174 RETURN TO KERTCH. 



for me during my absence at Golovinsky ; and 

 anxious to see as much of the Caucasus as possible, 

 I arranged to steam to Novorossisk and proceed 

 thence overland to Ekaterinodar. I hardly think I 

 was repaid for my trouble, as the country through 

 which I passed was not of a very interesting 

 nature, and more like the neighbourhood of 

 Tumeruk than of Duapse. At Novorossisk I 

 hired a cart (fourgon) with two horses and a driver 

 to take me to Ekaterinodar, calling at the Red 

 Forest en route. The distance was 114 versts, and 

 including stoppages, with the heavy cart behind 

 them, the game little horses did the journey in 

 thirty- three hours. It is wonderful what Russian 

 horses will do and on what a little food they do it. 

 Neither of the horses in this instance stood fourteen 

 hands, and they got no corn whatever on the 

 journey. 



On our way to Ekaterinodar we stayed at a 

 large village called Krimsky a Cossack settlement 

 I think it was originally ; and here we encountered 

 another of those fairs at which the Russian moujik 

 buys and sells all he wants or wants to part with 

 during the year. I wandered into the fair whilst 

 the horses were being watered, and found it a 

 medley of every race in the Caucasus, distinguished 

 from one another not more by their varied and 

 picturesque costumes than by the endless variety of 

 their conveyances and beasts of burden. Fashion- 



