Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

Л PICTURE OF RUSSIA.171

iu repair. Yesterday, before we broke down, I was praising tins road, which we were travelling at full gallop, to my feldjäger. " ^No doubt it is beautiful," replied the individual addressed, whose figure resembles that of a wasp, whose features are sharp and dry, and whose manners are at once timid and threatening, like hatred suppressed by fear: " no doubt it is beautiful — it is the great road to Siberia."

These words chilled me through. It is for my pleasure, I said to myself, that I travel this road : but what have been the thoughts and feelings of the many unfortunate beings who have travelled it before me ? These thoughts and feelings, evoked by the imagination, took possession of my mind. Siberia ! — that Kussian hell, is, with all its phantoms, incessantly before me. It has upon me the effect that the eye of the basilisk has upon the fascinated bird.

What a country is this ! a plain without limit and without colour ; with only here and there some few inec[iialities in the surface, a few fields of oats and rye, a few scattered birch and pine woods in the distance, villages built of gray boards along the lines of road, on rather more elevated sites, at every twenty, thirty, or fifty leagues, towns the vast size of which swallows up the inhabitants, and immense, colourless rivers, dull as the heavens they reflect! Winter and death are felt to be hovering over these scenes, giving to every object a funereal hue: the terrified traveller, at the end of a few wTeeks, feels himself buried alive, and, stifling, struggles to burst his coffin-lid, that leaden veil that separates him from the living.

Do not go to the north to amuse yourselves, unless i 2