velling--Travelling in Winter--Frostbitten--Disagreeable
Episodes--Scene at a Post-Station.

Of course travelling in Russia is no longer what it was. During the last
half century a vast network of railways has been constructed, and one
can now travel in a comfortable first-class carriage from Berlin to St.
Petersburg or Moscow, and thence to Odessa, Sebastopol, the Lower Volga,
the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Eastern Siberia. Until the outbreak of
the war there was a train twice a week, with through carriages, from
Moscow to Port Arthur. And it must be admitted that on the main lines
the passengers have not much to complain of. The carriages are decidedly
better than in England, and in winter they are kept warm by small iron
stoves, assisted by double windows and double doors--a very necessary
precaution in a land where the thermometer often descends to 30
degrees below zero. The train never attains, it is true, a high rate
of speed--so at least English and Americans think--but then we must
remember that Russians are rarely in a hurry, and like to have frequent
opportunities of eating and drinking. In Russia time is not money; if
it were, nearly all the subjects of the Tsar would always have a large
stock of ready money on hand, and would often have great difficulty in
spending it. In reality, be it parenthetically remarked, a Russian with
a superabundance of ready money is a phenomenon rarely met with in real
life.

In conveying passengers at the rate of from fifteen to thirty miles an
hour, the railway companies do at least all that they promise; but in
one very important respect they do not always strictly fulfil their
engagements. The traveller takes a ticket for a certain town, and on
arriving at what he imagines to be his destination, he may find merely a
railway-station surrounded by fields. On making inquiries, he discovers,
to his disappointment, that the station is by no means identical with
the town bearing the same name, and that the railway has fallen several
miles short of fulfilling the bargain, as he understood the terms of
the contract. Indeed, it might almost be said that as a general rule
railways in Russia, like camel-drivers in certain Eastern countries,
studiously avoid the towns. This seems at first a strange fact. It is
possible to conceive that the Bedouin is so enamoured of tent life and
nomadic habits that he shuns a town as he would a man-trap; but surely
civil engineers and railway contrac