In this district we also find the trees to be different in kind from what they were in the region traversed in coming hither. While in the first stages of the journey they were chiefly and almost exclusively firs, and birches, and willows, here, around Berdicheff, in Poland, we find the woods composed in a great measure of oaks, and elms, and chestnuts; and the forest aspect is completely different.
In the south-east corner of Poland, and in the adjacent districts of Russia known as Little Russia, there are considerable stretches of forest land overgrown by a wild pear tree. The fruit is not edible, either when green or ripe; but it is gathered and steeped in the Russian beverage called quass — the common drink of the peasantry — and it is sold extensively throughout Russia as steeped pears, and is greatly in demand by the peasants.
Qaass is prepared by pouring hot water upon broken, dry, black rye bread, a little yeast is added, and in some cases a little peppermint, and it is allowed to ferment.
Herds of swine are in the summer time turned out into the woods, where they become little better than wild boars. In November they are driven home, killed and frozen, and sent to the northern districts of Russia to be sold as frozen pork.
By Naumann, in his Geognosie, ii. p. 1173, it is stated: ' Olkuez and Schiewier, in Poland, lie in two sand deserts, and a boundless plain of sand stretches around Ozeustackaur, on which there grows neither tree nor shrub. In heavy winds this place resembles a rolling sea, and the
ST. PETERSBURG TO POLAND. 15
sand hills rise and disappear like the waves of the ocean. The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with sand to the depth of four fathoms.'
So far as is known to me, no attempts have yet been made to fix and utilise these drifting sands: but that they, as well as those which have been arrested and rendered productive in other lands — Hungary, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, and Northern Germany, may be brought under control I cannot doubt.
But in passing through the country one sees more of forests than of sand drifts.
Of Poland an anonymous writer early in the present century tells: — ' Poland is an extremely level country, diversified by few or no eminences, except a ridge of hills branching off from the Carpathian mountains, which anciently formed the southern boundary of the country. The rivers are unadorned with banks, and flow lazily in a flat monotonous course, insomuch that when, as previously stated, heavy falls of rain take place, the country for many miles is completely inundated. The number and extent of marshes and forests, neither of which the Poles have seemed very anxious to remove, uniformly strike strangers as one of the great characteristics of Poland. The soil, which is chiefly either of a clayey or marshy description, is, in many places, so extremely fertile, that with the least cultivation it is calculated to produce the most luxurious crops of corn; and it is distinguished for the richest pastures in Europe. Agriculture with the Poles, however, is completely in its infancy. For many ages they neglected this useful art, as they neglected every art of peace and domestic comfort; they were a warlike people; and, besides, the produce of the fields was not the property of the peasants, but of their masters, and they were themselves doomed, without hope of advancement, to continue in the same rank of life, whatever had been their industry or their skill, But though these disabilities have now been greatly removed, though the Poles are rapidly emerging from that state of laziness and inactivity in which they remained so long sunk, yet, in the department in question they have nearly everything to learn. Of the use of manure they are almost entirely ignorant; their common practice is to crop a field till it be exhausted, and then for a few years to abandon it. Their ploughs are scarcely sufficient to penetrate the surface of the ground; and their fields when reaped, exhibit from this circumstance, as rich a verdure as if they had remained for years unbroken. This ignorance, however, is diminishing every day. Some portions of Poland have been denominated the garden of Europe; and a period may not be far distant when the term may, with much propriety, be applied to the whole territory. Societies for the encouragement of agriculture have been established in Poland; and the vast tracts of forests and marshes with which it abounds certainly open up on extensive field for the display of skill and enterprise/
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