The highly exasperated feelings displayed by the majority in the first instance cooled down considerably during the five years which elapsed between the first notice of the intended reform and the actual consummation of it. The Russians are tolerably well accustomed to arbitrary measures, and their feelings are not naturally very deep. But the nobles were still far from being satisfied, and the mutterings of general discontent that were heard long after the inauguration of the new regime, continued to be a cause of anxiety to the Emperor. The dissatisfaction of the nobles was fed from various causes apart from the serf question. A pretty general reform of abuses was instituted about the same period. Many time-honoured privileges and monopolies were invaded, to the prejudice of those who were battening on the spoils of office. Matters continued in a critical state until the perpetration of the infamous deeds of incendiarism which preceded the Polish insurrection. These occurrences brought all the best part of the population to the side of the government, and restored the wavering loyalty of the nobles and military officers; and the malcontents, whose nefarious gains in public offices of trust and otherwise were put an end to, were fain to sink their grievances in oblivion.
CHAPTER XXI.
KAZAN—POLISH EXILES.
We passed through a great deal of bare, flat and uninteresting country on the road to Kazan. The ground being covered with snow, we could not judge of the soil, but farming villages were tolerably numerous, and a fair amount of population seemed to find a subsistence there. Oaks, of which we saw none on the Siberian side of the Ural range, now began to appear. The birch trees grow straight and tall, and pines were less conspicuous in the woods.
The number of Polish prisoners we found on the road threatened seriously to impede our march. We had met them occasionally in Siberia, but between Perm and Kazan we encountered companies of them on the way, and at almost every station. The resources of the posting establishment were severely taxed to provide horses for so many travellers at once, and we had frequently to wait till the Poles were gone, and then take the tired horses they had brought from the last station. The Poles travelled in the same manner as we did, in large sledges containing three or four people, sometimes more. Those who could not be accommodated with sledges had carts, or telégas, which were more or less crowded. None of them travelled a-foot. All were well clothed in furs. On the whole I was surprised to find such a number of people travelling with so much comfort. When we met a party of them in a post-station we were very short of room, unless when we happened to be there first. Then the cooking establishment was entirely monopolised by the exiles when it pleased the officer in charge to dine them. On such occasions we postponed our repast to the next station. The prisoners are invariably treated with kindness and consideration by the officer in charge and by the gensdarmes. They are under close surveillance, but I did not see any of the prisoners in irons, though I was informed that some of them were so. I remember one fat, jolly fellow in charge of one of the detachments of prisoners. He was a captain in the army, and had hard work to console himself in his forlorn situation. He did not at all like the service he was engaged in; indeed he seemed to feel his banishment to Siberia more than the exiles themselves. He envied our destination homewards, and took occasion to bemoan himself a little. "Ah! you are happy," said he; "in a few days you will be in Moscow, but I, poor devil, must go to Tobolsk with gensdarmes"—accompanied by an expressive shrug of the shoulders, and downcasting of the eyes. He made companions of some of the prisoners; one in particular he seemed to be on cordial terms with. The officer told us this prisoner had held a commission under Garibaldi, and had been lately captured leading a band in Poland. He was a handsome young fellow, with a wild look in his eye. As for the rest of the prisoners, there was nothing remarkable about them. They ate well and talked loudly; the din of their voices at a post-station was intolerable. They joked and laughed a great deal, by way of keeping their spirits up I suppose; but no indication whatever was given that they were exiles undergoing the process of banishment. If one might judge from appearances, I should say they rather liked it.
On the 24th of November, late at night, we reached Kazan, a fine old town, the name of which is closely bound up with the ancient history of Russia. I found a letter waiting me at the post-office there, in answer to my telegram from Kolyvan, which was a comfort. How I got into the post-office at eleven o'clock at night, and how the men happened to be there in their places at that hour, I was not very clear about. But it was explained that two posts were then expected, one from the east and one from the west, and that when I hammered at the door they thought it was at least one of them. Arriving in Kazan very late, we took up our quarters for the night at the station hotel, where we were half suffocated as usual by the close fusty atmosphere of a room kept up to + 16° Reaumur (68° Fahrenheit), no air being ever allowed to enter.
In the morning we began to hear ominous warnings about the Volga. The ice was coming down in big lumps, and our sledge could not be got across—so we were informed. It was seven versts from the station to the ferry. We might drive there and see for ourselves, but then it would have been excessively disagreeable to have to return defeated. We consulted a Russian gentleman to whom we had a letter of introduction, but no comfort was to be got from him. The state of the river was as bad as it could be, and he strongly advised us not to leave Kazan until the Volga was hard frozen. The voice of the tempter had been saying "wait, wait," at every point of our journey from Kiachta to Kazan, but as we had not listened before, we were not likely to do it now, when so near the end of our journey. I could not help remarking how singularly we had been baulked by contumacious rivers during the two months that had passed since we encountered the Tolla in Mongolia. They were always just in the impassable crisis when we happened to reach them, and last of all the Volga gave us trouble, a river that we never reckoned on crossing at all. A little earlier we should have passed up the river in a steamboat. A little later we should have driven up the Volga on the ice, for that is an almost direct road to Nijni-Novgorod. But of course we hit the wrong time, just betwixt and between. The river must however be crossed if we would proceed.
An offer of twenty roubles being made for the sledge, we sold it to the post-master. It was he who persuaded us that we could not take it further, and of course we thought ourselves "done" in consequence. We got our traps stowed in two post-chaises and drove towards the ferry on the Volga. In leaving the main town of Kazan we crossed over a causeway, or embanked road, through a marsh which connects the town with a kind of suburb. The view of Kazan from the other side of the swamp is very fine. It is built on high ground, and its spires and domes show to great advantage from a distance. In the summer season, when tree leaves and green grass are out, the environs of Kazan must be very pleasing to the eye; for even in November, when the country was one great snowy waste, bleak and cheerless, the town looked really handsome. The best houses, as well as public buildings, are built of brick, indeed a wooden house is rather the exception there. Having crossed a flat tract of country, we reached the Volga at a point about five miles from Kazan, and as many above its confluence with the Kama. It is truly a noble river, and the high banks enable one to get a sort of bird's-eye view of the broad sheet of water. I should rather say a compound of water, ice, and snow, for the surface of the river was covered with large blocks of ice, loaded with snow, moving rapidly down the stream, with a few open spots of clear water here and there. There was great commotion at the ferry among moujiks, Cossacks, and Tartars. Several boats were busy conveying passengers across, but they made slow work of it. The men refused to start from either side until they saw, or thought they saw, sufficient space clear to hold out some hope of their being able to effect the passage. They would wait an hour or more for a favourable opportunity to start, and even then they were just as likely to be carried down by the driving ice as to fetch the opposite landing. One boat was jammed in mid-channel and borne down in a perfectly unmanageable condition for two or three miles, until the moving icebergs voluntarily released her, when she was got to land at a place where it was impossible to get horses or sledges near, owing to the precipitous nature of the bank. The model of these boats is beautifully adapted to this kind of iceberg navigation. Their sides are cut away, so that a straight line is drawn from the gunwale to the keel. A section of the boat is represented by the letter V, but the angle formed by the two sides is much greater than that in the usual form of that letter, so that the boats are very flat. They may be nipped between two fields and no damage be done, as there is nothing for the ice to get hold of. Did the boats present a perpendicular side to the edge of it, they could not escape destruction. We unfortunately had ample time to make observations on the navigation of the Volga and other matters that came under our notice, for we were compelled to kick our heels about the whole day, without finding a boat disengaged. Long before dark the men stopped work for the day, to make sure they would not be caught in the dusk of the evening essaying a passage which demanded all their wits in broad daylight. The first hour or two passed pleasantly enough while we entertained ourselves watching the process of a river freezing. A margin of thick ice had already formed along the bank, strong enough to arrest the progress of the "pack" in its downward course, when borne against the projecting points. The floating ice-fields crashed with great impetuosity on the fixed ice, were shattered by the shock, and, urged by the force of the current, the fragments were piled up one above another in huge chaotic masses. When left still for a short time the pile congealed, and in a few hours was ready to serve as a barrier to stop more of the pack and annex it to the mass. During that one day the solid ice was extended six or eight feet, and with continued frost a very few days would suffice to freeze over the whole river.