' It is no unusual thing to meet with pike ranging from twenty to twenty-five pounds' weight, and sometimes more. The largest are generally captured in nets; but the quantity of weeds, with which the lakes and streams are covered in summer, makes net-fishing very difficult, if not impracticable. The fish are caught therefore in the greatest numbers as soon as the weeds die away, and are preserved in stews or in ice-houses.
' For my own part, net-fishing did not hold out much attraction. I therefore persuaded my friend, the ingenious carpenter at Wereiki, to fashion a dozen trimmers for me; and, having prepared some twine and hooks which I had bought at Konigsberg, I frequently made successful use of them. I caught also, in a large lake which I visited at Massalani, by trolling, many pike, which varied from one to eight pounds in weight. Upon one occasion, in June, I had sailed slowly, by the aid of a gentle breeze, from one side of the lake to the other, trolling as I went along; and had just started upon my return, when the bait was voraciously seized by a monster of a fish, that came right up to the top of the water, and darted off instantly with it. I let him have the line as quickly as possible. But the wind sprang up at this moment, and carried my boat off in one direction; whilst the fish was rushing madly away in another. I only had forty yards of line upon the reel; and, as soon as it had all run out, it of course snapped, and away went the only trolling gorge-hook that I possessed, with twenty yards of line.
' Thus abruptly and disastrously ended, as I thought, all my trolling speculations. But, upon returning to Massalani, a fortnight afterwards, the boatman brought me my hook and line, extracted from the fish, which be had found lying dead upon the water, a few days after my former visit. The fish, he told me, weighed more than twenty pounds. Behold! the old fable of the ring of Polycrates over again — stripped, indeed, of much of its miraculous character; for a sharp gorge-hook was much more likely to lead to the discovery of the fish that swallowed it, than a precious jewel; and the narrow circuit of a small inland lake a far more favourable place for such discovery than the waves of the open sea that washed the shores of Samos. Nevertheless, the incident could hardly fail to remind me, as it did, of the story, which has been told with such inimitable simplicity by Herodotus, and sung in inmortal verse by Schiller.'
To the district embracing the governments of Tchernigov and Kiev, with those of Poltava and Kharkov, are given the designations Little Russia, and the Ukraine.
The name Ukraine is said to signify frontier, a name not inappropriate to the country, which lies on the borders of European Turkey, Poland, Russia, and Little Tartary. It was acquired by Russia at different periods from Poland, a large portion having been seized by Catherine II. in 1793.
Of the Ukraine M. Marny writes:— 'In the Ukraine the black earth, called by the Russians stepnoi-ezernozem, which constitutes the soil of a part of South Russia, gives rise to forests of a special nature, of which the principal constituents are oaks, limes, and elms. These trees grow with uncommon vigour, and are associated with an immense number of large pear trees of a magnificent aspect. Nevertheless, this beautiful forest mantle is desolated under the pernicious action of drought, which causes the destruction of thousands of trees, more especially of hazels, ashes, and elms; only the spruce with deep roots escape its devastating influence.'
In Little Russia, and in the old Polish country to the south and the west, we find the villages of the north built of timber logs, and laid out as graphically portrayed in the quotation I have given from Hepworth Dixon's Free Jtussia, in Forest Lands and Forestry of Northern Russia (pp. 53-55), in illustration of forest scenes in the government of Archangel, have given place to villages of a different character. We find the difference thus indicated by that writer:— ' Instead of the grimy logs, you have a predominant mixture of green and white; instead of the former blocks you have scattered cottages in the midst of trees. The cabins are built of earth and reeds; the roofs thatched with straw, and the walls of the homestead are washed with lime. A fence of mats and thorns runs round the group. If every house appears to be small, it stands in a common yard, and one of its own. The village has no streets. Two, and only two, openings appear in the outer fence; one north, one south, and in finding your way from one opening of the fence to another, you pass through a mass of lanes between reeds and pines, beset by savage dogs. Each new comer would seem to have pitched his tent where he pleased, taking care to cover his hut and yard by the common yard.