MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 225 



At first it was necessary to carry a bunch of blades 

 and permit him to get a nibble at tolerably regular in- 

 tervals of time, as I walked before him rein in hand, 

 and for a day or two he seemed to be in a state of 

 mental bewilderment, as though unable to decide be- 

 tween the old love of his friend and the new love of 

 Indian corn. By the third day of the new experiment, 

 however, and the sixth day after the parting at 

 Kanseropol, Indian corn had completely won him over, 

 and now that he had forgotten his old companion he 

 seemed to have resolved on making up to the only 

 friend he now had to turn to, the owner of the hand 

 that fed him blades of maize. 



The road I was now traversing led to the considera- 

 ble town of Nicopol on the Dneiper. Villages and 

 habitation were farther apart than on any portion of 

 the way thus far traversed ; the population here averag- 

 ing but about fifteen to the square verst. For much 

 of the way, however, the land was under cultivation, 

 being farmed in large tracts by capitalists and 

 speculators. 



On the road crowds of people were met on foot, in 

 holiday costumes, wending their way from Nicopol 

 and adjacent villages to Ekaterinoslav. All carried 

 bottles, and their mission was to attend some religious 

 ceremony, where a priest would bless water and make 

 it holy ; the bottles were for the purpose of carrying 

 back some of this holy water to their homes. The 

 pilgrims were mostly women of the peasant class, and 

 their faces were a remarkable study. They were nearly 

 all strong, square-jawed faces, reminding me of Indian 

 squaws, and eloquent of great powers of physical endur- 



