CHAPTER V. 



ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 



ON Sunday, June 29, we crossed the River Moskwa, 

 where it runs through the broad, fat lands of the 

 Nicolai Oograshinsky Monastery, over a rickety pon- 

 toon bridge, half-submerged. Bridges have, in Russia, 

 an evil reputation among native travelers. The 

 foreigner sees in them merely the possibility of broken 

 bones, but to the native they are also the lurking- 

 places of highway robbers. In troublous times and 

 lawless districts, it is under the archways of the 

 bridges that marauders hide, to pounce out upon pass- 

 ing travelers. Many Russian travelers make a practice 

 of crossing themselves at bridges, by way of commend- 

 ing themselves to the special protection of Providence. 

 This, I was told, is a relic of the old Tartar days, when 

 the peasantry approached a bridge with fear and trem- 

 bling, making signs of the Cross, lest it be the hiding- 

 place of a band of marauding nomads. 



No danger of robbers at the bridge across the Mos- 

 kwa, however, unless they might also be amphibians, 

 capable of keeping their heads under water an indef- 

 inite length of time. 



Texas, as before mentioned, had a truly Russian 

 horror of bridges. Among his notions of a horse's 

 rights, was the privilege of turning tail at all sorts and 



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