CHAPTER XXXIII.
RAPID JOURNEY FROM STAVROPOL—RUSSIAN WEDDING—PERILOUS PASSAGE OF THE DON; ALL SORTS OF DISASTERS BY NIGHT—TAGANROK; COMMENCEMENT OF THE COLD SEASON—THE GERMAN COLONIES REVISITED.
It would have been impossible to travel more rapidly than we did from Stavropol to the Don. The steppe is as smooth as a mirror, and the posting better conducted than in any other part. We no sooner reached a station, than horses, which had been brought out the moment we were descried, were put to, and galloped away with us without a moment's check to the next station. A temperature of at least 20° Reaumer, the beauty of the sky, and something light and joyous in the atmosphere, kept us in the highest spirits. In no country have I ever seen such multitudes of gossamer threads. The carriage, the horses, and our clothes were covered with those glistening prognostics of fair weather.
As we advanced towards the abodes of civilisation, our thoughts were all about the pleasure of arriving at Taganrok, to find our letters, our friends, our European habits again, and the comforts of which for many months we had enjoyed but casual snatches. We rejoiced, therefore, in the speed with which we got over the ground, and scarcely cared to bestow a glance on the stanitzas that fled away behind us. In passing through a Russian village, however, we were constrained to bestow some attention on outward objects, our carriage being stopped by a wedding party that filled the whole street. We counted a dozen pavosks filled with young people of both sexes. The girls, with their heads bedizened with ribbons, screamed almost like savages, and rivalled the young men in impudence and coarseness. It was a disgusting spectacle. The bride differed from the rest only by the greater profusion of ribbons and flowers that formed her head-gear; her face was as red, her gestures as indelicate, and her voice as loud and shrill as those of her companions.
It may seem scarcely credible, but we were but two-and-twenty hours travelling 316 versts, between Stavropol and the Don. We ate and slept in the carriage, and only alighted at the river side, where all sorts of tribulations awaited us. I cannot at this moment think of that memorable night without wondering at the pertinacity with which ill-luck clings to us when once it has fastened upon us. At ten at night, when we were some little way from the Don, we were told that the bridge was in a very bad state, and that we should probably be obliged to wait till the next day, before we could cross it. Such a delay was not what we had bargained for, especially as we had reckoned on enjoying that very night a good supper and a good bed under a friendly roof in Rostof. Then the weather, which had been so mild, had suddenly turned chill, and this was another motive to haste; so we went on without heeding what was told us; but when we came to the river, the tokens that the bridge was out of order, were but too manifest. Several carts stood there unyoked, and peasants lay beside them, patiently waiting the daylight. These men reiterated the bad news we had already heard; but then it was only eleven o'clock; if we waited we should have to pass nearly seven hours in the britchka, exposed to the cold night air, whereas once on the other side, we should reach Rostof in two hours. This consideration was too potent to allow of our receding from our purpose. At the same time we neglected no precaution that prudence required. The coachman and the Cossack were sent forward with a lantern to make a reconnaissance, and returning in half an hour, they reported that the passage was not quite impracticable, only it would be necessary to be very cautious, for some parts of the bridge were so weak, that any imprudence might be fatal to us.
Without calculating the risks we were about to run, we at once alighted, and followed the carriage, which the coachman drove slowly, whilst the Cossack went ahead with the lantern, pointing out the places he ought to avoid. I do not think that in the whole course of my travels we were ever in so alarming a situation. The danger was imminent and indubitable. The cracking of the woodwork, the darkness, the noise of the water dashing through the decayed floor, that bent under our feet, and the cries of alarm uttered every moment by the coachman and the Cossack, were enough to fill us with dismay: yet the thought of death did not occur to me, or rather my mind was too confused to have any distinct thought at all. Frequently the wheels sank between the broken planks, and those were moments of racking anxiety; but at last by dint of perseverance we reached the opposite bank in safety. The passage had lasted more than an hour; it was time for it to end, for I could hold out no longer; the water on the bridge was over our ancles. It may be imagined with what satisfaction we took our places again in the carriage. The dangers we had just incurred, and which we were then better able fully to understand, almost made us doubt our actual safety. For a long while we seemed to hear the noise of the waves breaking against the bridge; but this feeling was soon dispelled by others; for our nocturnal adventures were by no means at an end.
At some versts from the Don our unlucky star put us into the hands of a drunken coachman, who after losing his way, I know not how often, and bumping us over ditches and ploughed fields, actually brought us back in sight of the dreadful bridge which we still could not think of without shuddering. We tried in our distress to persuade ourselves we were mistaken, but the case was too plain; there was the Don in front of us, and there stood Axai, the village we had passed through after getting into the britchka. Fancy our rage after floundering about for two hours to find ourselves just at the point from which we started. The only thing we could think of was to pass the night in a peasant's cabin; but our abominable coachman, whom the sight of the river had suddenly sobered, and who had reason to expect a sound drubbing, threw himself on his knees and so earnestly implored us to try the road to Rostof again, that we yielded to his entreaties. The difficulty was how to get back into the road, and we had many a start before we found it. The carriage was so violently shaken in crossing a ditch, that the coachman and Anthony were pitched from their seats, and the latter fell upon the pole, and became entangled in such a way that he was not easily extricated. His shouts for help, and his grimaces when my husband and the Cossack had set him on his legs were so desperate, that one would have thought half his bones were broken, though he had only a few trifling bruises. As for the yemshik, he picked himself up very coolly, and climbed into his seat again as if nothing extraordinary had happened. To see the quiet way in which he resumed the reins, one would have supposed he had just risen from a bed of roses; such is the usual apathy of the Russian peasants.
It was four in the morning when we came in sight of Rostof, which is but twelve versts distant from the Don. Thus we spent a great part of the night in wandering about that town, like condemned ghosts, without deriving much advantage from our rash passage of the river. It was well worth while to run the risk of drowning, when our calculations and efforts could be baffled by so vulgar a cause as the drunkenness of a coachman! But the sight of Rostof, where good cheer and hospitality awaited us, consoled us for all our mishaps. Yet even here, when we almost touched the goal, our patience was put to further trial; for alighting at the post station two versts from the town, our rascally coachman positively refused to drive us a foot beyond it. This was too much for the Cossack's endurance, so drawing out a long knout from his belt, he paid the fellow on the spot the whole reckoning he had intended to settle with him at the journey's end. The yemshik's shouts brought all the people of the station about us, and the wife of the postmaster came and scolded him at such a rate, that at last he was forced to drive us to the town; but it was more than an hour before he set us down at Mr. Yeams's house. His drunkenness had now passed into the sleepy stage, and he could only be kept to his work by constant thumping.
The house where we intended to lodge contained a corn store belonging to Mr. Yeams, English consul at Taganrok, who had obligingly invited us to use it when we quitted that town, and had sent orders to that effect to his clerk, M. Grenier: and so pleased were we with our quarters on our first visit to Rostof, that now the thought of going anywhere else never entered our heads. To have done so would have seemed an affront to Mr. Yeams's cordial hospitality. While we were unpacking the carriage, Anthony went and knocked at the door, and the coachman, unyoking his horses, in a trice went off as fast as he could, without even waiting to ask for drink money. Some minutes elapsed; Hommaire, losing patience, knocks again, when at last out comes Anthony with a very long face, and tells us that M. Grenier, clerk and Provençal into the bargain, refused of his own authority to receive us, pretending that he had not a room for us. Unable to comprehend such conduct, and believing that there was some mistake in the case, my husband went himself to the man, who putting his nose out from under the blankets, told him impudently, we must go and look for a lodging elsewhere.
All comment on such behaviour would be superfluous. To shut the door at night against one's own country people, and one of them a woman, rather than incur a little personal trouble, was a proceeding that could enter the head of none but a Provençal. The Kalmucks might have given a lesson in politeness to this boor, who rolled himself up snugly to sleep, whilst we spent the night, benumbed and shivering, under his windows in his court-yard. It may be conceived in what a state I passed the night; drenched with wet, worn down with mental and bodily fatigue, hungry, sleepy, and chilled by the sharp cold that at that season precedes sunrise, I was really unconscious of what was passing around me. As soon as it was light the Cossack procured horses, and took us to the best hotel in Rostof, where a warm room, an excellent bowl of soup, and a large divan, soon set us to rights again. On our arrival at Taganrok all the Yeams family were indignant at the behaviour of our Provençal, and, had we been disposed to pay him in his own coin we might have done so. They would have sent him his discharge forthwith, had we not interceded for him; the French consul wrote him a threatening letter, and with this our vengeance remained satisfied.
We learned at Taganrok that the strangest rumours had gone abroad respecting us. Some said that the Circassians had made us prisoners, others that we had perished of hunger and thirst in the Caspian steppes. In short, every one had had his own melodramatic version of our supposed fate. I cannot describe all the kind interest that was shown on our safe return from so hazardous a journey. In spite of our wish to arrive as soon as possible in Odessa, we could not refrain from bestowing a week on friends who received us with such warm sympathy.
The winds from the Ural swept away in one night all that October had spared. The weather was still sunny when we arrived on the shores of the Sea of Azof; but on the next day the sky assumed that sombre chilly hue that always precedes the metels or snow-storms. The whole face of nature seemed prepared for the reception of winter, that eternal sovereign of northern lands. The sea-beach covered with a thin coating of ice, the harsh winds, the ground hardened by the frost, and the increasing lividness of the atmosphere, all betokened its coming, and made us keenly apprehensive of what we should have to suffer on our way to Odessa, where we were to take up our winter quarters, and from whence we were still 900 versts distant. With the rapidity of the Russian post the journey might be accomplished in ten days, if the weather were not unfavourable; but after the threatening symptoms I have mentioned, we might expect soon to have a fall of snow, and perhaps to be kept prisoners by it in some village.
Unfortunately for us it was the most dangerous season for travelling in Russia. The first snows, which are not firm enough to bear a sledge, are much feared by travellers, and almost every year cause many accidents. At this period, too, the winds are very violent, and produce those frightful snow-storms which we have already described. It was a very cheerless prospect for persons so way-worn and weary as we were, to have incessantly to fight against the elements and other obstacles. I remember that in this last journey our need of rest was so urgent, that the poorest peasant seated by his stove was an object of envy to us.
We once more passed through all the German colonies I had so much admired a few months before. But the pleasing verdure of May had disappeared beneath the icy winds of the north, and all was dreary and dull of hue. Even the houses, no longer glistening in the sunshine, had a sombre appearance in harmony with the withered leaves of the orchards. A metel that broke out one night forced us to pass two days in a German village, in the house of a worthy old Prussian couple. The wife had lost the use of one side, and could not leave her chair, but her husband supplied her place in all the domestic concerns with a skill that surprised us. As in all the German houses, the principal room was adorned with a handsome porcelain stove, and a large tester bed which our hosts insisted on giving up to us. From morning till night the husband, aided by a stout servant girl, exerted all his culinary powers for our benefit. The table was laid out all day until dinner hour with coffee, pastry, bottles of wine, ham, and other appetising commodities.
There is nothing I think more delightful in travelling than to watch the proceedings of a somewhat rustic cuisine. In such cases all the marvels of Carême's art fade before two or three simple dishes prepared under your own eyes. The ear is pleasingly titillated by the tune of the frying-pan, the smell of good things stimulates desire and quickens the imagination, and the very preliminaries are so agreeable, that the traveller would not exchange them for the most magnificent banquet in the world.
The quantity of snow that had fallen during those two days retarded our speed. A man rode on before the carriage and carefully sounded the ground, for the metel had filled up the holes and ditches, and obliterated all landmarks. Nothing can be more frightful than those snowy wastes recently swept and tossed by furious winds. All trace of man's existence and his works, have disappeared beneath those white billows heaped upon each other like those of the ocean in a storm. How well we could appreciate, in those long days we spent in plodding through the snow, the horrible sufferings of our poor soldiers, perishing by thousands in the fatal retreat of 1812! The thought of their misery smote upon our hearts, and forbade us to complain, warmly clad as we were, drawn by stout horses, and having all we required done for us by others.
As we approached Kherson post-sledges began to show themselves; several of them shot by us with travellers wrapped up to the eyes in their fur cloaks. These sledges are very low, and hold at most two persons. It very often happens that the body part upsets without the driver's perceiving it; the accident is not at all dangerous; but it must be exceedingly annoying to the traveller, as he rolls in the snow, to see his sledge borne away from him at full speed, leaving him no help for it but to follow on foot. If the driver does not take the precaution to look back from time to time, the traveller may chance to run all the way to the next station, and it may be imagined in what a plight he arrives there. When the accident happens by night the case is still more serious. Many Russians have told us that they had thus lost their way, and only after a day or two's search had found the station where their sledge had arrived empty. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to lose one's way in the steppes, nor is it at all necessary to that end that one should fall out of his sledge. We ourselves were once in danger of roaming about all night in the neighbourhood of Kherson in search of our road, which we could not find. A very dense fog surprised us at sunset, scarcely five versts from the town. For a long time we went on at random, not knowing whether we were going north or south, and Heaven knows where we should have found ourselves at last, if we had not caught the sound of horses' bells. The travellers put us on the right way, and told us it was ten o'clock, and we had twelve versts between us and Kherson.