essary
plans. While thus engaged, he conceived the idea of a scientific
expedition to the Caspian Sea--a basin of which little was then known to
our geographers--and this idea held him so firmly that, a few months
later, he gave up his employment in order to realize it. In one of his
excursions to the cataracts of the Dnieper, where the mills were to be
erected, his geological knowledge led him to the discovery of the rich
veins of an iron mine, which has since been profitably worked.

"This period of my life," wrote Madame de Hell, afterwards, "spent in
the midst of the steppes, remote from any town, appears to me now in so
calm, tender, and serene a light, that the slightest memorial of it
moves me profoundly. Only to see the shore where we passed whole days in
seeking for shells, only to hear the sound of the great waves rolling on
the sandbanks and among the seaweed, only to recall a single one of the
impressions of that happy epoch, I would willingly repeat the voyage."

* * * * *

For his great scientific expedition, M. de Hell made vigorous
preparations during the winter of 1838, and having obtained from Count
Vorontzov, the governor of New Russia, strong letters of recommendation
to the governors and officials of the provinces he would have to
traverse, he and his wife started in the middle of May, 1839,
accompanied by a Cossack, and an excellent dragoman, who spoke all the
dialects current in Southern Russia.

Their journey through the country of the Don Cossacks we shall pass
over, as offering nothing of special novelty or interest, and take up
Madame de Hell's narrative at the point of her arrival on the banks of
the Volga.

"A dull white line," she says, "scarcely perceptible through the gloom,
announced the presence of the great river. We followed its course all
night, catching a glimpse of it from time to time by the faint glimmer
of the stars, and by the lights of the fishermen's lanterns flashing
here and there along its banks. There was an originality in the scene
that strongly affected the imagination. Those numerous lights, flitting
from point to point, were like the will-o'-the-wisps that beguile the
belated traveller; and then the Kalmuk encampments with their black
masses that seemed to glide over the surface of the steppe, the darkness
of the night, the speed with which our troika (set of three) carried us
over the boundless plain, the shrill tinkle of the horse