These mountaineers are small, agile, and muscular. There is no saying how they walk, for their life is passed on horseback. There is in the expression of their countenances, an inconceivable mixture of boldness, frankness, and fierce rapacity. Their bronzed complexion, dazzlingly white teeth, black eyes, every glance of which is a flash of lightning, and regular features, compose a physiognomy that terrifies more than great ugliness.
Their manœuvres surpass every thing an European can imagine. How cold, prim, and faded seem our civilised ways compared with those impassioned countenances, those picturesque costumes, those furious gallops, that grace and impetuosity of movement, that belong only to them. They discharge their carbines on horseback at full speed, and display inimitable address in the exercise of the djereed. Every rider decks his steed with a care he does not always bestow on his own adornment, covering it with carpets, strips of purple stuffs, cashmere shawls, and all the costly things with which the plunder of the caravans can supply him.
The manœuvres lasted more than two hours, and afforded us an exact image of Asiatic warfare. They concluded with a general mêlée, which really terrified not a few spectators, so much did the smoke, the shouts, the ardour of the combatants, the discharges of musketry, and the neighings of the horses complete the vivid illusion of the scene. It was at last impossible to distinguish any thing through the clouds of dust and smoke that whirled round the impetuous riders.
Paskevitch will perhaps be more embarrassed with them than he expects. From the moment these lions of the desert arrived, the town was in a state of revolution. The shopkeepers complained of their numerous thefts, and husbands and fathers were shocked at their cavalier manners towards the fair sex.
Though it was but the beginning of June, the heat had attained an intensity that made it literally a public calamity. The hospitals were crowded with patients, most of them labouring under cerebral fevers, a class of affections exceedingly dangerous in this country. The dust lay so thick in the street, that the foot sank in it as in snow, and for more than a fortnight the thermometer had remained invariably at 84° R. You have but to visit Russia to know what is the heat of the tropics. We nevertheless carried away not a few agreeable recollections of Iekaterinoslav, thanks to its charming position, and some distinguished salons of which it has reason to be proud.
On leaving Iekaterinoslav we proceeded to the famous cataracts of the Dniepr, on which attempts have been ineffectually made for more than a hundred years to render them navigable, and in the vicinity of which there are several German colonies.
My husband having in the preceding year discovered a rich iron mine in this locality, we had to stop some time to make fresh investigations. I have already spoken so much of the Dniepr, that I am almost afraid to return to the subject. In this part of its course, however, there is nothing like the maritime views of Kherson, the plavnicks of the Doutchina, or the cheerful bold aspect of the vicinity of Iekaterinoslav. Near the cataracts, the river has all the depth and calmness of a beautiful lake; not a ripple breaks its dark azure surface. Its bed is flanked by huge blocks of granite, that seem as though they had been piled up at random by the hands of giants. Every thing is grand and majestic in these scenes of primeval nature; nothing in them reminds us of the flight and the ravages of time. There are no trees shedding their leaves on the river's margin, no turf that withers, no soil worn away by the flood: the scene is an image of eternal changelessness.
The Dniepr has deeps here which no plummet has ever fathomed, and the inhabitants allege that it harbours real marine monsters in its abysses. All the fishermen have seen the silurus, a sort of fresh water shark, capable of swallowing a man or a horse at a mouthful, and they relate anecdotes on this head, that transport you to the Nile or the Ganges, the peculiar homes of the voracious crocodile and alligator. One of these stories is of very recent date, and there are many boatmen who pretend to speak of the fact from personal knowledge. They positively aver, that a young girl, who was washing linen on the margin of the water, was carried down to the bottom of the Dniepr, and that her body never again rose to the surface.
A German village is visible on the other side of the river, at some distance from the house of Mr. Masure, the proprietor of the mine. Its pretty red factories with their green window-shutters, the surrounding forest, and a neighbouring island with cliffs glistening in the sun, fill the mind with thoughts of tranquil happiness. On the distant horizon the eye discerns the rent and pointed rocks, and the fleecy spray of the cataracts. Here and there some rocks just rising above the water, one of which, surnamed the Brigand, is the terror of boatmen, are the haunts of countless water-fowl, whose riotous screams long pursue the traveller as he ferries across from bank to bank. All this scene is cheerful and pastoral, like one of Greuze's landscapes; but the bare hills that follow the undulations of the left bank show only dreariness and aridity.
The Germans settled below the cataracts of the Dniepr are the oldest colonists of Southern Russia: their colony was founded by Catherine II., in 1784, after the expulsion of the Zaporogue Cossacks, who were removed to the banks of the Kouban. It is composed solely of Prussian Mennonites, and comprises sixteen villages, numbering 4251 inhabitants, very industrious people, generally in the enjoyment of an ample competence. Corn and cattle form the staple of their wealth, but they are also manufacturers, and have two establishments for making cotton goods, and one for cloth. These Mennonites, however, have remained stationary since their arrival in Russia: full of prejudices, and intensely self-willed, they have set their faces against all innovation and all intellectual development. One of their villages stands on the island of Cortetz, in the Dniepr, once the seat of the celebrated Setcha of the Zaporogue Cossacks. The Setcha, as the reader is perhaps aware, was at first only a fortified spot, where the young men were trained to arms, and where the public deliberations and the elections of the chiefs were held. Afterwards it became the fixed abode of warriors who lived in celibacy; and all who aspired to a reputation for valour were bound to pass at least three years there. I went over the island of Cortetz, and saw everywhere numerous traces of fortifications and entrenched camps. It would not have been easy to select a position more suited to the purpose the Cossacks had in view. The island is a natural fortress, rising more than 150 feet above the water, and defended on all sides by masses of granite, that leave scarcely any thing for art to do to render it impregnable.
We made our first halt, after our departure from the cataracts, at the house of a village superintendent, in whom we discovered, with surprise, a young Frenchman, with the most Parisian accent I ever heard. He is married to a woman of the country, and has been two years prigatchik (superintendent) in one of General Markof's villages. He placed his whole cabin at our disposal, with an alacrity that proved how delighted he was to entertain people from his native land. We had excellent honey, cream, and water-melons, set before us in profusion; but in spite of all our urgent entreaties, we could not prevail on him to partake with us. This made a painful impression on us. Is the air of slavery so contagious that no one can breathe it without losing his personal dignity? This man, born in a land where social distinctions are almost effaced, voluntarily degraded himself in our eyes, by esteeming himself unworthy to sit by our side, just as though he were a born serf, and had been used from his childhood to servility.
He gave us a brief history of his life, a melancholy tissue of disappointments and wretchedness, the narration of which deeply affected us. His ardour and his Parisian wilfulness, his efforts and his hopes, all the exuberance of his twenty years, were cast into a withering atmosphere of disgusts and humiliations, which at last destroyed in him all feeling of nationality: he is become a slave through his intercourse alike with the masters and with the serfs; and what completely proves this, is the cold-blooded cruelty with which he chastises the peasants under him. The whole village is struck with consternation at the punishments he daily inflicts for the most trivial offences. While he was conversing with us, word was brought him that two women and three men had arrived at the place of punishment in pursuance to his orders. Notwithstanding our entreaties, and the repugnance we felt at being so near such a scene, he ordered that they should each receive fifty blows of the stick, and double the number if they made any resistance. The wretched man thus avenges himself on the mujiks, for what he has himself endured at the hands of the Russian aristocracy, and it is at best a hazardous revenge; even for his own sake he ought not to exasperate the peasants,