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

another ten minutes, he was as fast asleep as if he had not been the means of savins; all our lives.

While they put the harness in order, I approached the cause of all this mischief. The groom of the elephant had prudently led him into the wood adjoining one of the side-alleys of the road. The formidable beast appeared to me yet larger after the peril to which he had exposed me. His trunk, busy in the top of the bireh-trees, reminded me of a boa twisted among the palms. I began to make excuses for my horses, and left him, giving thanks to God for having escaped a death which at one moment appeared to me inevitable.

I am now at Moscow. An excessive heat has not ceased to reign there for several months; I find again the same temperature that I left: the summer is indeed quite extraordinary. The drought sends up into the air, above the most populous quarters of the city, a reddish dust, which, towards evening, produces effects as fantastical as the Bengal lights. This even-ing, at sunset, I contemplated the spectacle from the Kremlin, the survey of which I have made with as much admiration, and almost as much surprise, as I did at first.

The city of men was separated from the palace of giants, by a glory like one of Corregio's: the whole was a sublime union of the marvels of painting and poetry.

The Kremlin, as the loftiest point in the picture, received on its breast the last streaks of day, while the mists of night had already enveloped the rest of