It was a glorious winter morning, and the sun came forth like a bridegroom to run his course, invested with indescribable pomp of colour. First, over the whole of the eastern horizon extended a pale blue streak, which seemed, like a wall, to shut off the vast Beyond. Suddenly its summit changed into rare lapis-lazuli, while its base became a sheet of purple. From the darker lines shot wondrous waves of grey and crystal; and in time the purple foundations upheaved into glowing seas of fire. The wall broke up into castles, battlements, and towers—all with magical gleams, which gradually floated far away, while the seas of flame, lighting up the whole horizon, burst through their borders and swelled into a mighty ocean. The sight was one on which the eye of man could scarcely gaze. The sunny expanse of the winter-bound earth reflected as in a mirror the celestial panorama. Shafts of light seemed to dart in rapid succession from earth to sky, until at last the vast luminous orb of day rose from the depth of the many-coloured radiance, and with its surpassing glory put everything else to shame.
The travellers reached Samara—a well-built prosperous town, situated on a tributary of the Volga. There Major Burnaby parted from his companion, whose road thenceforward lay in a different direction, and proceeded to make his preparations for a drive across the steppes to Orenburg.
He started next morning, in a sleigh which he had purchased, and had caused to be well repaired, and took the road towards Orenburg. The country was flat and uninteresting; buried beneath a white shroud of sand, with a few trees scattered here and there, and at intervals a dreary-looking hut or two. The first post-station, for changing horses, was Smeveshlaevskaya, twenty versts (a verst is two-thirds of an English mile); the next, Bodrovsky, where Burnaby arrived a little after sunset. After drinking a few glasses of tea to fortify himself against the increasing cold (25° below zero, R.), he pushed forward in the hope of reaching Malomalisky, about twenty-six and a half versts, about nine p.m. But plunging into the heart of a terrible snowstorm, he and his driver were so blinded and beaten, and the horses so jaded by the swiftly forming snow-drifts, that he was compelled to give the order to return, and to pass the night at Bodrovsky.
At daybreak the resolute guardsman was on his way. In the course of the day he fell in with General Kryjonovsky, the governor of the Orenburg district, who was bound for St. Petersburg; and a brief conversation with him showed that the authorities, as he had suspected, by no means approved of his expedition to Khiva. At one of the stations, the man assigned to him as driver had been married only the day before, and undertook his duties with obvious reluctance. His sole desire was to return as quickly as possible to his bride, and with this intent he lashed his horses until they kicked and jumped in the most furious contortions. The Major was thrown in the air, and caught again by the rebound; upset, righted, and upset again; gun, saddle-bags, cartridge-cases, and traveller, all simultaneously flying in the air. After a third of these rough experiences, the Major resolved to try the effect of a sharp application of his boot.
“Why do you do that?” said the driver, pulling up his horse. “You hurt, you break my ribs.”
“I only do to you what you do to me,” replied the Major. “You hurt, you break my ribs, and injure my property besides.”
“Oh, sir of noble birth,” ejaculated the fellow, “it is not my fault. It is thine, oh moody one!” to his offside horse, accompanied by a crack from his whip. “It is thine, oh spoilt and cherished one!” to his other meagre and half-starved quadruped (whack!) “Oh, petted and caressed sons of animals” (whack, whack, whack!), “I will teach you to upset the gentleman.”
At length, after a journey of four hundred versts, Orenburg was reached. At this frontier town, situated almost on the verge of civilization, our traveller was compelled to make a short sojourn. He had letters of introduction to present, which procured him some useful friends; a servant to engage, provisions to purchase, information to collect about the route to Khiva, and his English gold and notes to convert into Russian coin. Through the good offices of a Moslem gentleman, he was able to engage a Tartar, named Nazar—not five feet high—as a servant; and after some delay he obtained from the military chief a podorojoraya, or passport, as far as Kasala, or Fort No. 1. This pass ran as follows: “By the order of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander, the son of Nicolas, Autocrat of the whole of Russia, etc., etc. From the town of Orsk to the town of Kasala, to the Captain of the English service, Frederick, the son of Gustavus Burnaby, to give three horses, with a driver, for the legal fare, without delay. Given in the town of Orenburg, 15th December, 1875.”
The next day, Frederick, “the son of Gustavus Burnaby,” with his Tartar servant, took their departure from Orenburg, and in a few minutes were trotting along the frozen surface of the river Ural. Every now and then they fell in with a caravan of rough, shaggy, undersized camels, drawing sleighs laden with cotton from Tashkent; or a Cossack galloped by, brandishing his long spear; or a ruddy-faced Kirghiz slowly caracolled over the shining snow. Three stations were passed in safety, and Burnaby resolved on halting at the fourth, Krasnojorsk, for refreshment. But as the afternoon closed in, the Tartar driver began to lash his weary jades impatiently; as an excuse for his vehemence, pointing to the clouds that were rising before them, and the signs of a gathering snowstorm. Soon the air was filled with flakes; the darkness rapidly increased; the driver lost his way, and, at length, the team came to a standstill, breast deep in a snow-drift. What was to be done? It was equally impossible to go forward or to return; there was no wood in the neighbourhood with which to kindle a fire, no shovel with which to make a snow house; nothing could the belated wayfarer do but endure the bitter cold and the silent darkness, and wait for morning. Burnaby suffered much from the exposure, but the great difficulty was to prevent himself from yielding to the fatal lethargy which extreme cold induces—from falling into that sleep which turns inevitably into death. How he rejoiced when the day broke, and he was able to despatch the driver on one of the horses for assistance; and how he rejoiced when the man returned with three post horses and some peasants, and the road was regained, and the journey resumed, and the station reached at last! There they rested and refreshed themselves, before, with invigorated spirits, they dashed once again into the snow-bound depths of the steppes.
After a while the aspect of the country grew more cheery. The low chain of mountains to the north-east was sometimes abruptly broken, and a prominent peak thrust its summit into the interval. Through the fleecy snow various coloured grasses were visible. Olive-tinted branches, and dark forests of fir and pine, contrasted strongly with the whitely shining expanse that spread as far as the eye could see. Spider-like webs of frozen dew hung from the branches. The thin icicles glistened like prisms with all the colours of the rainbow. Thus, through a succession of fairy landscapes, such as the dwellers in Western lands can form but a faint idea of, the travellers dashed onward to Orsk.