INTO MALO RUSSIA. 149 



grain was cut with cradles, swung by the men, and the 

 women did the binding. There were, however, many 

 females who wielded reaping hooks. Regular camps 

 were formed in the fields, since the fields were often 

 many versts away from the villages ; and a novel fea- 

 ture of the camps would be the babies in swinging 

 cribs suspended to rude tripods, and the toddlers next 

 in size taking care of them. Occasionally might be 

 seen the mothers, leaving their reaping or binding to 

 kneel beside the cribs and indulge themselves and in- 

 fants, the one as truly gratified to give as the other to 

 receive. 



Near the town of Oboiyan, both men and horses 

 came near scoring a catastrophe in a stream with a 

 bottom of quicksand. Texas, being the livelier horse 

 of the two, managed to scramble out almost before he 

 was in ; but Sascha's animal got fairly into it, and 

 whilst plunging about pitched his rider heels over head 

 into the sand and water. Luckily both horse and 

 rider escaped with no greater damage than a wetting 

 and a fright. 



Beyond Oboiyan the northern moujik and his red 

 shirt began to gradually fall into the background, and 

 the white-shirted peasants of Little Russia to take his 

 place. The moujik of Malo (Little) Russia cuts a less 

 picturesque figure in the fields than his Muscovite con- 

 freres of the north. In the fields of the forest zone 

 the red specks conjured up the comparison of poppies, 

 and in our gayer moods it was by this floral title that 

 we would call one another's attention to them. But 

 by no stretch of the imagination, nor by any enchant- 

 ment born of distance, would it be possible to call the 



