TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 910, 23 April 1878, Page 3

TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA.

CFroin the 'Pall Mall Gazette.')

Russia is the most uncomfortable of countries to travel in. Such railways as there are run mostly in sti'uight lines from terminus to terminus, without taking the slightest notice of the towns on the road. If you want to alight at a town half way down the line, you find that the station which bears its name is some twenty miles distant from the town itself. You climb into a paracladnoi — a three-horse truck, without springs — and ask that your luggage may be put in with you. The station porter, clad in a kaftan reaching to. his feet, smiles kindly, but cannot give you your luggage without the permission of some official who is absent. It takes money to find this official. When he has consented to inspect the luggage, he proceeds to examine every article as if it were a new and curious invention. More money is required to stop him. Then, you scramble into the truck again, and off it goes like •wildfire, the Kalmuck driver yelling all the way, aud thwacking the shafts with the stump of his whip to make you fancy he is dragging the vehicle by himself. The bumping is something to remember, for the roads are left to mend themselves, and in ■winter some of the ruts are big enough to hold coffins. In some districts, a chance of being chevied by a pack of dinnerless wolves adds to the interest of the journey, but, if it be night, a lantern with a very strong reflector hung at the back of the carriage will be enough to keep them from approaching. At length the town cf your destination is reached, and, pounding along its unpaved streets with the last flourish of howls, the isvostchik gallops into the court-yard of the place that calls itself an hotel. Out tumbles a flat-nosed hostler, whom the driver begins to thump and swear at, just to show his zeal in your service. Then comes the landlord, generally a German, who talks broken French, and whose accoinodation foi f travellers consists of two or three rooms without beds, and some hot water. It is expected that a traveller should bring his own provisions } if he "have not done so, he xHftst pay for food at famine price?, — and what food! It is of no use use asking for a chop or steak, for the last gridiron seen in Russia (except in private houses) was the one which Ivan the Terrible used for the broiling o£ refractory courtiers. A chunk of beef, stewed in sugf r and vinegar, and served with a saucerful of salted cucumbers and pickled cherries, will be about the extent of the bill of fare ; though, if their happen to be a wedding going on in the town, the landlord will run off to beg some choicer dainties, and return in tiiutnph with the leg of a goose stuffed with cloves, or a piece of pork braized with nutmegs or inarshmallows. As to beds, they are quite a modern innovation in Russia, and many well to-do houses are still unprovided with them. Peasants sleep on the tops of their ovens ; middle-class people and servants curl themselves up in sheepekins and lie down near stoves ; soldiers rest upon wooden cots with • out bedding, and it is only within the last ten years that the students in State schools have been allowed beds. A traveller must therefore roll himself up in rugs and furs, and •spend his nights on the floor of his inn room. Russians see no hardships in this, even if they be rich and accustomed to luxuries. They rather prefer boards to mattresses, and are first-rate travellers, for they make shift to sleep anywhere. There is one good side to travel 1 in" in Russia, and it is this : if a Stranger be not faring ior commercial purposes, he wi i be made a welcome guest at the house of the authorises in any town where he may wish (o spend more than a clay. The civil governor will despatch a secretary to his hotel, and be glad to have him to dinner for the sole sake of hearing what news he has to bring. This is pleasant enough, and the hospitality is the more gracious as the stranger cannot make any .return for it beyond thanks. On the other hand, a stranger who settles for any term exceeding a week in a country town will have Jo, bp pf the company jutu

which he falls ; for Russian friendship soon tarns to familarity, nnd one of the manifestations of familiarity is to ask the sfci anger to take a hand at ec irte. Then it becomes a question of refusing and being 1 deemed a boor, or accepting' and being promptly cleaned out. The Russians are feareful gamblers, and a stranger with circular notes in his pocket is «a godsend to them. They do not cheat ; but play and play until the result is utter impecuniousness to the one of the two parties to the game. The women are as bad as the men, and think nothing of winning a few hundred napoleous from a stranger whom they have not known for more than a week. It must be born in miud that tbe ladies here alluded to are those of a certain rank, who affect to copy Parisian manners ; for those of the mid Jle class do r.o show themselves to their husbands guests. In country houses card..'- play iug| is the ordinary evening's amusement — counters used when money is not forthcoming ; but in these places a stianger will often get two or three dry's excellent shooting in return tor cho bank-notes he drops on his host's table at night. Russian game consists of wolves, foxes, hares partridges, and several varieties .of wild fowl ; and a day with the gun leads to a turn out of all the rabble doggery of the country. All the mujicks roundabout leave their work to see t''.e sport, and almost every one brings a dog. Happily the game is not wild, else it would be all scared away by the frantic shouts raised by the peasaut every time a bird raises on the line of sight, or a grey fox slinks down a furrow. Another favorite country-house amusement is dancing, aud a foreigner will be ; delighted by the pretty jigs which Russian ladies dance with scarves or shawls some, thiug after the fashion ot the aimecs. they will sing too, accompanying themselves with triangular guitars rather like banjoes. It should be mentioned that there is no olloqnial equivalent in Russia to 'Sir,' or 'Madam,' and this puts social relations at once on a friendly ! footing. Tschinovnifis and their wives are addressed by their inferiors as ' Your High origin,' or ' High Nobility,' as the case may be, but amongst equals the usual formula is to address a person by his Christian name, coupled to that of his father — as thus, Paulo-Petrowitch, i.e., Paul son of Peter ; and the same in regard to .'women, ' Maria-Nicolaievna,'Mary, daughter of Nicholas. It goes without saying that the guest-chamber in a Russian country-house is as devoid of beds as a country hotel. At most, a foreigner will be accommodated with an ottoman spread with catskins ; but even if he have to lie on the floor, he will be sure to sleep, for a night-cap will be given him in shape of a pint bowl, full of a mixture of tea, egg yolks, and arak punch, enough to make him cry when he swallows it, and warranted to procure him a grand series of nightmares till morning.