The Boy Travellers in The Russian Empire / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with Accounts of a Tour across Siberia, Voyages on the Amoor, Volga, and Other Rivers, a Visit to Central Asia, Travels among the Exiles, and a Historical Sketch of the Empire from Its Foundation to the Present Time

by Thomas Wallace Knox

COPY OF PICTURE IN THE MONASTERY.

"There is a legend that when the saint first came to the spot he met a huge bear in the forest; the bear rushed forward to destroy him, but suddenly paused, and from that moment the saint and the bear were friends. For the rest of their days they lived together, and when the saint died the bear remained on the spot, and gave evidences of the most earnest grief. This story is implicitly believed by the orthodox Russians, and the gentleman from whose writings I have taken it says he heard it from the lips of a Russian lady, and narrated so artlessly that it would have been painful to have expressed any doubt of its truth."

Other legends of the monastery, and incidents showing its prominence in Russian history, whiled away the time till the station at Troitska was reached. After a substantial breakfast at the railway-station, the party proceeded to the famous edifice, which is more like a fortress than a religious establishment. Its walls have a linear extent of nearly a mile; they are twenty feet thick, and vary in height from thirty to fifty feet. They would offer little obstruction to modern artillery, but it is easy to see that they could make a stout resistance to such cannon as the Poles possessed three centuries ago. There are towers at the angles, eight in all, and one of them is surmounted by an obelisk which bears a duck carved in stone, in remembrance of the fact that Peter the Great used to shoot ducks on a pond near the monastery.

For what they saw at Troitska we will refer to Frank's journal:

"There were crowds of beggars along the road from the railway-station to the gate of the monastery. It seems that the place is an object of pilgrimage from all parts of Russia, and the beggars reap a goodly harvest from those who come to pray at the shrine of the saint. Before the railway was opened, the high-road from Moscow seemed to pass through a double hedge of beggars, and the traveller was never out of hearing of their plaintive appeals for charity.

WINDOW IN CHURCH OF THE TRINITY.