a sensible and practical view of the by the inferences to be gleaned from condition, character, and disposition them, we must consider the Russians of the population; and is happy in a contented and flourishing nation, his detection and indication of na- likely to make the larger strides in tional peculiarities. He does not, civilization that they are unimpeded like the majority of travellers in by revolutionary agitation. ProRussia, enter the country with a pagandists meet little encouragesettled determination to behold no- ment amongst the loyal and light thing from the White Sea to the Black, but oppression and cruelty on the one hand, slavery and suffering upon the other. He does not come to a premature decision, that be hearted subjects of the autocrat. "We have often observed at Moscow," says Mr. Erman, "birch trees hewn for fencing, yet still alive in the horizontal position, and throwing out cause Russia is ruled by an abso- shoots. The great distinction of lute monarch, all happiness, prosperity, the vegetable nature in this region is and justice are essentially banished its tenacity of life; and singularly from the land. It is really pleasant enough, the same capability of exto find a deviation from the established isting under oppression, and of routine of books about Russia. These withst a of obstinate adherence to established usage may be plainly recognised as a fundamental principle. Some foreign customs, indeed, are adopted from strangers residing at Moscow; but they, are, at the same time, so changed as to be assimilated to the national withstanding stubbornly every revoare now nearly all concocted upon one lutionizing influence, is here the and the same plan. The recipe is as characteristic of man also. The ear exact as any in Mrs. Rundell; and is of the stranger is sure, at every turn as conscientiously adhered to by of conversation, to catch the sounds literary cooks, as that great artist's - Kak ni bud,' (no matter how), invaluable precepts are by knights with which the Russians are used to and ladies of the ladle. Tyranny, give expression to their habitual inmisery, and the knout are the chief difference, and renunciation of all ingredients of the savoury dish. care. Notwithstanding the We are shown nation of cretins, great variety condition which the crushed under the boot-heel of an im- population exhibit, everything has perial ogre; whilst a selfish, servile the stamp of nationality, and an aristocracy salaam their admiration, and catch greedily at the titles and gewgaws thrown to them as a sop by their terrible master. This is the substance of the mess, which, being handsomely garnished with lying anecdotes of horrible cruelties practised upon the unfortunate population, manners. Russian nationality may is deemed sufficiently dainty to set be compared to a river, which receives before the public, and is forthwith other streams without changing its devoured as genuine and nutritive food by the large body of simpletons who take type for a guarantee of veracity. Mr. Erman despises the common trick and claptrap resorted by vulgar writers. Avoiding anecdotage, and abuse of the powers that be, he gives, in brief shrewd paragraphs, glimpses of Muscovite character and feelings, which clearly prove the people of that vast empire to be far happier, more prosperous, and more practically free than the inhabitants of many countries who boast of liberty because anarchy has replaced good government. Judging to name; or, still better, to a living organism, which, while devouring every variety of food, continues still the same." It was on the 29th of July that Mr. Erman, who travelled in company with the Norwegian professor Hansteen, left Moscow and moved eastwards, passing through a productive country, strewn with populous and comfortable villages. At Pokrof his first halting-place, his chamber walls were adorned with rude carvings and paintings, whose subjects were taken from the events of 1812, and represented the valiant deeds of the miles east of Moscow was the farthest point to which the French penetrated. less from any distinct assertions or peasantry. Buikova, a village forty arguments advanced in these volumes, than from their general tenor, and Their invasion has left but a faint position with the elegant luxuries and impression upon the popular mind in superfluities of extreme European Russia-even in Moscow, which suffered so much at their hands. Conflagrations have been common occurrences in that city, and the inhabitants are accustomed to be burned out. We read of seven such events, from the thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, in all of which the destruction was complete, or very nearly so. The fire of 1812 spared of camel's-down from Bokhara. The civilization. The clumsy carvings of Uralian peasants are found in the next warerooms to the fragile and fashionable masterpieces of a Parisian milliner. The chief part of the goods come from great distances. Amongst the important articles of traffic are tea from China, horse-hides from Tatary, iron bars from Siberia, shawls Bokharians also import large quantities of cotton, partiy raw and partly spun. This is one of the principal many of the stone churches, on whose towers "the Mahomedan crescent rises above the cross, a monument of earlier revolutions. The yoke of the objects of trade at Nijni. ConcernTartars was so lasting and oppressive, ing the origin of this useful subthat later events of a similar kind stance, curious fables were current in seem comparatively unimportant; Russia not quite a century ago. "It and even the French invasion is here appears to me certain," says Mr. Erthought little of, being usually com- man, "that the story of the zoophytic pared with the irruptions of the plant called Baránez, or lamb-plant Pechenegues and that of the Poles in (formed as a diminutive from Barán, later times, but never set on a level a sheep),, originated in some embelwith the Tartar domination." The lished account of the cotton plant. French have little prestige in Russia. Herberstein relates it at full length Whatever respect they previously and unchanged, just as he had heard it. enjoyed there, was completely annihilated by the pitiful figure they cut in the Moscow campaign; retreating, as they did, a ragged, disorderly, frostbitten remnant, before a swarm of armed peasants and irregular horse. And Muscovite sign-painters and saintcarvers decorate village walls with episodes of the disastrous overthrow of an army, probably the most powerful and really efficient ever got together. Any notion entertained by the Russians of French invincibility was as completely dissipated in that country by the events of 1812, as it was in Germany by the ensuing, and scarcely less important, campaign of 1813. There has been seen, near to the Caspian Sea, a seed, rather larger and rounder than that of a melon, from which, when set in the ground, is produced something similar to a lamb, of the altitude of five palms, having a very fine fleece, &c., &c. The German edition of Herberstein (Basel, 1563) adds that the Baránez has a head, eyes, ears, and all the limbs, like a sheep. But it mentions correctly "the very fine fleece which the people of that country commonly make use of to pad their caps withal. This is the ordinary use which the Tatar tribes in general make of cotton at the present day." The fair at Nijni lasts two months, and brings together six hundred thousand persons of different nations and tribes, or about thirty-three times the number of the stationary population. It produces a large revenue to the imperial treasury, -the letting of the wooden booths, and of two thousand five hundred and twenty-two stone storerooms, each of which latter is attached a Passing Murom, where a sort of Yankee tradition exists of a "robbernightingale," which entices travellers into the woods by its song, and then kills them by the power of its notes, Mr. Erman reached Nijni Novgorod at the moment of the great annual fair. The mixture of European and Asiatic produce and manufactures gives the Russian fairs an appearance singularly striking to the foreigner's eye. Things chamber for the owner of the goods the most opposite are there brought to live in), alone yielding, so far back together. Obrasá, or Greek holy as 1825, nearly four hundred thousand images, amulets, and other objects rubles; whilst the population of the used in the solemnities of the Græco- government, or district, amounting to Russian church, are seen in juxta- nearly a million of souls, paid taxes (to to the amount of fourteen millions of rubles. Nijni Novgorod is the point of ren dezvous for criminals from the western provinces of the empire, condemned to Siberian exile. They arrive there in small detachments, to pursue their journey in large bodies. In the vicinity of every post-honse along the road is another building known as the Ostrog or fort, which is merely a large barrack divided into numerous year or other limited period. Those of the peasant class have to support themselves, whilst offenders of a higher rank, and unused to manual labour, have an allowance made them by the government. In various places Mr. Erman met with exiles, from some of whom he obtained curious information. They are usually known by the mild name of "the unfortunates," and are held in no particular disfavour by the natives, with whose families small chambers, and surrounded by a they intermarry. By a remarkable fence of palisades, where the convicts enactment of the Russian law, serfs, are lodged upon the journey. From when transported to Siberia, become various passages scattered through in all respects as free as the peasants Mr. Erman's book, it appears that in western Europe. Mr. Erman re-. these Siberian exiles are by no means fers to this with strong approval, and so badly treated as has frequently been stated and believed. In most instances the punishment derives its severity less from any painful toil or cruel discipline imposed upon them, than from the rigidity of the climate, the separation from friends, and the mortal ennui those accustomed to civilization and society cannot but experience, whilst leading the monotonous life of a peasant or Cossack in regions as dreary as any the globe's surface affords. The first caravan of prisoners encountered by Mr. Erman, at about a hundred versts beyond Nijni, were well clothed and cared for, and seemed neither dissatisfied with their past journey, nor overwhelmed with care about the future. "With every train of them are several wagons, drawn by post-horses, to carry the women and the old and infirm men; the rest follow in pairs, in a long train, after the wagons, escorted by a militia established in the villages. It is but rarely that one sees special offenders with fetters upon their legs during the march." The majority of tales circulated by romancing travellers, with reference to Siberian exile, have little foundation save in the imagination of the narrators. Amongst these fictions is to be reckoned the statement that certain classes of the banished are compelled to pass their lives in hunting the sable, and other animals. The great majority of the delinquents are attributes to it the happiest results. "I have often," he says, " heard intelligent and reflecting Russians mention, as an almost inexplicable paradox, that the peasants condemned to become settlers, all, without exception, and in a very short time, change their habits and lead an exemplary life; yet it is certain that the sense of the benefit conferred on them by the gift of personal freedom is the sole cause of this conversion. Banishment subservient to colonization, instead of close imprisonment, is, indeed, an excellent feature in the Russian code; and though the substitution of forced labour in mines for the punishment of death may be traced back to Grecian example, yet the improving of the offenders' condition by bestowing on him personal freedom, is an original as well as an admirable addition of a Russian legislator." It is of course by the higher class of exiles that the banishment is most severely felt; but these live in the towns, that the succour received from government may reach them the more easily, and submit, for the most part, with great equanimity to the startling change from the luxury of Moscow or St. Petersburg, to the dullness and simplicity of Tobolsk, and even of worse places. Some of them have to do penance in church for a certain time after their arrival, and a portion of these continue the practice when it is no longer compulsory. At Beresov, condemned only to settle in Siberia; a town in western Siberia, which Mr. and when hard labour in the Uralian Erman passed through on an excurmines, and in certain manufactories, sien northwards from Tobolsk, the is superadded, it is generally for a oral chronicles of the inhabitants furnish curious details of the nume- katerinburg, the northern limit of rous illustrious exiles who have there their residence, gives curious partiended their days. Menchikoff, the culars. They are the only aboriginal well-known favourite of Peter I., was Siberian tribe whose mode of life one of these. "After his political extinction, he prepared himself, by devout penitence, for his natural decease. He worked with his own hands in erecting the little wooden church, now fallen to decay, which stands thirty or forty feet above the bank of the Sosva, at the southern extremity of the town: he then served in it as bell-ringer, and was finally buried by the grateful inhabitants of Beresov, immediately before the door of the building." It was here, at Beresov, that Mr. Erman fell in with a number of unlucky conspirators, who had lost fortune, rank, and home, by their association in a recent abortive revolutionary attempt. Amongst them were a M. Gorski, at one time a count and general of cavalry, and the ex-chieftains Focht and Chernilov. They usually wore the costume of the country, but upon holidays they donned European coats, in order to display the vestiges of the orders which had once been sewed upon them. A curious instance of vanity, traceable, perhaps, to a desire to distinguish themselves from persons condemned to the same punishment for crimes of a more disgraceful nature. regularly alternates from the nomadic to the fixed. Their winters are passed in permanent villages of wooden huts, erected usually upon the skirt of a forest. But when spring approaches, they collect their flocks and herds, strap hair tent-cloths upon their saddles, and are off to the plains. They appear to live upon horseback, and are indolent, indocile, and useless out of the saddle. The only thing the men do, is to drive home the mares at milking-time; all other domestic toil is left to the women. And although grass abounds in the summer pastures, hay is unknown amongst them. The cattle sustain life in winter as best they may, on stunted or decayed herbage, sought under the snow and gathered on the dunghills. Fermented mare's milk is the favourite drink of the Bashkirs, who live chiefly upon mutton and fish, and upon the fruit of the bird-cherry (Prunus padus) kneaded into a sort of cake. In the chase they make use of hawks, which they are particularly skilful in training. The smaller species of these birds are used to take hares, whilst the greater will strike foxes, and even wolves. The roving careless life of the Bashkirs possesses a peculiar charm, admitted even by the civilized Russians; and it is with no good will that, on the return of winter, the tribes reenter their settled habitations. "They approach them with reluctance, and believe that Shaitan, or the evil spirit, has taken up his abode in the huts that oppress them with such a sense of restraint. The men accordingly remain at some distance from the settlement, and send the women forward, armed with staves, with which they strike the door of every hut, uttering loud imprecations; and it is In the streets of Yekaterinburg, the first town of importance after crossing the Asian boundary, parties of exiles are a frequent spectacle; the number passing through in a year being estimated at five thousand, or about two-fifths of the annual export of convicts to Siberia, as stated by Mr. Stepanov, whose statement, however, Mr. Erman seems disposed to consider exaggerated. The detachments are usually guarded by Kosaks of the Ural, and by a company of Bashkir militia. These Uralian Kosaks are well uniformed, armed, and mounted, and not till they have made the rounds enjoy the same privileges as the with their noisy exorcisms, that the Kosaks of the Don. They are allowed men ride forward at full speed and an immunity from every impost, but with terrific shouts, to banish the are bound to devote themselves to dreaded demon from his lurkingthe public service. Touching the place." The chief weapon of these Bashkirs, another irregular and half- Bedouins of the north is the same savage militia, serving to swell the which so forcibly excited Captain ranks of Russia's enormous army, Mr. Dalgetty's risibility upon his visit to Erman, who made some stay at Ye- the Children of the Mist. But al though in these days of Paixhans and was the commencement of October, percussion, bows and arrows cer- the period of transition from summer tainly appear rather anomalous, they to winter, and the traveller's entrance are by no means contemptible weapons into the town was rendered memorin the hands of some of the Siberian able by a heavy fall of snow-" white tribes. Of this Mr. Erman had flies," as the postillions called the abundant opportunity to convince flakes, which they beheld with much himself, especially when his ramble pleasure. Their satisfaction was pronorthwards from Tobolsk brought bably owing to the fact that in him amongst the Ostyaks of the river Siberia the coldest part of the year is Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons the most favourable for travelling, of these people are bows six feet long, a matter of interest to people of of very slight curve, and from which their profession. But the moment of transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter, when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it, is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter, as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads); and the Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow obstructs wheeled carriages, and forbids the use of the sledge; and, unless peremptorily compelled to move four-feet arrows are discharged with murderous effect. Much practice and strength are required to draw these bows; and our scientific traveller, who, not having taken the necessary precaution of shielding the left arm with a piece of horn, from the recoil of the string, had been unable to draw his bow to more than one-third of the arrow's length, was not a little astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy, with sore eyes and a sickly aspect, send a blunt arrow one hundred and forward, the Russian merchants-the sixty feet, and strike the object aimed most experienced of Siberian travellers at, the stem of a larch, near its sum--await, in some convenient resting. mit, fully sixty feet from the ground. place, the hardening of the winter Blunt arrows, headed with flattened iron balls, are used to kill sables and squirrels, that the skin may not be injured; the sharp ones are a settler for any quadruped the country produces. road. From Mr. Erman's account, a better place than Tobolsk could scarcely be found, in those wild regions, wherein to pass a few weeks of compulsory inaction. Nevertheless, and although cordially received by the After many days' journey through governor-general, Velyaminov, from Tatar villages of wooden huts, and whom, and from other Russian offitowns that are little better, the first cers, he got much useful information, view of Tobolsk, obtained some miles our traveller was impatient to be off. before reaching the place, is quite im- He had a pet scheme in view. From posing; and the traveller, who might the very commencement of the journey think he had got a few stages beyond he had planned an excursion to the civilization, is cheered and encouraged mouth of the Obi, within the Arctic by the sight of church-towers, lofty circle. To this he was partly induced monasteries, and well-built houses. by the desire of tracing certain magIn vain does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master, who recommends him to the hospital ity of an inhabitant, by whom he is made welcome during his stay, with out demand for remuneration, although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this manner Mr. Erman and his companions, were accommodated in the upper story of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It salmon and caviare, were stowed in a netic lines, and partly by "the alluring prospect of enjoying, on the northern part of the Obi, the first undisturbed intercourse with the aboriginal possessors of the land, where they are little changed by foreign influence." Accordingly, towards the middle of November, the drifting ice upon the Irtuish having united into a solid sheet, Mr. Erman joyfully made final preparations for his journey to Obdorsk. They were few, and soon completed. A Kosak guide and intrepreter, a fur dress, a copper kettle, bread and ham, salted |