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THE

ENGLISHWOMAN IN RUSSIA.

CHAPTER I.

Samoïdes

Aspect of the Dwina - Crosses erected by the peasants - Sunset in the
North - Russian boats and barks Boatmen Their cargoes
Solombol Shallowness of the river - Archangel
Their mode of living - A visit to their Tchume, or encampment
Reindeer and sledges - Samoïde bridegroom A wedding-feast
The Samoïde costume Their ideas of the Supreme Being
A keepsake Catching a reindeer - Manner of eating - Strange

custom.

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"By the quarter seven" sang out the musical voice of the sailor who was engaged in heaving the lead. I hastened on deck, and found we were crossing the bar at the mouth of the Dwina. I looked around on the banks of the broad but shallow river; they were flat and marshy, abounding in brushwood and stunted firs, small birch-trees, with here and there an ash, the coral berries of which served to enliven the mass of green foliage. There were some cleared spaces, which, at a distance, with the setting sun shining full upon them, appeared like verdant lawns, but were, in fact, only sheets of morass, of which, indeed, the whole province of Archangel mainly consists. Here and there, amongst the sombre and interminable forests, I descried, far distant

B

from every human habitation, a solitary Greek cross, erected by some pious peasant or grateful fisherman, on his escape from danger. Contrary as such are to our more spiritual creed, yet I confess that I never could gaze unmoved on the holy symbol of our faith, thus made an offering from a simple and devoted heart. Many and many a time, during my long journeys through hundreds of versts* of the forest-land and sandy plains of Russia, have I felt cheered by this sign of a belief and church that we (because we are happily more enlightened) are too apt to condemn ; yet our ancestors, to whom the Russians, in their present state, may be compared, did not find it an useless symbol to awaken sentiments of religion in their breasts.

The evening was beautiful, and the sunset magnificent! the sky and river, the forest, the distant ocean, and the whole landscape, seemed wrapped in a flood of crimson light; every object was as perfectly distinct as in broad day, the only difference being that there was no shadow. The native barks glided calmly past us, strangelooking things, gaudily painted with red, black, and yellow designs, on the rough wood. Their clumsy vanes resembled those on Chinese junks; some were in the form of a serpent, others in that of a fish, a griffin, or some fabulous creature or other, and decorated with streamers of scarlet, all fluttering in the slight breeze that swept down the stream. The heavy one-masted vessels,

* A verst is about five furlongs. A verst and a half, with the addition of six yards, makes a mile.

with their large square sails, reminded me of the old pictures of the Saxon boats some thousand years ago. The boatmen are fine-looking men, of the real and pure Russian race, uncontaminated by uncontaminated by a mixture with the Tartar blood, of which there are so many traces in the middle provinces. Their dress is picturesque, and serves greatly to enliven the landscape; their gaily-coloured shirts show off to much advantage their sturdy forms; their costume, their manly beards, fair complexions, and light flaxen hair, might cause us almost to imagine that we were gazing on the men of Hengist and Horsa, who lived years and years ago; they were singing a monotonous and sad yet pleasing air, as they walked to and fro the whole length of their bark, propelling it with their long poles through the shallow part of the river. Their cargoes consist of articles of which the odour is not savoury, such as tallow, sheepskins, and hides in the raw state evil awaits the nose of him who stands to leeward.

I landed at Solombol, which is the port of Archangel, as vessels of any considerable burthen cannot proceed so far up the river as the city, on account of the shallowness of the water.

Archangel, although the capital of the province, and the chief port in the north of Russia, by no means answers the expectations of a foreigner who has seen it only in the large letters printed on the map: it was (for it has since been burnt down) a long straggling street of dismal-looking wooden houses, mostly painted dark gray or black, with the window-frames and doors of a staring white; the only buildings that were tolerable were (as is

commonly the case in Russian provincial towns) the government offices, the gymnasium, and the churches. A more wretched place dignified by the name of city it is impossible to conceive; but we comforted ourselves with the reflection that we should not remain long in it, a few months at the utmost, when we calculated upon bidding adieu to it for ever; we therefore determined upon philosophically bearing all the désagrémens which we might be condemned to meet with. It contained, at the time of which I am writing, about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, including the foreigners (mostly Germans) and the government authorities, but it was a miserably dull place. In the winter, which lasts about eight months of the year, we lived almost entirely by candlelight, our monotonous existence only varied by a drive in the sledge, or a stiff formal ball at the governor's of the province, in which our sole amusement was staring at the uniforms, bowing to his excellency, and eating bonbons. I do not know how we should have got through the dreary winter, had we not been cheered by the consolation that summer would come some time or other, though it appeared distant enough in the prospect as we walked out during the short hour of daylight, or rather twilight, in the middle of the day; when we made ourselves still more miserable by continually conversing of the daisied meadows and shady lanes, the forest glades and pretty flowers of "merry England." Not only did we suffer terribly from mal de pays, that extreme longing for home that amounts to a malady, but the heaviness of the sky seemed to affect the mind, as if the excessive cold had frozen all one's energies. It appeared of no use strug

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