in the days before the Norsemen came to Novgorod to trouble the nations. Sineous, the brother of Ruric, who settled on the White Lake far to the northward, extended his sway over Rostov. No doubt there

166

OLD ROSTOV.

were bloody and obstinate battles before the Finns gave
way to the Slavs and their Varangian leaders, but the
record of these is lost. But Rostov was the first appan-
age of the Slavs in the Volga countries, and tribute was
paid to it by the Emperors of the East early in the tenth
century. It was here that Christianity was first preached
in these regions, the earliest bishop being a Greek mis-
sionary from Byzantium; and in 990 Vladimir the
Saint founded at Rostov the Abraham Monastery, which
still exists, and granted the surrounding territory to his
son, the canonized Boris. It was, however, after the
days of Vladimir Monomachus—grandson of Constantine
Monomachus, Emperor of the East, father of George the
Long-armed, and a famous figure in Russian history,
whose cap of fur, surmounted by gems, the cicerone will
show you in the Kremlin of Moscow as the oldest of the
imperial “crowns”—that Rostov became a separate prin-
cipality. Then it took its share in the fighting that
was constantly going on; was sometimes uppermost,
and then again undermost; had its share of sieges and
sacks by Tartars, Lithuanians, and brigands; and grad-
ually waning before the rising splendour of Suzdal,
Vladimir, and Moscow, fell into insignificance.

Rostov has still a score of churches ancient and modern,
a great annual fair, some transport trade, linen and chemi-
cal manufactories, and gardens scattered around the little
lake, that supply fruits and vegetables for the tables of
Moscow and St. Petersburg. Otherwise there is little in
the flat marshy plain to attract pilgrims thither. Even
its name has been filched from it; and now when Rostov
is mentioned, one does not think of the ancient Finnish
stronghold, the birth-place of the Christianity of the

SUZDAL.

167

Volga, with magnificent churches covering the sacred bones of holy and quarrelsome saints, and the seat for centuries of pious and greedy princes, but of Rostov the vulgar new sea-port town on the Sea of Azov.

Suzdal, which succeeded Rostov in the supremacy of the North-east, is not far off. Its Grand Dukes once exercised for long a really royal sway, extending occasionally over Kiev and Novgorod; but to-day it has dwindled to even smaller dimensions than Rostov. George Dolguruky,—Long-armed George, as his grasping proclivities well entitled him to be called,—was the first independent prince of Suzdal. From here he went forth on his many excursions north, south, east, and west—plundering and humbling Kiev, as we have seen, and carrying off the grand-ducal crown of his father Mono-machus from the sunny plains of the Ukraine to these sombre forests; founding Moscow, Pereslav-Zalieski, Jaroslav, Kostroma, Vladimir, and other important cities. It is still worth while to trace the old earthen ramparts and ditches that divided the city into three parts, and glance into the interior of its vast old churches that are the only remains of its former grandeur. In the Assumption Cathedral, in the Kremlin of Suzdal, may be read an inscription that tells how Vladimir came hither in 997 to convert the people and to found this church; and the traveller who has sufficient faith may believe the authenticity of the record.

Vladimir, which is only a stage or two to the south, on the banks of the Kliasma, was probably selected by the later Grand Dukes in preference to their first heritage, both for its more convenient position and its more imposing site. It is now on a main line of railway half

168

VLADIMIR.

way from Moscow to Nishni-Novgorod, and it is the chief town of the government of the same name, and the seat of an archbishopric. Nevertheless it also has fallen from its former greatness; Moscow and Nishni-Novgorod have between them drained it of trade and influence. For one hundred and seventy years it was the capital of Russia. Even after the seat of sovereignty had been transferred to Moscow in 1328, the Grand Princes up till 1432 came to the Cathedral of Vladimir to be crowned.

The palaces, churches, and humble wooden shanties of old Vladimir spread for a great distance along the hilly banks of the Kliasma; and the Convent of Bogolubof, now seven miles distant, is said to have been once within the walls. Here, as at Moscow, there are a "Bielo-gorod," a "Kitai-gorod," and a "Kremlin;" but the population musters in all only fifteen thousand. Like its successful rival on the Moskva, Vladimir has often been burned down, sometimes by accident, and oftener by the hand of man. The most terrible day in its annals is its capture by Baty Khan in 1238. The Grand Prince George III., founder of Nishni-Novgorod, was absent at the time gathering an army to repel the invaders. The city was captured after four days' fighting, and the inhabitants put to the sword. The princess, with her children, and the clergy and nobles of the place, shut themselves up in the Cathedral of the Assumption; and the Mongols, piling wood around the edifice, burned it to ashes with all its occupants. Catherine II. restored the church in 1774, and later monarchs of Russia have often paid marks of respect to this ancient seat of their race. The Cathedral of St. Dimitri of Solun (partly restored by the Emperor Nicolas) is another

JAROSLAV AND UGLITCH.

169

antiquity of Vladimir, and, with its golden gate, is considered one of the finest specimens of the Byzantine style of architecture in Russia.

The prosperity of modern Vladimir mainly depends on its position as a provincial capital. Another famous city, the seat of the neighbouring government of Jaroslav, has preserved its importance by reason of being situated on the main artery of trade. Jaroslav is one of the busiest ports of shipment and transhipment, storage and distribution, of the multifarious commerce of the Volga and its connecting canals; has a rapidly growing population, counting already forty thousand; and has important manufactures of linen, wool, table drapery, hardware, leather, gloves, furs, paper, and chemicals; extensive saw-mills, foundries, and tanneries; and great annual fairs, which help to spread the products of the city's industry over the whole empire. But the townspeople are perhaps prouder of the past distinction of the place than of its present prosperity. Its annals carry us back to the days of the Grand Prince Jaroslav, son of Vladimir the Sainted.

The reader must be tired of hearing the reiterated story of civil broils and Tartar sacks, of which Jaroslav had its share like its neighbours. The great event of its history occurred in the early part of the seventeenth century. It was in this region that the first note of patriotic passion was sounded that was to deliver Russia from the Poles, and the wolfish bands of robbers that were tearing it asunder as if it were a dead carcass. Uglitch, in the same province, some distance farther up the Volga, was the place where occurred the murder of the young Dimitri, the most tragic event

170 *THE END OF "THE TROUBLOUS TIME"*

in its effects in Russian history, whereby the last hope
of the line of the old Czars was extinguished. Uglitch
also yielded the first contingent of Siberian exiles. The
usurping Godunoff, having quelled the insurrection that
followed on his crime, transported many of the citizens
beyond the Urals; and having publicly flogged and
broken off the ears of the great town bell that called
them to arms, he formally exiled it to Tobolsk, where it
still rings church-goers to prayers.

The patriotic Russians of the North-east—after long
witnessing their fatherland a prey to Crimean and
Cossack hoards, usurpers, pretenders, and brigands, and
even “Holy Mother Moscow” herself in the hands of the
heretical troops of King Sigismund of Poland—assembled
at Jaroslav and Kostroma, and having chosen Prince
Dimitri Pojarsky as their leader, marched on to Nishni-
Novgorod, followed and cheered for long distances by
the populations of whole districts. Then, having been
joined by the heroic Minin and the volunteers of Nishni,
they pursued their way to Moscow, where the task
of clearing the capital of intruders being completed, the
assembled nation chose for its head the young Michael
Romanoff, scion of a noble family whose estates lay not
far from Kostroma.

Among the most promising signs of the present of
Jaroslav may be mentioned the Science College, founded
and endowed by one of the Demidoffs, that great family
of bankers and merchants who have been called the
“Rothschilds of Russia.” More characteristic of its past
are its fourscore churches; perhaps the most interesting
being that of the Nativity, where, in Peter the Great’s
time, St. Demetrius, a great clerical champion of reforms,

THE NEW IMPERIAL LINE.

171

sustained arguments and superintended persecutions
against sectaries.

Without entering either into the church or into the
controversy, we will move down the broad, traffic-laden
stream to Kostroma, also the chief town of a Russian
government, and with a history and modern occupations
that agree pretty generally with those of Jaroslav. If we
glance into its curious old Cathedral of the Assumption,
we may see the spot where Dimitri of the Don kneeled
to give thanks for his safety when the Tartars were
wasting Moscow; or if we walk out to the neighbouring
Monastery of Ipatief, the rooms may be examined where
the six-year-old Michael Romanoff was living with his
mother when the representatives of the boyards and
people came to offer him the crown of Russia. A monu-
ment in a prominent place in the town is in memory of
the peasant Ivan Sussanin, whose romantic story has
been embalmed in music, drama, and fiction, as furnish-
ing the most heroic type of Russian loyalty. The Poles
were in search of the newly-elected monarch. Sussanin
offered to conduct an armed band of them to the place
where he was concealed, and purposely leading them
astray in the dark woods around Kostroma, he died by
their hands—thus giving his "life for the Czar," and
helping to end the sorrowful "time of troubles."

This busy region is indeed the consecrated ground
of Russian patriotism; and thus we find, when we
descend yet another stage to Nishni-Novgorod, the
spectacles of modern industry, and the memories of the
period subsequent to the Interregnum, completely blotting
out the recollections of the confused old barbaric times
ere Muscovy began to struggle out of its isolation.

CHAPTER VIII.

NISHNI-NOVGOROD—RUSSIAN INDUSTRY AND TOWN LIFE.

ANY to whom other Russian names that have been mentioned have been strange, must be familiar with that of Nishni and its great fair, where the East and the West meet once a year to chaffer and to exchange. A guide-book— Murray's excellent publication, for instance—will inform those who consult it that everything interesting about this far-famed commercial city “may be seen in a day;” and though this may be taking an exaggerated view of the tourist's capacity for sight-seeing and powers of endurance, it is the fact that the Great Fair is no longer the extraordinary spectacle that it once was.

That there is any falling away in the actual amount of business done is unlikely. The trade of Nishni is vast and increasing. Its situation, high on the right bank of the Volga, just below its junction with the Oka, is unrivalled as the site of an inland emporium. Not only do all the main channels of river communication—the Volga, the Oka, the Sura, and the Kama—feed it, but the chief routes of traffic and travel to and from Siberia converge upon it. Russian colonization is pressing on and rapidly filling up the country to the

NISHNI-NOVGOROD.

173

eastward and northward; and in all probability Nishni
is only in one of the early stages of its commercial
development.

But the old system of conducting trade, especially
since the introduction of railways, is undergoing
change. Occidental methods are taking the place of
those that have been in vogue in Eastern countries
from the most remote antiquity. Business can be much
more expeditiously and efficiently done by sample and
by letter than by buyers and sellers assembling from all
quarters of the earth with their goods in their hands.
Consequently, though the quantity of commodities ex-
posed may be smaller than in former times, the actual
amount of traffic conducted is immensely larger. The
smaller centres of trade growing up in Siberia and
Turkestan now collect and transmit the produce of these
countries; and so strange visitors from Asia, with out-
landish faces and garments, and forming a Babel of
unknown tongues, no longer form so prominent a feature
of the fair as they formerly did. In the arrangements
of the fair itself many innovations have been introduced,
causing the disappearance of some of the most character-
istic and singular of its sights. Picturesqueness has
been sacrificed in the interests of cleanliness, and altera-
tions and additions have been made in conformity with
modern notions of comfort.

In spite of these changes, the view, seen from one of
the elevated spots in the city—the Tower of Minin, for
instance—is still an animated and remarkable one in the
high-tide of the great annual gathering. Far and wide,
meeting the horizon in a line only broken by a mass of
forest, a steep river bank, an undulating heave of the

174

A CITY OF SHOPS.

land, or a glittering church spire, stretches the broad
plain, mostly under cultivation, and indicating, by the
number of hamlets and large villages scattered over it,
a population dense for Russia. The broad band of blue
stretching across the landscape from north-west to south-
east is the noble Volga, and the narrower ribbon that
meets it at right angles at your feet is the Oka. Both
rivers are crowded with barges, sailing vessels, and
steamers ascending and descending. A thick forest of
masts stands opposite the wharves of Nishni, and ex-
tends far into the Volga. On the triangular space
between the two streams are long streets of booths,
dingy or brightly painted, with boulevards, lines of
restaurants, and places of amusement, and avenues of
trees line the river; the new bazaar and governor's
residence in the centre; and a swarming population, like
bees, moving to and fro in this "city of shops"—the
fair itself.

To the southward of this scene is the town of Nishni
itself, with the sun gleaming from its brazen cupolas
and the white-washed towers of its kremlin, and
throwing deep shadows under the low archways and
the battlemented walls where the Tartars of Kazan have
often fought for entrance. At the present day the
Tartars of Nishni are a very useful and peaceable folk.
You will see their lithe, active figures busily engaged in
the lading and unlading of goods, with the sweat of
honest toil on their foreheads; and you are certain, while
wending your way to the fair, to be civilly and insinu-
atingly accosted by one of them who has some little
venture of his own strapped on his back or spread out
before him.

THE "GREAT FAIR."

175

Arrived on the scene of business, you may direct
your steps to the centre of the mart, where, in the
lower floor of the governor's house, are displayed manu-
factured English goods, fancy articles from Paris, toys of
Nürnberg, and relics from Palestine, side by side with
Persian and Bokharan silks and brocades, jewel-hilted
knives and daggers from the Caucasus, ornaments of
jade and lapis lazuli from Kashgar, turquoise, malachite,
and other stones, spurious and real, cut and uncut, with
Russian goods of all varieties. You may thence make
your way by a boulevard, lined principally by the shops
of silver and gold smiths, and dealers in fur and drapery
goods, and in which stand in kindly company the
Armenian and Orthodox churches and the Mohammedan
mosque, to the "Chinese row" behind, where the princi-
pal article exposed is the brick tea imported from the
northern parts of the Flowery Kingdom, by way of
Kiakhta, and choicest samples of which are sold at
"fancy" prices that would make a British housewife
stare. The Russians are excessively fond of tea; but
contrary to our method, they drink it without milk, and
flavoured with lemon-juice, sucking the fragrant bever-
age through a piece of lump-sugar held between their
teeth.

The Siberian line, which skirts the Volga, is no
less worth a visit; for here, along with the products of
the great Asiatic territory of Russia—furs and grain, and
precious metals and stones—may be seen the miscellaneous
stores designed for the Russian colonies and penal and mili-
tary posts scattered through Siberia as far as the Pacific.
Another important department of the fair is that devoted
to the sale and purchase of the dried fish which forms

176

SIGHTS OF THE FAIR.

so important an article of Russian diet. It has been an immemorial usage in the houses of the richest in the land, and down through every rank almost to the lowest, to whet the appetite by some tit-bit before the principal meals; and relishes suitable to all classes are purveyed at Nishni-Novgorod—caviare for the aristocratic, and salted cod or the coarser kinds of river fish for the vulgar palate. Or if you drop into one of the numerous restaurants—of which there are specimens suited to the tastes of the different races and classes that frequent the fair—you may profitably spend half an hour in watching the manner in which the people of various nations consume their food. Fill the warehouses, the bazaar, the eating-houses, the khans, the mosques and churches, the streets, the wharves and the shipping with a throng of from one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand strangers from all quarters, added to the ordinary resident population of forty thousand, not forgetting to make a prominent feature of the throngs of dirty beggars and tramps, greasy and tattered pilgrims and slouching monks, all equally eager to profit by the generosity of the well-to-do, the ignorant, and the pious, and you may gather some idea of the aspect of Nishni in the time of the fair. Other two fairs are held—one on the ice of the Volga, in January, for articles chiefly of wooden manufacture and toys; and the other in July, for horses and cattle—but neither can compare in extent with the great gathering in September.

In the town itself there is a good deal to attract notice. The citizens have not forgotten to honour the patriot who was born in their midst, and in addition to Minin's Tower, the tomb of the gallant butcher and

MUROM.

177

chief magistrate of Nishni, who cast out the Poles from
the Kremlin of Moscow, is pointed to with much pride
and reverence in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration,
the most ancient of the city churches. Within the
kremlin of Nishni also is a monument, erected by the
Emperor Alexander I., to Minin and Pojarsky, whose
names are as closely and constantly associated in patriotic
legend as those of Boris and Gleb are in ecclesiastical
myth.

Murom, the famous Russ city which was the head-
quarters of the last-named sacred personage, may be
reached in a day's journey up the Oka, on the right
bank of which, and within the province of Vladimir, the
decayed old town lies. Chroniclers carry back its
history as far as that of Rostov, the capital of Boris;
and like that ancient town its population has dwindled
in modern times to some ten thousand or twelve thou-
sand. The walls of its kremlin have disappeared, but
it is rich in churches, in sacred relics, and in pilgrim
shrines; and what in secular eyes is of greater conse-
quence, it still boasts a not inconsiderable trade in grain,
flax, linseed, iron manufactures, and timber. Murom is
likely to grow in importance, for it stands in a favour-
able position between the fertile corn-growing lands
south of the Oka and the more northern provinces that
are less richly endowed with agricultural wealth. Its
mills grind much of the rye meal and flour that feed
the industrious artisans, wood-cutters, and fishermen of
the five great Russian governments through which we
have just glanced—Moscow, Vladimir, Jaroslav, Kos-
troma, and Nishni-Novgorod.

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12

178

WANDERING ARTISANS.

These provinces are, for the most part, within the
zone of pine-forests, which, broadly speaking, the Oka
divides from the oak-woods and deep black mould of
the districts farther south. They contain vast tracts of
fertile country, but a much larger extent of marsh land,
forest, and unprofitable sand and heath. On the whole,
they do not raise sufficient grain to support the popula-
tion—some six and a half million, scattered over nearly
one hundred thousand square miles. Their true wealth
lies in their fine forests of timber trees, their prolific
fisheries, their centres of manufacture and commercial
business, and, most of all, in the industry and enterprise
of their inhabitants. Nowhere, even among the wander-
ing Slavs, is the instinct of roaming more strong, or the
practice more common, than in these old provinces in the
inmost heart of Russia.

A waggoner or boatman of Vladimir, or a felt-
worker of Kostroma, will travel across the Urals as far
as the Yenisei, or perhaps even the Lena, and think
himself richly compensated if he bring back a few
kopeks in his pocket. Troops of young artisans—
masons, carpenters, plasterers, blacksmiths, and shoe-
makers—emigrate from their homes on the Volga to the
large centres of population, to St. Petersburg, to Riga,
and to Odessa, for the purpose of practising their craft
and saving a little money, with which they will return
to their native village, purchase a house and a share of
the communal lands, and settle down to peasant life.
Thousands lead a half-peasant, half-artisan life, perform-
ing their share of the labour of village lands in the
proper season, and working at their trade for the rest of
the year.

RUSSIA'S ECONOMIC POLICY.

179

The nation is self-sufficing—that is, it strives, and by the aid of prohibitive tariffs strives pretty successfully, to shut out foreign competition, and to manufacture all that it needs for its daily wants. Thus while Russia exports enormous quantities of grain and other raw produce to its customers in other lands, it imports a comparatively small quantity of their commodities in exchange, and a great proportion of these imports consists of articles of luxury demanded by the "educated" tastes of the rich. It loses no doubt more than it gains by this policy; but to supply so enormous a population as is comprised within the limits of the empire, demands an extensive production on Russian soil of all that a Russian requires for food, raiment, travel, and labour. Economically, so far as its own needs are concerned, Russia is a "world apart," a kind of Japanese Empire in process of slow transition from the operation of irresistible external and internal causes. Many of the manufactured goods may, perhaps, as little bear comparison in finish and quality with the products of British looms and workshops as Tula, the "Russian Birmingham," and Vyska, the "Russian Sheffield," can vie with the great English centres of trade; but they quite suit the home market, and meet all the simple requirements of the peasant purchaser. The employers of capital in Russia have as yet been able to lie a good deal on their oars and take things easy; and so there may still be seen in many parts of the country the mines, factories, and mills emptying as the season of seed-time or harvest approaches, and the work-people streaming home by river-boat or post-cart, or more often on their own sturdy legs, to look after their

180

VILLAGE INDUSTRIES.

little holdings, scores or perhaps hundreds of miles
away.

It is in this "Russia of the forests" that we have
been describing also that another peculiar feature of
Russian industrial life is most marked and frequent—
namely, the occurrence of villages, or groups of villages,
devoted to a particular branch of trade. Each village,
each district, and each province has some special occupa-
tion, to which often its people are exclusively devoted.

Thus Count Artamof tells us, in his work on Russia,
that if the district of Nerehta, in Kostroma, is cele-
brated for its axes, Chuiysk is not less noted for its
calicoes and its nankins, and its women are regarded
as the best spinners in the empire. The cutting and
transport of firewood, and the preparation of tar and
carbon, occupy the natives of Pochehonn in Jaroslav;
and the people of Lubimetz are keepers of restaurants
and cheap eating-houses. The province of Jaroslav, in-
deed, supplies the waiters of the lower class to the large
towns of the empire; while the Tartars of Kasimov on
the Oka, famous for their sobriety and honesty, are em-
ployed in the best hotels of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The district of Miychino furnishes excellent saddlers,
harness-makers, and potters; and Rybinsk is known for
its pilots, joiners, and carpenters. Horsebreakers come
mostly from the banks of the Mologa; and no place in
Russia can compete with Uglitch for hams, or with
Romanov for sheepskin coats. The market-gardeners of
Rostov, as has already been mentioned, carry their
onions and cabbages, their cherries and apples, etc., to
the old and new capitals of Russia; and those of Danilov
are close competitors with their fruits and vegetables.

NEW GROUND.

181

No housewife is satisfied unless her board is spread with
linen from the looms of Velikoi-Selo or Viskovo.

Mr. Mackenzie Wallace informs us that "in the province
of Vladimir a large group of villages live by icon-paint-
ing; in one locality, near Nishni, nineteen villages are oc-
cupied in the manufacture of axes. Round about Paulovo,
in the same province, eighty villages produce nothing
but cutlery; and in a locality named Ouloma, on the
borders of Tver, no less than two hundred villages live
by nail-making."

South of the Oka river, between it and the country
of the Don Cossacks, and extending from the basin of
the Dnieper on the west to the banks of the Volga on
the east, is a "huge cantle" of Russia, comprehending
no fewer than ten governments—Kaluga, Orel, Tula,
Riazan, Tambov, Kursk, Voronej, Penza, Simbirsk, and
Saratov—that present numerous points of contrast, be-
coming more marked as we move southward and east-
ward, to the countries we have just passed over.

Shifting away from the centre of the empire, the his-
toric mould becomes more shallow; we can skim the surface
at greater speed. Ancient cities with chronicles reaching
back to the days of the introduction of Christianity, and
even towns that can carry their history back to the
more recent times of the Grand Princes or the domination
of the Golden Horde, become more rare. Some towns
of old date may be pointed to. Riazan and Kaluga,
Elets, Kursk, and Voronej were Russian settlements
before the coming of Baty Khan; Tula and Orel played
important parts in the civil struggles at the close of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.

182

THE GRANARY OF RUSSIA.

But Penza and Simbirsk, Tambov and Saratov, and the vast majority of the other centres of population, are the creations of the times of the Romanoffs, many of them, indeed, of the last fifty years. These provinces are lands recovered from the flood of Tartar immigration. Their settlement belongs to the more recent period of Russ colonization; and the process is not by any means complete.

Along the eastern skirts of this immense region—which is nearly as large in area as France, and with a population of between fourteen and fifteen millions of souls—the inhabitants are still scantily sprinkled, and there is ample room for development. Bran-new towns are springing up, much as we find them doing in Minnesota or Kansas, in districts teeming with agricultural riches, and whose great disadvantages are the fewness of the hands for turning the furrow and reaping the crop, and the great distances that separate them from a market. Even in the provinces nearer to Moscow and Kiev, though the country is often more densely populated than in the oldest parts of the empire, the land is capable of supporting a much larger number of inhabitants than it does at present; for this is the “granary of Russia”—a storehouse from whose abundance a great part of Europe and of Russia itself is fed. The conditions of soil, climate, exposure, and products differ in each of these provinces, as may easily be imagined, from the great extent of surface that they cover. But they resemble each other in this, that their population is almost exclusively devoted to agricultural work, and that they raise a large quantity of grain and other farm produce in excess of their own wants.

SCENERY OF THE BLACK LANDS.

183

In the northern parts of Riazan and Tula there are still masses of pine forest and bare expanses of swamp and sand; farther south, fine woods of oak, maple, beech, and elm, with wide clearings between, are prominent features of the landscape. Beyond these, the woods dwindle down to copses, or straggle away into lines bordering the river-courses. A rich, smiling, open country, with little hills and ridges tufted with trees planted round the walls of some convent or country-house, with hollows full of white hazels and wild cherry, apple, and pear trees, and broad cultivated plains, and cheerful-looking, white-washed village houses clustered round the church—such are characteristic features of the fertile "Black Lands" of Orel, Tambov, and Penza, and of Kursk and Voronej, bordering on the pastoral steppes of the Ukraine and the Don Cossack country. By the margin of the Volga, in Saratov and Simbirsk, wide, bare, sandy plains alternate with fine forests, deep, rich, loam lands, bearing splendid crops of wheat and maize, or patches where the painstaking German colonists rear the tobacco plant, the vine, and the water-melon.

We meet with a great variety in the races and religions as well as in the scenery of this region, and these increase the nearer we approach the Volga. Of the Finnish tribe of the Mordvins there are three hundred thousand established in the provinces of Penza, Saratov, and Simbirsk; and the last-named province contains nearly one hundred thousand of the cognate people, the Tchuvashes. Side by side with these are Tartars, forming little communities apart, each with its mollah and its village mosque. The Finnish peoples, nominally Christians, still follow many of the sacrificial and other

184

VARIETIES OF RACE AND CREED.

religious practices of their pagan ancestry, offering horses,
horned cattle, sheep, and fowls to their tutelary deities,
and propitiating them with oblations of bread, beer, and
vodka, and assembling in "sacred places" in the woods
for these superstitious observances, of which the eccle-
siastical authorities know not, or knowing, wink at.

Then the Teutonic colonies remain, as has already been
noted, as German in tongue, manners, and religion to-day
as they were when their countrywoman the great Empress
Catherine planted them on the Volga to be light to the
Russian peasantry around them. The Russians have
learned nothing; and their Lutheran neighbours have
forgot nothing.

But the great cause of ecclesiastical strife and
heart-burning in these countries is not the alien creeds
of these alien peoples, but dissent in the bosom of
the Orthodox Church itself. To the mind of the or-
dinary moujik, it appears the most natural thing in
the world that the Finlander should be a Protestant,
the Pole a Roman Catholic, and the Tartar a zealous
follower of Mohammed; but it is to him a thing incompre-
hensible that one of his own race should be of a faith
different from that of his fathers and all his kin. His
religion is as much a matter of inheritance as his blood
and his name, and it would be a kind of sacrilege to
doubt and blasphemy to deny the faith handed down
from the fathers.

But, as is inevitable among a peasantry on whom
religious feelings, uncorrected by knowledge and re-
flection, have so powerful a hold; who have intense,
unbounded faith in the miraculous virtues of pen-
ances, pilgrimages, fasting, the touch of holy relics, and

DISSENTERS AND HERETICS.

185

consecrated bread; who pay a devotion to the out-
ward form not less profound than to the spirit, and
whose memories are stored with the superstitious beliefs
of their ancestors in malignant spectres, fairy people, and
mysterious beings of the wood and the marsh,—there
are within the Russo-Greek Church divisions and sub-
divisions of doctrine and observance innumerable. Like
the stars, these seem to "increase with gazing." Some
of them reach back to the earliest discussions in the
Christian Church; others, including the most important
of all—the sect of the Old Believers, of whom we have
spoken—to the times of official reform and persecution
inaugurated by the Patriarch Nicon and the Czar Alexis;
while some of the most strange and extreme forms are
the product of modern religious and political impulses.
It is said, though no official statistics can be got to bear
out a fact so unpleasant, that if a religious census of
Penza, Tambov, and the neighbouring provinces were
taken, there would be found to be at least as many
Old Believers, clinging to the ancient forms and tenets,
and abhorring innovation as the special work of the
Evil One, as members of the recognized Church.

A great part of this region south of the Oka formed
part of the old principality of Riazan, the last and most
formidable of the rivals of Moscow in the basin of the
Volga. The Princes of Riazan contended with the Lords
of the city on the Moskva for the favours of the Great
Khan, and fought with them in the field. Tula belonged
to them, and their territory extended to the neighbour-
hood of the Dnieper on the west; while Voronej, far
down the Don valley, was one of their possessions. It
was not till 1521, in the time of Vassili, son of the

286

LAKE LADOGA AND THE NEVA.

little Swedish fort of Nienschantz stood on the north
bank of the Neva, where it discharges itself by several
mouths into the Gulf of Finland. A few wretched
fishers' cabins were scattered over the islands and along
the margin of the stream on the sites now occupied by
the palaces of St. Petersburg. At the outlet of the river
from Lake Ladoga was the fortified island of Noteburg,
or Orekhovo (the "Nut"),—"a hard nut to crack," Peter
wrote,—which had just been captured from the Swedes,
and re-named by the Czar, Schlüsselburg—the "Key
Fortress."

All else was morass and forest. The situation had,
however, decided natural advantages, counterbalancing no
less obvious defects. The river which flows out of Lake
Ladoga, though insignificant in length—only some forty
miles—is one of the first in Europe in its great breadth
and volume and in the depth and limpidity of its cur-
rent. Nature itself had already partially formed water-
ways, which could, with some aid from art, connect the
Neva with Novgorod, with Moscow, with Archangel, and
with the interior of Finland.

Peter the Great, casting his eagle glance around his
dominions, his busy brain filled with the most far-reaching
schemes of ambition, and his mind fixed, especially, on the
design of making Russia a great commercial and maritime
power, with a leading voice in the councils of Europe,
marked and appreciated the commanding position offered
by the Neva. He determined,—and with him to will
and to execute were one,—that here he would build the
future seat of imperial government, the Northern Rome,
the "eye" by which Russia should look out upon Euro-
pean affairs, and the portal by which the riches, the

THE FOUNDING OF ST. PETERSBURG.

287

arts, and the civilization of the West should enter into
the rude heart of Muscovy. The obstacles to his designs
were such as would have appalled a less powerful
intellect and less iron will. The soil had only lately
been conquered by Russia from the Swedes; the two
powerful northern nations were still grappling fiercely
for its possession. The site was low, marshy, and un-
healthy, and subject to periodic inundation. The climate
was of Arctic rigour, and the country around desolated
by war and incapable of productive cultivation. Rus-
sian prejudices and national feelings were passionately
opposed to the removal of the Czar from his old capital;
and the nations of Europe were jealous of this strange
half-wild figure from the East that suddenly appeared
in their midst and claimed to be of their company.
Peter's savage impetuosity overcame all obstacles.

In May 1703, the first stakes were driven of a
bastion which was constructed on an island of the Neva,
afterwards called Petersburg, opposite the site where the
imperial palace now stands. Here the beginnings were
formed of the present citadel, and a small wooden church
dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul arose. A portion of
the army was first employed in the labour of founding
the capital; but afterwards no fewer than forty thou-
sand Finnish and Russian peasants were drafted into
the work of draining, pile-driving, digging, and building.
Streets of wooden houses began to line the river, and
broad avenues were cut extending back into the marsh
and forest; for the new city was not to be after the old,
filthy, confined, and irregular type, but to be the model
of symmetry as well as the crown of grandeur for the
rest of the empire.

288

EARLY STRUGGLES.

Little by little trade and population came and took root. Foreign vessels arrived at the new port formed at Cronstadt, and at the wharves on the Neva, the first arrival curiously enough being a Dutch ship freighted by Peter's old friend Cornelius Kalf of Zaandam, where the Czar had worked as a journeyman carpenter. Extraordinary inducements were held out to the nobles, merchants, and artisans to settle at St. Petersburg. Where these failed, recourse was had to compulsory measures. Every vessel arriving at the port, whether barge from the northern lakes, or merchant ship from the high seas, was bound to bring a certain quantity of stones, brick, or gravel to strengthen the unstable foundations of the city, to form streets, and to build new edifices of granite. Nay, to draw masons thither, a ukase was issued forbidding the erection of buildings of stone in any other town of the empire. The first rude draft, as it were, of the Czar's ambitious plan—the unpaved miry streets, lined by squalid shanties, and the churches, palaces, and fortresses of wood—began to be transformed into a stately structure of more durable material.

During the early period of its history a perfect tempest of war beat around the young community. Peter was assailed by the united military strength of Sweden and Poland, led by the great captain of his time, Charles XII., and was frequently, nay, almost constantly, worsted. The whole of his resources were needed to withstand the ungovernable rage of the Swede; and there was rebellion, open or smouldering, throughout his own dominions. But he never relaxed from his purpose to found a great port and capital on the Neva. At every breathing-space in the struggle he returned to the

PETER'S LABOURS.

289

prosecution of his inflexible design; and when at last his
arch-enemy was overthrown, and the tide of battle
rolled northwards into Finland, he was able to devote
himself with renewed energy to the task. Fires wasted
the budding capital. When a strong easterly wind blew,
driving the waters of Ladoga into the channel of the Neva,
the river rose, inundating and devastating the newly-
formed streets. Owing to the low and marshy situation,
epidemics were frequent and fatal. The variations of
temperature were so rapid and excessive that the Russian
courtiers, inured to extremes of cold and heat as they
were, grumbled at being compelled to live in a city more
hyperborean in latitude and climate even than Stockholm.

Peter was inexorable to the obstacles of nature and
to the complaints of his subjects. He did not spare
others, but he spared himself least of all. When the
work of founding the city began, he built for himself
a small cottage of wood, which may still be seen by
the curious, on the river bank over against the splendid
Winter Palace. Here, says Rambaud, Peter installed
himself, and superintended the growth of the infant
capital, "sometimes piloting with his own hands the
first Dutch ships that ventured into these waters,
sometimes giving chase to the Swedish vessels which
came to insult him. He decorated the church of the
fortress with carvings of ivory, the work of his own
hands, hung it with flags conquered from the Swedes,
and consecrated there his little boat, 'ancestor of the
Russian fleet;' and, breaking through the tradition that
insisted on the princes being buried in St. Michael at
Moscow, chose out in St. Peter and St. Paul his own
tomb and that of his successors."

(718)

19

290

CRONSTADT.

There was a singular appropriateness in the manner of Peter's death, from the effects of a chill caught by flinging himself into the ice-cold waters of the Neva to save a boat in distress. When the great Czar was gone, it seemed at first doubtful whether his successors would carry out his wishes with regard to St. Petersburg, and its fate long hung trembling in the balance. But Catherine II., a princess scarcely inferior to Peter in ambition and strength of character, thoroughly understood and sympathized with his great plans; and since her time the growth of the capital in population, riches, and magnificence has been almost unchecked.

Let us now approach St. Petersburg, not from the side of Ladoga and the frozen wastes of the north, but from the side of the Baltic, and examine what manner of city this is that, in the space of a hundred and eighty years, has arisen out of a desolate marsh to be the worthy capital of a great military empire. First, there heave in sight the frowning bastions, the forest of masts, and the painted spires of Cronstadt, the port and defence of St. Petersburg—the eyelid, it might be called, that guards the “eye” of Russia from harm. The sights and sounds of Cronstadt are all suggestive of military, naval, and commercial life. A very large proportion of the forty thousand inhabitants consists of the garrison. In the busy “open” season, between May and November, the docks are crowded with shipping, the quays encumbered with merchandise, and the throngs of people in the streets are cosmopolitan rather than specially Russian.

A brief sail brings us to the mouths of the Neva and the first houses of the capital. As has already been indicated, the Neva, about the centre of St. Petersburg,

THE CAPITAL OF RUSSIA.

291

breaks up into several channels. The first of these to leave the main stream is the Nevka, which branches off on the right, and itself splits up into the Great and the Little Nevka. The main body of the river also separates itself lower down into the Great and Little Neva, and between these principal streams there are subsidiary channels, forming a series of islands, great and small. Chief among these islands are St. Petersburg, where the city had its first beginnings, surrounded by the waters of the Neva and the Great and Little Nevka, and Vassili Ostrog, between the Great and Little Neva.

On these islands, and on the north bank of the stream, the older buildings of St. Petersburg arose; but for a long period the mass of the population has shifted with the court to the southern bank. Here there are further subdivisions of water, by means of four lines of canals, so that altogether, within the city boundaries, we find some fourteen water-courses, a lake, eight canals, and nineteen islands. Like Venice or Amsterdam, therefore, St. Petersburg is an amphibious city; only, her walls are washed by the fresh rushing waters of the majestic Neva, instead of by the salt sea. The Neva is the pride of the Russian capital and the greatest of all its sights. It is no dead, muddy, evil-smelling ditch, like the Thames at London or the Seine at Paris, but a broad, clear, and powerful stream that looks worthy of its mission as the highway of commerce and the seat of empire. Its breadth opposite the Winter Palace, where it is crossed by a bridge of boats, is about three quarters of a mile, while its depth in its lower channels is fifty feet.

292

A CITY OF PALACES.

St. Petersburg may claim, equally with the "Queen of the Adriatic," with which it has so often been compared and contrasted, the title of the City of Palaces. No other capital has so many royal and princely residences. In none have the situation, the grouping, and architectural features of the buildings been so studiously arranged, so as to produce an imposing and magnificent scenic effect. As the Neva is the glory of St. Petersburg, so the city turns all its beauties towards the river, and views them reflected in its waters. Every bend of the stream reveals a *coup d'œil* which it seems impossible to rival, until a little farther on a new vista is opened up of lofty palace fronts, adorned by Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns surmounted by massive friezes, entablatures, and sculptured groups; temples of Byzantine, Grecian, or Gothic design, overtopped by swelling cupolas in green and gold, stiletto-like spires, or vast square towers; endless ranges of public and private buildings, monuments, warehouses, and docks, with quays thronged with passengers and vehicles; spacious and splendid streets, stretching away in far perspective for two or three miles; gardens and boulevards, relieving with their fresh green foliage the uniformity of lines and colour in the masses of stone-work; and broad canals and channels branching off to the right and left. And in the midst of all, giving an air of space, freedom, and dignity to the whole scene, flows the wide stream of the Neva, thronged by craft of all kinds and sizes, from the tiny gondola to the man-of-war, and from the rude barge, laden with timber, grain, or flax from the Volga, to the largest class of sea-going merchant ships.

BRIDGES AND QUAYS.

293

Ascending the channel of the Great Neva, we have on the left the stately fronts of the School of Mines, the School of Marine Cadets, the Academy of Arts, the Observatory, and the Academy of Sciences, lining the river wall of Vassili Ostrog (Basil's Island); while on the right, or southern side, are docks and admiralty yards, succeeded by the handsome range of churches, hotels, places of business, and residences of merchant princes known as the English Quay. Nearly opposite to the Grecian portico of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and about the middle of the English Quay, is the celebrated Nicolas Bridge, where the only permanent roadway over the Great Neva is carried across the river on eight colossal iron arches resting on piers of granite. The architect of this work, Stanislas Herbedze, had to contend not only with a stream of great width, depth, and strength of current, but with a shifting bottom and marshy soil, and to guard against dangers from floods and ice. Its successful completion, after fifteen years' labour, is one of the triumphs of engineering. Higher up are the Palace, the Troitski, and Liteinoi floating bridges. The second of these, extending from opposite the military parade-ground of the "Czar's Meadow" across the broadest part of the Neva to the fortress on the island of St. Petersburg, is three-quarters of a mile in length.

It is between the Nicolas and Troitski Bridges, and particularly at the point where the river separates itself into the channels of the Great and Little Neva, that the principal buildings of the capital are grouped, and the finest pictorial and architectural effects are found. Isaac's Place is the "Place of St. Mark" of St. Petersburg — the centre of interest, the starting-point from

294

COLOSSAL STATUE OF PETER.

which the sightseer naturally begins his exploration of
the city marvels, and probably the goal to which he
returns at the close of his day's labours. The spacious
open square looks out upon the Neva with a frontage of
some three hundred yards, and its farther end is closed
by that stupendous mass of marble and bronze, the
Cathedral of St. Isaac. On the margin of the river, half-
way between the Senate House, which ends the line of
the English Quay, and the Admiralty, is the celebrated
equestrian statue of Peter the Great.

This most famous of the monuments of St. Petersburg
was executed by the orders of Catherine II., and was the
work of a French sculptor, Falconet. Peter, astride a
mighty charger, is represented as reining his steed back
upon its haunches on the brink of a precipice, while he
stretches his sceptre over the river, and seems to survey
with proud triumph the wonderful growth of the city of
which he is the "posthumous creator," while underneath
the horse's feet writhes a serpent, emblematic of the diffi-
culties that were encountered and overcome in founding a
capital on a quaking bog. The statue is of bronze, and of
colossal size, the horse being seventeen feet in height and
the rider eleven feet. It stands upon a pedestal formed
of a block of granite weighing fifteen hundred tons, and
transported with infinite labour from the neighbouring
plains of Finland. An error of taste has been committed
in smoothing and planing away the natural angles of
the rock, and shaping the rough boulder into a conven-
tional form altogether inappropriate to the symbolic
meaning of the monument and to the rude herculean task
that it commemorates; but the attitude and expression
of the great Czar, the spirited action of the charger, and

THE ADMIRALTY.

295

the general idea and effect of the whole group, are worthy
of the subject and of the site.

After all, Isaac's Place is only a slice of a much larger
open space in the heart of the city—the Admiralty
Square. In the centre of this grand square is the
Admiralty building itself, one of the largest and most
notable edifices in the Russian capital. The front of the
Admiralty, facing the south, is a third of a mile in length,
and the two wings, stretching to the margin of the Neva,
are each six hundred and fifty feet. Enclosed between
these wings, and extending along the river bank, are
the Government dockyards, where vessels of the Russian
navy are constructed, with slips, wharves, moulding and
engine sheds, anchor and cordage stores, blacksmiths',
carpenters', and joiners' sheds, and all the other necessary
apparatus for an establishment of the kind; while the
vast building itself contains the offices of the naval
department of the Government, with a museum in which
are conserved the many objects of interest connected with
the maritime history of the empire. Formerly the Ad-
miralty was enclosed by a moat and ramparts, but the
place of these is now occupied by a shady line of
boulevards. The chief entrance in the south front is
through a grand archway, on either side of which are
gigantic representations of the terrestrial and celestial
globes, and overhead frescoes emblematic of Russia's
naval power. Above rises a square tower, supported by
columns; and surmounting this are the lantern, and the
tall, slender, richly-gilt spire which forms one of the
most prominent features in a general view of St. Petersburg,
from whatever side it is surveyed.

Opposite the Admiralty is a crescent of lofty build-

296

THE MACHINE OF GOVERNMENT.

ings of uniform architecture, and pierced in the centre
by a colossal archway,—the Foreign Office of Russia;
while separated from it by an open space corresponding
to Isaac's Place, and standing on the quay of the Neva,
is the Winter Palace, the official town residence of the
emperors.

In the buildings grouped around and within this
square—in the Winter Palace, the Senate, the Foreign
Office, the War Office, the Synod, and the Admiralty—
are concentrated almost the whole of the vast and com-
plicated machinery by which the executive government
of Russia is carried on. The mainspring of the whole is
within the palace itself, centred in the person of the Auto-
crat, the sole source of initiative action in legislative, judi-
cial, and administrative affairs, as well as of honours and
dignities. The vehicle of the Emperor's will is his
"Private Cabinet," the various sections of which direct
the executive government and the making and promulga-
tion of the law, the control of the army and police, and
the conduct of educational and ecclesiastical affairs. The
actual functions of government are intrusted to four
great Boards—the Council of the Empire, with its three
great departments having the superintendence of legisla-
tion, civil administration, and finance respectively; the
Directing Senate—or *Prawitelstwujuschtschi Senat*, if any
one cares to have its official title—whose committees sit
both at St. Petersburg and at Moscow, and whose duties
are partly executive and partly deliberative, while it is
a court of last resort in certain judicial cases; the Holy
Synod, composed of the dignitaries of the Church, and
having control of the religious affairs of the empire; and,
lastly, the Council of Ministers, divided into eleven

BUREAUCRACY IN DISREPAIR.

297

departments—to wit, the Imperial Household, Foreign Affairs, War, Navy, Interior, Public Instruction, Finance, Justice, Imperial Domains, Public Works, and General Control.

Subordinate to this central authority are the various local governments of the fourteen viceroyalties, fifty-one governments, and three hundred and twenty districts into which the empire is subdivided, each elaborately organized, and many of them regulated by special laws and constitutions. It would occupy a large volume to describe adequately in detail the functions and relations of this enormous and intricate machine, which, in theory at least, unites the vast resources and strength of Russia, her army of three millions of men, her powerful navy, the still more influential moral force of the Church, and the whole organization of civil life from the highest officer of state to the humblest member of the village “mir,” and places them in the hands of one man, for the expression of his will over ninety millions of people. It is the less necessary to enter into the subject, as bureaucracy has probably seen its best days in Russia. The apparatus—as was only to be looked for—in spite of theoretic perfection, is rusty in part, in others defective, and in not a few respects an instrument of oppression. It is constantly being altered in details; and probably will soon have to be altered in essentials, if the dangers threatened from a people who have had so much of officialism that they are growing sick of order itself are to be avoided.

A voluminous work also might be written—many books, indeed, have been written—on the court ceremonies and etiquette and the manner of life within the charmed

298

THE WINTER PALACE.

circle of fashion of which the imperial family is the
centre, and which, like the Government, are systematized
and regulated in the minutest details. It will be more
profitable and interesting perhaps to say something
instead of the Winter Palace itself. The site of the
official residence of the emperors was originally occupied
by a house belonging to Count Apraxin, Peter's high
admiral, who first taught the Russians to conquer at sea.
The Empress Anne first took up her town residence here;
and in 1762 it was rebuilt, under the direction of the
Empress Catherine, after a design by Count Rastrelli. In
1837 it was burned to the ground; but two years later
it had risen in its present magnificent form.

The structure, which is rich and ornate, even to
heaviness, in its style of architecture, is four stories in
height, and stands proudly apart from the other build-
ings on the Great Quay of the Neva, from whence a grand
flight of marble steps leads up to the principal entrance.
The frontage to the river is four hundred and fifty-five
feet, and that facing the Admiralty three hundred and
fifty feet. Who shall describe with appropriate elabora-
tion the glories of the clusters of Ionic and Corinthian
columns and pilasters, the richly-carved capitals and
entablatures, the ornamented architraves, flowers, fes-
toons, and arabesques, the corniced and pedimented
windows, and balustraded roof surmounted by vases
and statues? Whatever fault may be found with the
style—and public buildings of St. Petersburg, like those
of some other capitals, are by no means free of the re-
proach of meretriciousness—there can be no question of
the imposing general effect, and the situation of the
building is one of the finest in Europe. The interior

IMPERIAL UPHOLSTERY.

299

of the palace is furnished and embellished in the most sumptuous style. The whole resources of the art of the carver, decorator, and upholsterer have been expended on it; and the higher branches of art, painting and sculpture, are worthily represented.

The visitor is led through a maze of banqueting-halls, drawing-rooms, audience-chambers, corridors, and galleries, and up and down magnificent flights of stairs, until he gets bewildered by the blaze of gilt and bronze, the columns of marble and porphyry, the gorgeous draperies, carpets, and mosaics, the huge mirrors and candelabra, the richly-carved cornices and painted ceilings, and the thousand and one rare and precious works of art that have here been gathered together. In the lower story alone there are nearly a hundred principal rooms, and the area of the different apartments is not less than four hundred thousand square feet. The most famous among the rooms in the Winter Palace are the great banqueting-hall, which measures one hundred and eighty-nine feet in length by one hundred and ten in breadth; the hall of St. George, a still more magnificently decorated apartment, in which the chapter of the military order named after the popular saint of Russia is held; the white hall; the throne-room; the gallery of field-marshals; and the portrait-gallery; and the curious may see the crown jewels of Russia, and many other objects of artistic and historical interest.

Most people, however, will choose to devote more time to the splendid collection of paintings—one of the most extensive and precious in the world—in the adjoining picture-galleries, museums, and libraries of the Hermitage Palaces, than to an exploration of the wonders

300

THE HERMITAGE COLLECTION.

of the Imperial Palace. Here, by the care and public
spirit of successive emperors, have been gathered examples
of all the great schools of painting, including a large rep-
resentation of the great names in English art. The Great
and Little Hermitage and the Hermitage Theatre are con-
nected with each other and with the Winter Palace by
covered galleries, and, like the imperial residence, are ranged
along the Grand Quay of the Neva, to which they present a
frontage of nearly eight hundred feet. If we add to this
the Winter Palace itself, we have a continuous range of
imperial palaces more than a third of an English mile in
length, impressive in their vast size and stately proportions,
enriched within and without with all that wealth could
supply or taste suggest to please the fancy of generations of
autocratic sovereigns, and bursting with all kinds of superb
ornaments and costly furniture, and with still more price-
less treasures of art, science, and literature—chefs d'œuvre
of Raphael, Titian, and Correggio, of Greuse, Poussin, and
Claude, of Rembrandt, Cuyp, and Paul Potter; statues
in marble and bronze by the great sculptors of ancient
and modern times; collections of engravings, jewellery,
cameos, and antiquities of every kind, and a library con-
taining many thousands of rare works on archæology,
and manuscripts reaching back to the earliest beginning
of Russian literature and history. The principal literary
treasures of the Russian capital have, however, been
removed to the Imperial Public Library, on the Nevski
Prospect, where has been brought together one of the
richest and most extensive collections of books in the
world, embracing nearly a million of printed volumes.

The line of palaces on or near the Neva does not end
with the Hermitage; for beyond it is the Marble Palace,

PALACES AND MONASTERIES.

301

originally a present from the Empress Catherine to her favourite, Prince Orloff, and then behind the extensive lawns and shrubberies of the Summer Gardens are the Summer Palace, once occupied by Peter the Great; the quaint structure named the Castle of St. Michael, built by the Emperor Paul, and where he met with his tragic death; and the magnificent modern Michael Palace, close to the walls of which the late Emperor fell, shattered by a Nihilist bomb, as he was about to enter his carriage. Higher up the river we find the Taurida Palace, surrounded by extensive grounds, the gift of Catherine to another of her numerous favourites, the celebrated Marshal Potemkin, and now reserved for dowagers of the imperial family, while members of the reigning house have their residences scattered through other parts of the city.

On this southern side of the Neva also are two far-famed monastic piles that are palatial in their extent and splendour—the Smolnoi Church and Convent, with the attached institutions for the education of ladies of noble birth and of the daughters of simple citizens, and the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevski. The Smolnoi Church is of white marble, and surmounting it are five domes of blue, blazing with golden stars. The Nevski Monastery ranks next after those at Kiev and at Troitsa near Moscow, in precedence, sanctity, and importance, and, like the other two mentioned, is the seat of a metropolitan. Here, in their shrine of solid silver, rest the bones of the canonized Grand Duke Alexander, the conqueror of the Tchuds on Lake Peipus, and of the Swedes on the Neva, who had afterwards to bend his neck under the foot of the Tartar Khans.

302

ST. ALEXANDER NEVSKI.

Alexander Nevski is a saint in high repute on the banks of the Neva, where a political as well as a religious purpose is fulfilled by keeping up the memory of his exploits; and many are the rich gifts that have been brought hither to enrich his shrine and the church that contains it by successive emperors, princes, priests, envoys, and courtiers. Within the precincts of St. Alexander Nevski some of the greatest and noblest of Russia's sons are buried: it is the Westminster Abbey, the Père-la-Chaise of St. Petersburg. In a small side chapel in the Church of the Annunciation are the tombs of the Naryshkin family, the kin of Peter the First, and near by are the monuments of the celebrated generals Suvaroff, Rumiantsof, and Miloradovitch. In the adjoining cemetery a white marble column rises to the memory of Lomonosof, the father of Russian poetry—a sign of the uprising of a new literature, and that a higher and grander fame than can be won in war is receiving the recognition of the nation.

The most notable of the ecclesiastical edifices of St. Petersburg, however, is the new Church of St. Isaac the Dalmatian in Isaac Place. Surrounded on every side by colossal and splendid public buildings, this "mountain of bronze and granite" seems, by its vast bulk and height, to fill the greatest space in the eye while taking a panoramic glance over the Russian capital. There was a church on this spot in Peter's time, which Catherine afterwards caused to be reconstructed of marble; but the present magnificent building, which occupied nearly forty years in construction, owes its existence to the munificence of the Emperors Alexander I. and Nicolas. Like that of most Russian

CATHEDRAL OF ST. ISAAC.

303

churches, the ground plan forms a Greek cross. The length is three hundred and forty feet, and the breadth three hundred feet. The architect, M. Montferrand, has sought to attain his effects by the grand simplicity of the lines combined with the stupendous magnitude of the scale and the richness of the materials of the building. The great central dome surmounts four grand porticos, forming the entrances to the church. Access to these is obtained by four broad flights of steps, each step composed of a single block of granite. The two principal porticos are supported by sixteen polished granite columns of the Corinthian order, each hewn from the solid rock, while the side porticos have eight columns each. These gigantic monolithic pillars are sixty feet in height and seven feet in diameter; and they are set on bronze pedestals, and crowned by massive capitals of bronze and friezes of fire-polished stone. High above this rises the great central cupola, a vast burnished dome of copper, resting on a peristyle of thirty columns; and above it, "like a chapel on a hill-top," the rotunda, bearing aloft, at a height of three hundred and seventeen feet from the ground, the golden cross that is one of the great "landmarks" of the stranger in the city. Two smaller domes, similar in design to the main cupola, surmount each of the two principal porticos.

All the resources that the Russian genius and religious feeling can employ have been lavished on the interior of this great fane of the Orthodox faith; but with so much yet to describe, we must not linger over marble pavements and richly-gilded roofs, the paintings and carvings, the precious shrines, screens, and

304

ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.

altar furniture, and the pillars of malachite, lapis-lazuli, and porphyry, that may be seen by the curious or the devout in St. Isaac's. Before leaving its neighbourhood, however, mention may be made of a work by the same architect that stands not far off, in the Admiralty Square. This is the Alexander Column, a single shaft of red Finland granite, eighty-four feet in height and fourteen feet in diameter, and the largest monolithic monument of modern times. The base consists of another huge block of granite twenty-five feet in height; while the capital, which is surmounted by a winged figure of Hope, consists of bronze smelted down from Turkish cannons captured by the generals of Alexander I., in whose honour the column has been erected.

Beyond the Neva, and opposite to the Hermitage Palace, is a church of more venerable and interesting associations than have yet gathered round St. Isaac's—the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. Its slender, needle-like spire alone, shooting up into the air to the height of three hundred and eighty-seven feet, will not allow the visitor to St. Petersburg to pass it by unnoticed. It is the highest pinnacle in the capital, and almost in Russia, surpassing considerably in altitude the spire of the Admiralty and the cross of St. Isaac's, the two city landmarks that dispute with it for pre-eminence. Beneath this conspicuous monument, that, seen above the sea of buildings, looks more like "the mast of some great admiral" than a structure of stone, rests the dust of the great founder of the city, and grouped around, as he had decreed, are the tombs of his successors on the throne of Russia. The walls of the church are covered with trophies won in wars

A FIT RESTING-PLACE.

305

against Prussian and Austrian, Frenchman, Swede, and Turk, each marking a step in an astounding career of conquest and aggrandizement. The building itself is encircled by the strong walls and bastions of the fortress of St. Petersburg, where the first germ of the capital was planted. In the rear, a few hundred yards off, the small wooden cottage where Peter laboured and thought still stands entire. Opposite, beyond the broad Neva, and athwart its ascending and descending streams of trading and pleasure craft, is seen the stately line of palaces where his descendants, the heirs of one of the most extensive empires known in history, live surrounded by treasures of art and taste undreamed of in the Russia of a century and a half ago. On Vassili Island, beyond another wide reach of water on the right, at the parting of the Great and Little Neva, is the wide and open space on which stand the Exchange, where crowds of merchants do daily congregate, the busy docks, Custom House, and old and new bazaars, the Academy of Sciences, and the long line of the University front; while on the left, across the Great Nevka, and on the north bank of the main river, are the arsenals, graving-docks, shipbuilding yards, factories, and workmen's quarters, and all the signs of the industrial activity and naval power of Russia. Truly, so far at least as the choice of the great Czar's last resting-place is concerned,—

“After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”

It was in this fortress, now used as a state prison, that the Czarevitch Alexis, the only son of Peter that reached man’s estate, died under the knout, as the

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306 FAMILY TRAGEDIES OF THE ROMANOFFS.

punishment of his insubordinate opposition to his father's reforms. There are few of the imperial residences that do not contain some such ugly, skeleton in the closet as a witness of the terrible penalties that wait upon greatness. Peter's granddaughter, the Princess Tarakanof, was drowned in one of the dungeons of the fortress by the overflowing of the Neva. His grandson, Peter III., was done to death at Rapcha, near Peterhof, "a secluded spot, but very pleasant," to make a way to the throne for his ambitious wife, the Empress Catherine II. Ivan VI. died under the hands of assassins, after having been bereft of reason by his long confinement in the fortress of Schlüsselburg, from the cradle to the age of twenty-one. Catherine's son, the Emperor Paul, great-grandfather of the present Czar, was murdered under circumstances of peculiar atrocity in the sumptuous new palace he had reared for himself, while his eldest son, afterwards Alexander I., lay trembling and listening to the progress of the bloody work in the room above.

The stately courts and halls of the Winter Palace itself have seen their share of tragic incidents. From the front of it the Emperor Nicolas harangued the rebel soldiers of the Guards, in the "December Insurrection" that marked his accession to the throne. The conspirators who raised the standard of revolt in the name of the Czar's elder brother Constantine, who had renounced the succession for the love of the Polish lady whom he married, shot down the governor of the capital, Miloradovitch, "the hero of fifty-two battles," in the Place du Senat, massacred some of their officers, and fired on the metropolitan, and were only scattered by repeated rounds of ball-cartridge.

AMUSEMENTS OF THE CAPITAL.

307

Perhaps the most startling event, however, in the history
of the Winter Palace is the recent diabolical attempt to
blow up the imperial family with dynamite stored under
the state dining-room. Little more than a year after—
on the 13th March 1881—another and successful
attempt on the life of the head of the Russian state
closed for the present the long list of tragedies in the
Romanoff family,—the scene of Alexander the Second's
murder, however, being, as has been said, not the Win-
ter Palace, but the public roadway skirting the Catherine
Canal, near the Michael Palace.

Much might be said of the street sights and
sounds and the domestic life of the Russian capital.
Whole chapters might be written on the picturesque
variety and startling contrasts in the types of manners,
from the ultra-French polish and profuse display in the
upper circles, to the extreme poverty and primitive
simplicity of the lower ranks of citizens and the peas-
antry; of the trade, manufactures, and employments of
the capital; of its official, scientific, literary, and artistic
coteries; of the musical and theatrical representations
that fill so large a space in the thoughts of St. Peters-
burg society; of the popular amusements and recrea-
tions—the winter sports on the Neva, the *montagnes
russes* that do duty for the ice-hills in the milder
seasons of the year, and the rude humours of the
carnival; of the busy scenes to be witnessed in the
markets; of droskies and diligences, with their befurred
and shaggy-bearded drivers; of sledges and gondolas;
of floating fairs and ice-festivals; and of the excessive
solicitude with which a paternal government watches
over all the pleasures and occupations of its children,

308

BAZAARS AND MARKETS.

carrying espionage and supervision to lengths which, according to English notions at least, are intolerable.

For one desirous of studying Russian character and habits, no more profitable way of spending the time could be chosen than in visiting the numerous bazaars and markets in the city. In the Siennaia, or haymarket, he will find not hay alone, or chiefly, but poultry, flesh, and fish—frozen, dried, salted, and fresh; and all manner of vegetables, fruits, and other provisions are exposed for sale among an eager and gesticulating but good-humoured throng of buyers and sellers. It is, in fact, a combination of Billingsgate and Covent Garden, with features that are peculiarly Russian. The penalties of visiting these places of public resort are not to be measured only by the roubles and kopeks which the unwary stranger is wheedled into expending on the tempting wares exposed. Dr. Granville, an English traveller, who has given a most minute account of St. Petersburg as it was fifty years ago, describes a rag fair, where the humours of low Russian life may be studied, as a dense and unsavoury gathering of "hawkers, old clothesmen, sellers of kvass, sbitine (popular beverages), gingerbread, horse-flesh, and black cabbage soup, thick and nasty, of which the poorer people are fond," and richly deserving, from the crowding and pushing, its nickname of *Tolkonchoi Rynok*—the Shoving-market. In all its main features the picture is true to-day.

The Great Bazaar of St. Petersburg—the Gostinnoi Dvor, or Strangers' Market—is in the Nevski Prospect, at no great distance from the haymarket. The huge building is celled like a honeycomb with

THE NEVSKI PROSPECT.

309

shops, stalls, booths, and warerooms, in which goods of the most diverse and miscellaneous kinds, from the most rich and rare to the most coarse and common, are exposed for sale; and the streets, lanes, passages, and staircases are thronged with a swarm of purchasers more dense and more busy than bees in a hive. The business of the Gostinnoi Dvor has overflowed and invaded the neighbouring thoroughfares, which are lined with shops and stores in which generally merchandise of inferior descriptions are sold.

Of course no account of the Russian capital would be complete without something being said of its great promenade—the Nevski Prospect. Starting from the centre of the city in the Admiralty Place, this spacious street extends for a distance of some two miles, till it nearly reaches the Neva again at the Monastery of St. Alexander Nevski, thus cutting off from the rest of the city the most fashionable quarter and the imperial residences, round which the river sweeps in a wide curve. The Nevski Prospect is not throughout straight, being interrupted at about two-thirds of its length by the Moscow Railway station; but its spacious breadth, the magnificent buildings that line it on either side, the never-ending current of foot-passengers, equestrians, and carriages that stream through this main artery of the city, the roar of commerce, and the gay colouring of fashion, justify the comparisons that have been made between it and Regent Street in London and the Boulevards of Paris. At the same time, there is a picturesqueness in the semi-Oriental buildings that here and there break the line of more familiar architecture, in the rich and motley costumes of the people, and the

310

ST. PETERSBURG IN WINTER.

strange shapes and caparisons of the flights of vehicles
that neither the French nor the British capital can
boast of.

Most striking, however, is the aspect of the Prospect
in winter, when the whole capital, in its white and
ghastly draperies, has an unreal and fantastic appear-
ance, more like the "sheeted spectre" of a city, such as
might haunt the solitudes of the Pole, with walls of
iceberg and streets of snow, and fretted ornaments of
frost and rime, rather than a busy metropolis with
warm currents of human life flowing through it. The
Neva is a bewildering spectacle at these times, with
skaters skimming and wheeling like flocks of swallows
over its white surface—groups gathered here and there
watching or taking part in the ice-sports, eating and
drinking, buying and selling—and innumerable sledges,
drawn by horses or pushed by the hand, speeding to
and fro, with only a thin frozen board between them
and the deep waters. But the aspect of the crowded
and fashionable Nevski Promenade, where beauty and
fashion are wont to sun themselves in their gaudiest
plumage, is perhaps even more weird and strange; for
the ordinary sounds of traffic are hushed by the thick
carpet of snow, against which every object stands out
with silhouette-like sharpness—the familiar wheeled
vehicles have disappeared, and their place has been
taken by sledges, that flit past noiselessly, save for the
tinkling of the bells attached to the horses' necks and
the muffled monotone of the "runners" over the hard-
pressed snow. The owners of the sleighs lean back
amid the luxurious wrappings of fur and down that
bury them to the eyes; while the drivers, also thickly

"TOLERATION STREET."

311

padded against the cutting northern blast, lean eagerly
forward as they pilot their horses through the mazy
flights of sliding chariots, and the drifting clouds of
powdery or feathery flakes in which they finally dis-
appear. Even the foot-passengers, encased in their
heavy garments of fur, have an uncouth and gnome-
like air, that suits well the bizarre aspect of this singular
winter city

We have not mentioned any of the interesting build-
ings that line the Nevski Prospect, with the exception
of the Great Bazaar, but many of them are well
worthy of notice. Chief among these is the Church of
Our Lady of Kazan, with its dome and colonnade in
imitation of St. Peter's at Rome. Within it are the
miraculous image of the Virgin, brought hither from the
banks of the Volga, and, what to many perhaps will be
an object of greater interest, the tomb of Kutusoff, the
"Saviour of Russia" on the occasion of Buonaparte's
invasion. The Nevski has been dubbed " Toleration
Street, " for here in friendly neighbourhood are found
churches of the Dissident Russian sects, of Roman
Catholics, Protestants, and Armenians, and even a Mo-
hammedan mosque. The Foundling Hospital, the Alex-
ander Theatre, an imperial palace, and part of the
façade of the Foreign Office are also among the architec-
tural ornaments of this great promenade. Other fine
streets radiate out like it from the Admiralty Square
and the quays to the extremity of the city, and in these
and the busy connecting thoroughfares the life and
traffic of St. Petersburg are largely concentrated.

Taking the city as a whole, however, the streets seem
a " world too wide " for the population. Its growth,

312

THE CITY'S FUTURE.

enormous as it has been, is not yet sufficient to fill out
the ambitious plan of the founder. It is a young giant
that has not reached its full stature and strength.
Rapidly, however, the great capital of the Russian Em-
pire is filling up the unbuilt-on spaces within its cincture,
and populous suburbs are forming around it. Already it
boasts itself to be the fifth, in point of population, of the
capitals of Europe; and in art and science, in culture and
fashion, in trade and political influence, it struggles for a
foremost place among the most famous and formidable
of its rivals. Its history since first it secured a firm
foothold on the treacherous morass, in a wasted and
unfruitful region, under the cold skies of the north and
amid the clearing smoke of battle, has been a magnifi-
cent tribute to the bold and far-seeing sagacity of its
great Czar, who more than saint or apostle seems the
real presiding genius and patron of the city.

Yet clear-sighted observers are not wanting who hold
that St. Petersburg's sun is approaching its meridian,
and soon will move towards its setting. The capital of
the Czars is a thing extraneous to Russia. Its Italian
architecture and French fashions are the expressions of
tastes that have never truly become acclimatized; its
very site is on foreign soil. It is the work of arbitrary
will, not the natural outgrowth of Slav energies. There
is a party of growing numbers and influence with whom
jealousy of the foreigner and love of country are accepted
as almost synonymous. Too long, say the Slavophils,
has Russia been copying foreign models; it is time that
it took its destinies into its own keeping. St. Peters-
burg has had its uses, as a model; but the Slavs have
passed their probationary period, and can dispense with

PRESAGES OF EVIL.

313

it. If autocracy is to continue to guide Russia on in the fulfilment of its "mission," it must intrench itself again in the centre of the empire—at Moscow.

But the presence of the court, with all that that presence implies, is as the breath of St. Petersburg's life. "Take away," says Schuyler, "the army of the court and the officials, and it will sink into a third-rate town." It would no longer be able to make a successful fight against the efforts of nature to obliterate it. The treacherous bog over which it is built already yields under the intolerable weight of its palaces. It needs constant tinkering and mending to close the yawning gaps and keep the buildings in repair. When court favour deserts St. Petersburg, the swamp will be in a fair way to have its own again. In evil days may come about that conjunction—often predicted, but hitherto postponed—a westerly gale and high tide in the Gulf of Finland, and a breaking up of the ice and floods on the Neva. Then, indeed, might we see the splendid capital built up by Peter and his successors falling away into immeasurable ruin and dissolution, as may some day happen to their still greater work, the Russian Empire itself. Meanwhile it is still permitted us to hope better things of the future of St. Petersburg.

There are many places of note in the environs of St. Petersburg, but they owe their attractions to art rather than to nature. The surrounding country, like the province generally, is flat and uninteresting; and the soil, swampy, or sandy, or covered with funereal-looking pine-forests, does not make amends by fruitfulness and cheerful colour for its tameness of contour. But along the banks of the Neva, on the shores of the

314

IMPERIAL COUNTRY-SEATS.

Gulf of Finland, and on every "eligible site" near the capital, rise the chateaux and country-houses of the rich city merchants, the high officials of court, and of the great nobles, and the residences of royalty itself—splendid edifices surrounded by rich and beautiful gardens, parterres, and parks that belie both the climate and the soil.

Without playing the part of cicerone in these past or present country seats of the imperial family, or undertaking the endless task of describing the artistic treasures and luxuries with which they are stored, and the historical and romantic events of which they have been the scene, a passing glance may be thrown at the palace at Tsarskoë-Selo, where the villa originally erected by Catherine, the lowly-born consort of Peter the Great, has grown under later sovereigns to an immense pile, which, with its superb suites of rooms, the minor palaces and royal arsenal grouped about it, and the spacious grounds extending around it for many miles, is worthy to be the favourite resort of emperors and their courts. In another direction, not far from Cronstadt, are Peterhof, the retreat from whence Peter I. watched the growth of the Russian fleet, and his descendant, the Emperor Nicolas, the operations of the Anglo-French squadron before Cronstadt; Oranienbaum, where the ill-starred Peter III. frittered away his time in reviewing his famous "Holstein Guard," sailed his mimic fleet on the pond, and raised his Liliputian fortifications; and not far off the humble cottage where his ambitious spouse, the Second Catherine, was wont to retire when she desired a little release from the cares of state and the dissipations of court.

GATCHINA.

315

Lastly, there is the Palace of Gatchina, within which Alexander the Third, the Autocrat of spacious Russia, has, since the death of his father, dwelt in strict seclusion, surrounded by Cossack guards and elaborate precautions against treasonable attempts on his life.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BALTIC PROVINCES.

HE traveller who leaves St. Petersburg by the
Riga Gate will pass under the "Triumphal
Arch of Narva" before leaving the south-
western outskirts of the city behind him.
This massive gateway of metal is surmounted by a co-
lossal group, representing Victory drawn in a car by
six steeds, and holding aloft laurels and other insignia
of triumph in war. The road leads through the heart
of the sea-board provinces of Russia between the Gulf of
Finland and the Prussian frontier—a region that has
had only too frequent and bitter experience of war and
its glories—and ultimately to Warsaw and to the capitals
of Western Europe. It introduces us, in short, to the
"Baltic Provinces," and to their strangely "conglomerate"
history and population.

It is not inappropriate, and probably not unintentional,
that the name of Narva should be thus connected with
Russian triumph. The arch commemorates the safe
return of the troops of the Czar after the occupation of
Paris by the Allies in 1815. Narva is a pleasantly
situated little fortified town, distant some one hundred
miles from the Russian capital, on the river Narova,

NARVA AND DORPAT.

317

which here falls into the Gulf of Finland, after a course
of forty miles from Lake Peipus—the “Lake of the
Tchuds”—the great fresh-water basin on whose sedgy
banks so many heroic episodes in Russian history have
been enacted. The Narova is the western boundary of
the government of St. Petersburg; and though St. Petersburg
is officially accounted one of the Baltic Provinces,
its history and position only partially connect it with
the other maritime governments—Estonia, Livonia, and
Courland.

It is only after having crossed the Narova that we
feel we are treading the soil that has been so fiercely
battled for by successive invaders, and may yet be the
scene of a still more gigantic struggle of rival ambitions;
where Russian and Pole, Swede and Dane, Lithuanian
and German, have each left indelible marks on the
manners, language, and social condition of the people,
but have failed to destroy the primitive type of Livonian
character, or even to eradicate the beliefs, memories, and
observances that have been handed down from father to
son from times anterior to the introduction of Christianity.

On a sluggish stream that falls into Lake Peipus
stands the town of Dorpat, whose university, founded
by the great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, is still, says
Mr. Gallenga, “the best in the empire,” and the nucleus
of such learning and culture as are to be found in the
Baltic Provinces. Due west of Narva, and not far within
the entrance of the Gulf of Finland, is Reval, the capital
of Estonia, a busy seaport, with the aspect of an old
Rhenish town, and whose history for six hundred years
is full of stirring incidents of siege and civil broil.

318

BALTIC CITIES.

Riga, the chief town of Livonia, at the mouth of the
Dwina, a much more important place,—indeed, one of
the leading cities of the empire in trade and population,
—has the same German air in its architecture, its
municipal organization, the very names of the burghers,
and the language in which its extensive business is
conducted. A little distance beyond is Mittau, the pro-
vincial capital of Courland, whose glory departed with
its last duke, Biren, the favourite of the Empress Anne
Ivanovna, though a transient gleam returned to it for
the six years that Louis XVIII. made Mittau his residence
during his exile from France.

Around these five towns—Riga, Reval, Mittau, Dorpat,
and Narva—the great events in the history of this re-
gion have mainly centred. They are still the chief seats
of population and of commercial movement. To none
of them, however, need we go if we wish to feel the
pulse of the people of these provinces. Some of them
are busy seaport towns, crowded with foreign shipping
and foreign seamen. The street sounds are a perfect
Babel of diverse tongues, in which round British oaths
are plentifully interlarded. There is little at first
sight to remind the traveller that he is in the Czar's
dominions. Here and there a dome or a minaret, in the
familiar Byzantine taste, reminds one that the Greek
Orthodox faith has numerous adherents amidst the pre-
vailing Lutheranism.

The superior officials will probably be found to be
Russian; and many classes of tradesmen—shoemakers,
carpenters, and the like—are mainly recruited from the
interior of the empire. The clumsy rafts and boats that
descend the Dwina with their freights of timber, grain,

TEUTONIC INFLUENCES.

319

hemp, flax, and tallow are manned to a large extent by crews whose physiognomy, dress, and habits mark them as true sons of Holy Russia. But this is only a fluctuating and intermittent population. The Slav is not at home on the shores of the Baltic. He does not, except in the extreme north, take kindly to the strong fresh breath of the sea; his tastes and occupations are essentially those of the inland country, where the level plains stretch on all sides to the horizon's edge.

Much more in keeping with the situation are the evidences of German influences which have leavened the Baltic Provinces from one end to the other. In the counting-houses, in the exchanges, on the quays, the strong, guttural tones of the Teutonic tongue are heard. The names inscribed on the sign-boards of the most flourishing shops, and on the door-plates of the great merchant houses, unmistakably tell of the German origin of their owners. Riga, for instance, is a city where the commercial and higher grades of social life are essentially German. It has its Bürgermeister and its Rathhaus, its Domkirche and its picturesque groupings of brick gables and high-pitched roofs, as if it were a veritable ancient city of the Fatherland. The streets and public places are mostly designated by German titles; and indeed over a great part of the Baltic Provinces the nomenclature of the towns and villages is, as a rule, Teutonic in sound and sense, and tells of past conquest and long possession by the "superior race." The bourgeoisie tenaciously retain with the language and national character many of the old customs and manners which are going out of fashion in their ancestral home itself, so that in some respects they may be said to be more

320

SWEDES, POLES, AND JEWS.

German than the Germans. Add to this that the great seignieurs—the nobles, landed proprietors, and persons of consideration in the provinces—are, as a rule, of German descent, and it will be seen that the influence of Russia's powerful neighbour in this part of the world is much greater than can be measured by the mere numerical strength of the Teutonic element.

Along the coasts of Livonia and Courland there is a considerable sprinkling of Swedes, mostly hardy fishermen and seamen; and in few places are the primitive traditions and manners of the Scandinavian race preserved more pure from the contamination of modern change than in the islands of Dago and Oesel. In the south, especially in Courland, the spare, cadaverous figures with Jewish traits, looking the very image of meagre and hungry care, that haunt the shadows of the narrow, vilely-smelling streets, tell of the close neighbourhood of Poland. Poles, too, there are, and representatives of many other nations; but none of all those that have been enumerated have much relationship either by blood or sympathy with the true natives of the country.

In reality there are two aboriginal peoples in the Baltic Provinces—the Letts, a branch of the Lithuanian race, who inhabit Courland and Southern Livonia; and the Esthonians, and remnants of other tribes of Finnish origin, that occupy the northern districts. One needs to rummage far back into obscure antiquity before discovering any race affinity between these two peasant peoples. The languages bear no resemblance to each other. There are broad distinctions of temperament, physiognomy, and traditional beliefs. It is only by a sort of geographical accident that they have been placed

LETTS AND ESTHONIANS.

321

side by side, and subjected to the same hard discipline
of fate.

Misfortune alone has made them brethren. Centuries
of harsh usage and hard fare have developed a won-
derfully close likeness between Lett and Esthonian, at
least on a first and superficial view. Glancing at the
social condition of these lowly husbandmen and wood-
men, we might compare them to a dingy, well-worn
carpet, where the original brightness of colour and diver-
sity of pattern have been obliterated by being con-
stantly trodden on. Lithuanian and Finn, they have
been trampled upon by heavy-footed masters from their
first appearance in medieval history. They have borne
their destiny on the whole patiently and uncomplainingly,
bending their shoulders to the yoke of German, Swede,
Pole, and Russ, meekly submitting to the "whips and
scorns" of their haughty superiors, and bearing, as part
of the order of things, the chains that bound them to
the land like beasts of burden. Since the early part of
the present century, serfage has been abolished in the
Baltic Provinces, and well-meant attempts have been
made to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry; but
the whip is still an "institution" in the land, and the
dulled and lustreless eye, the rude features, the awk-
ward movements, and the slavish demeanour of the poor
Livonian or Esthonian boor show that the stamp of ser-
vitude is still upon body and spirit. The old saying
runs that "Esthonia is an Elysium for the noble, a heaven
for the clergy, a mine of gold for the stranger, and a
hell for the peasant;" and though this needs some modi-
fication in the present day, it is still too true that the
agricultural classes are deplorably poor and degraded,

(718)

21

322

FOREST SCENERY IN LIVONIA.

In Esthonia the soil is fruitful, and the scenery often
cheerful and picturesque. But in the more southern
provinces, where the dull, flat features of the country
are only broken by lugubrious masses of pine woods;
where forest, sandy down, and marsh alternate in monot-
onous succession; and where in many places the thin
soil only grudgingly yields enough to satisfy the daily
wants of the cultivator, the picture of peasant life is
still more depressing.

The Livonian peasant, unlike his Russian brother,
prefers, as a rule, to build his house apart from his
fellows, instead of joining with his neighbours to form a
little village. His lowly cabin will be found sheltered
behind some rising ground that breaks a little the force
of the terrible blasts of winter, and overlooking a meagre
little patch of grain-land or flax plantation which he
cultivates, or nestling in some clearing of the inter-
minable forest of fir and larch, whence he daily sallies
forth with axe on shoulder.

The roads are execrably bad; and unless one travel
by railway or over the Government post-routes, the
tedious journey in the rude, springless vehicles over
sandy hillocks, rough heaths, and deeply furrowed tracks
through the pine forests fills every bone of the body
with aches. There is a stately grandeur about these
silvan glades when the flickering winter sunlight streams
down on the path between the tall trunks, or, better
still, when the stars are seen shining with unearthly
magnitude and splendour between the snow-laden
branches. In the summer season a resinous perfume
fills the air; the road is strewn with the fallen cones and
needles of the larch, spruce, and fir; thickets of oak,

LETTISH PEASANT LIFE.

323

ash, hazel, maple, and beech vary with their lighter green
the sombre colouring of the forest; and a profusion of
wood-flowers and berries adds to the wild charms of the
scene. But a more than usually severe jolt, as the teluga
strikes against some log or stone, or a sudden halt, as
the wheels stick in a deep rut, soon recalls the mind to
the miseries of travel in the Baltic Provinces.

The human habitations encountered at intervals do
little in the way of enlivening the scenery. As a rule,
they tell only too plainly not only of rustic plainness and
poverty, but of squalid wretchedness and want. The
thatched roof of bent or grass is ragged and moss-grown;
the rude log walls have chinks through which the keen
winds and sifting snows of winter find a way to the
dark and smoky interior. M. D'Henriet, in his lively
account of the Baltic Provinces, furnishes us with a vivid,
though perhaps slightly overdrawn, sketch of the deso-
late and pitiable aspect of Lettish peasant life.

"The people," he says, "have an aspect of degradation,
and at the same time of gloomy resignation, mournful to
see. Near the villages, on little eminences that are called
hills, the cemeteries have a desolate air. The cabins are
tumbling in ruins, if one can call ruins these heaps of
pieces of wood, rudely squared, disjointed by humidity,
frost, and storms, the courtyards noisome, the doors badly
fitting, with holes in the roof serving for chimneys, and
in place of windows, shutters that are open during the
day, and are entirely closed in the evening against in-
discreet glances."

Within the dwelling it is equally vain to search for
marks of comfort. The diminutive cattle and the
human inmates are housed together, with often hardly

324

THE PEASANT AND HIS "MASTER."

a partition separating them. Tables and chairs are luxuries which only the rich can dream of. A rude bench, or perhaps the hard clay floor, is the couch on which the family huddle together for warmth and companionship during the bitter nights of winter. But notwithstanding his hard life and fare, and the discomforts of his "smoky crib," the Lettish peasant sleeps soundly on the bosom of his mother earth. Sleep and—when he can get it—strong liquor are his great resorts in which he seeks and finds forgetfulness of his wrongs and his miseries.

In the north of the Baltic Provinces, where the natural fertility of the land is greater, some rays of prosperity may be seen reflected in the condition of the population—touches of colour enlivening the outsides of the cottages, and traces of comfort in their internal arrangements; suggestions of coquetry and luxury in the holiday attire, and a less heavy-laden and hopeless expression on the faces of the people. It is no easy task to penetrate the thick rind of suspicion, timidity, and reserve with which the peasant guards the thoughts of his soul from the view of the stranger. Once behind these guards, and fully admitted to his confidence, one is surprised to discover how much true beauty and pathos are hidden under the dull mask which the Livonian or the Esthonian cultivator wears before the *Saxa*—the "Saxon," the master.

Lett or Finn, he preserves with a kind of religious tenacity the remembrances of the remote past of his race. Fragments of the heroic songs of their pagan ancestors are still chanted at the firesides of the peasant people, and keep alive the memory of the "days of the past," when they

THE KALEVY POEG.

325

were independent and warrior nations. The dwellers
round the "Lake of the Tchuds" (Peipus), sing mourn-
fully the dirges of their buried freedom—the glorious
period ere "the banners of the strangers waved, ere the
intruders made us slaves, enchained us as the serfs of
tyrants, forced us to be their servants." The "Kalevy
Poeg," the national Epos of Esthonia, tells in a strain of
profound sadness of the stupendous deeds of valour of
their hero, the "son of Kalev," who uprooted trees, ex-
terminated the beasts of prey, explored the waste regions
of the north, and fought the spirits of the snow and fire,
and overthrew all enemies until the "men of iron" came
up from the south, and at the close of one terrible day
of slaughter the liberties of Esthonia lay prostrate at
the feet of the mysterious strangers. "Long," says
Rambaud in his paraphrase of this remarkable poem,
"his sons trusted that Mana, the god of death, would
give the hero back his liberty, and that once again the
iron men would feel the weight of his arm; but, like
King Arthur, he has never appeared, bringing to his
people the liberty that the Germans have taken from
them."

It was in the closing years of the twelfth century
that the German crusade against these heathens of the
Baltic was begun, under the spiritual guidance of Bishop
Albert. Missionaries of the Latin Church, and mer-
chant adventurers of the Hanseatic League, which had
stations at Novgorod and elsewhere, had already pen-
trated into this region; but the natives, discerning the
danger to their independence, had cast them out. In
1200 the town of Riga was founded; and in the follow-
ing year the Order of the Sword-Bearers was instituted,

326 THE RULE OF THE MILITARY ORDERS.

and then began that extraordinary process of "conver-
sion" that made the natives of the Baltic Provinces at
once Christians and slaves. By their superior arms and
discipline the Brethren of the Sword slaughtered the
unhappy people in thousands, seized on their lands, and
reduced the survivors to a state of abject servitude;
cities, fortified posts, and baronial keeps arose on the
Dwina, the Aa, and the Narova; Reval, and other coast
towns that had been conquered by the Danes in the
days of Canute the Great, were purchased or wrested
from the Northmen; and Dorpat, founded by the famous
Grand Duke Jaroslav of Kiev, with the rest of the pos-
sessions of the Russians in these parts, fell into the hands
of the Livonian Knights.

In 1237 the Order was amalgamated with that of the
Teutonic Knights, who had been promoting the spread
of the faith by similar "mild" methods in the Lithuanian
Provinces. Then followed the periods of the power, the
decadence, and the fall of the "unnatural institution"
founded by these warrior priests; and the fierce struggles
of Lithuanians, Poles, Danes, Swedes, and Russians for
their possessions. In the latter half of the seventeenth
century the supremacy of Sweden was established over
the greater part of these provinces; and it was in their
time that the Reformed faith was introduced, and has
since continued to be the prevailing creed, though, as in
the parallel cases where the tenets of the Greek and
Roman Churches have been imposed by authority on
these aboriginal races, Christian doctrines are strangely
and apparently inextricably mixed up with primitive
pagan superstitions.

The turn of Russia came when Peter the Great resolved

RUSSIAN CONQUEST.

327

to break out his "window towards Europe," through the
Swedish possessions on the Gulf of Finland. The beginn-
ing was disastrously discouraging. In 1700 the Russian
army was completely destroyed by a Swedish force, not
a seventh of its strength, before Narva. Four years later,
however, after Peter had laid the corner-stone of his
new capital on the Neva, Narva was taken by storm;
and Sheremetief's conquering host of Cossacks, Tartars,
and Russians spread over the Baltic Provinces, burning,
pillaging, and massacring, and seizing, among other loot,
a Lettish damsel, the servant of a Swedish pastor at Ma-
rienburg, who became the wife of Peter, and his successor
on the throne of the Czars. Since the Russian conquest,
the lot of the Livonian and Esthonian peasant has been
somewhat ameliorated, and the provinces have been allowed
to retain a certain measure of self-government. There
have been "servile risings" and snatchings at indepen-
dence, but never on the large scale or with the deter-
mined spirit shown by the Poles. Early in the century
serfage was abolished; but the land is still mainly the
heritage of the German nobles, who have managed to
hold it through every change of government.

A word or two upon the most important seats of
commerce and population—Reval and Riga—must close
our notice of this interesting country and people. Reval,
as it is approached from the sea, has an appearance
which leads the visitor to look for great things,—an
expectation which, as in the case of many other cities,
is hardly fulfilled on a closer view. Yet, in spite of the
many narrow and filthy streets, lined by tumble-down
wooden houses, and thronged with passengers that wear
but too many indications of the rude and poverty-

328

REVAL.

stricken condition of the lower classes, it is a place that
is crammed with the souvenirs of an eventful past,
reaching back through seven centuries, and not without
hopeful signs of modern wealth, power, and culture.

The port, defended by an outlying line of reefs and
islands, and strongly fortified, is a station of the Russian
Baltic fleet. On shore, the most prominent feature is
the *Dom* quarter of the town, perched along the ridge
of a rocky height, with steep slopes descending to the
quays and warehouses, the streets of artisans' and merchants' houses, the sandy shores, and the harbour thronged
with the masts of shipping that lie in front and in flank.
On the Dom no plebeian edifice may rear its head. By
situation and association its inhabitants stand apart from
the vulgar herd. Under this rock sleeps Kolyvan, the
half-fabulous Finnish hero, whose name was borne by
the spot before it took its Danish title of Refwell—the
"Reef." Upon it rose the first fortifications and religious
houses built by the Danes when they took possession of
the locality

The hand of successive occupiers—the Brethren of
the Sword, the Swedes, and the Russians—may be traced
on the castle and the group of churches and aristocratic
dwellings clustered on the ridge. The great landmark
of Reval from seaward is the tower of St. Oluf, the
highest in Russia. The architecture of the church below carries us back to the early part of the fourteenth
century; but of still older date is the Church of St.
Nicolas, within which are preserved part of the original
frescoes of Holbein's "Dance of Death." The desiccated
body of the Duke de Cröy, the defeated general of the
Russian army at Narva, whose remains, seized upon by

RIGA.

329

his disappointed creditors as the only thing substantial
they could find to represent his enormous debts, lay in
the Church of St. Nicolas without obtaining the rites
of sepulture for more than a century and a half, and
was regularly exhibited to the curious. A few years ago,
however, the Russian Government had the remains de-
cently interred. In the Domkirche, or Cathedral, rest
the bones of Admiral Greig, one of the heroes of Russian
naval annals. Other notable buildings of Reval are the
Schwarzen-häupter-haus, the House of the Black-heads,
or military association of young citizens for the defence
of the town, an ancient institution also found at Riga
and Dorpat; the Ritterschafts-haus, or place of meeting
of the provincial council; "Long Hermann," the lofty
circular tower crowning the Dom rock; and the Lust-
schloss, or Imperial Palace. "The city is strewn," says
the writer of "Letters from the Baltic," "with the
ruined remains of convents and monasteries, and the
outer circumference is bound in with walls and towers
of every irregular form."

The effacing hand of time and the exigencies of com-
mercial development have done more to blot out the
traces of ancient Riga than has happened in the case of
its old competitor Reval, which it has long passed in the
contest for wealth and business. Its position on the
deep, navigable Dwina, and its communications by canal
and railway with the interior of the empire, have made
the fortune of the capital of Livonia. The entrance to
the river is defended by the fortress of Dünamünde; and
vessels ascend the sluggish stream several miles before
they come opposite the wharves of Riga. Nearly a
million tons of shipping—mostly British and German—

330

A GERMAN CITY.

enter the port in the year, to bear away the vast quantities of grain, timber, flax, and other Russian produce collected here.

The city has a population of one hundred thousand, and is rapidly growing. A bridge of boats connects the two banks of the river, here half a mile broad, during the open season, and is continually thronged with streams of passengers and goods. Riga rises on the north bank in amphitheatre form. The general features, as has already been said, are rather those of a German than a Russian town. Its present rulers have honoured it with special favours; and it has been called the "darling child of the Czars," who, after their coronation at Moscow, are wont to pay a visit to the commercial city on the Baltic.

It retains many of its ancient privileges, and is the only Russian city that possesses a municipal guard. It has its full share of literary, artistic, scientific, and technical organizations, of charitable institutions, and ecclesiastical edifices. Under the lofty tower of the Domkirche are the bones of Bishop Albert, the founder of Riga. The palace, now the residence of the governor-general of the province, was once the seat of the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order. In the Ritter-haus the nobility of Livonia hold their assemblies, in a hall emblazoned with their coats of arms. But perhaps the most remarkable building of old Riga is the Schwarzenhäupter-haus—where the “Black-heads” assembled for solemn ceremonial or active duty—whose quaint and lowering features seem stamped with the grim character of that remote period in which the city took its rise, while within it are stored the relics of its history from those fighting times down to its busy and peaceful present.

CHAPTER XV.

RUSSIA ON THE BLACK SEA—THE CRIMEA.

T is time to change the scene to a new and warmer clime and a brighter sky. The dark lines of the pine forests retire into the background, and for a while we bid farewell to the deep morasses and dreary heaths that border the northern seas, and the heavy cloak of snow and ice that muffles land and water for many months in the year. The sad-coloured life of man also takes some fresher and livelier tints under a warmer sun.

Scenery and accessories begin to wear a semi-Oriental stamp. The green steppe lands stretch illimitably to the horizon; the camel and the dromedary are among the beasts of burden, and the buffalo drags the primitive wooden plough over the land, in the spots where force of circumstances has compelled a race of roving and pastoral proclivities to adopt a settled agricultural life. Over whole districts of Southern Russia, Tartar faces and Tartar speech, the flowing robe, the fez, and the slippers, khans, mosques, shrines of Mohammedan saints, and flat-roofed houses turning their “blind side” to the narrow and crooked lanes and opening into spacious inner courtyards, are as much the characteristic features

332

NEW RUSSIA.

of existence in town and country as they are across the
Black Sea in Asia Minor. These signs of Eastern life
increase with every step of progress that we take; for
henceforward we move farther and farther from Europe
and familiar European manners.

Historically we find ourselves in a more recent era of
Russia's development than any that has hitherto been
reached. It is not easy to realize—so firmly and broadly
has the encroaching foot of the Slav been planted on the
Euxine—that it is scarcely a century since the command
of the northern coasts of the Black Sea was wrested
from the Turk. It may well bear traces of the close
neighbourhood of Asia, seeing that a hundred years ago
the Crimea was still, politically speaking, a part of that
continent, and a stronghold, isolated but intact, of the
widespread dominions of Islam. In the history of this
New Russia of the south, Peter the Great and his
“eaglets” flit into the background. Their forms are only
a little better defined through the mists of time and dis-
tance than those of their ruder forefathers; and their real
“field of fame,” like that of the older Czars, was in the
north. The great figures in the task of conquering and
organizing, and, it may almost be said, creating out of
chaos, the provinces of the Black Sea, are that imperial
and imperious dame Catherine II., her minister and fav-
ourite the magnificent Potemkin, and her famous general
Suvaroff, whose stomach for hard fighting and hard work
surpassed even that of the founder of St. Petersburg and
victor of Poltava.

Perhaps no better standpoint could be chosen for
taking a brief survey of the changeful fortunes of South-
ern Russia, as a necessary preliminary to describing its

A SURVEY FROM CHERSONESUS.

333

aspect of to-day, than the rocky promontory at the
south-western corner of the Crimea—" a peninsula of
a peninsula "+—on which stand the ruins of Chersonesus.

The early history of the old Greek city carries us back
two thousand five hundred years; while within sight is
the scene of one of the most important struggles that
modern Europe has witnessed. Sixty dynasties have
within the cognizance of history held sway in this
distracted corner of the world since the Greek colonists
from Heraclea settled here among the savage and inhos-
pitable Tauri, whose caves may still be seen in the
Inkerman valley and other parts of the Crimea. Emi-
grants from Miletus had already established themselves
at Panticapæum, the modern Kertch, at the eastern
extremity of the "Tauric Chersonese," and founded the
famous kingdom of Bosphorus.

Earlier and more illustrious visitors may have come
hither from the Ægean Sea. Commander Buchan Telfer,
whose book is a perfect storehouse of interesting facts
bearing on the history and archæology of the Crimea,
gives reasons for identifying Cape Aia, not far from
Chersonesus, with the place where Iphigenia found refuge
with the Tauri, and the inlet of Balaclava as the scene
of Ulysses' adventures with the monstrous Læstrigons.

Of the long quarrel between colony and colony,
republic and monarchy, Greek of the peninsula and
Scythian of the mainland, it is needless to speak; nor
of the conquests of Mithridates Eupator, of the ex-
tension hither of the Roman rule, or of the rich and
troublesome inheritance that this province became to
the Eastern Empire. Chersonesus in those days was
a wonderfully rich and beautiful city, as the remains

334

BARBARIAN INVASIONS.

of its splendid temples, baths, arches, aqueducts, amphitheatres, and other monuments attested down to a recent date; and it had many rivals in wealth and population among the other Greek cities on the Euxine. Pope Clement I. worked as a slave in the neighbouring quarries, and preached the gospel in its streets, and so by degrees the city became converted to Christianity.

Then from their vantage-ground on the strongly-fortified point the Christian city heard of, and almost saw, the "march of the nations" across the great highway of the steppes—Huns, Goths, Vandals, and Sarmatians, following on one another like waves of the sea, each overtopping that which went before, overwhelming old empires, casting down the labours built up by hands and brains during thirty generations of growing civilizations, and spreading immeasurable change over the western world. In spite of the supposed impregnability of their position, the citizens must have trembled with a foreboding of approaching ruin on seeing these destructive and ruthless forces passing so close to their doors.

At length the turn of Chersonesus came. The Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev marched his conquering host of half-clad Slavs down into the Crimea. The pagan prince swore an oath—an illogical one it seems in our day—that if he captured this Christian town, he himself and his whole people would embrace the faith of the Cross. Capture it he did, and the first Christian ruler of the Russians was baptized, and celebrated his nuptials with the sister of the Emperor of the East, on the spot now covered by the Church of the Holy Mother of God at Chersonesus.

Huns, Khazars, Petchenegs, Cumanians, Polovtsis

THE KHANS OF CRIM TARTARY.

335

afterwards descended on the Black Sea countries, and
seized and sacked the cities. Adventurers from the
growing Italian republics pushed thither, and founded
colonies on the coasts of the Euxine and Sea of Azov.
Venetians and Genoese quarrelled for supremacy, as the
Milesians and Heracleans had done eighteen centuries
before.

The great horde of Mongols had meanwhile descended
and settled like a troop of locusts on the countries to
northward. The Nogai tribe of Tartars established them-
selves on the steppes north of the Black Sea, and when
the power of the Golden Horde dissolved, the Khanate of
Crim Tartary rose into prominence.

A khan of the Nogais, a descendant of the great Gen-
ghiz, adopted the surname of Ghirei, out of gratitude to
a humble peasant of that name who had saved his life.
The Ghireis, fighting for plunder and empire, established a
semi-barbaric rule on the Crimea, and in the close of the
fifteenth century planted their capital at Baktchi-Serai,
separated by a range of hills from Chersonesus; and by
the aid of the Turks, and at the price of acknowledging the
suzerainty of the Porte, the Tartars expelled the Genoese
from the peninsula. A long succession of bloody and
ruthless raids into the heart of Russia, as far as Moscow
and Nijni, and even farther, signalized the period of Tar-
tar power in the south.

At length came Nemesis, slow-footed but sure. Already
Chersonesus was a ruin. Olgerd, the Lithuanian, nephew
of Gedimin, leaving Kiev smoking behind him, had, in
1368, swept with his conquering host through the isth-
mus of Perecop, beat down the walls of the grand old
Greek city, and reduced it to a heap of broken masonry.

336

RUSSIAN ENCROACHMENT.

The Crimean khans, aided by their overlord at Con-
stantinople, fought desperately to preserve their posses-
sions, and up to the last were able to take the offensive
against their implacable northern foe. But the limits
of their power gradually and surely contracted, as that of
Russia enlarged. Peter the Great had among his many
schemes one of establishing himself on the Black Sea,
and driving Turk and Tartar beyond the Danube, if not
beyond the Bosphorus. He built a fleet at Voronej on
the Don, gained the first Russian naval victory at the
mouth of that river, captured Azov, and founded the
seaport of Taganrog, on the Palus Mæotis. But an over-
whelming repulse on the Pruth compelled him to sur-
render his southern conquests.

The growing empire of the Czars was not ripe enough,
nor the Ottoman power sufficiently rotten, for the ambi-
tious project to succeed; and the more immediate neces-
sity of opening up a way to the Baltic had to be
attended to. Peter, however, had dealt a fatal blow to
the Cossack commonwealths on the Don and Dnieper,
who, from faithful watch-dogs guarding the house against
infidel robbers, had become wolves preying on friend and
foe alike.

A long stride in advance was taken in the reign of
the Empress Anne, whose famous generals, Münich and
Lascy, twice forced the lines of Perecop in the war of
1736-9, devastated the Crimea, and compelled the Khan
and the Sultan to cede the steppe country between the
Dnieper and the Boug. The ceded territory, called New
Servia, was organized by the Empress Elizabeth into a
military and agricultural colony, and settled with Bul-
garian, Servian, Hungarian, and Wallachian refugees,

SEVASTOPOL FOUNDED.

337

who replaced the old Cossack associations, and the last relics of the Zaporogian bands were scattered by Catherine the Great. This powerful sovereign proved a more formidable foe to Turkey than even Peter. In the war of 1767-74, her generals Galitsyne and Rumantsof overran the Sultan's dominions as far as the Balkans. Dolguruky broke through the "lines of Perecop," and extinguished for ever the rule of the Grand Khalif in the peninsula; and a Russian fleet appeared in the Ægean, and ravaged the Turkish coasts and islands.

By the Treaty of Kainardji (1774), the mouths of the Don and the Dniester were ceded to Russia, the Crimea was made independent, Russian merchantmen were allowed free access to the Black Sea, and a kind of Russian protectorate was established over the Christian subjects of the Porte. Nine years later the last khan of the Crimea, Chahin Ghirei, was dethroned, and the peninsula was formed with the adjoining mainland into the new Russian province of Taurida.

The revenge of the Slav upon the Tartar was almost complete. Turkey also was rapidly going to the wall in the long struggle for predominance in the East. Potemkin, created Prince of Taurida, established a naval arsenal at Kherson, the new port established at the mouth of the Dnieper, and named after the old Greek city from whose ruins we are taking our survey. With the stones of Chersonesus itself were laid the foundations of the strong fortress that began to rise close at hand at Sevas topol; while all over the southern steppes emigrants poured in and flourishing colonies sprang up. From 1787 to 1792 raged another war with Turkey, of which Suvaroff was the presiding genius, and the capture of

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22

338

PERECOP.

Ismail the crowning event. By the Peace of Jassy (1792) the frontiers of Russia were extended to the Dniester; and shortly after, the Empress in person, attended by the magnificent Potemkin, laid with extraordinary pomp the foundations of the great emporium of the Euxine—Odessa.

The later phases of this prolonged conflict between Russ and Turk, in which the latter has had to let go his hold bit by bit of his conquests in Europe, are of too recent date to call for recapitulation in detail. The wars of Alexander I. against the Porte terminated with the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812, which gave Bessarabia to the Czar, and brought the Russian frontier to the Pruth. The events of the Crimean War—when the bare plateau behind Chersonesus became the scene of the struggle between Russia and the Western Powers—and of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, are still fresh in most memories.

The modern traveller by land will probably follow in the steps of the ancient invaders, and enter the Crimea by the Isthmus of Perecop, unless, indeed, he journeys by the new line of railway from Moscow and the Don regions, which crosses the shallows of the Sivash, or “Putrid Sea.” Perecop will not detain him long, in spite of its memories of great sieges and assaults connected with the names of Münich, Lascy, and earlier military heroes.

The white walls of the fortifications guard the neck of land, only five miles in breadth, and glisten far over the surrounding waters and scarcely less flat and monotonous steppes. The deep fosse cut across the isthmus by the Tartar khans is still preserved, and is

THE CRIMEAN STEPPES.

339

crossed by a bridge with an imposing gateway—the portal of the Crimea. The minarets of a mosque rear themselves beside the bulkier form of a Greek church; and in the modest retirement of a back street hides a synagogue of the Jews. The population consists of Russians, Tartars, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews of the Karaim sect: these strangely assorted peoples will be found in greater or less proportion in almost every Crimean town.

Leaving Perecop—the “Gate of the Neck”—behind, and advancing over the broadening steppe, a stranger will find it difficult to believe that he is still on European ground, far less in that famous Tauridian peninsula whose luxuriant beauty has been so highly extolled. The plain is destitute of tree or of stream; no cliff or hill breaks the level expanse, save by-and-by a pale blue line of mountains far on the southern horizon.

The soil is impregnated with salt; the shallow lakes are brackish, or covered with a white efflorescence. The creeks and marshes that branch and wind among the sand-hills on the margin of the “Putrid Lake” are bitterly salt. The fetid smell that rises from the stagnant surface of that shallow inlet of the Sea of Azov justifies its evil-sounding name. The villages are small, half ruinous, and scattered widely apart. The chief signs of traffic are long trains of waggons, laden with raw salt, on their way to Perecop, whence this sole product of the Crimean lakes is distributed over the Czar’s empire.

These waggons are chiefly drawn by oxen, but sometimes double-humped camels of the Bactrian breed are the beasts of burden. The progenitors of the

340

TARTAR LIFE.

uncouth-looking creatures were doubtless brought from
the deserts of Central Asia by the forefathers of their
no less shaggy drivers. The Tartar cultivator of the
Crimea has indeed given up the roaming life of his
ancestors; but he still clings to the ancestral religion
and customs, and his dress is a compromise between
Western and Eastern tastes. Flocks of fat-tailed
sheep pasture the waste, and seem to find the saline
herbage toothsome and fattening. Around a well by
the roadside loose-robed turbaned shepherds may be
seen watering their goats, camels, and sheep from a
trough, in the patriarchal fashion of Syria. The village
streets are narrow crooked alleys between the blind
walls of courtyards, which screen the half-ruinous flat-
topped houses, provided in the case of the richer citizens
with harems and fountains and shady porches; and
there are the mosque for the faithful, and the khan for
the traveller, as in other Mohammedan lands.

These tokens of the long predominance of Tartar rule
in the peninsula are gradually disappearing. Russian
colonies and Russian ideas are slowly ousting the old
race from Crim Tartary, or changing it after their own
image. But generations probably will elapse before the
peninsula loses its character as a country distinctively
Mohammedan in manners and faith.

As the head-waters of the Salgir River are approached,
the country begins to rise, and the soil and scenery to
improve. The peaks and richly-wooded slopes of the
Tchatir Dagh, or "Tent Mountain," the highest summit
of the range which lines the southern coast of the
peninsula, stand out in bold relief. A region forming
in every respect a contrast to the dreary steppe lands

SIMPHEROPOL AND ITS “LIONS.”

341

behind is reached. Small streams—mere brooks in
summer, but roaring torrents after the melting of the
mountain snows—pour down from these hills to join
the Salgir, through fertile valleys and past villages sur-
rounded by corn-fields and orchards and overhung by
bold bluffs of limestone.

By-and-by we come to Simpheropol—anciently Ak
Metchet, or the “White Mosque”—the modern capital
of the Crimea, and the residence of the Governor of the
Province of Taurida. Like other Crimean towns, it
presents a strange jumble of the old and the new; but
here, perhaps, the new is gaining ground more rapidly
than elsewhere. The width of a street only separates
the Russian town, with its huge cathedral, barracks,
boulevards, and gymnasia, from the Tartar city, with its
mosques and bazaars and curiously mixed population of
Nogais, Greeks, and Jews.

The principal “lions” of Simpheropol, however, are too
new and raw to compete in interest with those of Baktchi-
Serai, one stage distant to the south-west. Again groves
of oak and beech, fine gardens of plum and apple trees,
and rich grassy meadows with numerous villages are
passed, as we descend the little river Alma to the old
Tartar capital. It still preserves all the main features
which it possessed when it was the headquarters of the
warlike dynasty of the Ghireis, and the gathering-place
of the hosts of horsemen who were accustomed for many
centuries to devastate Russia and Poland, and return
thither loaded with plunder, and dragging in their train
crowds of unfortunate captives, who were regularly sold
as slaves in the markets of Kaffa and other Crimean
towns.

342

A TARTAR CITY.

The Palace of the Khans still stands surrounded by walls and gates, in the centre of beautiful gardens with fountains, terraces, baths, arbours of vines, and other evidences of the taste of the old possessors. Close by are the Grand Mosque and the Mausoleums of the Tartar Khans. Most famous of the three hundred fountains in the city is the *Seyl-sybyl*—the “flood of tears” —that commemorates the grief of Krim Ghirei on the death of the lovely Christian captive who refused to conform to the faith of her enamoured master, as is sung by Alexander Pushkin in an immortal poem.

Baktchi-Serai is still to all intents a Tartar city, being almost exclusively inhabited by the Nogais, with a sprinkling of Jews and Armenians. It is crowded with mosques and Mohammedan schools; and from the wonderful beauty of its situation, in a narrow valley overhung by a precipitous mountain, with the tall and slender minarets and palace turrets rising from groves of orchard trees, mulberries, and poplars, it is one of the most unique and romantic spots in Russia.

In the neighbourhood are some curious excavated rock dwellings, probably the work of the ancient troglodyte inhabitants of this region. A little way up the valley is Tchufut Kale—the Jews’ Fort—where, perched on the summit of a precipitous rock, accessible only on one side, is the synagogue, still, or till lately, used by the Karaim Hebrews, and underneath are the rock-hewn chambers where the persecuted race have, it is said, found shelter since before the Christian era.

In another narrow defile is a Greek monastery, dedicated to the Virgin, the dim crypts and chapels of which, wholly or in part excavated in the face of the

THE PLAYGROUND OF RUSSIA.

343

cliff, are reached by a narrow zigzag staircase, up which hundreds of pilgrims from all parts of the Crimea toil on the day of the Assumption to pay their devotions at the rock-hewn shrine. Not far off is a lofty crag surmounted by ruined walls—once the capital of the Tetraxite Goths, afterwards the Genoese fortress of Mangup, later a sheltering-place of the Karaim sect, but now abandoned to the bats and the owls.

It is not alone in the vicinity of Baktchi-Serai that we find rock staircases and cave-dwellings formed by the hand of nature or of man; mouldering ruins of fortresses and castles built by Greek, or Goth, or Genoese crowning some high cliff and beetling over a fertile valley or a gorge green with the foliage of the laurel, the olive, and the fig; hillsides covered with vineyards, and hamlets surmounted by the towers of mosque or Christian church, with the grand dome of the “Tent Mountain” and its neighbour giants looking down from their cold heights on the smiling scene. These are characteristics of the Southern Crimea, from Chersonesus to Kaffa, and entitle it to the name which has been bestowed on it of the “Italy” of Russia.

On the southern side of the Tauric. Alps, especially, where the mountain range interposes a barrier to the cold blasts that sweep across the steppes, the climate is peculiarly mild and suited to the growth of a semi-tropical vegetation. The hills slope down steeply or descend in abrupt steps from a height of four or five thousand feet to the level of the waters of the Black Sea, which in many places wash the bases of great precipices hundreds of feet high, and hollow out the soft calcareous rock into fantastic shapes. Between the pro-

344

THE TAURIC ALPS.

jecting capes are lovely bays; and at the head of these
are mountain streams rushing down green valleys, or
brawling through deep ravines, overhung with the foli-
age of walnut and oak trees, and frequently making
sheer plunges over the rocky ledges in their channels.
Little towns of villas with hotels and bathing-places
shelter themselves in these bights, on the margin of the
bright blue waters of the Euxine; and splendid palaces
and country seats, many of them surrounded by mag-
nificent parks, gardens, and vineyards, are strewn over
the mountain side. For this is the playground of Russia
—the only available spot in the wide empire where the
rigorous hand of winter can be escaped—and the wealthy
and the noble and the valetudinarian crowd thither in
the "season," as their brethren in the West hasten to the
Riviera.

The eastern, the central, and the western districts of
the Tauric chain possess three distinct sources of inter-
est. To the eastward from Sudak or from Theodosia,
and along the minor peninsula of the "Cimmerian
Chersonese" to the Strait of Yenikale, where the Sea
of Azov communicates with the Black Sea, the range
dwindles in height and grandeur, and the country be-
comes comparatively bare and sterile. But it is a region
in which the antiquarian and archæologist would find
an exhaustless storehouse of treasures. Great mounds
of pottery, extensive catacombs, fragments of aqueducts,
roads, and fountains mark the sites of the ancient
Greek colonies. Cyclopean walls and dolmens tell of the
rude labours and probably of the bloody sacrificial rites
of the savage Tauric and Scythian peoples who lived
here when the strangers from Miletus and Heraclea

KERTCH AND ITS MONUMENTS.

345

landed twenty-four centuries ago. The ruins of Greek temples, Byzantine churches, and Tartar mosques tell of the introduction and the decay of new forms of faith, as the remains of old moles and feudal castles commanding the harbours speak of the glorious period of the predominance and rivalry of the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice in this region.

Most famous among these places of former note, now more or less fallen into decay, may be mentioned Kertch, the ancient Panticapæum; the tumuli that mark the sites of Nymphæum and Kimmericum; Kaffa, now called by its old Greek name of Theodosia, the headquarters for centuries of the power of Genoa in the Euxine; Saduk, which, as Soldaya, was for long a bone of contention between that republic and Venice; and more inland, Stari-Krim, the seat of the Tartar khans before they removed their capital to Baktchi-Serai. Kertch is still a place of some trade; indeed, after the fall of Sevastopol, it became the chief emporium of the Crimea. But the modern "Russified" town contains scarcely any trace of the Milesian city which became the seat and the burial-place of Mithridates, the conqueror of Greece and Scythia, and at a later date the capital of the renowned Kingdom of the Bosphorus, for many centuries the Great Power in the Black Sea. Above the town, on the "Golden Mountain," the last spur of the Tauric Alps, are the remains of the Acropolis—the "arm-chair of Mithridates"—and from thence, looking eastward, may be surveyed the mounds strewn with broken pottery and funeral urns, and fragments of walls and gateways, underneath which lie buried the glories of Panticapæum.

Theodosia has still a population of nearly ten thou-

346

KAFFA, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

sand souls, and a considerable trade. Here there are no relics of the Grecian era; for, as Mr. Seymour says in his "Russia on the Black Sea," during "a period of ten centuries the plough passed over the site of Theodosia." But when, at the close of the thirteenth century, the Genoese purchased the spot from the Tartars, and obtained the monopoly of the Crimean trade, the still more splendid city of Kaffa arose, and took the place of Panticapæum as the beacon of civilization in the Euxine.

So rich and populous did the city become, that it was known as the "Crimean Stamboul;" and even after it had been bombarded and taken in 1475 by a great Turkish fleet of four hundred and eighty-two sail, and the Italian colonists had been slaughtered or sold into slavery, it is said to have possessed under the Tartar regime no fewer than eighty thousand inhabitants and an almost unrivalled trade. Barbarous "improvements" by its latest masters have worked terrible havoc among the antiquities of Theodosia. "Of all the splendid edifices of the Genoese colony," says Mr. Seymour, "only two churches have escaped the Russian vandalism, having been granted to the Catholics and Armenians, and preserved by them. In spite, however, of the depredations of the authorities and the stupid ignorance of the governors, Kaffa has never been completely metamorphosed into a Russian town. Its principal monuments have been demolished, its walls razed to the ground, its later population expelled, but the general appearance of the town, the private dwellings, the streets paved with large flags, all announce a different people."

It should not be omitted to state, when speaking of the remains of Hellenic and Italian colonization in the

CRIMEAN COAST SCENERY.

347

Crimea, that many observers have noticed traits of
character and physique in the rural population, now
speaking the Tartar tongue and professing the Moham-
medan faith, that have led them to believe that the old
Greek and Genoese colonists were not exterminated, but
were blended with their Mussulman conquerors.

Westward of Saduk—the capital of the Cumanians,
when that roaming people were the masters of Southern
Russia—antiquarian lore becomes forgotten in the in-
creasing loveliness and wildness of the scenery. Here,
and for nearly a hundred miles along the Crimean coast,
is the “Garden” of Russia. Nearer and nearer to the
Euxine approaches the Yaila—the lofty table-lands form-
ing the crest of the Tauric Alps; and as the strip of land
between the mountains and the ocean grows narrower
with each mile of westing, the country becomes more
abrupt, broken, and rugged, and at the same time more
verdurous.

It has been compared to the finest bits of the coasts
of Italy or of Greece. In many places it resembles a
prolonged "Trosachs," but with rocks and trees on a
grander scale than in the Highland pass, with a southern
stamp of vegetation, and with a sparkling blue sea
showing itself at intervals on the one hand, and hills
towering to twice the height of Ben Venue on the
other. The sea generally washes the bases of tall cliffs
of schistose rock; higher up the slope come sandstone
formations; and above all, the limestone of which these
mountains are mainly composed. Each of these belts
has its own peculiarities of soil and productions, but all,
except the higher summits, are clothed in a rich garment
of green, sometimes so dense and so intermingled with

348

VILLAS AND WATERING-PLACES.

crag and boulder, and broken up by gorges, as to form
a "labyrinth of verdure."

Of late years much has been done by human skill
and taste to increase the natural loveliness of this
Russian paradise. In the reign of the late Emperor it be-
came the chosen retreat, during a great part of the year,
of the Imperial Court; and the great families of the
realm followed suit, and spent enormous sums in acquir-
ing property and building magnificent villas under the
shadow of the Tchatir Dagh, and in the exalted neigh-
bourhood of the Czar's palace at Livadia. Some of the
most notable personages in Russian history have left the
impress of their tastes and their eccentricities on the
mansions and pleasure-grounds that stud even the most
rugged portions of these Southern Crimean shores; and
memories of the Potemkins, Richelieus, Vorontzofs,
Galitzins, Naryshkins, De Witts, Potockis, Diebitchs,
and others whose names are continually appearing in
the later annals of the empire, are met with every few
miles. Utility has been combined with beauty; and
the vineyards, which are so sedulously cultivated, now
yield a considerable revenue to their noble possessors,
and the Crimean wines are known over the length and
breadth of Russia.

The whole district is now easily accessible both by
land and water; for in addition to the railway facilities
and the fine road which for many years has traversed
the coast region, steamers ply regularly to Alushta,
Yalta, and other little towns on the coast, and bring
crowds of visitors and sightseers of much humbler rank
than the high-born personages who formerly monop-
olized all the delights of this genial clime. The pretty

THE PALACE OF LIVADIA.

349

little town of Yalta is the headquarters of these birds of passage. It is a regularly-organized "tourists' town," having its hotels with French *cuisine*, its esplanade, and its sea-bathing apparatus. A little to the eastward of Yalta are the imperial "Botanical Gardens," which are described as "a vast establishment for experiments on acclimatization and practical studies on the plants and trees which might be profitably introduced into the Crimea."

A few miles to the westward and we reach Livadia, a small Greek village, close to which, as most people know, are situated the charming grounds and tasteful palace which Alexander II. made his resort whenever he could escape from the too cumbrous and ceremonious grandeur of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. The original royal residence in this district was a mile or so off at Orianda. Nicolas built a huge pile (lately burned to the ground), well according with the mind of that "Don Quixote of autocracy." This is now the property of the Grand Duke Constantine; and the present Palace of Livadia was only purchased in 1861, on the death of its owner, Count Potocki, and presented by the State to the late Empress. Great sums have since been expended in its improvement.

It is built in the Oriental style of architecture, and ornamented after the model of the palace of the old khans of Crim Tartary at Baktchi-Serai. Within, all the furnishings and decorations are chaste, simple, and elegant; while the parks, gardens, and vineyards surrounding the palace are laid out with the most exquisite taste. Neither in extent nor magnificence, however, can the imperial residence compare with the vast Moorish palace

350

THE GATE OF BAIDAR.

—the work of an English architect—built at Alupka, a few miles farther to the west, and under the frowning front of Aïpetry, which rises behind almost perpendicularly to a height of three thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight feet. The late Prince Vorontzof, Governor-General of New Russia and Lieutenant of the Casusus, entertained the Prince and Princess of Wales at Alupka in 1869, and two wellingtonias in the gardens of the palace were planted by their Royal Highnesses as memorials of their visit to the Crimea. There are other mansions and castles on the same coast that scarcely yield in beauty of situation or surroundings to Livadia or to Alupka.

At the extreme south-western corner of the Crimea is the Pass of Phoros, or the "Gate of Baidar," where, by a steep ascent through a defile, a projecting spur of the mountains is crossed, and the region of "perpetual spring" is left behind. A fine macadamized road is now carried over the pass; but half a century ago, when Dr. Henderson visited this region, the traveller bound eastwards had to scramble at the peril of his neck down a series of "prodigious natural stairs," well deserving the name of the "Devil's Staircase." The charms of the coast scenery are not lost sight of at Phoros; on the contrary, immediately below it opens up the famous Valley of Baidar, which has been extolled as the "Crimean Tempe," and where, says Seymour, the cottages of the Tartar villagers are "overshadowed by an exuberant vegetation of the walnut, the mulberry, the vine, the fig, the olive, the pomegranate, the peach, the apricot, the plum, the cherry, and the tall black poplar; all of which, intermingling their clustering

THE CRIMEAN WAR.

351

produce, form the most beautiful and fragrant canopies
that can be imagined."

The land now, however, begins to have a western
exposure, and the mountains no longer wholly shut
out the winter blasts from these delicious scenes.
Frost and snow pay visits to the luxuriant Vale of
Baidar; and still more rigorous, as we know to our
cost, is the winter climate on the bare plains immedi-
ately adjoining, between the land-locked harbour of
Balaclava and the long inlet on the southern shore of
which are the ruins of the fortress of Sevastopol. For
we have now reached a corner of the Crimea which no
Englishman can regard without feelings of pride and
sadness. Here was the arena where the deadly struggle
was fought out between the Western Powers of Europe
and the "Colossus of the North," while the whole world
looked breathlessly on. Here French élan and stubborn
British valour were pitted in not unequal combat against
the patient, stoical resolution of the Russian defenders;
and the engineering skill of Todleben, and the heroism
of Istomin, Kornilof, and Nakhimof, kept at bay for
nearly twelve months the most determined assaults of
the Allies, but could not avert the humiliation of Russia
and the destruction for the time of her far-reaching
plans on the Black Sea.

Sevastopol, as has been said, is built on the southern
side of the long deep haven which, with the inlet of
Balaclava, helps to form the Heracleotic Chersonesus, and
occupies the shores of two branch creeks that run in
between the high stony ridges of which the peninsula is
formed. Eupatoria, where the allied forces landed on
the 14th September 1854, is sixty miles to the north-

352

THE SIEGE OF SEVASTOPOL.

ward; and the heights of Alma, where, six days later, the battle was fought that opened the way to Sevastopol. lies about half-way between the two places. Marching round the head of the bay, and crossing at this point the Tchernaia, flowing between the steep ridges and cliffs of Inkerman, honeycombed with the dwellings of the ancient cave-dwellers, the invaders took up their positions on the landward side of the fortress,—the British troops with their base on Balaclava, and the French to the eastward, near the site of ancient Chersonesus.

It is not necessary to recount in detail the incidents of that memorable siege—how the defenders sunk their fleet at the entrance of the harbour, between the great batteries of Forts Constantine and Alexander, on which the fire of the allied fleet was directed, and laboured night and day raising new redoubts and earthworks; how the besiegers gradually drew the lines of trenches nearer, while beating off the assaults of the land army under Gortschakof at Balaclava and at Inkerman, and enduring the cruel privations of the terrible winter of 1854-5; and how a hotter and ever hotter rain of shot and shell was directed upon the doomed city, until, on the 8th September 1855, the Malakof redoubt having been carried by the French, the Russian flag was hauled down and the heroic defence was at an end. "In the last twenty-eight days of the siege," says Rambaud, "the Russians lost eighteen thousand men by the bombardment alone; a million and a half of bullets, bombs, shells, and grenades had been thrown into the town." In one single day seventy thousand projectiles were thrown into Sevastopol, and the thunder of the cannonade was heard for sixty miles around. One of the most singular

A DISMANTLED STRONGHOLD.

353

illustrations of the enormous waste of money and material
during the siege is the fact mentioned by Sir E. J. Reed,
that the Russian Government, by imposing a tax of six-
pence per hundredweight on the "old metal" picked up
by the townspeople after the bombardment, were able
to realize the handsome sum of £15,000.

The town of Sevastopol is slowly clearing away the
wreck, and recovering some of its former trade and
importance. Its population, however, is still probably
not half what it was before the siege; and it is doubt-
ful whether it will ever again be the formidable naval
and military stronghold which it was previous to 1854.

At the time of Mr. Reed's visit in 1875, the destruction
that had befallen this fair city—"fair by the beauty of
its site, the glory of its climate, and the magnificence
of its edifices"—was not obvious at first sight to one
approaching from seaward. The noble flight of land-
ing stairs, called after the great Catherine who founded
the town near the site of the squalid Tartar village of
Aktiar, and formed the scheme of making it the nucleus
of Russian power on the Black Sea, and the columned
portico, the statues, and the monuments to which they
lead, are almost uninjured. But as you penetrate into
the town, tokens meet you at every step of the ruin and
desolation caused by the "iron shower" which so long
beat down upon the city from the heights above, while
as seen from the hills themselves the view is "simply
appalling."

The signs of the presence of the armies which so
long marched and countermarched, and fought, and dug
trenches and laid mines, on this bare plateau, are
rapidly being obliterated by the hand of time. The

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23

CHAPTER XVI.

NEW RUSSIA AND ITS PORTS.

HE first naval success of the Russians was won in Black Sea waters—or, more properly speaking, in the Sea of Azov—when, at the capture of the fortress of Azov in 1696 by Peter the Great, part of the flotilla which had been built at Voronej seized and sank a number of Turkish galleys at the mouth of the Don. That was the first “palpable hit” in the return innings which Russia has now been playing against the Turk for two hundred years past, the latest additions to its long score of triumphs securing the retrocession of Bessarabia and the establishment of the Czar’s authority from the Danube to Batoum.

That earliest little gleam of victory opened up the prospect of a new source of strength. Ambition and necessity have gone hand in hand, and the rulers of Russia have never missed an opportunity of extending their sway over the countries of the Black Sea, and building up in these comparatively open waters a formidable naval power. The Empresses Anne and Elizabeth in their time made large additions to their territory in this direction, and prepared still more

356

THE GROWTH OF NEW RUSSIA.

effectually for the end by breaking the power of the
Cossack republics, and settling in the steppes skirting
Turkey and Little Tartary colonies of refugees and
immigrants of many nationalities—Greeks, Georgians,
Servians, Wallachians, and Hungarians—all united in
their hatred of the Mussulman, and ready to take up
sword at any moment against their old oppressors.

It was reserved, however, to the Empress Catherine to
deal the decisive blow. It was in her time that the
Zaporogian setch on the cataracts of the Dnieper was
finally suppressed, and the remnants of that freebooting
brotherhood were banished to the eastern shore of the
Sea of Azov, where they now form the community of the
“Cossacks of the Black Sea.” Her great commanders
beat back the Turk beyond the Dniester, and put an end
to the Crimean khanate. Thenceforth an era of peace-
ful progress began for Southern Russia, and continued
almost unchecked down to our own day, even during
the times when war has been raging on both flanks of
the newly-acquired territory.

There is nothing elsewhere in Europe to compare
with the marvellous rapidity with which the soil of
this “New Russia”—so long a mere field for hostile
armies marching across and fighting in—has been
occupied and brought under cultivation, and wealthy
commercial cities have sprung up in the bare steppe or
on the deserted inlets of the Black Sea. For an analogy
we must go to America or to our own Australian colonies.

In this region we must not look for venerable churches
and other monuments of ancient culture. The chief
antiquities are those relics of Scythian and other nomad
peoples long since disappeared that are found buried

BLACK SEA EMPORIUM.

357

under the tumuli that everywhere break the otherwise level plains. Civilization here is barely a century old, and is not yet fully acclimatized. Country life, like country scenery, is bald and uninteresting. The towns have only two titles on which they can base their claims to notice. Either they are strong fortresses—such as Kishenef, Bender, Akerman, Otchakov, and Kinburn—about which cling memories of famous episodes in military and naval history; or they are flourishing emporiums of trade—depôts like Balta, Nicopol, Elizabetgrad, and Ekaterinoslav—where the wheat, oats, and rye, the timber, linseed, and hemp, the wool, tallow, and hides, and other products of Russia, are collected; or seaports—like Odessa, Nicolaiev, and Kherson on the Black Sea, and Berdiansk, Marioupol, Taganrog, and Rostov on the Sea of Azov—where these homely but valuable articles are shipped to Western Europe.

Sometimes, as in the cases of Nicolaiev and Kherson, commerce and war have combined to give importance to these new cities. The two last-mentioned ports are both reached by the wide estuary formed by the union of the Dnieper and the Boug, the entrance to which is defended on either side by the fortresses of Otchakov and Kinburn, both much spoken of during the Crimean War, and by a large “midwater” battery. Nicolaiev, since the fall of Sevastopol the imperial naval station on the Black Sea, is situated some twenty miles up the Boug, a deep magnificent river a mile and a half broad. Kherson is forty miles distant on the still larger stream of the Dnieper, here spread over many miles and flowing between numerous islands.

It was at Kherson where Catherine may be said to

358

KHERSON.

have laid the corner-stone of the Russian power in the
Black Sea, though Ekaterinoslav—the “glory of Cath-
erine”—and the Greek colony of Marioupol were founded
in the same year—1778. It was the handiwork of
the magnificent imperial favourite Prince Potemkin,
the “Creator of New Russia,” the conqueror of the
Turks, and the subjugator of the Taurida. The site
was chosen and the name conferred because it was
then supposed that it was here, and not, as we have
seen is the case, at Sevastopol, where the ancient Greek
metropolis of Chersonesus had stood. Here was
founded, on a humble enough scale, the nucleus of the
Black Sea navy, which now embraces some of the
most formidable and ponderous “floating citadels” that
modern ingenuity has constructed.

When Catherine made her progress through her
recently conquered domains, in extraordinary state and
splendour, christening new towns and organizing vast
provinces on her march, receiving the homage of Polish
pans and Tartar princes, and waited upon by no less a
personage than the Emperor Joseph II. of Austria, she
made Kherson her headquarters for nearly a week.

Already the town, though only “a child of eight
years,” had made wonderful progress. The Czarina,
entering the city through a gateway on which were
written, in Greek characters, the words, “By this the
way leads to Byzantium,” was amazed to find that
a large population—including skilled carpenters, black-
smiths, and other artisans, attracted thither from all
parts of Europe—had been settled in this desolate
spot; that military buildings, storehouses, and a
cathedral had been built of freestone; that a dockyard

POTEMKIN AND HOWARD.

359

had been constructed, and three large vessels of war were
on the stocks; that the trade of the place was increasing
in "leaps and bounds," and the Russian flag already
floated in the harbour of Marseilles. Sumptuous were
the fêtes held in her honour, and great the rewards
reaped by Potemkin and his helpers from their imperious
but indulgent mistress.

In the Cathedral of St. Catherine the body of
Potemkin was buried by the direction of the Empress;
but her successor, Paul, who systematically threw dis-
grace on all that his mother delighted to honour, ordered
the bones of the founder of Kherson to be exhumed, and
huddled away in an obscure nook, where they no doubt
rest as peacefully as under their massive sarcophagus.

On the outskirts of the town is a monument which
begets quite other memories—that of the prison philan-
thropist Howard. It is a simple pyramid, standing in
the midst of a bare plain, and surrounded by a dilapi-
dated wall and a few poplar trees. By last accounts it
presented an appearance of sad neglect and decay, a
melancholy reflection on the gratitude of mankind, in
whose cause Howard toiled so zealously. He died here
in 1790—a year before Potemkin—not from having
caught jail-fever while engaged in his humane labours,
but from having caught cold by indiscreetly riding out
in thin pumps and light evening dress to an evening
entertainment in the neighbourhood.

Kherson to-day has a population of about fifty
thousand souls. Its commerce is extensive, and on the
whole increasing; but younger rivals, more favourably
situated, have robbed it of its former predominance.
Nicolaiev is now the chief naval station on the Black

360

NICOLAIEV.

Sea; and Odessa has long been the principal sea-port of Southern Russia. When the Russians captured the strong fort of Otchakov, on the feast-day of St. Nicolas, 1789, inflicting a loss of twenty thousand men on the Turks, it was thought only due to the saint for his services to name a town in his honour. Accordingly, Nicolaiev rose. From the first it was designed to be the headquarters of the Russian fleet in the Euxine, and for long it was nothing other than a vast arsenal and dépôt of naval and military stores. Latterly, however, it has been doing an extensive trade in the export of grain and other produce, and threatening to become a formidable rival to Odessa.

Great quantities of shipbuilding timber are brought thither down the Dnieper and Boug; and from the earliest days of its existence Nicolaiev has had a large share in the construction of the Russian men-of-war. From the first wooden frigate built here ninety years ago, to the circular ironclads launched under the superintendence of Admiral Popoff and the Grand Duke Constantine, late Lord High Admiral of the Russian fleet, its dockyards have supplied illustrations of all the changes which modern science and ingenuity have effected in naval warfare.

The late Emperor and other members of the Russian imperial family exhibited a warm interest in naval affairs, and have repeatedly taken up their residence for a short time at Nicolaiev. Evidence of the kindly concern shown for the comfort and improvement of the Russian soldier and sailor may be observed on all hands;—in the fine “Naval Hospital,” which Sir E. J. Reed considered to be unequalled by any institution of

THE BLACK SEA WAR FLEET.

361

the kind he had seen elsewhere; in the elementary and technical schools, reading-rooms, etc., attached to the barracks; and, more especially, by a visit to the Leski quarter, where cottages and plots of ground are allotted rent free, or, under certain conditions, as freeholds, to officers and seamen invalided by wounds or by age, and where, among other means of recreation provided for these disabled "tars," are a beautiful park and pleasure-grounds.

The Leski quarter was originally the idea of Admiral Greig, one of the many distinguished officers of English extraction who have served in the Russian navy. Few families have done more for the improvement of Russian administration in the naval and in other services than the Greigs, the head of which house was lately in charge of the Imperial Ministry of Finance. To them, among other debts, Nicolaiev owes its fine lines of boulevards, and other improvements in its streets and buildings which make it one of the handsomest cities in Russia.

The town has the natural advantage of being built on a healthy and elevated site, overlooking the confluence of two noble rivers—the Boug and the Jugul. The broad and regularly-built streets, and extensive gardens and parks, cover an enormous extent of ground; and the handsome structures, the Cathedral, Town House, Admiralty, Observatory, and other public buildings detach themselves as prominently from the ranks of the one-storied brick houses around them as the huge hulls of the "popoffkas," and other war-ships which make Nicolaiev their rendezvous, predominate over the merchant shipping in the docks and harbour.

Seventy miles farther to the south-westward, over a

362

ODESSA.

steppe as dreary and barren of interest as that between
Perecop and Kherson, or between Kherson and Nicolaiev,
and intersected by long, narrow salt lagoons and marshes,
is the great trading city of Odessa, the second commer-
cial port in Russia. Like Kherson and Nicolaiev, it
marks an immense stride in the progress of the Russian
arms and influence in the direction of Constantinople.
Like them, it has sprung up within a hundred years,
absolutely from nothing; for when Suvaroff's most san-
guinary feat of arms, the capture of Ismail, had in 1790
laid Turkey practically at Catherine's feet, and opened
the way to the Treaty of Jassy, by which the lands
between the Boug and the Dniester were ceded to Russia,
there were only a miserable cluster of Tartar hovels and
the small fort of Hadji Bey near the site where now
stands the fourth city in point of population in the
empire. It was only in 1794 that the Admiral de
Ribas, who had captured the Turkish fort, and who was
the first Russian commandant, was granted permission to
found a commercial town at the bay adjoining the
estuary of the Dniester.

The true era of Odessa's prosperity, however, dates
from 1804, when the Duke de Richelieu, the first
Governor-General of New Russia, took up his residence
here. Odessa owes at least as much to this distin-
guished French *emigré* as Kherson does to Potemkin
or Nicolaiev to Greig. Odessa formed itself under his
hands; the features which distinguish it, from other
Russian towns—that cheerful “civilized” aspect which
gives a stranger the impression that he is in a mer-
cantile city of Western Europe—were stamped on it by
Richelieu. He laid out, paved, and lighted the principal

RICHELIEU AND VORONTZOF.

363

streets; built a quarantine in the old fortress, a mole, and warehouses; instituted a bank, a bourse, a tribunal of commerce, and a theatre; organized a postal system and scientific and industrial schools; settled the town and suburbs with skilled artisans and other immigrants from the West; and, in a word, promoted everything that tended to develop the intellectual and commercial activity of the place. During the fourteen years of his administration the population increased from nine thousand to thirty thousand; and its wealth and trade, under the encouragement of the special privileges which it possessed as a free port, had developed in still greater proportion. It is told, in proof of the generous and disinterested spirit in which the first governor of New Russia worked, that when he left Odessa he carried with him only "a small portmanteau, containing his uniform and a couple of shirts."

Another great benefactor of Odessa, whose labours are also extant in the substantial form of valuable and handsome public buildings and works, was Prince Vorontzof. Odessa has not been ungrateful. The two chief monuments which the town possesses are statues of Richelieu and Vorontzof. The Lyceum, founded by Richelieu, has developed into the University of Odessa, one of the most important educational institutions in Russia. A great place of public resort is the "Duke's Garden," which was laid out by the direction of Vorontzof, who also built the Great Staircase, which leads from the level of the harbour to the summit of the limestone cliff on which the city stands. Lines of poplars forming a boulevard skirt the cliff and traverse the city in various directions; and though the soil and climate are not

364

THE ODESSA BAZAARS.

favourable to vegetation, the handsome suburbs and
country houses clustering around the town have a fair
sprinkling of trees. In the centre of the town another
oasis of green surrounds the cathedral, in the "Grand
Place;" but Odessa in the summer, in spite of all that
has been done for it, is a hot, arid, and dusty place,
while at other seasons the unpaved back streets, like
those of the other towns of New Russia through which
we have passed, are almost impassable with mud.

Singular is the collection of nationalities to be met
with in the streets and quays of Odessa, and stupifying
the Babel of tongues to be heard in its bazaars and ex-
changes; even in the theatre, plays in three or four
different languages are produced and understood. Odessa
is the outlet for the products of a great part of Little
Russia, Poland, and Galicia, as well as of the neighbour-
ing districts of New Russia. Representatives of all the
races inhabiting these border countries visit its market-
places to buy or to sell, and to mingle with the throng
of sailors of different nations, who have strolled carelessly
thither from the harbour in search of amusement, or
with Greek, Armenian, Italian, and Jewish traders who
are here, eagerly intent on business.

The province of Bessarabia alone furnishes the Odessa
bazaars with a strange medley of languages and costumes
—Roumanian peasants and German colonists with fruit
and grain from the villages that nestle in charming
valleys, bounded by broad hilly spurs, between the
Dniester and the Pruth; Jewish dealers in wool or flax
from the capital town of Kishinef, which already reckons
over one hundred thousand inhabitants; Bulgarian, Ser-
vian, and Greek cultivators with the produce of their

GIPSIES AND JEWS.

365

little fields; Cossacks and Tartars from the flat marshy tracts along the Pruth or at the mouths of the Danube; most noticeable of all, the Tsiganis or gipsies, who while leading as usual a wandering life, moving with tents and waggons from town to town, and subsisting by juggling, fortune-telling, and partly by pilfering, have managed to preserve here more than elsewhere the customs, dress, and beliefs which they are supposed to have originally brought from India.

It is the Jews, however, who put in motion and who regulate the currents of business life that set to and from Odessa. In the city their numbers have been estimated at sixty thousand. Deprived of Jewish enterprise and capital, the trade of New Russia would collapse. They show an example of thrift and sobriety which their Christian neighbours are slow to imitate; and to the jealousy and hatred aroused by the spectacle of their superior talents and wealth are to be attributed the scenes of riot and outrage that have recently disgraced Odessa and other towns in this region.

During the Russo-Turkish War, when the Bosphorus was blockaded by the Turks, the trade of Odessa was temporarily paralyzed. The extraordinary development of the American grain traffic has also had a material effect on the business of the Black Sea. There is little danger, however, of the commerce of this great city retrograding. Its inhabitants already number nearly two hundred thousand; the value of its trade is estimated at many millions sterling a year; there are still unlimited capabilities for growth in the countries behind it; and its progress in the future will probably be scarcely less remarkable than in the past.

366

THE SEA OF AZOV.

The harbours in the Sea of Azov have the advantage over Odessa and its neighbour ports on the Black Sea proper, in being nearer to the great centres of Russian wealth and population on the Volga. But there are other circumstances that much more than neutralize the shorter land carriage between Taganrog and the "granary of Russia."

First, the shifting sandbars of the Strait of Yenikale have to be passed before the shallow half-fresh waters of the "Palus Mæotis" are reached. Skilful piloting is needed in threading a way between the shoals, and making headway against the currents which set from the mouths of the Don and from the outlet of the "Sivash" towards the Strait. Long peninsulas—mere spits of sand or mud—project into the turbid waters or line the coasts, the most remarkable being the Peninsula or "arrow" of Arabat, which for forty miles interposes a barrier between the "Putrid Sea" and the Sea of Azov.

In other places abrupt cliffs of sandstone or marshes line the shore. Everywhere, however, the environs of this shallow, muddy basin of brackish water are flat and stale, though not unprofitable; for on both shores of the Gulf of the Don especially fine crops of grain are raised, and large flocks of cattle are reared by the Cossack communities on the eastern coast. Berdiansk is the only decent port, and even that harbour is rapidly silting up. Vessels trading to the higher ports in the Sea of Azov have to lie several miles off-shore and take on board cargo. There is hardly any import trade, and the ballast is generally flung overboard, and helps to increase that accumulation of rubbish with which the Sea

THE DON PORTS.

367

of Azov is gradually choking itself. When a strong wind is blowing from the northward, the water near Taganrog is sometimes forced bodily off-shore, leaving a great expanse of sand and mud, with vessels sticking in it like flies in a pot of honey. Then for many months the greater part of the sea is frozen over; and immense hummocks and ridges of ice, "as high as a house," give the Palus Mæotis the appearance of an inlet of the Polar Ocean. Mr. Seymour says that in 1854 a "regular mountain-chain, many miles in length," stretched partly across the entrance to the Gulf of the Don, and that an English vessel that had been lost there for several weeks "was only discovered by one of her masts sticking above the ridge."

The most notable places in the Sea of Azov are clustered about the mouths of the Don—Azov, the scene of Peter the Great's first success over the Turks, near which was the site of the old Greek colony of Tanais; the seaport of Taganrog, first founded by Peter so early as 1706, rebuilt by Catherine in 1769, and the place where the Emperor Alexander I. died in 1824; and lastly Rostov, like Taganrog, the seat of a large trade in grain, tallow, wool, and fish. There is little otherwise noticeable about these busy towns, except perhaps that the mud and filth accumulated in their streets are somewhat above the average, even for Russian cities.

To reach Rostov we must ascend one of the channels of the Don, between reedy islands and mud-banks, to the head of the delta. Except in the season of floods, the Don is a shallow stream, with a volume of water ridiculously out of proportion to the great length of its course and to the breadth of its shingly channel. It is navi-

368

DON COSSACKS.

gated by flat-bottomed steamboats, drawing only a couple of feet of water; and Mr. Mackenzie Wallace says that on each voyage a free passage is given to a number of Cossacks, on the understanding that when the vessel runs aground, as is constantly happening, it becomes their duty to get into the water and haul her off by main strength. He mentions also that the steamer by which he was travelling had on one occasion to come to a dead halt, in order not to run down a mounted Cossack, who was leisurely crossing her bows in wading from bank to bank; and that a passenger, finding that no stop was to be made at his village, quietly slipped over the side and walked ashore.

These Cossack villages or stanitzas are dotted at intervals along the margin of the Don. Their inhabitants divide their time between the sturgeon and other fisheries, agriculture, and military life. The old military organization of the Don Cossacks has been in a large measure broken down of recent years. There is no longer an ataman or "hetman" at Tcherkask clothed with semi-independent power; the civil and military officials alike receive their appointments in the ordinary way; and the Cossacks of the Don are simply a community of agriculturists, holding their lands on condition of military service when called upon, and thus forming an irregular cavalry force which is a powerful and valuable adjunct to the Russian army. The Cossack frontiersmen are scattered along the whole southern margin of Russia from the Danube to Behring Strait; and besides their uses in actual war, especially in such duties as scouting and foraging, they serve as a police force for overawing and keeping in order the tribes

NOVO-TCHERKASK.

369

which have only recently come under Russian rule. In
times of peace they break up new soil and raise large
quantities of grain, though the roving instincts inherited
from their forefathers make them disinclined to devote
themselves steadily to agriculture, when it is possible to
make a living by hunting or by fishing.

Each group of Cossack communities—there are some
dozen of them in all—has had its own special origin,
history, and organization. The Cossacks of the Don are
the most numerous of all, and have been longest under
settled government. Their stage of civilization differs
little from that of the ordinary Russian peasant. They
are perhaps better educated and more intelligent, and more
cleanly in their houses and persons, than their fellow-
countrymen who are impressed into the regular army.
They are, as a rule, taller in stature and more powerful
in frame; “schism” has made wider progress among
them,—in fact they are *raskolniks* almost to a man; and
in their costume and many of their habits they differ
from the ordinary Russians. In the main, however, they
are the same race, mingled in the course of centuries
with infusions of Tartar, Polish, and Circassian blood,
and modified by the wilder and freer life of the steppe.

Their capital, Novo-Tcherkask, stands on high ground
on the banks of two little streams, and commands a
wide view of the valley of the Don, which flows close at
hand, and of the level plains stretching to the eastward.
The headquarters of the Don Cossacks were removed
to Novo-Tcherkask from the old town of Tcherkask,
built on a muddy island in the Don, and subject
to periodical inundations, in the time of the famous
hetman Platoff, whose palace and the triumphal arch at

(718)

24

370

BLACK SEA COSSACKS.

the entrance to the broad main thoroughfare are the chief
architectural features of the new city. The list of the
public buildings of New Tcherkask—which include,
besides schools, churches, and hospital, a club-house and a
theatre—shows what progress these rough-riders of the
Don, who were only brought under subjection in the
time of Peter the Great, are making in modern art
and taste. In spite of these attractions, of its wide
clean streets, and of the neighbouring vineyards which
yield the celebrated wine of the Don, Novo-Tcherkask
is too parched and dusty, too exposed to violent vicissi-
tudes of temperature, to be an ideal place of residence.

Next neighbours to the Cossacks of the Don are the
Tchernomorski—the Cossacks of the Black Sea—who
hold the plains on the eastern side of the Sea of Azov
and along the course of the Kuban river up to the very
base of the chain of the Caucasus. These are descen-
dants of the Zaporogian bands of the Dnieper, the rem-
nants of which were deported hither a century ago.
Their later experiences have not been so conducive to
peaceful industry as have those of their kinsmen on the
Don. Many a sharp brush have they had with the Tcher-
kess and other tribes of the Caucasus, in the memory of
men who are not yet past middle age; and the neighbour-
hood of their capital, Ekaterinodar, on the banks of the
Kuban, has been recommended as the most likely place
extant for collecting materials for an authentic modern
tale of adventure of the Fenimore Cooper class.

The Black Sea Cossacks are not particularly fond of
tilling the land; but they rear large flocks of cattle and
sheep; they are successful fishers, and daring hunters
of the wild boar, the wolf, and the bear.

TMOUTARAKAN.

371

Between the mouths of the Kuban is a singular island or peninsula—it is difficult to say which—that stretches out towards the Strait of Yenikale. Here are the little town of Taman, and many small fishing-villages on the bights, sand-spits, and creeks that intersect this maze of fresh and salt water, marsh and dry land; and here, on the site of an early Greek colony, within view of the capital of the Bosphorus on the Crimean side of the strait, and almost under the shadow of Mount Elburz, Mstislaf, son of St. Vladimir, more than eight hundred years ago, founded the Russ state of Tmoutarakan, and was the ancestor of a line of Russ princes who, centuries before St. Petersburg or even Moscow had been heard of, carried on wars with Huns and Avars, entered into alliances with the Greek emperors to destroy the Khazar kingdom, then all-powerful between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and thus were the pioneers of Slavonic aggression in the Caucasus, and paved the way for the more abiding conquests that were to come.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CAUCASUS AND TRANSCAUCASIA.

EW parts of the great plains of Russia are
more empty, desolate, and "monotonous with
an intensity almost rising into grandeur,"
than the steppes lying between the mouths
of the Don and the Caspian. The traveller bound
southward can now take advantage of the line of rail-
way which, passing through Novo-Tcherkask, is carried
on, past Stavropol, as far as to Vladikavkas, at the
entrance to the defile of Dariel, and at no distant date,
no doubt, will be continued to Tiflis, the capital of the
Russian territories in the Caucasus. But under what-
ever conditions the journey is made, the landscape of
these "Sarmatian wastes" becomes insupportably tire-
some long before it is over. One does not wonder that
the Sauromati, the Alans, and the Huns, who of old
had these plains as their inheritance, did not make them
an abiding resting-place, but hastened on to more smiling
regions in Poland and Germany; or that their modern
conquerors, the Russians, have left them pretty much
to the occupation of Kalmuks and Tartars, and, placing
a Cossack cordon to watch over these nomad tribes, have
also pushed forward to fairer scenes beyond.

THE PLEASURES OF POSTING.

373

The posting-stations are few and far between, and the fare and lodging bare and rude as the surrounding wilderness. In summer the dust and heat are stifling: the sun shines down on the burnt-up herbage, and the atmosphere is like the air over a furnace, and the level surface seems to throb and palpitate with the heat. In winter time the cold is as excessive. The traveller buries himself in his heap of furs, knowing that exposure even for a few minutes will lay him open to the risk of frost-bite.

Perhaps one of the storms that are common in this region suddenly sweeps down and envelops the sledge and horses in clouds of powdery snow. On such occasions, even with the most skilful "yemstchik," the danger of losing the way and being buried in the snow-drift is no mere imaginary terror. Describing these winter hurricanes, which are known to the natives of the steppe as the "boura" or "metel," Mr. Seymour says:—"When the wind blows with violence, and the snow is drifted about in eddies, the storm has a singularly bewildering and stunning effect. The inhabitants themselves lose their way; and the herds of horses, cattle, and sheep that happen to be surprised by it become seized with a panic, and rushing headlong before the gale, defy every obstacle that presents itself to their wild career. They are then inevitably lost; and overcome by fatigue, they either perish in the snow, or meet their death by falling down the precipitous side of some ravine."

The night brings little comfort to make amends for the fatigues of the day; for the company that share with the traveller the shelter of the little Cossack station are more noisy than select, and insect life is active and

374

THE CAUCASUS.

abundant. But some fine morning he awakens to discover that he has reached the confines of a new land—a region of sublimity and romance. Rugged hills rise ahead in loftier and loftier tiers, separated by valleys clad with trees—the first wood met with for five hundred or six hundred miles—and by cold mountain streams, branches of the Kuban or the Terek. The next stage brings him to thriving Cossack, Russian, and German colonies sheltering themselves behind these slopes, amid cornfields and vineyards; or perhaps to a health-resort, with hotel and baths clustered round a mineral spring in approved European fashion. High above all rise the gleaming summits of a mountain chain, grouped about some giant, like Elburz or Kazbek, raising itself, a stupendous pyramid of snow, to a height of two thousand or three thousand feet above the highest peak of the Swiss Alps. It is the Caucasus.

This great mountain range stretches from the Euxine to the Caspian waters, like a barrier between Europe and Asia, for a length of eight hundred miles. Its highest peaks are near its central region, and the general elevation diminishes on either side as it approaches its two bounding seas, into each of which it projects a sort of outwork in the form of a peninsula. The general direction, as any map will show, is not directly across the narrowest part of the isthmus, but transversely, in a west-north-west to east-south-east direction, thus leaving at either extremity a tract of mountainous country —Abkhasia on the west, and Daghestan on the east— wedged in between the main ridge of the Caucasus and the sea, and traversed only by a narrow, and on the Black Sea coast almost impracticable, pass between the

LEGEND AND ROMANCE.

375

hills and the water, into which the cliffs suddenly shelve down.

Other remarkable features of the Caucasian chain are its comparative isolation from other mountain systems, the absence of lakes, the steepness of its acclivity, especially on the northern side, the compactness of its mass—its subsidiary spurs and offshoots being of small extent, and its greatest breadth only about one hundred and fifty miles—and the nature of its “dorsal ridge,” which is composed of two parallel ranges of peaks, not, however, separated by deep valleys, but connected by a lofty table-land, which seems to unite them as summits of one massive mountain.

In the Caucasus is found the highest land in Europe or in Western Asia. Ancients and moderns have alike had their imaginations impressed by its transcendent height, its singular position, and the savage loveliness of its scenery. It has been made a chosen realm of legend and romance. Ea, to which Jason and the Argonauts fared in their quest for the Golden Fleece, has been identified with Kutais, now a Russian military post and trading town, containing little of interest to a modern seeker for adventure. Colchis, where Medea wove her spells and worked her horrid deeds of blood, is thought to correspond with the coast district on either side of the Rion—the ancient Phasis—at the mouth of which stands the port of Poti, now the starting-point of the railway which has already been carried to Tiflis, and will ere long reach Baku on the Caspian. It was to a crag of Elburz, still looking serenely down on Kutais and the Rion valley, or of Kazbek, dominating the Dariel Pass, that Prometheus was chained by the angry

376 ELBURZ AND THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS.

lord of Olympus for bringing down the fire of the gods to earth, while, according to the old myth, Europe and Asia, and the nymphs of the sea and the woods, met to soothe the torments of the benefactor of the race of men.

The Greeks were not the only people to whom the Caucasus, and more especially Elburz, the "shining" or "sublime," were full of awe-inspiring suggestions—associations in which the terrible and beautiful were inextricably mingled. In Arabian legend "beyond Mount Kaf" was the region of mystery and enchantment, where the spells of the genii had full power.

To the Zoroastrians—the fire-worshippers of early Persia—Elburz was the highest and most ancient mountain in the world, and the most sacred spot on earth. It was their Sinai, the mount where Zoroaster received the law. But it was more: they regarded it as "the throne of Ormuzd, the mount of the congregation of the celestial spirits, the pure region of light, where there is neither enemy, darkness, nor death, but all is light, peace, and felicity." "Yonder on Elburz," says the Zend-Avesta, "is neither gloomy night nor cold wind, nor heat nor corruption, nor evil, the creature of wicked genii; yonder the enemy dare not ascend as the domineering lord; for yonder walks the great king—the sun —the source of peace and life."

Alas for the ancient faiths! The adorers of the everlasting fire have disappeared in Persia, supplanted and exterminated by the believers in the Prophet and his son-in-law Ali—the Shiite sect of Mohammedans. Our countrymen, Freshfield, Tucker, and Moore, who were the first who succeeded in the attempt to ascend

BAKU AND ITS NAPHTHA SPRINGS.

377

Elburz, unsustained by the devouring ardour of religious faith, but led on merely by scientific zeal or by traveller's curiosity, discovered no abodes of beneficent spirits; and found darkness—in the shape of fog—cold, and hunger very disagreeable realities. A good spice of danger, also, may be counted upon by the mountain-climber in the Caucasus, not only from the precipices, crevasses, and avalanches of these Alpine heights, but from the brigand tribes that infest the valleys below.

Only at Baku, at the Caspian extremity of the chain, do any traces of the ancient fire-worship survive. The whole peninsula of Apsheron, on which the town of Baku stands, is saturated with naphtha; and the oil, which exudes freely from the soil at various spots, forms the chief riches of the place. One of these "naphtha wells" has sometimes been known to catch fire by accident, and to continue to burn for years, throwing up its pillar of flame to mark the farther outpost of the Casusus. Occasionally the phenomenon may be witnessed at Baku of a "sea in flames." The oil floats like a scum on the waters near the shore, and on a light being applied to the torpid waves, pale blue flames start up and flicker far and near in snaky undulations over acres of the surface of the Caspian.

A few miles from Baku is the Guebre temple of Atesh-gah, where the eternal fires are fed by the miserable remnant of the worshippers of the source of life and heat that linger in these parts. The temple itself is a small building with crenellated outer walls surrounding a central dome built over the chief altar. Not only upon the altar itself, but from every turret and battlement, and from the ground without and within the

378 MUD VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES.

enclosure, gouts of flame rise and burn unceasingly, fed by the naphtha springs below. The priests, or priest —for by last accounts only one remained in charge of the temple—is supported by the alms of the Parsee devotees, who make pilgrimages from places so distant as Bombay and Delhi to the holy fane where the lamp of the ancient faith is still trimmed in the midst of Christian, Mohammedan, and heathen tribes.

The mud volcanoes at Taman, the opposite extremity of the Caucasus, and at points along the range, bear testimony that Plutonic agencies have been at work along its whole length in raising this mighty mountain wall. No active volcanoes exist in the range, but extinct craters and lava streams have been found on Elburz, Kazbek, and other peaks; hot, sulphur, and other mineral springs are common; and the whole region is still subject to earthquake shocks, one of which, in quite recent years, rendered uninhabitable the old city of Shamaka, the capital of the province of Shirvan, where now is the chief seat of the important silkworm-rearing and silk-manufacturing industries of the Caucasus.

The sun does not shine on a land more beautiful and luxuriant than that which lies along the southern slope of the mountains from Shirvan to Circassia. Beneficent Nature seems to have striven to provide a contrast to the cold splendours of the icy peaks and the savage gloom of the "dark Iberian dales" by spreading the whole store of her treasures at the foot of the Caucasian cliffs. Sheltered from the freezing breath of the north wind, and exposed to the fervid rays of a semi-tropical sun, the rugged sides of the mountains are covered with

PRODUCTS OF THE CAUCASUS.

379

the most rich and varied vegetation, which struggles up to an extraordinary altitude, and almost mingles with the perpetual snow. Dense forests of the oak, beech, hazel, walnut, cedar, birch, cypress, pine, box, and alder clothe the slopes of the valleys; lower down are waving grain-fields of temperate climes, the olive, the vine, the fig, the melon, the orange, and other fruits of warm latitudes, and crops of tobacco, rice, maize, cotton, sugar, tea, and indigo, that form an important part of the wealth of this greatly favoured land.

The marshy flats near the Caspian are overgrown with a jungly vegetation reminding one of the lowlands of India; and the banks of the Phasis, and other streams in Mingrelia and Imeritia adjoining the Black Sea, are covered with a magnificent semi-tropical forest, wreathed into a nearly impenetrable mass by twining convolvuluses and lianas. Within a distance of a few leagues one seems to pass from Arctic scenery through a temperate clime to almost torrid warmth and luxuriance. Few regions contain such extraordinary richness and variety of plant life; the simple enumeration of the species fills no fewer than eighteen quarto pages of the botanical work of Guldenstadt, who declares that the Caucasus produces everything necessary for the existence and even the luxurious accommodation of man.

Still more strangely assorted are the races inhabiting the Caucasus. Perhaps in no part of the world of equal extent are so many distinct peoples and languages grouped together. It was once a favourite theory that the purest type of the Aryan or Indo-European family of nations—the “Caucasian race”—was to be found in these mountains. That idea has long been exploded.

380

CAUCASIAN RACES.

It arose from the accident that the finest and most characteristic skull in the collection of the German ethnologist Blumenbach was that of a Georgian. Never, probably, as Dr. Latham says, has a single skull brought so much confusion into the domain of science as in this case.

The "Caucasian" is not even the predominant race in the Caucasus. Its peoples are of curiously and obscurely mingled blood, but the Mongolian type is thought to be the prevailing one. This strange assortment of nations has been explained by supposing that after the passing of each of the innumerable Asiatic migrations which have chosen this pathway into Europe, representatives of the races composing it have been left behind, like stranded driftwood on the ebbing of a flood.

The Caucasus might thus be likened to a mighty sieve, through which the peoples of the northern world have been sifted from the earliest times. Tradition connects the range and the neighbouring summits of Ararat with the first peopling of the earth after the Deluge; and its geological formation shows that it must have been one of the earliest mountain upheavals in the Old World. When the "wrack of nations" caught in its intricate valleys and deep woods has been thoroughly and scientifically examined, an important light will doubtless be thrown on the origin, primitive condition, and prehistoric wanderings of mankind.

It has been proposed by Dr. Latham to group the inhabitants of the Caucasus under the title of "Dioscurian," for the quaint reason that at Dioscurias, one of the principal early Greek settlements on the Colchian coast, identified with Iskurias, some seventy miles north-

MEDLEY OF TONGUES AND CREEDS.

381

ward of the Phasis, thirty interpreters were needed in Strabo's days to conduct the business of the place with the natives of the region. To-day it is estimated that about a score of distinct languages and over a hundred dialects are spoken in and about the Caucasus. In the streets of Tiflis six languages are constantly and three or four others occasionally in use; though here, as elsewhere, a mongrel Tartar tongue is employed as a *lingua franca*, understood by all the motley throng of the market-place.

It is no easy task to group these different races in any satisfactory way, so puzzling are the points of contrast and resemblance which they present in physical type, religion, language, and race. The most important division, however, is that which embraces the Georgian race, who may be said to be the only portion of the indigenous inhabitants of the Caucasus who have settled industrial habits, a history, or a literature. The native of Mingrelia is a kind of handsome "ne'er-do-well" and rather disreputable relation of the more civilized and energetic natives of Georgia proper, Imeritia, and Gouria. All these are Christians of a more or less—generally more—corrupt type; but other allied peoples—like the Lazes of the newly-acquired district near Batoum—are rabid Mussulmans, with an incurable taste for brigandage; while the Suanes, a rude tribe of mountaineers living on the slopes of Mount Elburz, whose curious little commonwealth has been fully described by Commander Telfer, have no religious beliefs at all beyond some superstitious practices, and a veneration for the memory of the famous Georgian queen of the twelfth century, Tamara.

382

THE CIRCASSIANS.

The Tcherkess and the Lesghian were the guardians of the western and eastern Caucasus respectively before the coming of the encroaching Russ. The day of the Tcherkess—or the Circassian, as he is more generally called in Western Europe—is nearly past. The mountain home, which the tribes defended so long with ferocious bravery, is no longer theirs. Whole clans are extinct or scattered, shot down by Russian musketry, or deported to distant lands.

During their protracted struggles with the Russians, the sentiment of the West elevated these freedom-loving mountaineers to the rank of heroes. There is no doubt that they possess some of the savage virtues in remarkable strength—that they are courageous, hospitable, and passionately fond of liberty. It must be confessed, however, that the savage vices are to be found in even greater development than the virtues; and that, on the whole, the world would be no great loser if this survival of the Middle Ages were to become completely extinct. Essentially they are men of war, but, with all their bravery and the advantages of their country, they have never been able to offer a united front to the invader.

Only the sternest necessity will persuade the Tcherkess to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; he leaves the females of his family to perform the vulgar labours of the house and the field, and is himself a hunter and a brigand by profession. He lives, or lived—for the old ways of life have been terribly broken in upon—under an organization which is a singular compound of the feudal and the patriarchal system. There are chiefs, with their "fighting tail" of retainers, duinhe-

MEDIEVAL COSTUMES.

383

wassails, and serfs; but the bulk of the nation are free-born, exercising despotic sway within their own families, and brooking control from none. Passionately revengeful, deceitful, and cruel, the Circassian is a remorseless foe and a fickle ally. His strongest attachment, perhaps, is reserved for his horse, and his gun ranks second in his affections. He carries other weapons of a more antique cast—a spear and bow and arrows—and his belt is quite an armoury of knives and daggers.

The dress of some of the tribes of the Caucasus bears a startling resemblance to that of the knights of medieval times: to see a company of these horsemen riding gallantly along, clad in chain-mail and helmet, with a tunic over all, it is easy to imagine that they are a Crusading host resuming their march to Jerusalem after an enchanted sleep of seven centuries in these wild mountains. This is especially true of the Hessurs—not, however, strictly a Tcherkess tribe—who have actually red crosses wrought upon their breasts, and declare that they are descendants of the Crusaders, though their worship now is given to the gods of war and the spirits of the earth, the oak, and the hills.

The Circassians are fanatical Mohammedans, though they are grossly ignorant of the faith they so ardently espouse, and their religion is mixed up with Christian and pagan beliefs and practices. The only branch of trade in which they have ever engaged with any seriousness is one which from time immemorial has been carried on—that of kidnapping or selling the female members of their own families to supply the demand in the slave-markets and harems of Turkey for the beauties of the Caucasus. It must be said that when

384

CIRCASSIAN EMIGRANTS.

this and other traits in the Circassian character are kept
in view, it is hard to get up any very strong sympathy
over the ruinous misfortunes that befell them.

The Russians, tired of repressing their turbulent out-
breaks, at length offered them the choice of removing
from their mountain recesses to the valleys, where they
could be placed under efficient Cossack control, or of emi-
grating from the country altogether. Thousands of them
closed with the latter alternative, and the Sultan offered
them an asylum among the faithful. It was not a suc-
cessful experiment either for Turkey or the Circassians.
There was terrible mortality among the refugees, from
epidemics and other diseases, on the long overland march
to the coast and in the sea-passage to the Turkish ports.
They were scattered in small parties over the length and
breadth of the Ottoman Empire; small communities of
them are met with from the Dead Sea to the environs
of Erzeroum, and from Erzeroum to the banks of the
Danube—armed bands of needy and desperate men
accustomed to live by plunder, among an unarmed peas-
antry often of alien faith. The consequence has been
that the Circassians have had a red hand in most of the
massacres in Bulgaria and Syria which have horrified
Europe, and are one of the acute causes of the misery
and misrule that reign throughout the Sultan's terri-
tories.

Much need not be said about the Abkhasians, a de-
generate kind of Circassians living in the narrow strip
of country between the ridge of the Caucasus and the
Black Sea—the Tcherkesses proper, occupying for the
most part the northern slope of the range—beyond
the fact that an abortive rising took place among them

PETER THE GREAT AT DERBEND.

385

during the Russo-Turkish War. The tribes of Daghestan, however, and more particularly the Lesghians, who also inhabit a territory enclosed between the mountains and the sea, but on the northern side and at the Caspian end of the chain, have played a part in recent history that cannot be passed over so hastily.

This, and not Circassia, as is often supposed, is the country of Schamyl. Only for a few years, and in a loose kind of way, did the western tribes join those of the east in their resistance to the Russian power. Daghestan may be described as a triangle, the three sides of which are formed by the Caspian, the main range of the Caucasus, and a lofty spur which it throws off to the north-eastward, terminating at the "iron gates" of Derbend. The pass between the marshy seaboard and the mountain has always been the easiest and most frequented pathway between the north and the south of the Caucasus. The remains of ancient walls and towers, extending from Derbend along the crest of the hills, are believed to be the traces of fortifications built to keep at bay the roving hordes of the steppe; and it is thought probable that the narrow way, like the "Caucasian gates" at Dariel, was once closed by iron bars and gates. Russia's first advances towards the Caucasus were made in this direction; cautious approaches by the Czars Ivan and Feodor, followed more than a century later—in 1722—by a sudden spring of Peter the Great, who seized upon Derbend, where the little hut occupied by the autocrat will be shown to you on the outskirts of the strange-looking Eastern city whose white flat-topped houses, climbing stair-like up the steep slope from the water's edge, are in glaring con-

(718)

25

386

CONQUEST AND REVOLT.

trast to the dark masses of the old khan's palace, the
mosques, and the encircling walls and towers.

After a pause of more than half a century, Russian
aggression again began; but it was not till 1824 that
the conquest of Daghestan and Tchetchnia was com-
plete. There came a deceitful calm of a few years, and
then a fierce outbreak of insurrection, that spread like
a conflagration from one end of the Caucasus to the
other, and for thirty years occupied the energies of the
Russians in suppressing it.

The movement was as much a religious as a political one. Among so many disjointed nations there could scarcely be a real national movement; while there was, on the other hand, the common bond of faith. Schamyl himself, with all his military talents, was more of a prophet-seer than a warrior: his adherents still couple his name with that of Mohammed in their prayers. Three forerunners of Schamyl—Mullah Mohammed, Ghazi-Mullah, and Hamzak Bek—preached the doctrines of "Mirdism," or strict obedience to the book of the moral law in the Koran, stirred up the fierce mountainseers to a pitch of religious and patriotic frenzy, and completely destroyed the authority of the khans whom the Russians had left in charge of the districts. Ghazi-Mullah was killed at the storming of the Avarian village of Ghoumri, Schamyl's birthplace, in 1832, and Hamzak Bek was assassinated; and Schamyl, the son of a poor shepherd, and who had himself been in turn a pedler, a travelling fishmonger, a ballad-singer, and a juggler, took the leadership of the confederated tribes by sheer force of character and ability. Driven from Daghestan, Tchetchnia, on the northern slope of

SALMON RUNS IN THE AMOOR.

487

rises along the banks! So, on the Amoor, the salmon
and sturgeon come in from the great deep in such myriads
that they seem to form almost a solid mass as they
ascend the stream.

But we have already anticipated these lordly swimmers, who are on their way to the upper course of the great river, and have completed, in a fragmentary way, the wide circuit of Siberia.

CHAPTER XXIII.

RUSSIAN TURKESTAN.

HE political and the geographical boundaries of
Russian Turkestan are by no means identical.
In the official sense its borders are reached
when, leaving the half-Tartar town of Semi-
polatinsk—the “Seven Palaces”—we cross the range of
hills forming the watershed of the streams that drain
into the Upper Irtish, and descend into the basin of Lake
Balkash and the province of Semiretchensk—called after
the “seven rivers” which find their way by the main
channel of the Ili into that great inland sea.

Balkash is a typical lake of the steppes. It is three
hundred and thirty miles in length, and at one point
sixty miles in breadth. But there is hardly a perma-
nent human habitation on its shores. It is hemmed in
either by hungry deserts of sand or salt marshes. No
river flows into it on the northern side, which is formed
of sandy terraces rising one above another to the level
of the steppes, which are the pasturing grounds of the
Middle Horde of the Kirghiz. On the south the water
shoals so gradually that it is impossible to tell where
lake ends and dry land begins; and in these swamps the
rivers that flow down from the Ala Tau and other spurs

LAKE BALKASH AND THE ILI.

489

of the Altai mountains lose themselves after wandering disconsolately through a dreary desert thinly sprinkled with saline vegetation. The Ili is the only river that brings down any considerable body of water to the lake, which must at one time have been of much larger dimensions than at present, and is even being slowly dried up, the bays along its margin being changed into lagoons, and then filled up with the sand drifted by the winds from the surrounding waste.

The Russian Government have placed vessels on the lake, which ascend the Ili, on the fertile banks of which the population of the district is mainly congregated. Kopal, on the outermost skirts of the Ala Tau range, here rising to a height of 14,000 to 17,000 feet, north of the valley, was at one time the place of chief note in this province; but since the seat of authority has been fixed at Vierny, on a little stream falling into the Ili, the latter town has in great measure supplanted it. Vierny, under the administration of its active and able governor General Kolpakofsky—surnamed by his admiring men, for his tirelessness in the saddle, the “Iron Seat”—has rapidly developed into a flourishing town of over 12,000 inhabitants, though it is possible that its trade and importance will be injured by the retrocession of Kuldja and the upper part of the Ili valley to China. In the district around many thriving Russian and Cossack colonies have been planted, and it is to this region that we must understand reference to be made when we hear of emigration from the Don and the Volga to “Turkestan.”

Neither the climate, the life, nor the scenery of Semi-retchensk, however, partakes in any degree of the char-

490

VIERNY AND ISSYK-KUL.

acteristics of Turkestan, though the advances of Russia in
this quarter in 1853 were simultaneous with her earliest
conquests on the Sir Daria, and the two provinces were
in 1867 incorporated, for reasons that had official weight,
in the new governor-generalship, which, with its head-
quarters at Tashkend, has so long been administered by
General Kaufmann. Vierny itself is described by Schuy-
ler as essentially a Siberian town, with wide and regular
streets, shops with glaring and picturesque signs, large
official buildings of brick, dirty little hotels, and a curi-
ously mixed population of Asiatic races—Sarts, Tartars,
Kirghiz, Kalmuks, and Chinese. Saw-mills, brick-kilns,
distilleries, and breweries, technical and primary schools,
public gardens, and dancing assemblies, bear token to
the influence of European ideas; while Chinese mer-
chants in flowered silks and cottons, and Kalmuk herds-
men with queues and brown faces, riding on oxen, tell
of the neighbourhood of the Celestial Empire.

Not far from Vierny is Uzan-Agatch, where, in Octo-
ber 1860, Kolpakofsky, with eight hundred men, in-
flicted a crushing defeat on a Khokandian force of nine-
teen thousand, which had marched through the passes of
the range on the south side of the valley in order to
oust Russia from the Ili. The only result was that the
victors, following up their advantage, crossed the moun-
tains and seized from the ruler of Khokand the region
about Lake Issyk-kul and the course of the river Chu
—thus taking a long step towards the appropriation of
the Central Asian khanates. Issyk-kul lies five thou-
sand three hundred feet above sea-level—a beautiful
blue expanse of water, over one hundred miles in length,
wedged in between two lofty ranges of the Tian Shan,

TIAN SHAN PEAKS AND PASSES.

491

and fed by numerous streams that flow down from its glaciers. The neighbourhood of the lake is almost deserted, except by roving parties of the Kara Kirghiz, a tribe of much purer Tartar lineage than their brethren of the steppes beneath—the Kirghiz Kaisaks of the three Hordes, with whom we have already made acquaintance. Sculptured remains of ancient cities have, however, been found on its shores, and for miles along the margin at one place the beach is thickly strewn with skulls and fragments of human bones, marking, say the tribesmen, the site of a bloody battle now forgotten.

Passes lead from this point over the main ridge of the Tian Shan into Eastern Turkestan, and these have been seized by the Russians, who have for many years had munitions of war collected at Fort Naryn, near the summit of the range, in expectation of troubles with Yakoob Beg or his successors the Chinese. The culminating peak of this great mountain system, Mount Khan Tengri, lifts its head far into the snows at no great distance south-east of Issyk-kul; and close under it runs the Muzart Pass, by which a precarious communication was kept up by a road carried over glaciers, moraines, and yawning fissures, crossed by temporary wooden bridges, between the Chinese possessions on the Ili and in Kashgar.

The Chu River, rising among the snows of these terrific defiles, flows close past the western end of the lake, and communicates with it by an arm, which is sometimes an effluent and sometimes an affluent of Issyk-kul, and then makes its way through rocky and precipitous gorges, with an occasional border of flowery

492

CLASSIC GROUND.

meadows and clumps of forest, into the bare steppes
below. As it bends westward along the skirts of the
Alexandrofsky range, it receives many little tributaries
that stream down the slopes and recruit its failing waters
before they are finally lost in the sands, or in swampy
brakes of rushes, where tigers and lynxes have their
haunts.

This is a classic ground. Here are the "Thousand
Springs" of the Chinese geographers; through it led
the highway by which the medieval travellers passed
eastward on their way to the court of the Great Khan.
It was the centre of the power of the Kara Khitai,
whose rule extended over both Eastern and Western
Turkestan, and whose capital, Bala Sagun, stood near
the banks of the Chu. That more than half-mythical
personage, Prester John, is believed to have been a khan
of the Kara Khitai, who may have professed Christianity
at the time that the Nestorian faith extended widely
over Central Asia and China. Genghiz Khan, emerg-
ing into the Ili valley from the deserts of Mongolia,
took this way, and threw in the dust the power of
Prester John, as he did greater and lesser potentates that
tried to withstand his conquering march. Near Tokmak
are the ruins of the capital of the principality of Kip-
chak, which furnished the name for all the western
conquests of the Mongols. Aulieta, the principal town
of the district, is supposed to be on the site of Talas,
another great city of the descendants of Genghiz. Near
it is a mountain where Noah's ark is thought to have
rested, and mounds and piles of immense stones; believed
to have been built by the "jins;" and within is a
sacred tomb, in great repute among the followers of the

A NEW WORLD.

493

Prophet, built over the bones of a descendant of Sheik Akhmed Yasavi, the patron saint of the Kirghiz, in whose honour Timur built the great mosque that is the pride of the city of Turkestan. It was at Aulieta that General Tchernaieff began his campaign against Khokand in 1864, which ended within a few weeks in the capture of Tashkend and the annexation of the greater part of the khan's territory; and General Kaufmann had it at one time seriously in his mind to fix here the capital of the Russian possessions in Central Asia.

Still, so long as we are on the northern side of the Alexandrofsky Mountains, we are outside the magic circle of Turkestan. A current of Western life and ideas flows here; Russian colonization has spread along the well-watered hill-sides, and well-to-do farmers come down to market at Aulieta, dressed in the garb and speaking the tongues of Europe; the climate is healthful and invigorating; even the Kirghiz, to one who, like Schuyler, has been sojourning among the fanatical peoples to the south, appear "patterns of simplicity, manliness, and virtue."

A journey through the passes or across the steppe into the valley of the Sir brings us to a new world—into an atmosphere charged with doubt, mystery, and suspicion. In this region Russia has now planted down her foot firmly, and made her presence felt in the most remote corner. The boundaries of Western Turkestan are marked out very plainly by nature. To the eastward it is defined by the huge wall of the Tian Shan and the Pamir Steppe—the outward supports of the great table-land of Thibet and Chinese Tartary. Near the sources of the Amu River is a mountain knot,

494

BOUNDS OF TURKESTAN.

where the Pamir, the Western Himalayan ranges, and
the Hindoo Koosh join; and at this point also is the
meeting-place of the Chinese dominion, of the Afghan
possessions in Turkestan, and of the territory of the
Maharajah of Kashmir, who is under the protection of
the Empress of India. On the south the limits of Tur-
kestan are marked by the Hindoo Koosh, which gradu-
ally merges into the Kopet Dagh range of mountains,
separating Northern Persia from the Turcoman Oasis,
and extends to the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Thus shut in on two sides by lofty mountains, Turkestan is bounded on the west by the waters of the Caspian, and on the north by the steppes pastured by the Kirghiz. The general character of the region thus shut off from the rest of the world by rocky walls, deserts, and salt water is that of a waste of sand, shifting and barren like the sea. Great peninsulas and promontories jut out from the bounding mountain masses into this ocean of sand, and oases of marvellous fertility, brilliantly green with fruit trees and grain fields, are dotted on its surface like islands.

The rivers rise in the uplands—at the foot of glaciers,
or in little mountain tarns surrounded by snow all the
year round. Such is the source of the Oxus or Amu
Daria, found by Captain John Wood in the Sari-kul
Lake, situated at a height of sixteen thousand feet above
sea-level, in one of the most remote corners of the Pamir
Steppe. Descending from these cold naked heights on
the “Roof of the World,” where, owing to the great
elevation, even breathing is a difficulty, the muddy and
rapid streams cut their way through narrow valleys to
the lower levels. Numerous side gorges join the main

TRADE ROUTES IN HIGH ASIA.

495

channel; and wherever there is room for plants to grow,
there is a rich vegetation, and a little tribal community
maintaining itself on its flocks and herds, and, when
opportunity offers, on those of its neighbours.

This is particularly the case in the district of the Upper
Oxus, which is still imperfectly explored—or at least im-
perfectly described. Russian scientific expeditions have
penetrated into the broken and difficult region of Kara-
tegtin and Hissar, and jottings of the routes taken and
the places visited have reached geographical circles in
Europe; but the remark which Vilkievitch, the Czar's
agent at Kabul, made to Sir A. Burnes forty years ago
still holds good: "It is not the custom of Russia to
publish to the world the results of her researches in
foreign countries." Trade routes ascend these intricate
valleys, and surmount the ridges of the broad blocks of
mountain that separate the Amu from the Zerafshan,
and the Zerafshan from the Sir, sometimes at heights
of ten thousand and twelve thousand feet above the
sea; but the merchants and travellers who have busi-
ness to do in the great marts of traffic in Turkestan
prefer coasting along the foot of the hills by tracks
comparatively safe, and beaten by the feet of camels
and horses, to undertaking the toilsome ascents of the
passes, and submitting to the black-mailing of robber-
chiefs.

Farther westward the mountains sink down to the
level of the plain, or are continued merely as ranges of
low dusty hills. The last drop of water has been wrung
from the highlands, and the rivers are left without guid-
ance to wander forth into the desert. In places where
there is a clay subsoil to retain the rains, little patches

496

DESERTS AND THEIR DENIZENS.

of green are found in the thirsty plain, and wells are
dug, around which the kibitkas of roaming tribesmen
are pitched, and where the trade caravans crossing the
Kizil Kum or Kara Kum—the “Red” and the “Black”
Sands—make their evening halt.

Strips of cultivated land, vineyards, and groves of
fruit-trees are found on the banks of the streams where
it is found possible to draw off the water by canals
for purposes of irrigation. A dusty vegetation of camel-
thorn and other desert plants covers large expanses,
and affords pasturage for the flocks of hardy sheep,
camels, and horses kept by the Turcoman and other
nomadizing tribes. Herds of wild asses also frequent
the waste: Mr. O'Donovan, accompanying General Sco-
beleff's recent expedition to the Tekke country, de-
scribed a countless host of these graceful creatures bear-
ing suddenly down upon him with the swiftness of the
wind, and having satisfied their curiosity by surveying
him at a distance of some yards, wheeling round and
disappearing as swiftly as they came in the cloud of
dust raised by their nimble heels. Lions, which were
hunted in this region in Alexander the Great's time, are
no longer found, except, perhaps, that one may make an
occasional foray into the desert from Northern Persia;
but tigers of small size, bears, wolves, and several species
of antelopes manage to pick up a living.

Nearer the Caspian the rivers disappear, and with
them almost every sign of life; the country becomes
utterly naked and desolate. Great changes must have
come over the physical condition of this region within
the historical period. The part which this region has
played in the history of the world seems inexplicable

LOST RIVERS.

497

except on the supposition that it once was capable of
supporting a much larger population than it now
contains.

The positive statements of ancient geographers, that
the Oxus and Jaxartes emptied themselves into the Cas-
pian, have also opened a rich field for theory and conjec-
ture. We know now, of course, that both these great
rivers—each with a course of some fifteen hundred miles
—debouch into the shallow Sea of Aral, which, in spite
of its great length and breadth—two hundred and sixty-
five miles by one hundred and forty-five miles—is little
more than an overgrown lagoon of the steppe. The
other rivers of what was known to our fathers as Inde-
pendent Tartary have not even so honourable an end
to their career as the Aral Sea.

The Zerafshan, for instance, hurries with much noise
and turbulence down its rough mountain channels, and
sets out briskly from the hills as if to join the Amu.
Then the hot sands begin to drink up its waters and
to choke its bed with silt; streams are carried away
to irrigate the rice-fields and apple and peach orchards
of Samarcand and Bokhara; the river spreads itself
abroad in devious and intricate channels, and stag-
nates in marshes and pools, and it is completely ex-
hausted while its apparent goal is still many miles dis-
tant. It is the same with the rivers that flow into
the hollow of Turkestan from the Hindoo Koosh. The
rivers of Khulm and of Balkh exhaust themselves in the
gardens of these two ancient Bactrian cities; the Siri-
pul and the river of Meimana water the oases on their
banks, but have not strength left to cross the desert
beyond; the Murghab loses itself a little way beyond

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32

498

OLD COURSES OF THE OXUS AND SIR.

Merv, the dilapidated old metropolis of Margiana; and
the Heri-rud, the river that flows past Herat, descends
from the hills to the plain only to dissipate itself in
the Tejend swamp. So also in the north, the steppe
rivers shoal and throw off branches instead of deepen-
ing and receiving tributaries as they flow onward; they
stumble aimlessly about among mud-flats, sandy hillocks,
and beds of rushes, and end, after a course of hundreds
of miles, in some insignificant salt marsh.

It is conjectured, with much probability, that these
fragmentary streams once formed parts of one grand
river system. The theory is that when the climate of
Turkestan was moister than it is to-day, and the rain-
fall, of course, heavier and more regular, the great lake
Issyk-kul sent a large body of water into the bed of
the Chu, keeping the channel of that now useless stream
well scoured and running full; that a further reinforce-
ment came, perhaps, from Lake Balkash, bringing the
surplus drainage of the Ili valley, while the Sari-Su and
other rivers now lost in the Kirghiz Steppe flowed in
further on. A still more important contributor was
found in the Jaxartes, which is believed to have joined
the main stream near where Fort Perovsky now stands,
and the further course of the united body of water is
still marked by the Yani Daria, a channel through the
sands of Kizil Kum, down which in flood-time part of
the water of the Sir still flows straight towards the
Oxus. The last-named stream was the lowest and
greatest of the affluents of the ancient river; and it
then held its way from the southern extremity of the
Sea of Aral to the Caspian Sea at Balkan Bay, through
the deep wide furrow in the sands known as the Usboi,

THE SHORES OF THE ARAL SEA.

499

or old course of the Oxus, down which the Russians are
just now said to be endeavouring to induce the waters to
resume their flow, in the hope of opening up water com-
munication with their new possessions in Khiva, Bokhara,
and Khokand.

It is more than doubtful whether this curious experi-
ment will be successful. They may persuade, indeed
they have already persuaded, a considerable body of
water to leave the Oxus and flow for some distance along
the dry bed of the old river; but it is quite another
thing to get it to discharge itself into the Caspian, much
more to preserve such a depth of channel that vessels
could ascend. The trunk stream that once may have
given freshness to the desert is hopelessly withered and
dead, and only in some of the outer twigs and boughs
does the sap still run. The Amu Daria, according to the
late Major Herbert Wood, who made a minute hydro-
graphical survey of the region, is rapidly silting up its
bed, owing to the quantity of water drawn off to irrigate
the oases of Khiva, and is finding increasing difficulty in
travelling even so far as the Aral Sea. The Sir also, in its
lower course, divides into narrow, tortuous channels, and
is so obstructed by mud and sand banks as to be nearly
unnavigable.

The Sea of Aral itself is filling up, clear water, bays,
and inlets changing to marshes, and marshes to dry land,
within living memory. Its shores are utterly deserted
except by water-fowl. On the east, sandy beaches
covered with shallow pools shelve into the brackish
waters, and on the west, the low shingly bluffs of the
Ust-urt plateau run out into the lake. On a fine day
beautiful atmospheric effects may, according to Schuyler,

500

THE "GOOD OLD TIMES."

be seen, when, with a pale blue sky and fleecy clouds
overhead, the sun lights up the clear pools of water
and shore and sea with silver and pearly hues, and the
coloured stems of the low leafless shrubs give to the
desert an aspect of purple, rose, and yellow, mingling
with the yellow-brown of the sands. There is nothing
else, however, admirable about Aral: it is subject to
heavy storms, and possesses no harbour of refuge for
the vessels of the "Aral flotilla," conveyed thither in
pieces, and launched at an enormous cost to the Russian
Government; and the officers of the little fleet must
have found this most isolated of naval stations neither
so lively nor so serviceable for purposes of war or com-
merce as was at one time expected.

What Turkestan needs in order to regain its past
prosperity is a moister and more equable climate, a more
regular rainfall, and a more industrious population. In
these respects, it may be feared, things are retrograding
rather than improving. For many generations past it
has been in "reduced circumstances." After remaining
long in obscurity, a flood of light has been poured in
upon it at the moment of collapse and humiliation. Its
former glory was won by ruthless, predatory warfare,
and it became rich and powerful on the spoils of weaker
neighbours. Now it is being plundered and annexed in
its turn. A few of the more isolated mountain tribes
and Turcoman clans may still kidnap and rob on a petty
scale, but their power for evil is every year being cir-
cumscribed. The time for conquest and slaughter on
the grand scale seems to be past; Timurs and Babers
are no longer bred in the Mavera-ul-Nehr—the "land
between the rivers." The khans of Tartary remind us

ALEXANDER OF MACEDON.

501

of nothing more than the giants Pope and Pagan, who sat at the entrance of their dens surrounded by the bones, ashes, and blood of dead men, biting their nails in impotent rage as Bunyan's pilgrims passed by. Not only can destroying hosts no longer issue like clouds of locusts from these deserts and spread terror and desolation to the gates of Moscow, Smyrna, and Delhi; the khans must submit to see the stranger and the infidel pass by their gates with richly-laden caravans, and dare not lay a finger upon him.

The first clear glimpse obtained into the interior of this region is afforded by the famous expedition led thither by Alexander the Great more than two thousand two hundred years ago. The Macedonian conqueror passed the Hindoo Koosh with his army, hunted the fugitive Persian satrap Bessus across the Oxus—which was crossed, as is still sometimes done at the present day, on skins—and, after laying waste Maracanda, the modern Samarcand, and other towns, advanced as far as the banks of the Sir. Here he left a colony of his invalided soldiers—one of half a dozen Alexandrias planted as memorials of the Greek conquests in Sogdiana and Bactria; and he had sundry brushes with the Scythian hordes on the northern bank of the stream, which the flatterers of the conqueror declared to be the Don, a geographical discovery as remarkable as that afterwards made by Alexander himself when he pronounced the Indus to be the Nile, on the strength of seeing crocodiles swimming in the Indian river. The Padishah Iskender is to this day one of the great mythical personages of Central Asia; legends regarding him hang about the mountains, lakes, and rivers of Turkestan; many of the

502

THE ARAB CONQUEST.

chiefs still trace their descent to him; and the Khokandians point out at Marghilan the tomb where, as they believe, the horned hero lies buried. The Bactrian kingdom that he founded survived for several centuries, and coins bearing the names of a long line of monarchs—Heliocles, Eucratides, and the rest—and silver plate engraved with Bacchic processions and other subjects taken from classic mythology, are still found in Kunduz, Balkh, and Badakshan, to attest the degree of culture attained in this distant colony of the Greeks.

The Scythians on their way to the Indus overwhelmed the Bactrian empire; and Persians, Parthians, and Chinese by turns asserted their supremacy. Then came the Arabs of the Khalifate, who early in the eighth century proselytized busily with fire and sword, and planted the roots of Mohammedanism so deeply that to this hour the most orthodox champions of Islam are to be found in the medressahs of Khiva and Samarcand, and Bokhara is accounted one of the holiest cities of the Mussulman world.

Hitherto the countries on the Oxus and Jaxartes had had no title to the name of "Turkestan." They had mainly been peopled and governed from the south, and the predominant races are believed to have been of Iranian origin. But now began a current of emigration and conquest from another quarter. The Seljukian Turks burst in from the north-east, and traversing the land from corner to corner, selected as the seat of their power Khorassan, behind the mountain screen of Northern Persia. Here their renowned leaders, Togrul Beg and Alp Arslan, engaged in tremendous struggles for mastery with the Turcomans of the steppes, and with the succes-

GHENGHIZ AND TAMERLANE.

503

sors of Mahmoud of Ghuzni, the son of a Bokharan slave, who had just conquered India, and carried away to his rock-fortress in Afghanistan the "Great Gates" of Delhi, brought back in triumph eight centuries later by a British army.

The shahs of Kharezm—the modern khanate of Khiva —had established themselves at Samarcand as the ruling power in Turkestan, when the horde of Genghiz was on the march. The proud Kharezmian shah, disdaining the offered alliance of the Mongol chief, was defeated and slain; his capital was laid waste and his people massacred, and the remnants of his army were chased through the Afghan passes and across the Indus. When Genghiz parted Asia among his sons, Turkestan fell to the share of Jagatai; but as is often the case in family settlements where there is a large property to divide, the heirs were not contented with their portions. Long and cruel wars were waged between the Jagataides and their strong kinsmen and neighbours, the lords of the Golden Horde.

The family quarrel was brought to an issue in the time of the notorious Timur Leng (Timur the Lame—corrupted by our forefathers into “Tamerlane”). This formidable personage was an almost perfect type of the Tartar conqueror—insatiably ambitious, of indomitable will and energy, brave and skilled in warfare, utterly ruthless in the shedding of human blood, the idol of a savage soldiery, and the terror of the world. In the case of the other great figures in Central Asian history before and after his time, Turkestan was only the starting-place whence they set out to seek their fortunes in other lands; or it was a prize which, coming from Greece,

504

BABER AND NADIR SHAH.

Persia, or Mongolia, they struggled to reach. But Timur was born in the Mavera-ul-Nehr—at Shehr-Sebz, no long distance south of Samarcand—and after all his marchings and wanderings, his campaigns against Tokhtamish on the Sir, on the Volga, and in the Caucasus, his expeditions to the Dnieper and the Oka, his two descents into the plains of India, and his still more bloody, loudly-trumpeted victories in Persia, Syria, and Asia Minor, he returned to his dearly-loved capital among the fruitgroves of the Zerafshan valley, and died "between the rivers" when about to set out for the conquest of China. The pillage of the rich countries to the south and west was lavishly expended in rearing and beautifying the palaces, mosques, and colleges of Samarcand, which under his care became the centre of power and learning in the Eastern world. Another flood of invasion from the northern steppes sapped and overthrew the rule of the successors of Timur in Bokhara and Khokand. The famous Baber was prince of the latter province, then known as Ferghana, and twice he established himself in Samarcand; but with all his military genius and political skill he was unable to withstand the onset of Sheibana and his Uzbegs, and fleeing by the familiar road through Afghanistan to India, he became the founder of the Mogul empire.

The subsequent history of Turkestan has largely consisted of struggles for ascendency between the three khanates, civil wars, and family quarrels, plots, and murders. There has been no successful organized assault by its warlike people either on Russia or on India. The last—perhaps the last possible—of the great "scourges of humanity" reared in these deserts was Nadir Shah,

CHANGED TIMES IN TURKESTAN.

505

a Turcoman freebooter, who, less than a century and a
half ago, overthrew the Persian and Mogul empires, and
was assassinated in the height of his fame while returning,
after the manner of his kind, laden with spoils of Delhi
and the Punjab.

As a fellow-countryman of Nadir's, following the
same esteemed occupation of highwayman, regretfully
told Colonel Baker in 1873,—"Things are changed:
we cannot stand against your new guns; and we have
no training." The tide of Russian conquest is rolling
swiftly back upon the countries of Turkestan, and pro-
mises soon to engulf the whole. Let us see when this
encroaching movement began, and how far it has already
extended.

CHAPTER XXIV.

LATEST CONQUESTS IN CENTRAL ASIA.

USSIA hesitated long before venturing her hand into this Central Asian wasp's nest, which she is now engaged in rifling, with more prospect of getting stings than honey. The learned Professor Grigorief shows that there were commercial relations and interchanges of missions between Muscovy and the khanates so far back as 1620. The early military expeditions of Russia in this quarter were directed against Khiva, and were not attended with encouraging results. Peter the Great sent a small army to subdue the Khivan khan; but the latter, though unable to overcome the enemy in the field, was more than a match for him in artifice, and Prince Bekovitch and his men were massacred or perished miserably in the desert between Lake Aral and the Caspian. A force under Perovsky, despatched by Czar Nicolas in 1829, met with even more signal failure—they had not even a barren victory to repay them for their sufferings in attempting to cross the steppes in winter. The excellent people of Khiva, besides quarrelling with the neighbour khanates, continued merrily the old-fashioned practices of piracy and robbery, dreaming that the arm of retribu-

THE KIRGHIZ STEPPE.

507

tion was not long enough to reach across the desert. Stray Russians were picked up by them, or by these professional adepts in kidnapping, the Turcomans, until there was quite a considerable collection of subjects of the Czar pining in slavery.

At last, after hesitating for one hundred and forty years on the northern side of the Kirghiz Steppe, Russia determined to stride across it, and see with her own eyes what was going on in the strange world of Turkestan. This momentous movement was so far completed in 1847 that a Russian fort was built on the Sir Daria—some four hundred miles from the old frontier near Orsk—and two vessels were placed on the river. No determined opposition was offered by the Kirghiz, though an irregular struggle was kept up for ten years longer by the bandit chief Isset Kutebar, “the Rob Roy of the steppe,” from places of refuge in the plateau of Ust-urt. The post road across the steppe from Orsk to the Sir is now practically as safe as a European highway. Station-houses, for resting and change of horses, are placed at convenient distances along the route, and the traveller is made as comfortable as is consistent with the presence of filth and fleas. The Kirghiz are settling quietly down to pastoral pursuits, and along the Sir they are beginning to cultivate the land. Projects have been formed of bridging over the distance between Orenburg and Tashkend by a railway, and were the finances of Russia, and especially those of the government of Turkestan, in a more healthy state, the work would no doubt soon be carried out.

Once established on the Jaxartes, Russian annexations in Turkestan went on by a kind of natural process. The

508

FERGHANA AND ITS RULERS.

juncture was a favourable one for such encroachments. There was bad blood between the khanates, as usual, and Khokand, the nearest of the three, was torn by civil commotions. Kipchak, Uzbeg, and Sart factions alternately struggled into power, and the Khan Khudayer was a vicious and bloodthirsty creature—judged even by the Central Asian standard—who murdered his minister and best friend, the Kipchak chief Mussulman Kuli, and was repeatedly turned out of the throne by his disgusted subjects. The Russian conquests began in 1853 by the capture of Ak Musjid—now Fort Perovsky—after a resolute defence by the celebrated Yakoob Beg, who afterwards crossed the Tian Shan with a band of Khokandians, and became the ruler of Eastern Turkestan.

On the lower Sir the climate is rigorously cold; the river is hemmed in between sandy deserts, and is frozen for four months in the year. Better things were to be found farther up stream. Under the shelter of the mountains was the valley of Ferghana, with its running streams and its fruit-groves, the pears, melons, and grapes of Andijan, and the delicious apricots and pomegranates of Marghilan, celebrated by the Emperor Baber. Turquoises and other precious stones, gold dust, and copper ore were to be found; and the populous towns of Tashkend, Khojend, and Khokand were famous in Central Asia for their manufactories of rich cloths and their workers in brass and jewellery.

Beyond these mild inviting regions, lying so temptingly near at hand, were places of still greater interest—Samarcand, Bokhara, Khiva, and Merv—about which the English had been manifesting much curiosity. A long series of British travellers—Moorcraft, Burnes, Ab-

TRAVELLERS AND MILITARY ADVENTURERS. 509

bott, Thomson, Shakespeare, Connolly, Stoddart, and Wolff
—had penetrated into the region, and gathered great
store of information. Russian travellers were not behind
in enterprise and daring. Demaisons visited Bokhara in
1834 in the dress of a Tartar mullah, and Vikievitch in
the year following disguised as a Kirghiz,—feats that, as
M. Grigorief points out, demanded no less boldness and
adroitness than the Hun carian Vâmbéry's more recent
visit made in the disguise of a dervish. In 1841, about
the time that Connolly and Stoddart were basely mur-
dered at Bokhara by the Ameer Nasrullah, Khanikoff and
Lehmann made an interesting journey to Samarcand,
which had remained almost totally unknown to Euro-
peans since the time of Timur.

Service in Turkestan became popular in the Russian
army; it opened up to young officers prospects of "show-
ing their paces" and obtaining promotion, honours, and
decorations. Tchernaieff, Scobeleff, Romanofsky, Lazareff,
and other notable military commanders, made their repu-
tation—some of them afterwards lost it—in Central Asian
campaigns. So far from the seat of government, civil
and military officials were necessarily left with a large
amount of discretion, and they took large advantage of
their opportunities of spreading their own and the White
Czar's fame.

After nibbling away for years morsels of Khokand,
General Tchernaieff, in the campaigns of 1864-66, cap-
tured the cities of Turkestan, Tchimkend and Tashkend,
and stripped Bokhara of the conquests which it had made
from its rival khanate in the hour of its extremity; and
his successor, Romanofsky, followed up these advantages
by advancing into Bokharan territory, inflicting a signal

510

ANNEXATION OF KHOKAND.

defeat on the troops of Mozaffur Eddin at Irjar, and
established Russian garrisons at Ura-tepé, Jizakh, and
other places south of the Sir. General Kaufmann was
nominated Governor-General of Turkestan in 1867, with
the city of Tashkend as his headquarters; and next
year another war broke out with Bokhara, resulting in
the annexation of Samarcand and the Zerafshan valley,
and the political subjection of the rest of that khanate
to Russia. In 1875 there was a last despairing effort
by the Khokandians, led by Abdurrahman Aftobatcha, the
son of Mussulman Kuli, to eject the intruders, but after
a fierce struggle the resistance was thoroughly quelled
by Scobeleff; and in 1876 the remaining portion of
Khokand was formed, under the ancient title of Ferghana,
into a province of Russian Turkestan.

For fifteen years past the progress of the Russian
arms and influence in Central Asia has been presided
over by General Kaufmann.* No name has been so
much identified with Muscovite aggrandizement in this
region, and no one has copied more faithfully the morals
and the methods of Asiatic rulers in the management
of an Oriental dependency. He has never shown any
surpassing genius either for war or for diplomacy. His
position, however, far removed from effective control,
with the whole power of the empire behind him, and a
tempting field for ambition in the weak and distracted
countries lying in front, has given him a great influence
for good or for evil, which he has scarcely used in the
way best fitted to enhance the reputation of Russia for
open dealing, or to improve the relations between his

* General Kaufmann has just (May 1882) been superseded by General Tchernaieff as Governor-General of Turkestan.

GENERAL KAUFMANN.

511

country and our own. The Governor-General of Turkestan has been the type of the "prancing proconsul" of the time; at Tashkend he has maintained a semi-regal state and ceremonial, which has gained for him among the native populations the title of the Yarim Padishah, or "half king." He never rides out, Mr. Schuyler was informed, without a select guard of Cos-sacks; and even his wife and children had at one time their escorts, until a newly arrived officer turned the practice to ridicule by innocently asking why the lady was under arrest. At the public receptions to which the gay and fashionable world of Tashkend are admitted the etiquette of the Winter Palace is observed; and if the Governor-General condescends to shake the hand of a guest, the latter is immediately courted as a rising light in society. When his excellency returns after an absence to Tashkend, triumphal arches are erected and cannon fired in his honour.

In spite of these imposing displays—partly, perhaps, on account of them—the administration of the province is not so successful as could be desired. Turkestan, apart from the costs of the wars, entails a heavy annual drain on the finances of Russia, which are little able to bear the burden. The population are heavily taxed, and have other causes of discontent. The tone of morals in civil and military circles is not exalted. Peculation and jobbery are rife, and drinking and gambling fill up the spare hours in high society. There are generally flitting about the "court" a number of pensioners, or applicants for pensions, claimants and pretenders to Central Asian crowns, or dethroned or expelled ameers and khans, of which there is always a large supply on hand. Khu-

512 RUSSIAN INTRIGUES IN CENTRAL ASIA.

dayar Khan of Khokand had to take shelter with General Kaufmann, but got tired of that sheltering wing, and took flight to India. Abdur Rahman, the present Ameer of Afghanistan, came here in 1870, after being expelled from Kabul by his uncle, the late Shere Ali. Afterwards he removed to Samarcand, where he lived quietly till a new turn of fortune's wheel carried him again to the top of affairs in Afghanistan, with no great feeling of gratitude in his heart, it is said, for the Yarim Padishah. General Kaufmann loves to play with these puppets, and in the alarm which their movements excite in India and England perhaps has his reward. The approach of Russia towards our Indian Empire has led to long correspondence and interchanges of opinion between our own Government and that of St. Petersburg, and in 1872 an arrangement was come to between Lord Granville and Prince Gortschakof by which Afghanistan was declared to be "outside of the sphere within which Russia should be called upon to exercise her influence." The Oxus was laid down as the boundary of the territories of the Ameers of Bokhara and Kabul, and of the legitimate influence of Russia and England, and a limit was set for the time to Kaufmann's ambition. This did not prevent him, in 1878—a time, however, when Russia and England were "diplomatically at war" —from sending the notorious Stoletoff mission to Kabul; and we have thus to thank him, in part, for the cost and trouble of the Afghan War, and the unfortunate Shere Ali, who died near the Oxus while fleeing for refuge to his faithless "friend," for the loss of his kingdom.

The new or Russian town of Tashkend, though the seat of government, is by no means a typical city of

TASHKEND.

513

Turkestan. Schuyler, viewing it first by moonlight, could scarcely believe that he was in Central Asia. "The broad dusty streets, shaded by double rows of trees; the sound of rippling water in every direction; the small white houses set a little back from the streets, with trees and a palisade in front; the large square full of turf and flowers, with a little church in the middle," all combined to give him the impression that he was in one of the quiet little towns of New York State! By daylight it resembled more a new prairie town—"Denver, for instance, though lacking in the busy air that pervades that place, and with Sarts, in turbans and gowns, in place of Indians and miners." The native town, however, presents an admirable abstract of all that is quaint, bizarre, and characteristic in Central Asian architecture and city life. We cannot do better than quote part of the excellent description of the American author :—

"The streets are rarely straight, and in rambling about the town we go up and down hill, turning to this side and that, sometimes between high walls, sometimes beneath the wooden portico of a mosque which mounts high in the air, now along the edge of some deep ravine, and now crossing some rushing stream on a low wooden bridge. Everywhere trees are leaning over the walls, for everywhere there are gardens, and we can leave the street and take a by-path up the edge of some stream where an old wooden mill-wheel is busily turning, and feel ourselves almost in a country nook. Sometimes we pass into the garden of some medressah or college, where are shady walks, and where the turf about a shady pond is covered with idlers from the town, for the pupils are mostly in their little rooms reading or reciting their

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33

514

KHOKAND AND TURKESTAN.

lessons. Outside the walls—and the town is about six miles across—the gardens extend for several miles. These gardens, which are thickly planted with trees, and at a distance entirely conceal the town, are still very beautiful, though they have suffered greatly since the Russian occupation. Beyond the gardens we find the open steppe, which stretches from the Sir Daria, here some forty miles distant, to the mountains."

Such another city of closely-packed buildings of clay and of wood, surmounted by the melon-shaped domes of mosques and medressahs, covered with blue and white enamelled tiles forming texts from the "Koran," and half hidden in the brilliant green of gardens and orchards, is Khokand, though the population, some sixty thousand, is only half as large as that of Tashkend.

Neither of these places can lay claim to exceeding antiquity, or possesses any structure of such note and sanctity as the ruined mosque, begun by Timur in 1397, built over the tomb of the patron saint of the Kirghiz, the Sheik Akhmed Yasavi, in the decayed old town of Turkestan. This building, still grand in its decay, must, we are told, have been at one time wondrously beautiful. The front consists of an enormous arched portal, at least one hundred feet high, flanked by rounded windowless towers with crenellated tops. Under the great dome is a vast hall, ornamented with rich alabaster and mosaic work, after the Moorish style; and in adjoining apartments are the tombs of the saint, of the descendants of Timur, and of the Kirghiz sultans of the Middle and Little Hordes.

No spot in Central Asia, not even Bokhara, can, however, vie in interest with Samarcand. It is reached

SAMARCAND.

515

from Tashkend by passing the Sir Daria at Tchinaz,
crossing a parched and arid waste known to the Russians
as the " Famished Steppe," and entering the far-famed
Zerafshan valley by a mountain pass—the " Gates of
Tamerlane "—commanded by the fortress of Jizakh, from
which Tchernaieff was repulsed in 1866, but whose gates
opened in the autumn of the same year to Kryzhanofsky,
the governor-general of Orenburg. Beyond the defile,
on the rocky walls of which are engraved inscriptions
recording triumphs gained over invading hosts from
the north by Timur's warlike grandson, Ulug Beg, and
by the last of the great sovereigns and benefactors of
Samarcand, Abdullah Khan of Bokhara, the valley of the
Zerafshan—the " gold-strewing " river—is reached. The
road leads through fields and gardens and numerous
villages, and over streams crossed by ancient bridges,
until, in the middle of the valley, the lofty blue domes
and red brick towers of Samarcand are seen rising,
as they have done for so many changeful centuries,
above the green foliage of its fruit-trees.

Though it has long ceased to be the centre of the
world, the city preserves some remains of its former
magnificence. Among the common people its prestige
is not quite gone. It is still accounted the " head of
Islam ;" and the proud saying is not yet forgotten among
the faithful, " Samarcand is the face of the earth, Bok-
hara the marrow of Islam ; were there not at Meshed
an azure dome, the whole world would be a ditch for
ablution." Meanwhile, it is only a small district town
of some thirty thousand inhabitants, in an empire whose
capital is four thousand miles away.

You enter the gate of Shah Zindeh—no Tartar spears-

516

THE TOMB OF TIMUR.

men barring the way—and find yourself in a new boule-
vard, with an excellent pavement, where, like Mr. Schuyler,
you may hire a drosky and drive to the citadel, where,
in 1866, the Russian garrison, under Major Stempel,
offered a heroic resistance to the attempt of the people
of Shehr Sebz to recover the city. You look down on
the great mosques and medressahs, the bazaars, canals,
and water-tanks, planned and built by Timur and his
successors; on the sea of verdure beyond, and across at
the snow-covered mountains that hem in the valley; and
acknowledge that Samarcand has not wholly been de-
spoiled of her beauty and romance. The ameer's palace
within the fortress has been turned into the Russian
military hospital.

In the courtyard, formerly used on occasions of
ceremony, is the *Koktash*, a block of gray marble, carved
with arabesques, that, according to the tradition of
the place, fell from heaven to form the foundation of
the throne of Timur. The tomb of the Tartar con-
queror is covered by a mosque that crowns a small
hill on the south side of the citadel. Under the central
dome, which is richly ornamented with alabaster work,
and the walls inlaid with "hexagonal plates, closely
set together, of finely carved transparent gypsum," is
a slab of a greenish-black stone, six feet long, fifteen
inches wide, and fourteen inches thick, covering the
vault where this arch-destroyer, for whom the world
once seemed too narrow, now lies gathered into very
small space. Over the tomb, on the side towards Mecca,
an ancient standard, with floating horsetail, hangs as a
memento of his victories. Under adjoining slabs sleep
Ulug Beg and other descendants of Timur, and an

MOSQUES AND MEDRESSAHS.

517

honourable place beside him is occupied by his teacher, the learned Mir Seid Belki. The ashes of the wives of the conqueror are accommodated in an adjoining building.

The chief architectural glory of Samarcand is the mosque of Shah Sindeh, the “Living King,” built by Timur on the spot where a great promulgator of the faith suffered martyrdom. By the local legend, the “Living King” was due to appear again in the flesh in 1868, to cleanse the city of the infidel, and his non-fulfilment of the appointment has rather injured his repute. The mosque, an immense structure, ranking in sanctity and splendour close after the Hazret Mosque at Turkestan, is now much out of repair; but the lofty portals and domes, faced with blue and white porcelain tiles forming mosaic patterns and texts, the marble and tiled staircases, the interior walls overlaid with arabesques, the arches and ceilings covered with pendent alabaster work, and the finely carved wooden pillars that support them, make it worthy of being a type of the palmy era of Samarcand. In the Mosque of Hodja Akbar was long preserved, as the most precious relic in the city, the Koran of Othman, the third khalif. The book has now been removed to the Imperial Public Library at St. Petersburg—a small instalment of historical revenge for Timur’s act, the carrying away into Tartary the great library of Greek authors at Brussa, some traces of the existence of which Mr. Schuyler thought he discovered at Bokhara.

On a hill close by are the ruins of the Observatory —the first erected in Asia—founded by the “Shadow of the Almighty,” Ulug Beg; and within the walls

518

THE BAZAAR OF SAMARCAND.

are the crumbling remains, still surmounted by a min-
aret one hundred and fifty feet in height, of the college
which that prince prepared as the home of the astron-
omers and mathematicians whom he attracted to his
capital. In still finer taste are the other great medressahs
of Samarcand—that of Bibi Khanym, built by and
named after Timur's favourite wife, and daughter of the
Emperor of China; and the colleges of Shir-dar and
Tilla-kari, dating three hundred years later, erected by
the Uzbeg, Yalang Tash, who rifled the shrine of the
Imaum Reza at Meshed, in order to embellish his works
in Samarcand.

The latter two buildings, as well as the Ulug Beg
medressah, are in the centre of the bazaar. Here, as in
the other bazaars of Central Asia, a most heterogeneous
collection of different races assemble for trade and barter.
A skilful ethnologist might find traces of the different
waves of emigration and conquest which have passed
over Turkestan in the dress, features, and customs of the
people who crowd the narrow crooked alleys, or spend
the night as well as the day in the little niches where
their wares are exposed. The two great elements of the
population are the Tajiks or Sarts and the Uzbegs: the
former the representatives of the Iranian population
who occupied the country before Turkestan became the
"land of the Turks;" and the latter of the Turanian
tribes that from time to time descended upon the basin
of the Sir and the Amu since the days of Genghiz. Mr.
Schuyler thus discriminates between the two races :—

"The Tajiks and Uzbegs are readily distinguished
from each other, not only in appearance, but also in
character. The Tajik is larger and fuller in person,

TAJIKS AND UZBEGS.

519

with an ample black beard, and an air of shrewdness
and cunning. He is fickle, untruthful, lazy, cowardly,
and boastful, and in every way morally corrupted. The
Uzbeg is taller and thinner, with a scanty beard, and
a longer and more strongly-marked face. He is simple
in his manners and dress; while the Tajik is devoted to
his personal appearance, and fond of adorning himself.
The Uzbegs look upon the Tajiks with contempt, but at
the same time they are dependent upon them. The
Tajiks treat the Uzbegs as fools and children of nature,
and smilingly say that they have them entirely in their
power."

The Tajiks constitute a large proportion of the town
population, while the nomads are chiefly Uzbegs. The
former speak a dialect of Persian, but most of them
are also acquainted with Turki, the language of the
Uzbeg tribes. Other peoples, of whom representatives
will be found in the bazaars, are Persians, Hindus, Jews,
gipsies, and probably a sprinkling of Russians. A
wandering dervish, known in Samarcand as a kalender,
a name delightfully suggestive of the "Arabian Nights,"
may be met with. He is making a round of the holy
cities, and his next place of pilgrimage may be Bokhara.

Thither we will not follow him, for that metropolis of
Central Asia, though dependent on Russia, not only
politically, but for the life-streams of water from the
Zerafshan that keep its fields and gardens green, has not
yet been included within the dominions of the Czar.
Neither has Khiva, though there is a widespread notion
that the Cossacks are in actual possession of that Uzbeg
khanate. The khan, taking no warning from the fate

520

THE KHIVA EXPEDITIONS.

of his neighbours, and encouraging and profiting by the
slaving and marauding propensities of his Turcoman
subjects, it was determined in high council at St. Petersburg
to put an effectual end to his power of annoyance.

The expeditions organized against him started in
1873, from five different points—from Jizakh, under
Kaufmann's own command; from Kazala, on the Sir,
under the Grand Duke Nicolas Constantinovitch; from
the Emba, under General Verevkin; from Mangishlak,
on the Caspian, under Lomakin; and from Tchikishlar,
on the Attrek, under Markozoff; and they closed in on
the khanate from the east, north, west, and south. All
the difficulties lay in getting there, for by the nearest
route there were four hundred miles of desert to cross.
Many privations were suffered from heat and drought,
and Markozoff's column had to fall back to the Caspian
a miserable wreck. More than enough of men and guns
and camels, however, reached the lower Oxus to beat down
the feeble opposition of the khan, and Kharezm fell
into the hands of the invaders. Afterwards the fertile
portion of the oasis, lying on the south side of the river,
was surrendered again to Mohammed Khan, while the
desert northern bank was annexed to Turkestan, as the
Amu Daria district.

While abolishing slavery, and taking other guarantees
for the future good conduct of Khiva, Russia thus took
care to reward herself for carrying out this part of her
civilizing mission by placing herself in a position to ex-
ercise an all-powerful control over the native state. Her
troubles and annexations in this part of the world did
not, however, stop here. The Turcomans could hardly
be expected immediately to reform their ways because

TEKKE TURCOMANS.

521

their old confederates and customers in Khiva had been
bound and muzzled. The Yomud tribes, nomadizing
between Khiva and the Caspian Sea, were thoroughly
cowed by the primitive operations, disgraced by barbar-
ous massacres "in the Circassian style," carried out by
General Golovatchef; and the Goklan clans on the
Attrek have given comparatively little trouble.

Not so the Tekkes, whose two divisions, the Akhal
and the Merv Tekkes, occupy respectively the fertile
strip of country along the foot of the Kopet Dagh range,
and the oasis which the river of Herat forms before it
is dissipated in the desert of Turcomania. These hardy,
restless frontiersmen are possessed of an admirable breed
of horses, with which they can cover great distances when
out on their kidnapping and pillaging forays. They are
more at home in their felt tents than in permanent habi-
tations, and in the saddle than out of it. Robbing seems
to come more natural to them than their ostensible occu-
pations of shepherds and horse and camel rearers.

Rude in their manners and savage in their tempers,
the English travellers who have visited the Tekke
Turcomans—and, in addition to their most recent guest,
Mr. O'Donovan, special correspondent of the *Daily News*,
quite a series of officers in the Indian army, Colonels
Baker and Macgregor, Major Butler, and Captains Napier
and Gill, among others, have within the last few years
taken the trouble of exploring the Tekke country—have
discovered among them some primitive virtues, and
especially a manly frankness and rough sense of humour
that may be set against their manifold sins. The
Persians do not appreciate them as neighbours; and "in
their eyes," according to M. Ferrier, "a Persian is simply

522

LATEST RUSSIAN SUCCESSES.

a mercantile and marketable commodity, and not worth
taking care of after it has been injured."

Seeing that Russia has spoiled their best market for
these human wares, it is only natural that they should
bear a special grudge against the northern infidel.
Since the capture of Khiva, expeditions have been sent
against them almost every year, each ending in more or
less decisive failure. Markozoff, Lomakin, Tergukasoff,
Dolgorouki, and Lazareff have in turn been discomfited
by the valour of the Akhals and the hardships of the
march. At length an expedition on a more extensive
scale was fitted out, and placed under the command of
General Scobeleff: to insure success, a railway, intended
to extend across the desert from Krasnovodsk on the
Caspian, at the foot of the mountains, was begun, and
has since been completed to Kizil Arvat. The Tekke
stronghold of Geok Tepe was captured in spite of a
heroic defence, and the Turcoman oasis was added to
the Empire of the Czars in the spring of 1881.

A treaty was concluded in the spring of 1882 between
Persia and Russia, by which it was agreed that the
frontier between their respective territories should be
drawn along the lower course of the Attrek river and
the range of the Kopet Dagh eastwards to a point
about a hundred and twenty miles from the Persian
fortress of Sarakhs.

The new Russian outpost station of Askabad is in
the neighbourhood of Nadir Shah's original stronghold,
Kelat, a stupendous natural fastness, twenty-five miles
in length by from five to seven broad, shut in by walls
of rock from eight hundred to one thousand feet high,
with a sheer perpendicular scarp between three hundred

THE CENTRAL ASIAN PROBLEM.

523

and six hundred feet. On the other side of the mountains is the holy city of Meshed, where thirty thousand pilgrims assemble annually to visit the shrine of the Imaum Reza, and the mausoleum of the khalif of the "Arabian Nights," Haroun el Raschid; and not far off is Nishapur, the old capital of the Seljuk empire in Khorassan. Alp Arslan, the heroic figure of that dynasty, is buried at Merv, separated by a strip of desert from the new Russian frontier.

From the fertile oasis of Merv, according to one set of military critics, from Khorassan, according to others, a dash might be made at Herat—the "key" of India—by a designing enemy of England; while a third body of authorities are of opinion that Russia, from her position on the Oxus and in Bokhara, has for many years been in possession of the best available strategic base for carrying out the scheme, which she is so persistingly suspected of entertaining, for invading and conquering Hindustan.

To the most Chauvinist of Russian generals, to the most nervous and credulous of Russophobists, the enormous difficulties and risks of such an undertaking must be manifest on any attempt to calmly consider the situation. Yet neither obstacles nor a wise regard for the real interests of Russia have hitherto availed to stop the progress of Russian arms in Central Asia. Should a collision take place on this distant frontier between two nations that need only to know each other more thoroughly in order to be friends and fellow-workers in restoring these Eastern countries to more than their former prosperity and civilization, it is only necessary to consider the contrast which the rivals present in all that con-

524

A ROCK AHEAD.

cerns the health and stability of their political, social, and commercial condition to judge which shall be the greater sufferer of the two. While the young Czar has just added to his overgrown dominions several thousand square miles of desert and several thousand head of Turcoman robbers, he dare not show himself outside the palace grounds of Gatchina. A hostile meeting in Asia would be a misfortune to Britain; it would probably be ruin to the Russian Empire.