This was just the hairbreadth escape that happened to the first yemschik chance had thrown in our way. His horses, just as he seized the platform to leap on to it, started off at a furious pace. Like a brave fellow, he kept his grip on it like a bulldog, and, luckily, on the reins too, and was thus hauled over the snow at our side for some minutes. At the end of this critical interval he found some lucky projection beside the sledge, where he could support his knee, and at last, thanks to the herculean strength of his arms and the help we gave him, he succeeded in gaining his seat and then tenaciously clung to it to the end of the stage. Thus equipped, we left Nijni-Novgorod on the 17th of December at three o’clock in the afternoon.
This first day’s journey in a sledge was delightful and exhilarating. We felt all the pleasure of the novelty of the locomotion without yet beginning to experience the least fatigue, and at every moment we met other travellers coming, twenty and even thirty leagues, to the city we had just quitted, on their business or pleasure.
However great the distance may be, it is never an obstacle to the Russians: they seem to make nothing of it, and never to calculate it. A lady at St. Petersburg said to me one day: “You should go and see the cascade of Tchernaiarietchka: I went there the other day, and I was charmed with it; I never dreamt there was anything so beautiful at our city gates.” On making inquiries about it a few days later, and as to how I could get there, I found that it would take forty-eight hours by rail, and twelve by diligence. I daresay they will think of sending the poor seamen who are ordered to join their ships at Nicolaefsk to St. Petersburg gates; it is only three hundred leagues from the Russian capital. The reader will learn subsequently, if he is interested in continuing the journey with me, that the Siberians, of the fair sex even, are not at all dismayed at the prospect of undertaking journeys of fifteen hundred, nay, two thousand leagues in a sledge, with young children to boot, and these sometimes at the breast.
On account of the great novelty and variety of the spectacle, I found the trip delightful on leaving Novgorod. The time passed more rapidly than the banks of the river, over whose congealed surface our horses continued fleeing at a mad pace as if pursued by a phantom.
This imposing Volga is of a character truly quite exceptional. France, certainly, has no river worthy of so much admiration for its grandeur. During the summer it is enlivened with an incessant movement of steamers, and is of immense importance as a waterway; and during winter also it continues rendering great services to humanity, affording the means for the transport of the grain that it has fertilized with its beneficent waters. Nothing is grander than this glacial route of unusual width, and of a uniformity and smoothness which no road laid by the hand of man can approach; without a pebble or a rut, one glides over without a jolt. Nothing interests the traveller more, the first time, than to watch the shores passing before the eye like a panorama; to contemplate the mountains and valleys the frozen way spares him the trouble of traversing; to coast the islands without navigating; and to pass here and there some barque, or perhaps steamer, imprisoned in the ice.
In about three hours and a half after leaving Novgorod, we reached our first stage, it being then quite dark.
In all these posting stages, there is a room for the travellers; and this room, though heated at the proprietor’s expense, becomes really a free home for the wanderer: he may eat, drink, and sleep there; do, in fact, whatever he likes; and what is still more singular, lodge there as long as he wishes, no one having a right to dislodge him.
Although this privilege is secured by contracts made between the posting masters and the Imperial administration, it would undoubtedly be quite consistent with the Russian character to accord it if it were not compulsory, the people being essentially hospitable.
This amiable quality results, perhaps, from the rigour of the climate; but I am rather disposed to believe—so general and spontaneous is it—that it is the consequence of a happy and generous disposition.
I shall have something more to say, by-and-by, on the merits of the Russian peasantry. I do not say that they have a monopoly of this benevolent spirit, for, indeed, it is common to all classes. The society of St. Petersburg cannot, certainly, be suspected to be wanting in kindness towards strangers; even the old Muscovite noble, notwithstanding his haughtiness, notwithstanding his hatred of new social institutions, notwithstanding his regret to see Moscow no longer the residence of the emperors, and, moreover, his antipathy for European ideas and fashions, adopted in the new capital;—in spite of all that, the Muscovite lord has retained profoundly rooted in his nature the old traditions of respect towards him who is his guest, and he regards hospitality, not simply as a passive virtue, but seriously as an active duty.