220 THROUGH RUSSIA OX A MUSTANG. 



and wheat which they were hauling in from the fields, 

 they seemed ridiculously undersized. On the unculti- 

 vated parts of the steppe now also began to appear 

 big flocks of merino sheep, and the rude day-shelters of 

 the shepherds. 



Finding nothing to justify a halt at Zaparozhia, we 

 rode on, and for the night regained the main road and 

 the post-station of Kanseropol. The sun was melting 

 hot, the way was dusty, and the bare, drouth-deadened 

 steppe insufferably dreary to the eye. The heat, the 

 dust, the hard fare of the villages, and the dreary 

 monotony of the southern steppes, had, ever since 

 leaving Kharkoff, been particularly rough on Sascha. 

 His sanguine idea of a "two month's picnic on horse- 

 back " had, of course, vanished like a shadow ere we 

 had been on the road a week. Though a pleasant 

 companion enough, and a very useful one in my case, 

 his moral stamina was not equal to the prolonged 

 hardships and discomforts of the ride. For two weeks 

 past he had been a good deal of a drag, wavering daily 

 between the ambition to finish what he had set out to 

 do, and a hankering after the comforts of his home- 

 life in Moscow. 



By appealing to his pride, and reminding him of the 

 sorry figure he would cut in the eyes of his sweetheart, 

 who had decorated him with roses at Tula ; and of his 

 brother and friends in Moscow, should he return with- 

 out having finished the ride, I had managed to per- 

 suade him along as far as Kanseropol. Here, how- 

 ever, finding the sun growing hotter and the discom- 

 forts of the road increasing rather than diminishing, 

 he decided to return to Ekaterinoslav, sell his horse, 



