past,
and preparation for those of the coming winter. Their possessions are so
large (those of Count Scheremetieff, for instance, contain one hundred
and thirty thousand inhabitants) that they push each other too far apart
for social intercourse; and they consequently live _en deshabille_,
careless of the great national interests in their hands. There is a
class of our Southern planters which seems to have adopted a very
similar mode of life,--families which shabbily starve for ten months, in
order to make a lordly show at "the Springs" for the other two. A most
accomplished Russian lady, the Princess D----, said to me,--"The want of
an active, intelligent country society is our greatest misfortune. Our
estates thus become a sort of exile. The few, here and there, who try to
improve the condition of the people, through the improvement of the
soil, are not supported by their neighbors, and lose heart. The more we
gain in the life of the capital, the more we are oppressed by the
solitude and stagnation of the life of the country."

This open, cheerful region continued through the morning. The railroad
was still a novelty; and the peasants everywhere dropped their scythes
and shovels to see the train pass. Some bowed with the profoundest
gravity. They were a fine, healthy, strapping race of men, only of
medium height, but admirably developed in chest and limbs, and with
shrewd, intelligent faces. Content, not stupidity, is the cause of their
stationary condition. They are not yet a people, but the germ of one,
and, as such, present a grand field for anthropological studies.

Towards noon the road began to descend, by easy grades, from the fair,
rolling uplands into a lower and wilder region. When the train stopped,
women and children whose swarthy skin and black eyes betrayed a mixture
of Tartar blood made their appearance, with wooden bowls of cherries and
huckleberries for sale. These bowls were neatly carved and painted. They
were evidently held in high value; for I had great difficulty in
purchasing one. We moved slowly, on account of the many skeleton
bridges; but presently a long blue ridge, which for an hour past had
followed us in the south-east, began to curve around to our front. I now
knew that it must mark the course of the Oka River, and that we were
approaching Nijni-Novgorod.

We soon saw the river itself; then houses and gardens scattered along
the slope of the hill; then clusters of sparkling domes on th