14° THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



swept clean, and all manner of sanitary and inquisi- 

 torial inspection. In theory, this sort of inspection is 

 no doubt rather to be commended than otherwise ; the 

 trouble is, that not one Russian in ten thousand is fit 

 to be intrusted with powers that practically leave the 

 people at his mercy. The writer has slept in rooms in 

 Russian villages where the windows had evidently not 

 been opened from one year's end to another, for venti- 

 lation seems as unnecessary and uncongenial to a 

 moujik, and even to many Russians of considerable 

 education, as to a mole. 



The " best room," in nearly every village traktir we 

 stayed at over night, was notoriously in need of being 

 thrown open for ventilation by the uriadnik. The 

 writer found the air in them, that had been boxed up 

 all summer, so insupportable that I used to go and 

 sleep, by preference, under the shed with the horses. 

 Sascha, however, didn't seem to care ; or, at all events, 

 it seemed to his Russian mind " so much like a moujik 

 to sleep with the horses," that he preferred the dangers 

 of suffocation in foul air. I expected to get up some 

 morning and find him a ghastly corpse ; but, somehow, 

 he survived to the end. 



It is not the proprietors of traktirs, however, not the 

 gentleman whose cellar contains barrels of vodka, and 

 who owns a half dozen samovars, always ready to be 

 steamed up for the making of tea, that ever feels 

 the inconvenience of the inquisitorial powers of the 

 uriadnik. In one village, where the traktir sleeping- 

 room had to all appearances been sealed up since 

 winter, we heard a queer story of a moujik whose 

 window had been thrown open nearly every day during 



