RUSSIA By SIR DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE Popular ed. with an autobiographical memoir. LONDON 1886? RUSSIA. CHAPTER I. TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA. Railways-State Interference-River Communications-Russian “Grand Tour "-The Volga-Kazan-Zhigulinskiya Gori-Finns and TartarsThe Don-Difficulties of Navigation-Discomforts-Rats-Hotels— Peculiar Customs-Roads-Hibernian Phraseology Explained-Bridges -Posting-A Tarantass-Requisites for Travelling-Travelling in Winter-Frostbitten-Disagreeable Episodes Scene at a Post-Station. OF F course, travelling in Russia is no longer what it was. During the last quarter of a century a vast network of railways has been constructed, and one can now travel in a comfortable firstclass carriage from Berlin to St. Petersburg or Moscow, and thence to Odessa, Sebastopol, the lower Volga, or even the foot of the Caucasus; and, on the whole, it must be admitted that the railways are tolerably comfortable. The carriages are decidedly better than in England, and in winter they are kept warm by small iron stoves, such as we sometimes see in steamers, assisted by double windows and double doors-a very necessary precaution in a land where the thermometer often descends to 30° below zero. The trains never attain, it is true, a high rate of speed-so at least English and Americans think-but then we must remember that Russians are rarely in a hurry, and like to have frequent opportunities of eating and drinking. In Russia time is not money; if it were, nearly all the subjects of the Tsar would always have a large stock of ready money on hand, and would often have great difficulty in spending it. In reality, be it parenthetically remarked, a Russian with a superabundance of ready money is a phenomenon rarely met with in real life. In conveying passengers at the rate of from fifteen to thirty |