ellers
wisely built, or reaches the suburbs, that one begins thoroughly to
comprehend the enthusiastic praises of many Russians who regard Kieff as
the most beautiful town in the empire.

The glare of the yellow brick melts softly into the verdure of the
residence quarter, and is tempered into inoffensiveness in the Old Town
by the admixture of older and plainer structures, which refresh the eye.
But the chief charm, unfailing, inexhaustible as the sight of the ocean,
is the view from the cliffs. Beyond the silver sweep of the river at
their feet, animated with steamers and small boats, stretches the
illimitable steppe, where the purple and emerald shadows of the sea
depths and shallows are enriched with hues of golden or velvet brown and
misty blue. The steppe is no longer an unbroken expanse of waving
plume-grass and flowers, wherein riders and horses are lost to sight as,
in Gogol's celebrated tale, were Taras Bulba and his sons, fresh from
the famous Academy of Kieff, which lies at our feet, below the cliffs.
Increasing population has converted this virgin soil into vast
grainfields, less picturesque near at hand than the wild growth, but
still deserving, from afar, of Gogol's enraptured apostrophe: "Devil
take you, steppe, how beautiful you are!"

Naturally, our first pilgrimage was to the famous Kievo-Petcherskaya
Lavra, that is, the First-Class Monastery of the Kieff Catacombs, the
chief monastic institution and goal of pilgrims in all the country, of
which we had caught a glimpse from the opposite shore of the river, as
we approached the town. Buildings have not extended so densely in this
direction but that a semblance of ascetic retirement is still preserved.
Between the monastery and the city lies the city park, which is not much
patronized by the citizens, and for good reasons. To the rich wildness
of nature is added the wildness of man. Hordes of desperadoes, "the
barefoot brigade," the dregs of the local population, have taken up
their residence there every spring, of late years, in the ravines and
the caves which they have excavated, in humble imitation of the holy men
of the monastery of old. From time to time the police make a skirmish
there, but an unpleasant element of danger is still connected with a
visit to this section of the city's heart, which deters most people from
making the attempt.

Beyond this lie the heights, on which stand the fortress and the
Catacombs Monastery. Opposite the arsenal