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

68REVOLTING CRUELTY OF

dience that perpetuates the evil which they inflict or to which they submit.

The intervention of the police between people who quarrel would expose the combatants to punishment yet more formidable than the blows they bear in silence, and they avoid therefore all noise that might call the executioner to the spot.

Of the following tumultuous scene chance, however, rendered me a witness this morning.

I was passing along a canal covered with boats laden with wood, which the men were carrying on shore. One of these porters got into a quarrel with his comrades, and they all commenced fighting as they might have done among ourselves on a similar occasion. The aggressor, finding himself the weakest, took to flight: he climbed, with the agility of a squirrel, a large mast of the vessel, and perching himself upon a yard, set at defiance his less nimble adversaries. So far I found the scene amusing. The men seeing themselves balked in their hope of vengeance, and forgetting that they were in Russia, manifested their fury by loud cries and savage menaces. There are found at certain distances, in all the streets of the city, agents of the police in uniform : two of these persons, attracted by the vociferations of the combatants, repaired to the scene of action, and commanded the chief offender to descend from his perch. This individual did not obey the summons; one of the policemen sprang on board; the refractory porter clung to the mast; the man of power reiterated his commands, and the rebel persisted in his disobedience. The former, infuriated, tried himself to climb the mast, and succeeded in