As winter is the longer half of the year, it is the harvest time for those who are in the line of buying and selling meats and all provisions that are preserved by frost. As soon as the cold weather fairly sets in, the fatted cattle and pigs and poultry are doomed to die by the hands of the butcher. The carcasses are instantly frozen and sent to market. Here it is packed up in enormous heaps, and families who are able to buy at wholesale prices lay in their winter supplies, and those who live from hand to mouth can buy at any time fresh meat that was killed in the fall. The weather is so uniformly cold that little danger of a thaw is apprehended, but if it comes, away goes the meat. And it must at any time be cooked immediately on thawing, so that it is rather a precarious mode of preserving provisions. But it is adapted to the country and climate, it saves packing and salting, and has the advantage of furnishing fresh meat, at moderate prices, at all times. The fish from the White Sea are also kept, like wood-piles, in heaps with oxen and sheep and deer. The flesh of mammoths and elephants of past ages has been found in perfect preservation in the icy regions of the north, and it is certainly one of the remarkable provisions of nature that cold, which is so destructive of animal life, should also be the preserver of flesh, for indefinite periods, after the life principle has been extinguished.
The Jews in Chatham Street, New York, who press their wares upon the notice of passers by, are modest compared with the vendors of old clothes and miscellaneous matters in the markets of Moscow. It was hard to get away from them without making an investment in the most undesirable of all worldly goods,—a coat that somebody else had cast off. And such a jumble of things! reminding one of the sign on the country store window-shutter of an alliterative dealer: “Bibles, Blackball, Butter, Testaments, Tar, Treacle, Godly-books, and Gimlets, for sale here.” Ironware, pot-metal, in the shape of utensils for cooking, seemed to abound; and if the poorer people, who are the buyers here, have any thing to cook, it is very pleasant to know it. Their food is mainly milk, eggs, pickles, cabbage, and black bread, with beef and mutton according to their ability to buy it. As a general thing the Russian peasants are not underfed; the land being so largely in the immediate care of the laborer himself, he can manage to get food for himself and family. And as they clothe themselves in the rudest and most primitive way, literally using skins of beasts, and in their natural state, they ought to be able to live comfortably without handling much money.
The “Riding School” of Moscow is the building in which a remarkable museum is gathered. This building is one of the longest with an unbroken area in the world, the roof, without a column to support it, covering a space 560 feet long and 160 wide. It is constructed on this enormous scale for the exercise of regiments, cavalry and foot, in winter, when the weather is so severe as to render drills out of doors impossible. The Ethnological Society of the North of Europe had selected this place—and it was my good fortune to be here at the time—for the exhibition of the Slavonic races in wax! Here they are in all their varied employments, according to the climate, habits, and necessities of the several peoples; with their actual surroundings of forest, ice, snow, sea, river; the men, women, and children, with dogs, poultry, oxen, reindeer, and sledges, hunting and fishing, freezing and trying to keep warm, marrying and trading and travelling; here are Albanian costumes, and there a cavern and human skeletons sitting in it, telling a story I could not understand, and here a cottage out of whose roof the smoke curls gracefully, and the open door and chickens and children playing near, need no interpreter to speak of comfort and content.
If one were writing a volume of the manners and customs of the Slavonic races, he would learn more of them by the study of this museum than in months of travel among the people. The society is composed of learned and thoughtful men of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, &c., who meet annually for the collection and diffusion of useful knowledge on the subject of their own race specially and the family of man. We are very apt to think that, outside of our own English-speaking countries, there is little doing to promote the civilization and thus the happiness of the human race. Travel takes this and many other conceits out of a man. One of the first things he learns, if he is capable of learning any thing, is that he knows very little of what is going on in the world. Then he finds that people whom he thought slow and only half civilized are far ahead of him in many things, and by degrees he comes to the conclusion that there is much in the world to be learned that he had never dreamed of. But if he sticks to it that what he does not know is not worth knowing, like my fellow countryman who insists that there is more art in Illinois than in all Europe, then you may be sure that he answers to the cane shown to Sydney Smith by one of this sort of travellers who said:
“This stick, sir, has been all around the world, sir.”
“Is it possible,” replied Mr. Smith, “why it’s nothing but a stick for all that!”
CHAPTER XXX.
FROM MOSCOW TO ST. PETERSBURG.
A COUPLE of English commercial travellers arrived to-day and were very conversable at dinner. No class of men one meets abroad are more free to impart what they know, than these agents of trading houses in England, who infest all countries, and push their way into every company that is willing to hear their ceaseless flow of talk. At dinner one of them asked a Frenchman in what country of Europe Egypt was situated, and the Frenchman did not know; they discussed the subject for some time, neither of them thinking it was not in Europe at all. But the two having failed to settle the geographical position of Egypt came back to matters nearer at hand, and the invasion of Russia by the French and the downfall of Napoleon, made the conversation lively. For when did or will a Frenchman and Briton agree upon the character, the genius, or the deserts of the Man of Destiny. And this led to the mention of the Sparrow Hills, and to an excursion thither, from which we have just returned.
On our way out of the city, we passed the church of the Saviour, the largest church in Moscow, with the most splendid dome, which, being covered with gilding, looks like a mighty sun rising. The church has been in process of building more than fifty years, and is far from being finished yet. It is intended as a memorial of the French invasion and its awful fate; and it was begun in the year 1812, so memorable for that critical event in the history of Russia, of France, and of mankind. And it was on the Sparrow Hills that Napoleon first saw Moscow.
An hour’s ride from the hotel brought us to the Simonoff Monastery, which has been here through all the storms of weather and war these last five hundred years. Rich in lands with thousands of serfs, and the treasury into which emperors and princes poured their royal gifts, it has been sacked again and again by invading hordes, but has lived on, with six churches within its walls. A lake near by is reached by an underground passage, and miracles of healing are said to be wrought upon the sick who come here with faith, and stay until they get well. In the midst of the enclosure rises a tower more than three hundred feet, and a blind bell-ringer delights in leading you to the look-out loft, and answering every question you can ask respecting every object in your sight. You may be sure that he is right in his answers, though he is blind as a bat.