A Book of Voyages. Patrick O’Brian
country, like a new beauty, finds detractors, I am not in the least alarmed; for a person, not a Russian, who has been there on speculation, has given me so charming a description of it, that I should not be sorry to purchase a Tartarian estate.
MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 29, 1786
I left my coach at Petersburgh, and hired for myself and my small suite, the carriages of the country, called Kibitkas; they are exactly like cradles, the head having windows to the front which let down; I can sit or lay down, and feel in one like a great child, very comfortably defended from the cold by pillows and blankets—These carriages are upon sledges, and where the road is good, this conveyance is comfortable and not fatiguing; but from the incredible quantity of sledges that go constantly upon the track of snow, it is worn in tracks like a road; and from the shaking and violent thumps the carriage receives, I am convinced the hardest head might be broken. I was overturned twice; the postillions I fancy are used to such accidents; for they get quietly off their horse, set the carriage up again, and never ask if the traveller is hurt—Their method of driving is singular; they sit behind three horses that are harnessed abreast—a shrill whistling noise, or a savage kind of shriek is the signal for the horses to set off, which they do full gallop; and when their pace slackens, the driver waves his right-hand, shrieks or whistles, and the horses obey. I would never advise a traveller to set out from Petersburgh as I have, just at the end of the carnival; he might with some reason suppose it is a religious duty for the Russian peasant to be drunk; in most villages I saw a sledge loaded with young men and women in such a manner, that four horses would have been more proper to draw it than one, which wretched beast was obliged to fly with this noisy company up and down the village, which is generally composed of houses in straight rows on each side of the public road—The girls are dressed in their holiday-clothes, and some are beautiful, and do not look less so from various coloured handkerchiefs tied over their forehead, in a becoming and pittoresque manner. The Russian peasant is a fine, stout, straight, well-looking man; some of the women, as I said before, are uncommonly pretty; but the general whiteness of their teeth is something that cannot be conceived; it frequently happened that all the men of the village were in a circle round my carriages—and rows of the most beautiful oriental pearl cannot be more regular and white than their teeth—It is a matter of great astonishment to me, how the infants outlive the treatment they receive, till they are able to crawl into the air; there is a kind of space or entresol over every stove, in which the husband, wife and children lie the greatest part of the day, and where they sleep at night—the heat appeared to me so great that I have no conception how they bear it; but they were as much surprised at me for seeking a door or window in every house I was obliged to go into, as I could possibly be at their living in a manner without air. The children look all pale and sickly, till they are five or six years old. The houses and dresses of the peasants are by no means uncomfortable; the first is generally composed of wood, the latter of sheep-skins; but trees laid horizontally one upon another makes a very strong wall, and the climate requires a warm skin for clothing—It might appear to English minds, that a people who are in a manner the property of their lord, suffer many of the afflictions that attend slavery; but the very circumstances of their persons being the property insures them the indulgence of their master for the preservation of their lives; and that master stands between them and the power of a despotic government or a brutal soldiery. Beside, my dear Sir, the invaluable advantage which these peasants have, as in paying annually a very small sum each, and cultivating as many acres of land as he thinks fit, his fortune depends entirely upon his own industry; each man only pays about the value of half-a-guinea a year—If his lord would raise this tax too high, or make their vassals suffer—misery and desertion would ruin his fortune, not theirs.
MOSCOW, MARCH 3, 1786
I believe I have not told you, that I am possessed of all the instructions to proceed upon this new journey in a very pleasant manner. The commanders at Krementchouck and at Cherson are informed of my intention to proceed to Perekop, where I shall enter into that peninsula called the Tauride … in which there is at present about thirty thousand of the Empress’s troops, including five thousand Cossacks in her pay; which I am very curious to see. The Khan’s palaces, noble Tartar houses, and others are prepared for her reception, in which I am assured I shall be received and treated perfectly well—
CHERSON, MARCH 9, 1786
I was obliged to put my kibitkas on wheels at a vile little town called Soumi, before I arrived at Pultawa—Notwithstanding there might have been many things worth stopping to look at in the immense town of Moscow, I was so impatient to meet the spring, that I would not send my name to any person whose civilities would have obliged me to stay. I cannot say that Moscow gives me any idea than of a large village, or many villages joined, as the houses stand at such a distance, and it is such a terrible way to go to visit things or people, that I should have made as many long journeys in a week, as there are days in one, had I staid—What is particularly gaudy and ugly at Moscow are the steeples—square lumps of different coloured bricks and gilt spires or ovals; they make a very Gothic appearance, but it is thought a public beauty here; a widow lady was just dead, who having outlived all the people that she loved, she left an immense sum of money to gild with the purest gold, the top of one of the steeples—
At Soumi I conversed with a brother of Prince Kourakin’s and a Mr. Lanskoy, both officers quartered there; and to whom I was indebted for a lodging: they obliged a Jew to give me up a new little house he was upon the point of inhabiting—The thaw had come on so quickly that I was obliged to stay two days while my carriages were taken off the sledges—
There is no gentleman’s house at Pultawa; I slept at my banker’s, and walked all about the skirts of the town—
CHERSON, MARCH 12, 1786
This place is situated upon the Dneiper, which falls into the Black sea; the only inconvenience of the Docks here is that the ships, when built, are obliged to be taken with camels into that part of the channel deep enough to receive them—The town is not at present very large, though there are many new houses and a church built after pretty models; good architecture of white stone—There are no trees near this place; [Colonel] Korsakof is trying to make large plantations; the town is entirely furnished with fuel by reeds, of which there is an inexhaustible forest in the shallows of the Boristhenes, just facing Cherson—Rails, and even temporary houses are made of them—Korsakof, and a Captain Mordwinof, who both have been educated in England, will, I have no doubt, make a distinguished figure in the military annals of Russia; Mordwinof is a sea-officer, and superintends the ship-building here—there are some very pretty frigates on the stocks. Repninskai is the governor’s name, and he has a young wife, who is very civil; my lodging is a large house built for a Greek Archbishop—but, being empty, was appropriated to my use: I have remonstrated here, but in vain, against having centinels, and the guard turning out as I pass through the gates. The Emperor’s Consul has a wife who wears a Greek dress here; I think it by no means becoming—I have nothing but maps and plans of various sorts in my head at present, having looked over all such as my curiosity could induce me to ask for—The fortifications and plantations are executed here by malefactors, whose chains and fierce looks struck horror into my heart, as I walked over them, particularly when I was informed there are between three and four thousand—
Mordwinof informs me, the frigate which is to convey me to Constantinople is prepared, and is to wait my pleasure at one of the seaports in the Crimea, and that the Comte de Wynowitch, who commands at Sevastopole has directions to accommodate me in the best manner—
KARASBAYER, APRIL 3, 1786
I went in a barge for about two hours down the Boristhenes, and landed on the shore opposite to that on which Cherson stands. A carriage and horses belonging to a Major who commands a post about two hours drive from the place where I landed were waiting, and these conveyed me to his house, where I found a great dinner prepared, and he gave me some excellent fresh-butter made of Buffalo’s milk; this poor man has just lost a wife he loved, and who was the only delight he could possess in a most disagreeable spot, marshy, low, and where he can have no other amusement but the troops—From thence I crossed the plains of Perekop, on which nothing but a large coarse grass grows, which is burnt at certain periods of the year—All this country, like that between Cherson