A Book of Voyages. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ travellers retrace their steps—

      M— As I have never started on a voyage in order to retrace my steps, and as it seems that I run the risk of becoming an enfant perdu myself, if I undertake this journey—I will put off my visit to your country for another occasion, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur; and so we talked of other things—

      I shall now prepare every thing to visit the Crimea or rather the Tauride; I have been told it is a very beautiful country; and I confess I am not sorry this enfant perdu gives me a good excuse for turning my steps towards Constantinople—

      I am speaking without any partiality, dear Sir; but I do not see here the prejudices of the English, the conceit of the French, nor the stiff German pride—which national foibles make often good people of each nation extremely disagreeable. I am assured the Russians are deceitful—it may be so; but as I do not desire to have intimacies, I am much better pleased to find new acquaintances pleasant and civil than morose or pert—

      P.S. I am not a little surprised to hear people say: I shall inherit so many hundred peasants, or such a one lost a village—it is the number of men, and not of acres, that make a fortune great here; so that a plague or any distemper that would prove mortal to the peasants, would be death to the nobles’ pockets likewise—

      The Vicechancellor, Comte d’Osterman, is obliged to have a table for sixty foreigners every Wednesday; and a widow, Princess de Galitzin, a supper once a week—at Mons. d’Osterman’s too, a ball every Sunday night. The Empress is at the expence of these dinners and suppers—and, I confess, I think it an excellent and royal idea, to be certain of having houses open for the entertainment of foreign ministers and strangers of distinction—There is a custom here which I think very abominable; noblemen, who are engaged to marry young ladies, make no ceremony, but embrace them in the midst of a large company at a ball—

      I have mentioned to a few people my intention of seeing the Crimea; and I am told that the air is unwholesome, the waters poisonous, and that I shall certainly die if I go there; but as in the great world a new acquired country, like a new beauty, finds detractors, I am not in the least alarmed; for a person, not a Russian, who has been there on speculation, has given me so charming a description of it, that I should not be sorry to purchase a Tartarian estate.

      MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 29, 1786

      I left my coach at Petersburgh, and hired for myself and my small suite, the carriages of the country, called Kibitkas; they are exactly like cradles, the head having windows to the front which let down; I can sit or lay down, and feel in one like a great child, very comfortably defended from the cold by pillows and blankets—These carriages are upon sledges, and where the road is good, this conveyance is comfortable and not fatiguing; but from the incredible quantity of sledges that go constantly upon the track of snow, it is worn in tracks like a road; and from the shaking and violent thumps the carriage receives, I am convinced the hardest head might be broken. I was overturned twice; the postillions I fancy are used to such accidents; for they get quietly off their horse, set the carriage up again, and never ask if the traveller is hurt—Their method of driving is singular; they sit behind three horses that are harnessed abreast—a shrill whistling noise, or a savage kind of shriek is the signal for the horses to set off, which they do full gallop; and when their pace slackens, the driver waves his right-hand, shrieks or whistles, and the horses obey. I would never advise a traveller to set out from Petersburgh as I have, just at the end of the carnival; he might with some reason suppose it is a religious duty for the Russian peasant to be drunk; in most villages I saw a sledge loaded with young men and women in such a manner, that four horses would have been more proper to draw it than one, which wretched beast was obliged to fly with this noisy company up and down the village, which is generally composed of houses in straight rows on each side of the public road—The girls are dressed in their holiday-clothes, and some are beautiful, and do not look less so from various coloured handkerchiefs tied over their forehead, in a becoming and pittoresque manner. The Russian peasant is a fine, stout, straight, well-looking man; some of the women, as I said before, are uncommonly pretty; but the general whiteness of their teeth is something that cannot be conceived; it frequently happened that all the men of the village were in a circle round my carriages—and rows of the most beautiful oriental pearl cannot be more regular and white than their teeth—It is a matter of great astonishment to me, how the infants outlive the treatment they receive, till they are able to crawl into the air; there is a kind of space or entresol over every stove, in which the husband, wife and children lie the greatest part of the day, and where they sleep at night—the heat appeared to me so great that I have no conception how they bear it; but they were as much surprised at me for seeking a door or window in every house I was obliged to go into, as I could possibly be at their living in a manner without air. The children look all pale and sickly, till they are five or six years old. The houses and dresses of the peasants are by no means uncomfortable; the first is generally composed of wood, the latter of sheep-skins; but trees laid horizontally one upon another makes a very strong wall, and the climate requires a warm skin for clothing—It might appear to English minds, that a people who are in a manner the property of their lord, suffer many of the afflictions that attend slavery; but the very circumstances of their persons being the property insures them the indulgence of their master for the preservation of their lives; and that master stands between them and the power of a despotic government or a brutal soldiery. Beside, my dear Sir, the invaluable advantage which these peasants have, as in paying annually a very small sum each, and cultivating as many acres of land as he thinks fit, his fortune depends entirely upon his own industry; each man only pays about the value of half-a-guinea a year—If his lord would raise this tax too high, or make their vassals suffer—misery and desertion would ruin his fortune, not theirs.

      MOSCOW, MARCH 3, 1786

      I believe I have not told you, that I am possessed of all the instructions to proceed upon this new journey in a very pleasant manner. The commanders at Krementchouck and at Cherson are informed of my intention to proceed to Perekop, where I shall enter into that peninsula called the Tauride … in which there is at present about thirty thousand of the Empress’s troops, including five thousand Cossacks in her pay; which I am very curious to see. The Khan’s palaces, noble Tartar houses, and others are prepared for her reception, in which I am assured I shall be received and treated perfectly well—

      CHERSON, MARCH 9, 1786

      I was obliged to put my kibitkas on wheels at a vile little town called Soumi, before I arrived at Pultawa—Notwithstanding there might have been many things worth stopping to look at in the immense town of Moscow, I was so impatient to meet the spring, that I would not send my name to any person whose civilities would have obliged me to stay. I cannot say that Moscow gives me any idea than of a large village, or many villages joined, as the houses stand at such a distance, and it is such a terrible way to go to visit things or people, that I should have made as many long journeys in a week, as there are days in one, had I staid—What is particularly gaudy and ugly at Moscow are the steeples—square lumps of different coloured bricks and gilt spires or ovals; they make a very Gothic appearance, but it is thought a public beauty here; a widow lady was just dead, who having outlived all the people that she loved, she left an immense sum of money to gild with the purest gold, the top of one of the steeples—

      At Soumi I conversed with a brother of Prince Kourakin’s and a Mr. Lanskoy, both officers quartered there; and to whom I was indebted for a lodging: they obliged a Jew to give me up a new little house he was upon the point of inhabiting—The thaw had come on so quickly that I was obliged to stay two days while my carriages were taken off the sledges—

      There is no gentleman’s house at Pultawa; I slept at my banker’s, and walked all about the skirts of the town—

      CHERSON, MARCH 12, 1786

      This place is situated upon the Dneiper, which falls into the Black sea; the only СКАЧАТЬ