Chapter LII
At the close of the second day at Nijne Novgorod I started for Moscow. As we drove from the hotel to the railway the jackdaws, perched everywhere on the roofs, were unusually noisy. Leaving Asia and entering Europe, the magpie seemed to give place to the jackdaw. The latter bird inhabits the towns and cities east of the Ural mountains, and we frequently saw large flocks searching the debris along the Volga road. He associates freely with the pigeon, and appears well protected by public sentiment. Possibly his uneatable character and his fancied resemblance to the pigeon saves him from being knocked in the head. Pigeons are very abundant in all Russian cities, and their tameness is a matter of remark among foreign visitors.
The railway station is across the Oka and near the site of the annual fair. We went at a smashing pace down hill and over the ice to the other side, narrowly missing several collisions. At the railway I fell to the charge of two porters, who carried my baggage while I sought the ticket office. A young woman speaking French officiated at the desk, and furnished me with a billet de voyage to Moscow.
In the waiting room a hundred or more persons were gathered. The men were well wrapped in furs, and among the ladies hoods were more numerous than bonnets. Three-fourths of the males and a third of the females were smoking cigarettes, and there was no prohibition visible. In accordance with the national taste the chief article sold at the buffet was hot tea in tumblers.
Some one uttered “Sibeerski” as, clad in my dehar, I walked past a little group. To keep up appearances and kill time I drank tea, until the door opened and a rush was made for the train. There is an adage in Germany that three kinds of people—fools, princes, and Americans—travel first class. To continue Russian pretences, and by the advice of a friend, I took a second class ticket, and found the accommodation better than the average of first class cars in America.
How strange was the sensation of railway travel! Since I last experienced it, I had journeyed more than half around the globe. I had been tossed on the Pacific and adjacent waters, had ascended the great river of northern Asia, had found the rough way of life along the frozen roads beyond the Baikal, and ended with that long, long ride over Siberian snows. I looked back through a long vista of earth and snow, storm and sunshine, starlight and darkness, rolling sea and placid river, rugged mountains and extended plains.
The hardships of travel were ended as I reached the land of railways, and our motion as we sped along the track seemed more luxurious than ever before. Contrasted with the cramped and narrow sleigh, pitching over ridges and occasionally overturning, the carriage where I sat appeared the perfection of locomotive skill. How sweet is pleasure after pain. Sunshine is brightest in the morning, and prosperity has a keener zest when it follows adversity. To be truly enjoyed, our lives must be chequered with light and shadow, and varied with different scenes.
The railway between Nijne Novgorod and Moscow is about two hundred and fifty miles in length, and was built by French and Russian capital combined. There is only one passenger train each way daily, at a speed not exceeding twenty miles an hour.
In the compartment where I sat there was a young French woman, governess in a family at Simbirsk, with a Russian female servant accompanying her. The governess was chatty, and invited me to join her in a feast of bon-bons, which she devoured at a prodigious rate. The servant was becomingly silent, and solaced herself with cigarettes. The restaurants along the road are quite well supplied, especially those where full meals are provided. Two hours after starting we halted ten minutes for tea and cigarettes. Two hours later we had thirty minutes for supper, which was all ready at our arrival. About midnight we stopped at the ancient city of Vladimir, where there is a cathedral founded in the twelfth century. Stepping from the train to get a night glimpse of the place, I found a substantial supper (or breakfast) spread for consumption. In justice to the Russians, I am happy to say very few patronized this midnight table.
At daybreak I rubbed the frost from a window and looked upon a stretch of snow and frost, with peasant cottages few and far between. An hour later, our speed slackened. Again cleaning the glass and peering through it, a large city came in sight.
It was Moscow,—“Holy Moscow,”—the city of the Czars, and beloved of every Russian. Suffering through Tartar, Polish, and French occupations, it has survived pillage, massacre, fire, and famine, and remains at this day the most thoroughly national of the great cities of the empire. The towers and domes of its many churches glittered in the morning sunlight as they glittered half a century ago, when Napoleon and his soldiers first climbed the hills that overlook the city.
It was a long drive from the station to the hotel. The morning was clear and cold, and the snow in the streets had been ground into a sand-like mass several inches deep. The solid foundation beneath was worn with hollows and ridges, that vividly recalled the oukhabas of the post road. Streets were full of sleds and sleighs, the latter dashing at a rapid rate. In the region near the station there were so many signs of ‘Trakteer’ as to suggest the possibility of one half the inhabitants selling tea, beer, and quass to the other half. Near the center of the city the best shops displayed signs in French or English, generally the former.
Of course I went early to the Kremlin. Who has ever read or talked of Moscow without its historic fortress? Entering by the Sacred Gate, I lifted my hat in comformity to the custom, from which not even the emperor is exempt. One of my school-books contained a description of the Czar Kolokol, or Great Bell, and stated that a horse and chaise could pass through the hole where a piece was broken from one side. Possibly the miniature vehicle of Tom Thumb could be driven through, but, certainly, no ordinary one-horse shay could have any prospect of success. The hole is six feet in height, by about a yard wide at the bottom, and narrows like a wedge toward the top. The height and diameter of the bell are respectively nineteen feet four inches by twenty feet three inches. It weighs 444,000 pounds. It was cast in 1733, by order of the Empress Anne, and the hole in its side was made by the falling of some rafters during a fire in 1737. It remained buried in the ground until 1836, when it was raised and placed on its present pedestal by order of the Emperor Nicholas.