374 T^'^^ University of California Magazine. 



JOTTINGS FROM RUSSIA. 



[From the letters of Charles Palache, '91.] 



Slatoonst, August gth, 1897. 

 A RRIVED here early this morning, we made an excursion to 

 study the hills between the station and the town, and hav- 

 ing lost the excursion and returned to the station with an hour 

 before lunch, I sit down for a little chat. As I said in my last, 

 we have had a two days' trip away from the railroad. And 

 such a trip as it was ! At last I know what it really is to travel 

 in Russian vehicles, and have a keen sense of " Ural weather." 

 About noon (by local time, which is two hours in advance of the 

 St. Petersburg time by which we eat, sleep and travel,) the 

 crowd of travelers distributed themselves by twos in the strange 

 looking vehicles which had been waiting about all morning. 

 Imagine a long buck-board, the platform made of springy 

 birch-poles with wide interspaces, mounted on rather low 

 wheels, very loose on the axles and rickety looking. Place in 

 the middle of the platform a big basket of wicker-work, (a wash 

 woman's basket on a large scale,) half filled with hay and just 

 long enough to let you stretch your legs out when sitting up 

 straight. A seat for the driver in his long leather coat, so 

 placed that he sits higher than his passengers. Two scraggy, 

 tough little broncos to pull it, one in the shafts with the high 

 wooden arch over his head, which serves to hold the shafts to- 

 gether and at the same time to bind them to the collar by which 

 the draft is made — the other attachment by a loose whiffle tree, 

 on one side a single rein, pulling his head down and out as far 

 a check attached to the shafts will allow. Such is a poor sketch 

 of the most common vehicle in this part of Russia, the 

 " brachka" as it is called, or when a horse runs on either side, 

 a "troika." Sometimes a folding cover is provided, and then 

 it is called a "tarantass." Sometimes the basket is replaced by a 

 box or sort of platform on which four people sit, back to back. 



