The adjutants and officers appointed to the governors and commandants of provinces must be equally capable of enduring these fatigues, and the amount of health continually sacrificed on these endless Russian roads is almost incredible. These travellers often arrive at the stations so benumbed with cold and so exhausted and worn out, for want of sleep, that it is necessary to lift them from their carriages.
On arriving at Reshitilovka we found, to our sorrow, that it was a fastday, and we could not, therefore, expect that the dinner would make amends for the weather. We were presented with a tureen full of lukewarm water, in which pieces of cabbage and cucumber were floating ; a fish covered with lamp-oil sauce ; and something, by way of dessert, that resembled papier-mache. To make the matter worse, when the hostess observed that we did not attack these viands with great eagerness, she remarked that " perhaps there was not sugar enough" to the cakes, and crumbled a handful over them with her fingers. We had been but little tempted before ; after this operation, however, we could eat nothing at all, but a glass of " schnaps" in Russia helps one to digest all maimer of vexations.
The town of Reshitilovka, renowned far and wide for certain silky black lamb skins, said to be quite pccidiar to the place, is like all the towns in this part of the country, nearly as extensive as a )rovincc. It contains, I was informed, not less than 11,000 inhabitants, 2000 serfs, and the rest hasakki, or freemen, that is to say, nobles and Jews. About one -half of these serfs belong to one gi-eat nobleman, and the rest are distributed in parcels of ten, three, or even two, among small proprietors, who live scattered about amongst the peasants in the villages. A town of this sort with us would be content with one church, but here there are no less than six, and an astonishing number of windmills surround the place, like a besieging army.
The population in Poltava is more dense than in any other government of Russia, as there are almost 2000 persons to every (German) square mile, and in no other do we find it so much concentrated on a few points, a circumstance accounted for by this part of the country having been formerly much exposed to the incursions of the Tartars, so that the inhabitants were compelled to keep together for mutual defence.
In reading the history of Charles XII. we are apt to figure to ourselves this district as a naked steppe, without a tree or a shrub ; but such would be a very mistaken notion, for the landscape is still variegated by pleasant woods, and can only be regarded as the Irontier-land of the true steppe, which does not begin till wc arrive on the other side of the Dnieper. In the Ukraine the landscape is still varied and pleasing. The valleys of the larger and smaller rivers are often extremely beautiful, presenting fine meadows, broken by rich forests of oaks and wild fruit trees ; and, though the traveller may be reminded, by a multitude of appearances, that he is approaching the wild wastes of the steppes, he is not the less made to feel, by a succession of varied objects, that he has not yet entered upon the vast naked plains that go by that name, and which the Russian designates by the expressive appellation of the nastayushtshoi stepy or the veritable steppe.
" He, he, garkaya f (bitter one!) " 9ioo, noo, popi.'" (now, you little popes!) " shevelitsa r (shake yourselves!) " beregitsa r (mind what you're about!) '•'' noo, noo, rasom T now, all three together!) "/?o gooro, po gooro! po gorutshkoo r (up the hill, up the hill, up the little hill!) ' Come, don't be afraid! What are you stumbling for? Are you blind!" (gee up, you barbarians!) — In these and similar terms our postilion continued incessantly to discourse with his horses, and, by the aid of his unwearied coaxings and scoldings, we at last anvved, towards evening, in the eminent city of Krementshug, on the bnnks of the Dnieper. Samovar postavit! (on with the tea-kettle!) is a word of command which the traveller, who arrives half-frozen at a Russian post-station, rarely fails to thunder forth from his carriage-window; nor did we fail to make it our first salutation to the Israelite host that hastened out to receive us.