"What do you think of okroshka—a soup made of cold beer, with pieces of meat, cucumber, and red herrings floating in it along with bits of ice to keep it cool? Don't want any. Neither do we; but the Russians of the lower classes like it, and I have heard Russian gentlemen praise it. Many of them are fond of batvenia, which is a cold soup made in much the same way as okroshka, and about as unpalatable to us. We ordered a portion of okroshka just to see how it looked and tasted. One teaspoonful was enough for each of us, and batvenia we didn't try.
"After the pirog we had cutlets of chicken, and then roast mutton stuffed with buckwheat, both of them very good. They offered us some boiled pig served cold, with horseradish sauce, but we didn't try it; and then they brought roast grouse, with salted cucumbers for salad. We wound up with Nesselrode pudding, made of plum-pudding and ices, and not unknown in other countries. Then we had the samovar, which had been made ready for us, and drank some delicious tea which we prepared ourselves. Now for the samovar.
RUSSIAN MUJIKS DRINKING TEA.
"Its name comes from two words which mean 'self-boiling;' and the samovar is nothing but an urn of brass or copper, with a cylinder in the centre, where a fire is made with charcoal. The water surrounds the cylinder, and is thus kept at the boiling-point, which the Russians claim is indispensable to the making of good tea. The beverage is drank not from cups, but from glasses, and the number of glasses it will contain is the measure of a samovar. The Russians rarely put milk with their tea; the common people never do so, and the upper classes only when they have acquired the habit while abroad. They rarely dissolve sugar in their tea, but nibble from a lump after taking a swallow of the liquid. A peasant will make a single lump serve for four or five glasses of tea, and it is said to be an odd sensation for a stranger to hear the nibbling and grating of lumps of sugar when a party of Russians is engaged in tea-drinking.
"We sat late over the samovar, and then paid our bill and returned to the Square. Doctor Bronson told us that an enormous quantity of tea is consumed in Russia, but very little coffee. Formerly all the tea used in the Empire was brought overland from China by way of Siberia, and the business enabled the importers of tea to accumulate great fortunes. Down to 1860 only one cargo of tea annually was brought into Russia by sea, all the rest of the importation being through the town of Kiachta, on the frontier of Mongolia. Since 1860 the ports of the Empire have been opened to tea brought from China by water, and the trade of Kiachta has greatly diminished. But it is still very large, and long trains of sledges come every winter through Siberia laden with the tea which has been brought to Kiachta on the backs of camels from the districts where it is grown.
PLANT FROM WHICH YELLOW TEA IS MADE.