a salamander, were whole legions
of officers, elegantly-dressed ladies, and a rabble of miscellaneous
second and third class passengers like myself, puffing, blowing,
eating, drinking, sweating, and toiling, as if their very existence
depended upon keeping up the internal fires and blowing them off
again. It is dreadful to see people so hard pushed to live. I really
can't conjecture what sort of a commotion they will make when they
come to die. A sandwich or two and a glass of tea lasted me all the
way to Moscow--a journey of eighteen hours, and I never suffered from
hunger, thirst, or fatigue the whole way. If I had "gone in" like
other people, I would certainly have been a dead man before I got half
way; and yet, I think, two sandwiches more would have lasted me to the
Ural Mountains. It continually bothers me to know how the human
stomach can bear to be tormented in this frightful way. Per Baccho! I
would as soon be shot in the hand with an escopette ball as drink the
quantity of wine and eat the quantity of food that I have seen even
women and children dispose of, as if it were mere pastime, on these
railway journeys. I think it must be either this or the frost that
accounts for the extraordinary prevalence of red noses in Russia, and
it even occurred to me that the stations are painted a fiery red, so
that when travelers come within range of the refracted color their
noses may look pale by contrast, and thereby remind them that it is
time to renew the caloric.

[A] This contract terminated last year (1865).

With the exception of the seventy-five versts between Moscow and Tver,
I can not remember that I ever traveled over so desolate and
uninteresting a stretch of country as that lying between St.
Petersburg and Moscow. For a short distance out of St. Petersburg
there are some few villas and farms to relieve the monotony of the
gloomy pine forests; then the country opens out into immense
undulating plains, marshy meadows, scrubby groves of young pine,
without any apparent limit; here and there a bleak and solitary
village of log huts; a herd of cattle in the meadows; a wretched,
sterile-looking farm, with plowed fields, at remote intervals, and so
on hour after hour, the scene offering but little variety the whole
way to Tver. The villages are wholly destitute of picturesque effect.
Such rude and miserable hovels as they are composed of could scarcely
be found in the wildest frontier region of the United State