When I awoke in the morning, I saw my travelling companion sitting forward in the carriage, holding in his hand a pistol ready cocked. On my inquiring the cause of this unexpected movement, he replied that the yamtshiks all round Nikolayeff were known to be the greatest rascals in the world, and he had no good opinion of our present one. " The fellow stops every moment," said he, " and pretends to have something to do to the horses, while he leers round on the steppe, as if he expected somebody. I have been obliged to caU to him every minute not to drive so near the ditches. It is a common trick with them to upset a carriage, to give their comrades time to come up." I thought it as Avell to keep a sharp eye on the rascal, and so took out my pistol also, whilst my companion occasionally enforced his commands with a good hard whack, which the postilion took as quietly as if he knew he deserved it. Nowhere, in fact, does opportunity make more robbers and murderers than in Russia. Drive him with a tight rein, and you may do what you will with a Russian ; but, if you nod behind his back, his head is apt to get full of all sorts of wicked notions. A few blows brought our postihon into the best humour. He not only mended his pace, but began to encourage his horses with the wonted eloquence of his tribe, whereas he had previously been quite silent and sulky.
At the last station, before our arrival at Nikolayeff, we found no horses, and had to wait while men were sent out to catch some. We availed ourselves of the interval to visit Adyamka, an adjoining military colony of lancers. The men lived like genuine Troglodites, in houses dug in the ea,rth, but for their horses a very handsome range of stables had been erected An imperial stud was connected with the colony, and in the stud, we were assured, there were English stallions that had cost as much as 20,000 rubles. These horses are not turned out into the steppe like the others, nor were we admitted into the stables to see them.
Wood, we were told, cost here from fifty to sixty rubles the cubic sash. In Poland it may be bought for ten or twenty rubles, and at Odessa it can often not be had for eighty. Firewood is often brought to Odessa, by landcarriage, a distance of thirty German miles.
By breakfast-time we had reached at length the river Bug, and the town of Nikolayeff. We had been driving for some time along the bank of the river, and rejoicing with the sight of its mighty waters, our eyes long wearied of the everlasting green. The banks of this stream are high on both sides, and the beds of clay and limestone wliich form the steppe He quite open to the day.
Nikolayeff, near which we saw for the first time in Russia a vineyard, has only been built about forty years, and is rather strangely chosen for the seat of the Admiralty of the Black Sea, as it is situated in the interior of the country, and vessels coming up to it must overcome the inconveniences of the entrance to the Dnieper. The true riding point of the Black Sea is
A sash is equal to seven English feet.
undoubtedly Sevastopol, which lies In the midst of the regions whither orders have to be sent, and is the great arsenal of the Russian navy.
Like all Russian cities, Nikolayeff is built in a regular open manner on the flat steppe, and is full of distinguished looking buildings, so that from the river it has a very splendid effect. The town is said to contain 15,000 inhabitants.
The handsome and convenient German inn at which we put up, did not tempt me to linger there long. I soon threw myself into a droshky to take a drive round the town and visit its Hons. Unfortunately for me, however, it was Sunday, and all the world was holiday-making. I could neither see the Admiralty, the Observatory, nor the Hall of Antiquities ; so, after driving for some time up one street and down another, I at last found myself before the entrance of the pubUc garden, which is laid out on a steep rising ground, overlooking the river Bug. The garden is exceedingly pretty, and when we entered, gay music was sounding from a pavilion in the centre, and half the fashionable world of Nikolayeff, Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Russians, and Germans, were enjoying its beauties.
Nikolayeff stands near the site of the ancient Olbia, which was built by the MUesians 655 years before the birth of Christ, and was unquestionably the most important commercial city of the Greeks in this part of the Pontine regions, occupying in the commercial world of those days about the same rank that Odessa occupies in ours . The spot on which Olbia stood is now called Stomogil (the hundred hills), and is the property of a Russian nobleman, Count Kusheleff-Besborodko, in whose possession are the greater part of the antiquities that have been discovered in the neighbourhood.