CHAPTER IX. NEW RUSSIA. FROM KISHNAU TO ODESSA. Leave Kishnau. - Desolate country. Funereal stones. Sudden frost. Salubrity of Morals.-Theatricals. Prohibition of missionaries. - Pastors and their - Bible Society. - Russian church. flocks.-Politics.-Closing Dardanelles.-Russian influence. -Anecdotes. - Poland's wrongs. Exiles.-Rupture of marriage tie. Russian wives. dotes. Indignities suffered by Poles. Bulgarian emigrants. Feudal system.Serfs and seigneurs. - Abrok. -Services required. Power of masters.- Anecdote.Moral effects of slavery. 246 TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA. HAVING Secured the best conveyance to Odessa which the town of Kishnau afforded, we continued our route with an anxious desire to reach the capital of New Russia, where we expected to find comfortable accommodations, and intended to arrange our plans for the winter with reference to the state of the plague in Constantinople. The first part of the journey lay over a sandy road, through a desolate country where nothing but birds afforded a proof of animal existence. Several eagles, whose noble size and lofty flight commanded our respect for their royal race, with numerous hawks and falcons, flew over our heads but the bird of which we saw the greatest number was the pewet, called by the natives "keefit," a name evidently derived, like our own, from the sound it utters. We met neither carriages, carts, nor human beings, for many miles; and the solitude is rendered fearful by monumental stones, marked with crosses, which every here and there indicate the spot where some poor traveller has fallen a prey to banditti. In a space of thirty miles five of these may be seen, one of which commemorates a murder perpetrated only six months before we passed the spot. Travelling in Russia is not travelling for MURDER OF COURIER. 247 pleasure. The bad roads, undefined by any hedge or boundary, the miserable conveyances constantly breaking down, and the dirty, comfortless post-houses, combine to make a journey a painful and laborious undertaking: hence, the object is to accomplish it as quickly as possible, and for this purpose the natives generally travel day and night, sleeping in the carriage when fatigue compels a halt, to avoid entering the huts, miscalled post-houses. Danger is added to discomfort; murders and robberies are not unfrequent, and the police is so inefficient that the criminals are seldom secured. Some time ago, a courier engaged by the English consul at Odessa, on his way to Vienna with money, stopped at a house where thirty other individuals had taken shelter: in the night the building was surrounded, all the inmates were murdered, the property was stolen, and the banditti escaped, nor have they since been heard of. Between Kishnau and Sicara, a distance of forty versts, not a single habitation, except one post-house, is erected by the roadside. At the end of this long stage we were thankful for a pause; and as we partook of some refreshment from our stores, we were amused by observing the frogs which, in countless numbers, 248 CHARLES XII.-THE DNIESTER. covered the surface of a small lake. The majority were sleeping with their heads just above the water, and so soundly as not to be aroused by stones thrown close to them; while a minority, sufficiently large to claim consideration, raised their deep bass voices in full sonorous symphony, as if striving to vindicate the taste and judgment which have assigned to them the name of "Holstein nightingales!" From Sicara we ascended a high hill, beyond which are others that form the range supposed to be the Macrocremnii Montes mentioned by Pliny, commanding a view of the extensive plains lying to the east of the Dniester, and inhabited, in the time of Strabo, by the Tyrigetæ. A drive of seventeen versts brought us under the walls of the fortress of Bender, distant two miles from a town of the same name. Close to this is the little village of Varnitza, where Charles XII. of Sweden took refuge after his defeat at Pultawa, gallantly defending himself with a scanty remnant of his followers: and to the south is a large mound supposed to be that mentioned by Herodotus as having been raised by some kings of Scythia. The Dniester, which runs under the walls of the fortress, is crossed on a swinging ferry: it takes its rise in the Carpathian hills, and pursues a winding course till it reaches the Black Sea. In ancient maps it is called the Danastus, and represented as the boundary between Dacia and Sarmatia in modern geography it was known, under a modified name, as the line of separation between Russia and Turkey, till the former empire acquired Bessarabia, thus stretching its limits to the river Pruth. Leaving this last-named province and entering into what is called New Russia, we continued our journey by moonlight as far as Taraspol, a town of considerable size, nine versts from Bender and sixty-six from Kishnau; whence we started again before daylight the following morning, lamenting the miserable accommodation afforded by Russian inns. Nothing can be more dreary than the flat, desolate, and uncultivated country, called the steppe, between Taraspol and Odessa; not a village nor a traveller is to be seen for hours together, and almost the only persons we met during the day's journey were a party of Calmuk Tartars habited in the costume of the country. There is no road; but numerous tracks of cart-wheels run side by side over the unpeopled waste, and a way seems to be no sooner marked out than it is deserted for a VOL. I. Q |