There was nothing especially worthy of note at any of the landings, beyond the peculiar windmills, except at Gorodetz, which is renowned for the manufacture of spice-cakes, so the guide-book said. I watched anxiously for Gorodetz, went ashore, and bought the biggest "spice-cake" I could find from an old woman on the wharf. All the other passengers landed for the same purpose, and the old woman did a rushing business. After taking a couple of mouthfuls, I decided that I was unable to appreciate the merits of my cake, as I had been, after repeated efforts, to appreciate those of a somewhat similar concoction known under the name of "Vyazemsky." So I gave the cake to the grateful stewardess, and went out on deck to look at a ray of sunlight.
"Where's your cake?" asked a stern voice at my elbow. The speaker was a man with long hair and beard, dressed like a peasant, in a conical fur cap and a sheepskin coat, though his voice, manner, and general appearance showed that he belonged to the higher classes. Perhaps he was an "adept" of Count Tolstoy, and was merely masquerading in that costume, which was very comfortable, though it was only September.
"I gave it to the stewardess," I answered meekly, being taken by surprise.
"What! Didn't you eat it? Don't you know, madam, that these spice-cakes are renowned for their qualities all over Russia, and are even carried to the remotest parts of Siberia and of China, also, I believe, in great quantities? [He had got ahead of the guide-book in that last particular!] Why didn't you eat it?"
"It did not taste good; and besides, I was afraid of indigestion. It seemed never to have been cooked, unless by exposure to the sun, and it was soggy and heavy as lead. You know there has been a great deal of rain lately, and what sun we have even now is very pale and weak, hardly adapted to baking purposes."
This seemed to enrage my hairy mentor, and he poured out a volume of indignant criticism, reproach, and ejaculations, all tangled up with fragments of cookery receipts, though evidently not the receipt for the Gorodetz cakes, which is a secret. The other passengers listened in amazement and delight. When he paused for breath, I remarked:-
"Well, I don't see any harm in having bestowed such a delicate luxury on the poor stewardess. Did any of you think to buy a cake for her? And why not? I denied myself to give her pleasure. Look at it in that light for a while, sir, if my bad taste offends you. And, in the mean while, tell me what has inspired you with the taste to dress like a peasant?"
That settled him, and he retreated. That evening he and the friend with whom he seemed to be traveling talked most entertainingly in the little saloon, after supper. The friend, a round, rosy, jolly man, dressed in ordinary European clothes, was evidently proud of his flow of language, and liked to hear himself talk. Actors, actresses, and theatres in Russia, from the middle of the last century down to the present day, were his favorite topic, on which he declaimed with appropriate gestures and very noticeable management of several dimples in his cheeks. As a matter of course, he considered the present day degenerate, and lauded the old times and dead actors and actresses only. It seemed that the longer they had been dead, the higher were their merits. He talked very well, also, about books and social conditions.
The progress of the weak-kneed steamer against wind and current was very slow and uncertain, and we never knew when we should reach any given point. Even the mouths of the rivers were not so exciting or important in nature as they used to look to me when I studied geography. I imparted to the captain my opinion that his engine was no better than a samovar. He tried hard to be angry, but a glance at that ridiculous machine convinced him of the justice of my comparison, and he broke into a laugh.
We left the steamer at Yaroslavl (it was bound for Rybinsk), two hundred and forty-one miles above Nizhni-Novgorod, and got our first view of the town at daybreak. It stands on the high west bank of the river, but is not so picturesque as Nizhni. Access to the town is had only through half a dozen cuts and ravines, as at Nizhni; and what a singular town it is! With only a little over thirty thousand inhabitants, it has seventy-seven churches, besides monasteries and other ecclesiastical buildings. There are streets which seem to be made up chiefly of churches,-churches of all sizes and colors, crowned with beautiful and fantastic domes, which, in turn, are surmounted by crosses of the most charming and original designs.
Yaroslavl, founded in 1030, claims the honor of having had the first Russian theatre, and to have sheltered Biron, the favorite of the Empress Anna Ioannovna (a doubtful honor this), with his family, during nineteen years of exile. But its architectural hints and revelations of ancient fashions, forms, and customs, are its chief glory, not to be obscured even by its modern renown for linen woven by hand and by machinery. For a person who really understands Russian architecture,-not the architecture of St. Petersburg, which is chiefly the invention of foreigners,- Yaroslavl and other places on the northern Volga in this neighborhood, widely construed, are mines of information and delight. However, as there are no books wherewith a foreigner can inform himself on this subject, any attempt at details would not only seem pedantic, but would be incomprehensible without tiresome explanations and many illustrations, which are not possible here. I may remark, however, that Viollet-le-Duc and Fergusson do not understand the subject of Russian architecture, and that their few observations on the matter are nearly all as erroneous as they well can be. I believe that very few Russians even know much scientifically about the development of their national architecture from the Byzantine style. Yaroslavl is a good place to study it, and has given its name to one epoch of that development.
With the exception of the churches, Yaroslavl has not much to show to the visitor; but the bazaar was a delight to us, with its queer pottery, its baskets for moulding bread, its bread-trays for washtubs, and a dozen other things in demand by the peasants as to which we had to ask explanations.
Breezy, picturesque Yaroslavl, with its dainty, independent cabbies, who object to the mud which must have been their portion all their lives, and reject rare customers rather than drive through it; with its churches never to be forgotten; its view of the Volga, and its typical Russian features! It was a fitting end to our Volga trip, and fully repaid us for our hot-cold voyage with the samovar steamer against the stream, though I had not believed, during the voyage, that anything could make up for the tedium. If I were to visit it again, I would approach it from the railway side and leave it to descend the river. But I would not advise any foreigner to tackle it at all, unless he be as well prepared as we were to appreciate its remarkable merits in certain directions.
A night's journey landed us in Moscow. But even the glories of Moscow cannot make us forget the city of Yaroslaff the Great and Nizhni Novgorod.
