We once more passed through all the German colonies I had so much admired a few months before. But the pleasing verdure of May had disappeared beneath the icy winds of the north, and all was dreary and dull of hue. Even the houses, no longer glistening in the sunshine, had a sombre appearance in harmony with the withered leaves of the orchards. A metel that broke out one night forced us to pass two days in a German village, in the house of a worthy old Prussian couple. The wife had lost the use of one side, and could not leave her chair, but her husband supplied her place in all the domestic concerns with a skill that surprised us. As in all the German houses, the principal room was adorned with a handsome porcelain stove, and a large tester bed which our hosts insisted on giving up to us. From morning till night the husband, aided by a stout servant girl, exerted all his culinary powers for our benefit. The table was laid out all day until dinner hour with coffee, pastry, bottles of wine, ham, and other appetising commodities.
There is nothing I think more delightful in travelling than to watch the proceedings of a somewhat rustic cuisine. In such cases all the marvels of Careme's art fade before two or three simple dishes prepared under your own eyes. The ear is pleasingly titillated by the tune of the frying-pan, the smell of good things stimulates desire and quickens the imagination, and the very preliminaries are so agreeable, that the traveller would not exchange them for the most magnificent banquet in the world.
The quantity of snow that had fallen during those two days retarded our speed. A man rode on before the carriage and carefully sounded the ground, for the metel had filled up the holes and ditches, and obliterated all landmarks. Nothing can be more frightful than those snowy wastes recently swept and tossed by furious winds. All trace of man's existence and his works, have disappeared beneath those white billows heaped upon each other like those of the ocean in a storm. How well we could appreciate, in those long days we spent in plodding through the snow, the horrible sufferings of our poor soldiers, perishing by thousands in the fatal retreat of 1812! The thought of their misery smote upon our hearts, and forbade us to complain, warmly clad as we were, drawn by stout horses, and having all we required done for us by others.
As we approached Kherson post-sledges began to show themselves; several of them shot by us with travellers wrapped up to the eyes in their fur cloaks. These sledges are very low, and hold at most two persons. It very often happens that the body part upsets without the driver's perceiving it; the accident is not at all dangerous; but it must be exceedingly annoying to the traveller, as he rolls in the snow, to see his sledge borne away from him at full speed, leaving him no help for it but to follow on foot. If the driver does not take the precaution to look back from time to time, the traveller may chance to run all the way to the next station, and it may be imagined in what a plight he arrives there. When the accident happens by night the case is still more serious. Many Russians have told us that they had thus lost their way, and only after a day or two's search had found the station where their sledge had arrived empty. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to lose one's way in the steppes, nor is it at all necessary to that end that one should fall out of his sledge. We ourselves were once in danger of roaming about all night in the neighbourhood of Kherson in search of our road, which we could not find. A very dense fog surprised us at sunset, scarcely five versts from the town. For a long time we went on at random, not knowing whether we were going north or south, and Heaven knows where we should have found ourselves at last, if we had not caught the sound of horses' bells. The travellers put us on the right way, and told us it was ten o'clock, and we had twelve versts between us and Kherson.