Journey through the Steppes — Mykolaiv, Olbia, Ochakiv and Kherson

In Constantinople, where we had passed the preceding winter, the cold and the snow appeared to us insupportable in the light wooden houses, open to every wind, and furnished with no other resource against the inclemency of the weather than a manghal, which served at best only to roast the feet and hands, whilst it left the rest of the body to freeze. But in Russia even the mujik has constantly a temperature of nearly 77 deg. in his cabin in the very height of winter, which he obtains in a very simple and economical manner. A large brickwork stove or oven is formed in the wall, consisting of a fireplace and a long series of quadrangular flues ending in the chimney and giving passage to the smoke. The fire is made either of kirbitch[2] or of reeds. When these materials are completely consumed, the pipe by which the flues communicate with the chimney is hermetically closed, and the hot air passes into the room by two openings made for that purpose. Exactly the same apparatus is used in the houses of the wealthy. The stoves are so contrived that one of them serves to heat two or three rooms. The halls, staircases, and servants' rooms, are all kept at the same temperature. But great caution is necessary to avoid the dangers to which this method of warming may give rise. I myself was saved only by a providential chance from falling a victim to them. I had been asleep for some hours one night, when I was suddenly awakened by my son, who was calling to me for drink. I got up instantly, and without waiting to light a candle I was proceeding to pour out a glass of water, but I had scarcely moved a few steps when the glass dropped from my hand and I fell, as if struck with lightning, and in a state of total insensibility. I had afterwards a confused recollection of cries that seemed to me to have come from a great distance; but for two minutes I remained completely inanimate, and only recovered consciousness after my husband had carried me into an icy room and laid me on the floor. My son suffered still more than myself, but it happened most strangely that my husband was not in the smallest degree affected, and this it was that saved us. The cause of this nocturnal alarm was the imprudence of a servant who had closed the stove before all the kirbitch was consumed; this was quite enough to make the atmosphere deadly. All the inmates of the house were more or less indisposed.