Twenty years around the world

by John Guy Vassar

CXXXIX.

Staverpool, Northern Circassia, June 22, 1858.

In my last from Piatigorsk I stated my intention of visiting the other mineral sources. Of these Gelesnovodski furnishes hot iron water, and is one of the few in the world of the hot ferruginous kind. It is romantically situated some twenty wersts from the place above named. It is a village of Cossack peasants, who were whitewashing and brushing up their rude cabins, built of branches of trees trellised or woven together, with a mud coating on both sides, and a coat of white for appearance. The roofs are entirely of straw, and of the most primitive style. A few decent houses have been erected, and the government has built some ordinary baths, and the woods and grounds have some walks and drives cut through. I went out in company with the Director of the Baths at Piatigorsk, which was fortunate, as the season had fairly commenced and no hotels were open, but being introduced to a certain baroness just established in her own house, we had a very respectable dinner.

Some thirty wersts in another direction is the most remarkable soda fountain I have ever seen in any country, called Kissnovodski. Here the crown has expended considerable sums in the erection of bathing buildings of massive masonry. The promenades through the woods are in good order for visitors. The source is about ten feet in diameter and throws out four hundred gallons per minute, bubbling up like soda water or sparkling champagne, being highly charged with carbonic acid gas. It is slightly charged with iron, and is delicious either with or without wine. It is used at the close of the season for bathing and drinking, giving extraordinary strength to the muscles of the body. Such a spring in a civilized and settled country, where there were facilities to get to it, would be a mine of wealth. Salt springs are also found about midway in going out.

A Tartar village lies to the right on the way to the springs first named, and also a village of German colonists about midway, which I visited a few days since in company with a party of Russian officers and their wives. I learned from an old German that the government gave them the use of lands in common, with certain immunities. I also found here an old Scotchman who had nearly forgotten English, having come out with the first missionaries, of whom none now exist. Both these old people had friends in the United States, and you can well imagine their joy and surprise at seeing an American for the first time.

I have had occasion to pass nights in Cossack houses, when horses were wanting at the stations, or it was unsafe travelling after dark, and when the only room in the post station was occupied, and I found the contrast between the tidy, comfortable cottages of the German settlers, and the filthy dwellings and habits of the Cossacks, Tartars, and Kalmucks, most striking.

Their villages are generally from twenty to twenty-six wersts apart, and are about a mile square, with a mud wall or brush fence and embankment all round, and sentinels at the gates. The houses, barns, and sheds are thatched with straw, and sufficiently remote from each other to guard against fire. The streets or roads are one hundred feet in width, and many are planted with trees.

The plains are used for pasture and tillage, and at nightfall the oxen, sheep, goats, and hogs are driven in by the shepherds, when all the boys and girls of the village turn out to drive their respective animals into the fold. They cultivate the ground, and harvest their crops at great distances from the villages, and always go armed.

They are the pioneers of Russian civilization, accustomed to border warfare like our squatters with the Indians. The government sends down villages of them from the river Don, granting them certain privileges, for which they are obliged to keep the Circassians at bay and furnish certain numbers of guards or sentinels, who change about, and are ever ready to pursue the enemy. As fast as portions of Circassian territory are acquired, fortresses and troops advance, and the Cossacks follow up and settle upon the lands. It is a sort of semi-barbarous civilization.

For a distance of some two hundred wersts we have seen no wood of any consequence, the whole country consisting of immense steppes or plains. The small water courses furnish brush for making wicker fences and frames of houses. Artificial turf is made from the straw, hay, and deposit of the barnyards, dried in the sun, and cut in brick form in summer for winter fuel. The ox-carts and wagons are entirely of wood, not a nail being used in their construction. I have counted from fifty to eighty loaded carts at a time, and not a particle of iron could I discover. The wood must be brought long distances from the mountains. The timber for building at this place is brought some six hundred wersts, or four hundred and fifty miles, by land. This is one of the best countries in the world for railroads, and if occupied by Americans the enemy would be conquered by the locomotive.