326 The University of California Maga2ine. 



detail to be seen except in one or two monasteries which lay far 

 out of the city, and with their strange forms of dome and 

 church and brilliant coloring, gave life to the scene. The total 

 effect was wonderful, fairy like, a dream of the East, and I 

 was not sorry to sit there till evening, watching the shadows 

 slowly creep upon the distant city. Our point of view was 

 called the Sparrow Hills. Here I met Prof. Lawson just ar- 

 rived in Moscow. 



Post Riajsk fidy ji, 1897. 



We are on our way to the Ural at last, well on our way in 

 fact, since the first night is past. We are in the midst of a 

 boundless plain, level as the prairie; the horizon broken by 

 occasional patches of forest or the dome of a village church. 

 The forest is mostly birch, the Russian national tree. The 

 harvest of grain, Egyptian corn, (Brosso), or potatoes, is 

 mostly harvested, and the yellow stubble fields dotted with 

 cocks of grain sheafs, are only broken by the brown of the sum- 

 mer-fallowed portions. A village is near at hand; low mud, 

 (adobe) huts, heavily thatched with straw, straggle along on 

 either side of one long street. A few trees, generally one or 

 more four-armed wind mills to grind the grist, and for the rest, 

 the one-horse wagons bringing in the grain to the stacks; a field 

 of buckwheat white in blossom — a single peasant woman 

 trudging along the dusty road, legs to the knees wrapped about 

 with gray cloth, the feet in grass sandals with cross lacings, the 

 chief garment, a long coat of yellowish color with a bright red 

 border, and on the head a gay handkerchief. Thus a bit of 

 living color in the monotonous and dreary scene. Our train is 

 a special one of about twelve cars to contain our two hundred 

 excursionists. The cars are both first and second class, the 

 former painted in bright blue, the latter in yellow. The ar- 

 rangements of both are the same, fairly good for this country, 

 but nothing to boast of. 



Batraki near Syczan on the Volga, August i, iSgy. 

 We reached here early this morning after the second night 

 out from Moscow. After our breakfast of dry bread and tea 

 (clear, weak and with lemon in true Russian fashion) and after 



