There is not much choice of dishes in the interior of Russia; but what one does get is sure to be tolerably good. Even on the Beresina and the Dnieper I have always fared better than at most of the places in our country where "Ten minutes for refreshments!" is announced day by day and year by year. Better a single beef-steak, where tenderness is, than a stalled ox, all gristle and grease. But then our cooking (for the public at least) is notoriously the worst in the civilized world; and I can safely pronounce the Russian better, without commending it very highly.
Some time in the night we passed the large town of Vladimir, and with the rising sun were well on our way to the Volga. I pushed aside the curtains, and looked out, to see what changes a night's travel had wrought in the scenery. It was a pleasant surprise. On the right stood a large, stately residence, embowered in gardens and orchards; while beyond it, stretching away to the south-east, opened a broad, shallow valley. The sweeping hills on either side were dotted with shocks of rye; and their thousands of acres of stubble shone like gold in the level rays. Herds of cattle were pasturing in the meadows, and the peasants (serfs no longer) were straggling out of the villages to their labor in the fields. The crosses and polished domes of churches sparkled on the horizon. Here the patches of primitive forest were of larger growth, the trunks cleaner and straighter, than we had yet seen. Nature was half conquered, in spite of the climate, and, the first time since leaving St. Petersburg, wore a habitable aspect. I recognized some of the features of Russian country-life, which Puschkin describes so charmingly in his poem of "Eugene Onägin."
The agricultural development of Russia has been greatly retarded by the indifference of the nobility, whose vast estates comprise the best land of the empire, in those provinces where improvements might be most easily introduced. Although a large portion of the noble families pass their summers in the country, they use the season as a period of physical and pecuniary recuperation from the dissipations of the past, and preparation for those of the coming winter. Their possessions are so large (those of Count Scheremetieff, for instance, contain one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants) that they push each other too far apart for social intercourse; and they consequently live en déshabillé, careless of the great national interests in their hands. There is a class of our Southern planters which seems to have adopted a very similar mode of life,—families which shabbily starve for ten months, in order to make a lordly show at "the Springs" for the other two. A most accomplished Russian lady, the Princess D——, said to me,—"The want of an active, intelligent country society is our greatest misfortune. Our estates thus become a sort of exile. The few, here and there, who try to improve the condition of the people, through the improvement of the soil, are not supported by their neighbors, and lose heart. The more we gain in the life of the capital, the more we are oppressed by the solitude and stagnation of the life of the country."
This open, cheerful region continued through the morning. The railroad was still a novelty; and the peasants everywhere dropped their scythes and shovels to see the train pass. Some bowed with the profoundest gravity. They were a fine, healthy, strapping race of men, only of medium height, but admirably developed in chest and limbs, and with shrewd, intelligent faces. Content, not stupidity, is the cause of their stationary condition. They are not yet a people, but the germ of one, and, as such, present a grand field for anthropological studies.
Towards noon the road began to descend, by easy grades, from the fair, rolling uplands into a lower and wilder region. When the train stopped, women and children whose swarthy skin and black eyes betrayed a mixture of Tartar blood made their appearance, with wooden bowls of cherries and huckleberries for sale. These bowls were neatly carved and painted. They were evidently held in high value; for I had great difficulty in purchasing one. We moved slowly, on account of the many skeleton bridges; but presently a long blue ridge, which for an hour past had followed us in the south-east, began to curve around to our front. I now knew that it must mark the course of the Oka River, and that we were approaching Nijni-Novgorod.
We soon saw the river itself; then houses and gardens scattered along the slope of the hill; then clusters of sparkling domes on the summit; then a stately, white-walled citadel; and the end of the ridge was levelled down in an even line to the Volga. We were three hundred miles from Moscow, on the direct road to Siberia.
The city being on the farther side of the Oka, the railroad terminates at the Fair, which is a separate city, occupying the triangular level between the two rivers. Our approach to it was first announced by heaps of cotton-bales, bound in striped camel's-hair cloth, which had found their way hither from the distant valleys of Turkestan and the warm plains of Bukharia. Nearly fifty thousand camels are employed in the transportation of this staple across the deserts of the Aral to Orenburg,—a distance of a thousand miles. The increase of price had doubled the production since the previous year, and the amount which now reaches the factories of Russia through this channel cannot be less than seventy-five thousand bales. The advance of modern civilization has so intertwined the interests of all zones and races, that a civil war in the United States affects the industry of Central Asia!
Next to these cotton-bales, which, to us, silently proclaimed the downfall of that arrogant monopoly which has caused all our present woe, came the representatives of those who produced them. Groups of picturesque Asians—Bashkirs, Persians, Bukharians, and Uzbeks—appeared on either side, staring impassively at the wonderful apparition. Though there was sand under their feet, they seemed out of place in the sharp north-wind and among the hills of fir and pine.
The train stopped: we had reached the station. As I stepped upon the platform, I saw, over the level lines of copper roofs, the dragon-like pinnacles of Chinese buildings, and the white minaret of a mosque. Here was the certainty of a picturesque interest to balance the uncertainty of our situation. We had been unable to engage quarters in advance: there were two hundred thousand strangers before us, in a city the normal population of which is barely forty thousand; and four of our party were ladies. The envoy, indeed, might claim the Governor's hospitality; but our visit was to be so brief that we had no time to expend on ceremonies, and preferred rambling at will through the teeming bazaars to being led about under the charge of an official escort.
A friend at Moscow, however, had considerately telegraphed in our behalf to a French resident of Nijni, and the latter gentleman met us at the station. He could give but slight hope of quarters for the night, but generously offered his services. Droshkies were engaged to convey us to the old city, on the hill beyond the Oka; and, crowded two by two into the shabby little vehicles, we set forth. The sand was knee-deep, and the first thing that happened was the stoppage of our procession by the tumbling down of the several horses. They were righted with the help of some obliging spectators; and with infinite labor we worked through this strip of desert into a region of mud, with a hard, stony bottom somewhere between us and the earth's centre. The street we entered, though on the outskirts of the Fair, resembled Broadway on a sensation-day. It was choked with a crowd, composed of the sweepings of Europe and Asia. Our horses thrust their heads between the shoulders of Christians, Jews, Moslem, and Pagans, slowly shoving their way towards the floating bridge, which was a jam of vehicles from end to end. At the corners of the streets, the wiry Don Cossacks, in their dashing blue uniforms and caps of black lamb's-wool, regulated, as best they could, the movements of the multitude. It was curious to notice how they, and their small, well-knit horses,—the equine counterparts of themselves,—controlled the fierce, fiery life which flashed from every limb and feature, and did their duty with wonderful patience and gentleness. They seemed so many spirits of Disorder tamed to the service of Order.