52 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



it with wisps of straw is vain. We tie it with bands and 

 belts ; but nothing will induce it to lie down. How can 

 we blame it ? Trunks have rights as well as men ; they 

 claim a proper place to lie in; and my poor box has just 

 been tossed into this tarantass, and told to lie quiet on logs 

 and stones. 



' Still more fitful than this trunk are the lumber verte- 

 bra in my spine. They hate this jolting day and night ; 

 they have been jerked out of their sockets, pounded into 

 dust, and churned into curds. But then these mutineers 

 are under more control than the trunk ; and when they 

 begin to murmur seriously I still them in a moment by 

 hints of taking them a drive through Bitter Creek. 



'But, ah! here is Holmogory. Holmogory was the 

 birthplace of Lomonosoff. a philosopher and a poet of the 



last century, whom his countrymen greatly honour 



here is Holmogory, standing on a bluff above the river, 

 pretty and bright, with her golden crops, her grassy roads, 

 her pink and white houses, her boats on the water, and 

 her stretches of yellow sand; a village with open spaces; 

 here a church, there a cloister, gay with gilt and paint, 

 and shanties of a better class than you see in such small 

 country towns ; and forests of birch and pine around her 

 Holmogory looks the very spot on which a poet of the 

 people might be born. 



'From Holmogory to Karsjopol, from Kargopol to Viete- 

 gra, we pass through an empire of villages, not a single 

 place on a road four hundred miles in length that could 

 by any form of courtesy be called a town. The track runs 

 on and on, now winding by the river bank, now eating its 

 way through the forest growths ; but always flowing, as it 

 were, in one thin line from north to south ; ferrying deep 

 rivers, dragging through shingle, slime, and peat ; crashing 

 over broken rock ; and crawling up gentle heights. His 

 horses four abreast, and lashed to the tarantass with ropes 

 and chains, the driver tears along the road as though he 

 were racing with his Chert his Evil One ; and all in the 

 hope of getting from his thankless fare an extra cup of tea. 



