familiarity breeds indifference. When you
have successfully crossed without serious accident a few hundred bridges
of this kind you learn to be as cool and fatalistic as your yamstchik.

The reader who has heard of the gigantic reforms that have been
repeatedly imposed on Russia by a paternal Government may naturally
be astonished to learn that the roads are still in such a disgraceful
condition. But for this, as for everything else in the world, there is
a good and sufficient reason. The country is still, comparatively
speaking, thinly populated, and in many regions it is difficult, or
practically impossible, to procure in sufficient quantity stone of any
kind, and especially hard stone fit for road-making. Besides this, when
roads are made, the severity of the climate renders it difficult to keep
them in good repair.

When a long journey has to be undertaken through a region in which there
are no railways, there are several ways in which it may be effected.
In former days, when time was of still less value than at present, many
landed proprietors travelled with their own horses, and carried with
them, in one or more capacious, lumbering vehicles, all that was
required for the degree of civilisation which they had attained; and
their requirements were often considerable. The grand seigneur, for
instance, who spent the greater part of his life amidst the luxury of
the court society, naturally took with him all the portable elements of
civilisation. His baggage included, therefore, camp-beds, table-linen,
silver plate, a batterie de cuisine, and a French cook. The pioneers
and part of the commissariat force were sent on in advance, so that
his Excellency found at each halting-place everything prepared for his
arrival. The poor owner of a few dozen serfs dispensed, of course, with
the elaborate commissariat department, and contented himself with such
modest fare as could be packed in the holes and corners of a single
tarantass.

It will be well to explain here, parenthetically, what a tarantass
is, for I shall often have occasion to use the word. It may be briefly
defined as a phaeton without springs. The function of springs
is imperfectly fulfilled by two parallel wooden bars, placed
longitudinally, on which is fixed the body of the vehicle. It is
commonly drawn by three horses--a strong, fast trotter in the shafts,
flanked on each side by a light, loosely-attached horse that goes along
at a gallop. The points of the