The Virgin of Kazan—Russian manner of expressing disapproval—Dining with a grandee—His description of the enfranchisement of the serfs—The Tartars—Journey in a sledge—Caravan of exiles—The Votiaks—Aspect of European Russia.

The city of Kazan is not situated on the banks of the Volga. It stands at the distance of at least half a mile from the left bank of this river.

The day after we arrived here, Constantine introduced me to one of his old college companions, a young man who had just finished his studies in medicine at the university of Kazan. Being desirous of seeing Kazan and its neighbourhood, and this young medical man knowing them well, I begged him to become my guide, which he most courteously consented to do.

We first went to the university, which is celebrated; then to the cathedral, which interested me very much. Its style is different from the Byzantine—a style that obtrudes so often on the eye of the stranger in Russia that he at last gets tired of it; but this cathedral reminds one of certain portions of the ancient Kremlin, and is evidently a construction of a remote period. Its paintings are very crude, as in the early stages of the art, though well-executed specimens of the epoch. Another object that attracted my attention was the high altar in massive silver.

Then we went on a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Kazan, the patron saint of travellers. This virgin was formerly left hanging on a tree in the middle of the forest. There she performed wonderful miracles amid the awestruck peasantry, who made long pilgrimages to obtain pardon of their sins and find favour in her sight. One of the chief bishops of Kazan, touched at her exposure in so wild a spot, ordered her to be conducted to the cathedral, that she might be honoured in a sanctuary worthy of her merits. But on the day following the ceremony the lady excited the greatest wonder and admiration by returning herself to her accustomed place in the forest. It was in vain they led her back three times in a grand procession to the city; for the repeated miracle of her return just as often clearly indicated her will and pleasure. Since the lady would not go to a church, a church was obliged to come to the lady, and one accordingly came, or rather rose, on this privileged spot, and then followed in its wake a monastery which became, after that of TroÏtsa, one of the richest in Russia. Then later habitations of the devoted began to cluster around, and now the Virgin of Kazan, whether she likes it or not, is shut up in a city.

This wonderful virgin, the reader will understand, is a little picture, pretty well executed in the Byzantine style and of great antiquity.

As I wished to see this treasure, we went there and sent to the abbess to obtain permission to visit it; but, to my disappointment and vexation, it was refused. This was the only occasion on which doors were closed against me whenever I presented myself, either in European Russia or Siberia, to gratify my curiosity in visiting any public building.

The young student who accompanied me was disgusted at the scrupulosity or ill-nature of the abbess, and manifested his feelings in a way more significant than delicate—a way quite common with Russians—by spitting with great energy repeatedly on the ground. But in spite of this unseemly reception of the abbess’s message, he was most respectful and courteous towards the nun who bore it, and we went away exchanging bows, as if she had conferred on us the highest favour.

This dainty habit of expressing disapproval or protestation by salivary effusion is so common and popular that it finds its way even into literature. It was here, just in this city, that I was present at a play wherein the author tried to represent as effectively as possible how far domestic quarrels might go in a household composed of members who were not very accommodating to one another. The representation was perfectly intelligible to me from beginning to end, notwithstanding my ignorance of the Russian language, simply because the best arguments employed by the leading characters in the play consisted principally in repetitions of this gesture, certainly far more expressive than delicate. And so far as regarded my young companion also, if anything would have withheld him from responding quite as demonstratively to the abbess herself on receiving her refusal, it would not have been any sentiment of reverence or scruples of piety, and for a very good reason: because the students of the university of Kazan pique themselves on being freethinkers.

But what is much more serious in the Russian territory is that they strain the theory of emancipation to embrace ideas of political liberty in its most liberal sense. The Government, however, knows how to suppress this excess of enthusiasm as soon as it manifests itself. At the time of the Polish insurrection, three students having a little too openly demonstrated their views, one was shot and the other two banished for life to the Siberian deserts.

The liberation of the serfs had naturally caused a great deal of bitter feeling towards the late Czar on the part of certain aristocratic landowners; and the Russian liberals have succeeded, in a great measure, in conciliating the latter by sympathizing with them in their imaginary wrong; thus it sometimes happens that nobles and liberals share the same hopes, and consequently draw closer to one another. With this spirit pervading these two classes, the reader will not be surprised to learn that I was introduced by a student of the university of Kazan to an important personage of the old Russian aristocracy.

He entertained me with an account of the enfranchisement of the serfs, and it was naturally from his own point of view; but since these views differ very widely among people with whom I have conversed on the subject, according to their interests or prejudices, I will give in his own words the opinion of this old Russian noble without making any comment on it. He thus began:

“Formerly all the Russian territory belonged to the nobles. The peasant, of course, was at the mercy of the lord on whose land he lived, and was obliged to give him a certain amount of work. The lord, however, never abused this privilege; on the contrary, he was in the habit of distributing every year among the peasantry a certain quantity of land to farm for their own benefit, as a recompense for their services. Under this arrangement, the peasant had an interest in working; he worked for his master, and the land consequently improved, and then he worked for himself, to obtain some comfort in his old age. The land under this system produced more, and the general prosperity could not fail to increase accordingly.

“But then the Czar, just like Louis XIV. in France, fearing the growing influence of the aristocracy, gave to the peasantry the lands they had hitherto merely farmed. The Emperor himself undertook to indemnify the lords, reserving to himself the right of receiving, in the form of a land tax, the established rents, which, in the absence of such a liberality,—a liberality more apparent than real—the peasant would have continued paying to his lord. Since that time, the lords, deprived of their authority, have almost all abandoned their lands; the peasantry discover that the profits of their lands are absorbed by the Imperial tax; and this tax, itself inequitably assessed, does not, without much difficulty, find its way into the coffers of the state. The consequence of this enfranchisement, accorded solely with the object of increasing the Czar’s authority, is an injury in the first place to the serfs, then to the nobility, and finally to the state.”

This noble, as it appears, would admit no advantage whatever. The most insignificant social changes, however just—and there are none now in Russia that are not—appeared to him in the light of iniquities.

In the presence of these retrograde views, the political creed of the most ardent French Legitimists would appear revolutionary.

I was very much entertained, nevertheless, the evening I passed with him, where the old Russian manners and habits were scrupulously observed. When we rose from the supper table each of the guests went up to the host and hostess to shake hands in token of gratitude, to which they replied in the prescribed form: “I beg you will excuse me for what God has this day given me to eat, when I have the honour to receive you.” And to this they added such compliments as: “À votre santÉ”; “Les absents n’ont pas toujours tort.” These complimentary customs, however amiable they may seem externally, lose a great deal of their sincerity when the motive that gives rise to them becomes apparent; and this undoubtedly is vanity, and especially the vain desire of exhibiting a little magnificence and expense. The real meaning of these fine phrases is: “I pray you to take notice that I have just offered myself a bottle of champagne, and the satisfaction it gives me in making you a witness of this luxurious habit surpasses any other pleasure I could possibly get out of it.”

The Tartar population that enlivens the streets of Kazan contributes very much to the picturesqueness of the city. Notwithstanding that they have been deprived of their territory ever since 1552, the Tartars can, with a very good grace, hold up their heads wherever they show themselves in Kazan, for they are not only the founders of the city, but they defended it with great bravery against their enemies, who captured it only after severe losses. After having made several bold sorties and repelled many desperate assaults, they courageously bore their sufferings from the want of water—a calamity the Russians inflicted on them by cutting off their communications with the Volga. When the last hope of victory died away the Tartar queen flung herself headlong from the top of the Sonnbec tower—a building which remains well preserved to the present day.

This interesting tower, from its combination of the minaret and the pagoda, reminds one of the people whose features are half Arab and half Mongol. It stands on a commanding eminence over the city, and forms certainly one of its most beautiful and attractive objects.

The Tartar harems are much less accessible than those of the Bosphorus or of Tunis, perhaps because Mahomedan fanaticism, in being here roused through impatience of Christian domination, has become all the more uncompromising. I therefore found it impossible to catch a glimpse of a single individual of these jealously guarded communities; and I was rather disappointed, because in judging from their lords, I had formed an idea that they must be very beautiful. The regularity and symmetry of features of the Arab race are associated in the Tartars with great muscular strength, and the dignified and haughty glance of a race impatient of conquest. This highly favoured physique is accompanied with moral attributes as elevated, and the Russians, however disdainfully they treat this people, have nevertheless adopted the proverb: “Honest and faithful as a Tartar.”

Kazan is the last European city on the road to Siberia that still preserves a European aspect, in so far as many of its houses are built of stone, and are ranged in streets of definite form. I was, therefore, getting impatient to quit it, and to see something of an Asiatic character.

Constantine and I went together to purchase a supply of eatables for our journey. We laid in a supply of sausages, some caviare, cheese, not forgetting white bread, which, when soaked in tea, is the principal part of the subsistence on a journey in Siberia. To venture on a journey in these parts, one should be neither a gourmet nor a gourmand. I have often been astonished to find how very little is necessary to sustain the human body, and wonder why we Frenchmen at home take so much trouble to give our stomachs so little rest and so much unnecessary work.

We went through the operation, for the second time, of getting into our three heavy fur garments, and on the 22nd of December, at four in the afternoon, we were gliding along again cosily, side by side, over the frozen snowy dust of the road leading to Siberia.

In order to go at a brisk rate in a sledge, it is necessary that the snow over which it is moving be well beaten down. Private sledges are not numerous enough to prepare a way by crushing the snow, so this work is done by sledges carrying goods; and since these follow in a line in the wake of one another, the beaten part of the road, on which one is desirous of gliding, is of very limited width. The consequence of this narrowness of the chosen way is that two sledges never pass without clashing against each other; nor are the yemschiks very solicitous about avoiding a collision, since they know perfectly well their own necks are quite safe, the long projecting wooden guards, which I have already described, being amply sufficient to protect them from danger. The sledges thus guarded whisk rapidly along one against the other, sometimes striking one another with a shock in which horses and sledge are thrown down and shot off at a tangent across the road.

The worst kind of these collisions is the shock from two sledges of unequal size: the larger of the two, being generally too heavy to be simply hurled aside by its adversary, as is the case with the lighter vehicle, is taken underneath and lifted instead, and occasionally high enough to be almost overturned.

But it is never a complete overthrow: the sledge thus thrown off or lifted slides along on a single skate and on the end of the long wooden guard, and they do not stop for so trifling a matter. The yemschik, unable to keep himself on an inclined plane without holding, hangs on to the apron and maintains his place by the sheer strength of his arms; the horses still go on at a gallop, and the travellers proceed three or even five hundred yards in this half-tilted posture till some rut in the road brings the sledge down again on both skates.

Each part of the road to Siberia has its special advantages and disadvantages, but the incidents just mentioned are of common occurrence when the wanderer no longer travels over a frozen river. The most disagreeable effect of this constant jolting, to an inexperienced traveller, is the want of sleep. During the whole night after we left Kazan I never closed my eyes a moment, whilst Constantine gave evident proofs of the soundness of his slumber by a prolonged sonorous snoring, equally uninterrupted whether he fell on me or I fell on him, crushing him even with all my weight.

I was bemoaning sadly within myself a long, tedious night, passed without sleep, when we came up at daybreak with a caravan of exiles. These poor wretches, dragging their chains afoot, were wearily trudging along, with a long journey before them, to the far end of Eastern Siberia. I had not at that time more pity for assassins and thieves than I have now, and since the day I passed the Russian frontier, conspirators have appeared to me no better, perhaps even worse; still it touched me to the heart to see these unhappy creatures, with a wearisome journey of three thousand leagues before them, and their fate too—if they lived to reach the end of the dreary march—instead of there finding a home to cheer them, to find nothing but a gaol!

A few sledges were following this caravan, and when I inquired why they thus accompanied it, I was briefly informed: “For the invalids and princes.” A phrase that had on reflection a great deal of meaning in it, and suggested very forcibly the formidable power of the Emperor in Russia, a sovereign power before which every subject, from the humblest serf to the highest prince of the realm, must bow down, with their differences almost lost in the equal degree of subjection.

The Emperor, in fact, may without trial condemn any subject to two years’ imprisonment, and even, if he thinks proper to do so, banish him for life.

It occurred to me, as I was watching these poor exiles, that there might be one innocent, and this thought would have made me very uneasy if I had not by this time become too good a Russian subject to venture to entertain it very long.

It is not at all an uncommon occurrence in Siberia to meet travellers afoot. I have seen, it is true, but very few women that recalled to my memory “the Siberian girl” of Xavier de Maistre; if I had, and our road had been in the same direction, I should have offered them perhaps a place in my sledge, just as the peasants of the Ural mountains compassionately helped the heroine, where she became so popular, to reach the end of her painful journey. But I have met men, very often in all kinds of weather and situations, trudging on foot, in spite of the snow and the intense cold, across a dreary extent of country where no human habitation could be seen, in order to reach some remote region with the hope of providing for a domestic want, to accomplish a pilgrimage, or to proceed to some destination under the coercion of the Government.

Amongst these was a young soldier on leave at home with his parents, and who had been ordered suddenly to join his regiment in garrison at Kazan. He was then in ill-health, but notwithstanding his feeble condition, he set off at once, and it might be said even with pleasure, because the will of the Emperor was in question. He was compelled to do so, they would tell me; no doubt he was: but the sentiment of obedience and loyalty is so deeply implanted in the Russian peasant, that he will submit to suffering without a murmur the half of which he would not undergo for any other personage than his sovereign.

When he had nearly come to his journey’s end, this brave young fellow, being no longer able to drag one foot after the other, and seized with giddiness and fainting, had wandered a few yards from the track beaten by the sledges, and there lay almost buried in the snow, the even surface of which had deceptively hidden a sudden fall in the ground. Just as I was passing by, a man of strange aspect had saved him from a terrible fate and was watching over him: this good Samaritan had a red beard and red hair under a thick shaggy fur cap; over his shoulder were slung a long bow and some arrows, and his feet were strapped on two long narrow planks of sufficient length to keep him whilst thus gliding over the snow from sinking into it, even at the spot where the young soldier was lying almost lost to sight in its ominous embrace.

As I had now gathered much information regarding the indigenous races, I recognized him almost at a glance to be a Votiak. With the aid of this good man, we helped the poor soldier on to a goods sledge, one of a file that fortunately happened to be passing at the moment, as if almost by a miracle. Having done this, we gave him some brandy to warm him, a little food, and then, being assured of his safety, we parted, each on our way.

I was much interested in examining this specimen of a race that has occupied the country, not only before the Russians, but before the Tartars. The Votiaks seem to have preserved all their ancient freedom, and they roam the intricate and boundless forests of Eastern Russia in pursuit of game, on which they subsist. I regretted almost the direction I had to take as I watched this Votiak disappearing gradually amid the trees like a spirit of the forest, careless of the rifts over which he passed without seeming to notice them, a mythological union of half beast and half man: externally, in colour and roughness of ways, a beast; and internally, in humanity and tender-heartedness, a man, as this act I have related proved him to be—a curious combination of savageness and sensibility. I would willingly have followed this man and have had the liberty to hunt, in his company, the deer, the wolf, and the bear, to study his simple manners and lead his strange life; but when I could not make without fatigue a simple excursion in a sledge, I felt on comparison humiliated at the thought of having so little power of endurance.

In 1774 the Votiaks were fifty-five thousand in number, and since this period no census has been taken. Many have been converted to Christianity, though a large number remain idolaters, and still practise the superstitious ceremonies of their worship in the depths of their forests.

Tents pitched at certain distances from each other, generally in some picturesque spot, covered with groups of pine and birch, serve them as a sanctuary; these tents have but one opening, and that always facing the south. They are entirely void of furniture or ornament.3

The Votiaks have three principal divinities: a Master and Supreme Lord of everything, called Inmar; a god that protects the land and the harvests; and a third god that has dominion over the waters. Inmar dwells in the sun, which is an object of their highest veneration.

The principal fÊte of the year is in the month of August, and then the grand priest known as Toua proceeds to one of the sanctuaries I have just mentioned, and there sacrifices, in due order, one after the other, a duck, a goose, a bull, and a horse. The horse should be chestnut, though in cases of necessity it may be of any other colour, except black. Afterwards the faithful have a repast on the flesh of these animals; then the Toua collects the blood and the fat, and, putting them into the stomachs, he burns them with a portion of the bones; the heads are hung up on a neighbouring pine, and the skins sold for the benefit of the high-priest.4

Before burying their dead the Votiaks wash them carefully and clothe them in rich ornaments. When they are about to close the grave they throw in a few pieces of silver, and say: “This ground is thine.” Finally, when a member of the family is dangerously ill, the parents are accustomed to sacrifice a black sheep.5 As these practices are always carried out in secret, it was not without much difficulty that Pallas and MÜller were able to penetrate the mysteries I have just mentioned.

It is the custom in Russia, whenever a new emperor mounts the throne, to oblige the Votiaks to take a fresh oath of fidelity. The ceremony is curious. They stretch a bear’s skin on the ground, and then lay on it an axe, a knife, and a bit of bread. Every Votiak cuts off a morsel of this bread, and, before eating it, recites this formula: “If I should not remain ever faithful to my sovereign during my life, or should I rebel against him with my free will and knowledge; if I neglect to perform the duties that are due to him, or if I offend him in any manner whatever—may a bear like this tear me to pieces in the heart of the forest, this bread choke me at once, this knife pierce my body, and this axe cut off my hand.” There is not an instance, says Gmelin, of a Votiak having violated his oath, although they have been so often persecuted on the ground of their religion. The road leading from Kazan to Perm passes through immense forests of evergreen trees. My journey through this region was attended with a degree of cold rather severe. The thermometer varied from twenty to thirty degrees below zero (Centigrade). At this temperature, a temperature not at all unusual in Siberia, it rarely happens that the least breeze comes to disturb the tranquillity of the atmosphere. All the trees of the forest were therefore almost perfectly at rest: the only movement perceptible from time to time was a branch bending down slowly to relieve itself from a too heavy burden of snow.

This complete silence—this all-pervading stillness of nature, in which she seems to repose from the terrible manifestations of her power, as in the tempest and in the billows of the ocean—is not without grandeur, and to the thoughtful, perhaps, if less imposing, is more solemn than her other phases. On the one side she presents to us vicissitude and transitoriness, and on the other unchangeableness and duration; the agitation and the turmoil of the one may, indeed, remind us more vividly of life, but the quiescence and sepulchral muteness of the other draw our thoughts nearer to eternity.

The aspect of Asiatic Russia produces on the mind an impression not dissimilar from that derived from contemplating the ocean, or the African desert, and this is immensity—mournful immensity.

To be lost amid this inhospitable, boundless space is not to pine away simply from hunger and thirst, as on the sands of the desert, with some prospect, however remote, of relief; here one dies pierced with cold to the marrow, lingering without hope; for what hope could exist to escape from a region interminable to the desponding eye, whose glacial temperature without movement means inevitable death?

With the muteness and unchanging aspect of these limitless wilds is associated another of a fantastic character, doubtless one of the causes of the all-pervading superstition of this country. In the depth of these forests, which may be called virgin forests—not that they are untrodden, for they are inhabited—the snow falls very unequally. Here and there enormous cedars preserve beneath their branches large bare spaces; and farther on the avalanches from weaker branches accumulate into high pyramids. On one side the wind rounds off the angularity, and on the other it is pierced by protruding branches of vigorous shrubs. It follows that the snow, thus heaped up in these spots, takes many irregular forms, which, to the excited imagination, may easily become terrifying, especially at approaching night, when these white phantoms stand forth from the mysterious obscurity under the spreading cedars.

When we dismounted at the end of our stage, there was a little adventure that made me blush, I must admit, for my French gallantry. We met here two women, who had been waiting the whole day long, till the posting master was pleased to give them horses to continue their journey. This autocrat had at last relented just before we came up; the horses were put in their sledge, and they were going to start at once, when Constantine presented our Crown podarojnaia order. “That is my last troÏka,” exclaimed the master of the relays; “I shall be obliged, I am sorry to say, to my great regret, to keep you waiting here——” “Take the horses out of that sledge,” said Constantine authoritatively, perfectly indifferent to the distressing embarrassment into which he had thrown these two poor travellers.

I did not clearly understand the affair at first, but I doubt whether, after having examined these two personages, my gallantry would have overruled my selfishness, for their departure or detention depended on the one or the other. If at night all cats are grey, in Siberia all women swaddled for a journey are uniformly unattractive; and the face, besides, is disfigured with a look of uncleanliness from intense and prolonged cold.

I do not know what Don Quixote would have done in the presence of these two Dulcineas: as it was quite impossible for me to follow them, the only alternative was to precede them.

The reader will soon learn what followed from this incident. I am ashamed to say I had the cowardice to approve, at least by my silence, Constantine’s decision; and we continued our journey, without any other adventure, as far as Perm, where we arrived on the 26th of December at daybreak.