Jottings from Russia. 325 



The country is a plains country, like our prairies in some 

 parts, but different in being for great stretches covered with 

 forests of birch, pines or oak, and in being well watered and 

 wonderfully green and fresh in those parts used for pasture. 

 The harvest of grain was in full swing, all hand-reaped by what 

 seems a very scanty population. 



Moscow, Jtdy 29, 1897. 



Yesterday was a busy and pleasant day. We had to go 

 to the bank for money, the first thing, and as the banks do not 

 open until ten o'clock, there was time to kill. So 1 wandered 

 about the Market, taking photos of the peasants with their 

 vegetables heaped high on curious wagons, and of many of the 

 fine horses with their strange gear that are to be seen on every 

 hand. By the time we had obtained our money and paid for 

 the Ural excursion at the Congress bureau, the morning was 

 gone. We lunched at the Eremitage restaurant in true Russian 

 style, waited on by men, for once not in the conventional dress 

 coat, but clad all in white, full trowsers, a long white blouse 

 with a sort of cord belt of magenta color on which hang their 

 corkscrew, purse, etc. The lunch was also Russian enough 

 with Caviar, Russian white wine and Russian cigarettes, the 

 mutton cutlets being more ordinary. Lunch over, we joined a 

 crowd at the University for the first excursion. One hundred 

 and fifty strong, we steamed away up into and through the 

 Kremlin, down to and across the river and on to a canal where 

 a steamer awaited us. Half an hour's steaming up the river, 

 which winds along with a low meadow bank on one side and a 

 steep escarpment thickly clad with birches and dotted with vil- 

 las on the other brought us to our landing place, and we walked 

 up through the woods to a restaurant which crowns the heights. 

 The geology shown us was practically nothing, and in that re- 

 spect the excursion was really absurd; but the view from that 

 portico was incomparable. Aiforeground of green meadow land 

 with forest masses on either hand and in the more distant center 

 framed the great city with its innumerable spires and domes, 

 campaniles and gates, — the great dome of the Saviour Cathe- 

 dral like a golden globe glittering in the center. There was little 



