X.

A JOURNEY ON THE VOLGA.

I.

WE had seen the Russian haying on the estate of Count Tolstoy. We were to be initiated into the remaining processes of the agricultural season in that famous "black earth zone" which has been the granary of Europe from time immemorial, but which is also, alas! periodically the seat of dire famine.

It was July when we reached Nízhni Novgorod, on our way to an estate on the Volga, in this "black earth" grainfield, vast as the whole of France; but the flag of opening would not be run up for some time to come. The Fair quarter of the town was still in its state of ten months' hibernation, under padlock and key, and the normal town, effective as it was, with its white Kremlin crowning the turfed and terraced heights, possessed few charms to detain We embarked for Kazán.

us.

If Kazán is an article in the creed of all Russians, whether they have ever seen it or not, Mátushka Vólga (dear Mother Volga) is a complete system of faith. Certainly her services in building up and binding together the empire merit it, though the section thus usually referred to comprises only the stretch between Nízhni Novgorod and Astrakhan, despite its historical and commercial importance above the former

town.

But Kazán! A stay there of a day and a half served to dispel our illusions. We were deceived in our expectations as to the once mighty capital of the imperial Tatár khans. The recommendations of our Russian friends, the glamour of history which had bewitched us, the hope of the Western for something Oriental, all these elements had combined to raise our expectations in a way against which our sober senses and previous experience should have warned us. It seemed to us merely a flourishing and animated Russian provincial town, whose Kremlin was eclipsed by that of Moscow, and whose university had instructed, but not graduated, Count Tolstóy, the novelist. The bazaar under arcades, the popular market in the open square, the public garden, the shops, all were but a repetition of similar features in other towns, somewhat magnified to the proportions befitting the dignity of the home port of the Ural Mountains and Siberia.

The Tatár quarter alone seemed to possess the requisite mystery and "local color." Here whole streets of tiny shops, ablaze with rainbow-hued leather goods, were presided over by taciturn, olive-skinned brothers of the Turks, who appeared almost handsome when seen thus in masses, with opportunities for comparison. Hitherto we had thought of the Tatárs only as the old-clothes dealers, peddlers, horsebutchers, and waiters of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Here the dignity of the prosperous merchants, gravely recommending their really well-dressed, well-sewed leather wares, bespoke our admiration.

The Tatár women, less easily seen, glided along the uneven pavements now and then, smoothly, but still in a manner to permit a glimpse of short, square

feet incased in boots flowered with gay hues upon a green or rose-colored ground, and reaching to the knee. They might have been houris of beauty, but it was difficult to classify them, veiled as they were, and screened as to head and shoulders by striped green kaftáns of silk, whose long sleeves depended from the region of their ears, and whose collar rested on the brow. What we could discern was that their black eyes wandered like the eyes of unveiled women, and that they were coquettishly conscious of our glances, though we were of their own sex.

We found nothing especially striking among the churches, unless one might reckon the Tatár mosques in the list; and, casting a last glance at Sumbeka's curious and graceful tower, we hired a cabman to take us to the river, seven versts away.

We turned our backs upon Kazán without regret, in the fervid heat of that midsummer morning. We did not shake its dust from our feet. When dust is ankle-deep that is not very feasible. It rose in clouds, as we met the long lines of Tatár carters, transporting flour and other merchandise to and from the wharves across the "dam" which connects the town, in summer low water, with Mother Volga. In spring floods Mátushka Vólga threatens to wash away the very walls of the Kremlin, and our present path is under water.

His

Fate had favored us with a clever cabman. shaggy little horse was as dusty in hue as his own coat, a most unusual color for coat of either Russian horse or izvóstchik. The man's armyák was bursting at every seam, not with plenty, but, since extremes meet, with hard times, which are the chronic complaint of Kazán, so he affirmed. He was gentle

and sympathetic, like most Russian cabmen, and he beguiled our long drive with shrewd comments on the Russian and Tatár inhabitants and their respective qualities.

"The Tatárs are good people," he said; "very clean, cleaner than Russians; very quiet and peaceable citizens. There was a time when they were not quiet. That was ten years ago, during the war with Turkey. They were disturbed. The Russians said that it was a holy war; the Tatárs said so, too, and wished to fight for their brethren of the Moslem faith. But the governor was not a man to take fright at that. He summoned the chief men among them before him. See here,' says he. With me you can be peaceable with better conscience. If you permit your people to be turbulent, I will pave the dam with the heads of Tatárs. The dam is long. Allah is my witness. Enough. Go!' And it came to nothing, of course. No; it was only a threat, though they knew that he was a strong man in rule. Why should he wish to do that, really, even if they were not Orthodox? A man is born with his religion as with his skin. The Orthodox live at peace with the Tatárs. And the Tatárs are superior to the Russians in this, also, that they all stick by each other; whereas a Russian, Hóspodi pomilui! [Lord have mercy] thinks of himself alone, which is a disadvantage," said my humble philosopher.

We found that we had underrated the power of our man's little horse, and had arrived at the river an hour and a half before the steamer was appointed to sail. It should be there lading, however, and we decided to go directly on board and wait in comfort. We gave patient Vánka liberal "tea-money." Hard

times were evidently no fiction so far as he was concerned, and we asked if he meant to spend it on vódka, which elicited fervent asseverations of teetotalism, as he thrust his buckskin pouch into his breast.

Descending in the deep dust, with a sense of gratitude that it was not mixed with rain, we ran the gauntlet of the assorted peddlers stationed on both sides of the long descent with stocks of food, soap, white felt boots, gay sashes, coarse leather slippers too large for human wear, and other goods, and reached the covered wharf. The steamer was not there, but we took it calmly, and asked no questions for a space.

We whiled away the time by chaffering with the persistent Tatár venders for things which we did not want, and came into amazed possession of some of them. This was a tribute to our powers of bargaining which had rarely been paid even when we had been in earnest. We contrived to avoid the bars of yellow "egg soap" by inquiring for one of the marvels of Kazán, soap made from mare's milk. amused apothecary had already assured us that it was a product of the too fertile brain of Baedeker, not of the local soap factories. May Baedeker himself, some day, reap a similar harvest of mirth and astonishment from the sedate Tatárs, who can put mare's milk to much better use as a beverage!

An

In the hope of obtaining a conversation-lesson in Tatár, we bought a Russo-Tatár grammar, warranted to deliver over all the secrets of that gracefully curved language in the usual scant array of pages. But the peddler immediately professed as profound ignorance of Tatár as he had of Russian a few mo