72 NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



sash, while a low-crowned black felt hat and turned-up 

 brim covers a head, the back of which has thick reddish- 

 brown hair, arrested by the scissors as it touches the coat, 

 while the front is adorned by a face with cocked nose, 

 large mouth, and a general dusty, turnipy, and, on the 

 whole, stolidly kind expression. 



There is a myth about shepherds being able to distin- 

 guish one sheep from another by the expression of their 

 countenances. We don't believe James Hogg himself, 

 after marking the idiosyncrasies of all the black or 

 white faces on Ettrick, would ever be able to discover 

 the difference between one Vostick (Isvostchik) and 

 another. 



When the traveller, for the first time, hazards his per- 

 son in one of those small droskies, and his driver securing 

 a rein in each hand, gets off with rapid speed along the 

 quays and streets of St. Petersburgh, he has entered on a 

 new experience in locomotion, unless he has had some 

 personal knowledge, as I have had, of the corduroy roads 

 of America., 



Those streets, those memorable streets, surely leave 

 impressions never to be obliterated. They are all paved 

 with small stones, and seldom level, but descending in the 

 centre, along which is an open water-course. But the 

 holes in that pavement 1 the roughness of those stones 1 

 the rattle, plunges, knocks endured ! while following a 

 swift- trotting horse and remorseless Vostick in a drosky, 

 forms an element of sight-seeing in hot weather which 

 every traveller should carefully consider before he leavei 



