We met many sledges laden with goods en route to the fair which takes place every February at Irbit. This fair is of great importance to Siberia, and attracts merchants from all the region west of Tomsk. From forty to fifty million roubles worth of goods are exchanged there during the four weeks devoted to traffic. The commodities from Siberia are chiefly furs and tea, those from Europe comprise a great many articles. Irbit is on the Asiatic side of the Ural mountains, about two hundred versts northeast of Ekaterineburg. It is a place of little consequence except during the time of the fair.
After entering Europe, we relied upon the stations for our meals, carrying no provisions with us except tea and sugar. We knew the peasants would be well supplied with edibles during Christmas holidays, and were quite safe in depending upon them. A traveler in Russia must consult the calendar before starting on a journey, if he would ascertain what provision he may, or may not, find among the people.
Congour was the first town of importance, and has an unenviable reputation for its numerous thieves. They do not molest the post vehicles unless the opportunity is very favorable, their accomplishments being specially exercised upon merchandise trains. Sometimes when trains pass through Congour the natives manage to steal single vehicles and their loads. The operation is facilitated by there being only one driver to five or six teams. This town is also famous for its tanneries, the leather from Congour having a high reputation throughout Russia. Peter the Great was at much trouble to teach the art of tanning to his subjects. At present, the Russians have very little to learn from others on that score. Peter introduced tanning from Holland and Germany, and when the first piece of leather tanned in Russia was brought to him he took it between his teeth and exerted all the strength of his jaws to bite through it. The leather resisted his efforts, and so delighted the monarch that he decreed a pension to the successful tanner. The specimen, with the marks of his teeth upon it, is still preserved at St. Petersburg.
While waiting for dinner at Congour, I contemplated some engravings hanging in the public room at the station. Four of them represented scenes in “Elizabeth, or the exiles of Siberia,” a story which has been translated into most modern languages. These engravings were made in Moscow several years ago, and illustrated the most prominent incidents in the narrative.
There were many things to remind me I was no longer in Siberia, and especially on the Baraba steppe. Snows were deeper, and the sky was clearer. The level country was replaced by a broken one. Forests of pine and fir displayed regular clearings, and evinced careful attention. Villages were more numerous, larger and of greater antiquity. Stations were better kept and had more the air of hotels. Churches appeared more venerable and less venerated. Beggars increased in number, and importunity. In Asia the yemshick was the only man at a station who asked “navodku,” but in Europe the chelavek or starost expected to be remembered. In Asia, the gratuity was called “Navodku” or whisky money; in Europe, it was “nachi,” tea money.
During the second night, we reached Perm and halted long enough to eat a supper that made me dream of tigers and polar bears during my first sleep. In entering, we drove along a lighted street with substantial houses on either side, but without meeting man or beast. This street and the station were all I saw of a city of 25,000 inhabitants. In summer travelers for Siberia usually leave the steamboat at this point, and begin their land journey, the Kama being navigable thus far in ordinary water. Perm is an important mining center, and contains several foundries and manufactories on an extensive scale. The doctor assured me that after the places I had visited in Siberia, there was nothing to be seen there—and I saw it.
A deep snow had been trodden into an uneven road in this part of the journey. At times it seemed to me as if the sleigh and all it contained would go to pieces in the terrific thumps we received. We descended hills as if pursued by wolves or a guilty conscience, and it was generally our fate to find a huge oukhaba just when the horses were doing their best. I think the sleigh sometimes made a clear leap of six or eight feet from the crest of a ridge to the bottom of a hollow. The leaping was not very objectionable, but the impact made everything rattle. I could say, like the Irishman who fell from a house top, “’twas not the fall, darling, that hurt me, but stopping so quick at the end.”
When the roads are rough the continual jolting of the sleigh is very fatiguing to a traveler, and frequently, during the first two or three days of his journey, throws him into what is very properly designated the road fever. His pulse is quick, his blood warm, his head aches, his whole frame becomes sore and stiff, and his mind is far from being serene and amiable. In the first part of my land journey I had the satisfaction of ascertaining by practical experience the exact character of the road-fever. My brain seemed ready to burst, and appeared to my excited imagination about as large as a barrel; every fresh jolt and thump of the vehicle gave me a sensation as if somebody were driving a tenpenny nail into my skull; as for good-nature under such circumstances that was out of the question, and I am free to confess that my temper was not unlike that of a bear with a sore head.
Where the roads are good, or if the speed is not great, one can sleep very well in a Russian sleigh; I succeeded in extracting a great deal of slumber from my vehicle, and sometimes did not wake for three or four hours. Sometimes the roads are in such wretched condition that one is tossed to the height of discomfort, and can be very well likened to a lump of butter in a revolving churn. In such cases sleep is almost if not wholly, impossible, and the traveler, proceeding at courier speed, must take advantage of the few moments’ halt at the stations while the horses are being changed. As he has but ten or fifteen minutes for the change he makes good use of his time and sleeps very soundly until his team is ready. During the Crimean war, while the Emperor Nicholas was temporarily sojourning at Moscow, a courier arrived one day with important dispatches from Sebastopol. He was commissioned to deliver them to no one but His Majesty, and waited in the ante-room of the palace while his name and business were announced. Overcome by fatigue he fell asleep; when the chamberlains came to take him to the Imperial presence they were quite unable to rouse him. The attendants shook him and shouted, but to no purpose beyond making so much disturbance as to bring the Emperor to the ante-room. Nicholas ordered them to desist, and then, standing near the officer, said, in an ordinary voice, “Vashe prevoschoditelstvo, loshadi gotovey” (Your horses are ready, your Excellency). The officer sprang to his feet in an instant, greatly to the delight of the Emperor and to his own confusion when he discovered where he was.
The Russians have several popular songs that celebrate the glories of sleigh-riding. I give a translation of a portion of one of them, a song that is frequently repeated by the peasants in the vicinity of Moscow and Nijne Novgorod. It is proper to explain that a troika is a team of three horses abreast, the douga is the yoke above the shaft-horse’s neck, and Valdai is the town on the Moscow and St. Petersburg road where the best and most famous bells of Russia are made.