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CHAPTER IV.

THE LAST DAYS OF FATHER VOLGA.

AT early dawn on the following morning the quay is like a ripe clover-field with red shirts and gaudy kerchiefs, while boxes, bags, and portmanteaus come trundling on board thick and fast. Stewards bustle about with the steaming tea-urns which, as long experience teaches them, will soon be shouted for through every part of the vessel; ladies scream for their missing maids, or empty reticules and work-bags in fruitless search after their tickets; deck-passengers in greasy sheepskin settle into the corners which they will never quit till the end of the voyage; officers make a display of their buttons, and light paper cigarettes with a knowing air; sailors survey the community at large with an air of quiet, professional disdain; and the skipper, a broadfaced, jolly-looking old "salt" from the Baltic coast,* pulls up his coat-collar, and gets his telescope ready for action. The whistle sounds shrilly through the whoop of the rising wind, and we are off.

And now the old-world aspect of the whole scene becomes overwhelming. Acres of trees level with the

* Finland and the Baltic provinces supply the few good seamen in Russia.

water, like the tops of a drowned forest; wide wastes of hot brassy sand, melting in a dim haze along the horizon; boundless green plains, dotted with grazing cattle; long reaches of dreary swamp, cut up by the endless network of the hundred mouths of Father Volga; and everywhere a vast, dreary, silent, desolation, like that of an unpeopled world.

Nevertheless, this great sepulchre of nature is not without signs of life. Every now and then we pass a huge barge, manned by brown-faced men in sheepskin, labouring heavily against the stream; or a waggon with a team of oxen, far away on the endless plain; or a little log-built hamlet perched on the brink of the grey, sullen stream; or a cluster of quaint little straw lampshades, with smoke oozing from their tops, which, on a nearer view, turn out to be Kalmuck hovels; and, at times, the solitary mound of some nameless grave.

But it is when shrouded by the creeping mist which has given it an evil renown, that this Stygian stream assumes its most characteristic aspect. Dante himself could conceive no sight more grim and cheerless than that great waste of leaden water shut in by the blank rayless sky. A universal gloom, a damp, creeping chill, like the chillness of the grave; no sight, no sound of life, only the plash and welter of the sullen waters, over which the half-seen steamer looms like a gigantic coffin. Amid such surroundings any shape of horror seems congenial. It needs little imagination to body from the encircling mist the grim ferryman of the shades with his ghastly freight, or the Phantom Ship

looming gauntly past, her spectral rigging gleaming like a phosphorescent corpse, and her crew, with the brand of everlasting torment on their haggard faces, glaring wolfishly at us as we shoot by.

And so we plod onward till nightfall, anchor for the night (for to run the gauntlet of the Volga shoals in the dark is beyond even a Livonian sailor), and, with the first grey of morning, are on our way once more.

Nine o'clock brings us to Tchorni-Yar, where I am met by a set of old acquaintances-the Kalmucks of Eastern Russia. We have barely stepped ashore, when I recognise the little beehives of felt and wickerwork which met me at every turn, four years ago, on the long low banks of the Don. Marching up to the nearest "kibitka," I raise the loose flap that masks the entrance, revealing an interior so like that of my former friends the Samoiedes, that I feel for a moment as if I had wandered into Lapland by mistake. The same smoky, Teniers-like atmosphere; the same welter of sacks, boxes, skins, and cooking utensils; the same wonderful omniumgatherum of "properties" hanging to the tent-poles; the same astounding collection of unsavoury smells of every kind; the same gnome-like figures, with faces like a crushed bun, grouped, witch-fashion, round the huge caldron that simmers in the centre.

Availing myself of the stupefaction caused by my sudden appearance, I clutch the enormous, dirt-begrimed wooden spoon floating in the mess, and coolly proceed to help myself. In an instant my statesque hosts break into spontaneous hospitality. One "drags" the pot in

quest of a possible scrap of mutton, a second tugs from his capacious pocket a pasty lump of rye-bread, covered with hair and bits of straw, while a third kindly invites me to seat myself on a newly-flayed sheepskin, which he places, raw side upward, for my especial accommodation.

Thus established, I go in valiantly at the "soupe à la Calmouque "-an astounding mixture of tea-leaves, mutton-fat, rye-flour, milk, and rancid butter, sufficient to startle a dervish. However, I have seldom met a national plat that I could not deal with, and I do full justice to this one, though my performance cuts a poor figure beside the Homeric swallow of my hosts, who go to work as if (like Logi in the old Norse Saga) they could bolt, not merely the food, but the caldron as well. My appreciation of their cookery evidently pleases the worthy savages, who season my last spoonful with a few scrapings from a thick brown cake that looks like a square of bad tobacco, but is in reality a genuine sample of the famous "brick tea," whose weight every camel in Central Asia knows to his cost.

But when, on proffering the ladle back to the chief, I slip into it a silver twenty-kopeck piece (62d.) as deftly as if I had practised at an election, the popular feeling changes. An angry murmur runs round the circle, and more than one voice protests loudly against such a violation of Kalmuck etiquette; but I stand my ground, and answer, with quiet confidence, that my faith enjoins the acknowledgment of one benefit by another. The honest barbarians readily accept the explanation; and, with a

farewell shake of their greasy paws, which makes me feel as if I had caught a live salmon by the tail, I dive under the curtain, and make a dramatic exit.*

For the rest of the day the scenery alternates between bushy undergrowth and bare sand, chequered towards evening by a green maze of wooded islets, so close together that we appear to be sailing through the avenues of a great garden. The sunset over the woods is very grand-the light dying away from tree-top after tree-top as the gathering dimness steals on, till all is veiled in the sombre mysterious twilight that fills the aisles of a cathedral. But already the strange contrast between the two banks, so striking in the higher stream, begins to make itself manifest. The European shore masses itself in bold ridges of steep crumbling turf, with here and there a huge cliff crowning it like a tower-the symbol of an imperfect but robust civilisation. On the Asiatic side, endless wastes of barren sand and grisly morass melt drearily into the darkening sky-fit emblem of that torpid barbarism before which all the choicest gifts of Nature have been spread in vain; a Dead Sea of humanity, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

As night falls, we reach the famous German colony of Sarepta, the neat houses and spotless cleanliness of which contrast very pointedly with the filthy burrows of the native population; and so, apparently, think my Russian fellow-passengers, judging from the spiteful energy with which they puff their cigarettes and mutter * I had several more "Kalmuck breakfasts" later on, while crossing the steppes; but this first one may fairly stand for all.

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