252 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



Don to Kalatch, thence by a short railroad to the 

 Volga, and up that Russian Mississippi to our destina- 

 tion. 



Our starting point is Rostoff, a city near the mouth 

 of the Don. The boat is a paddle-wheel steamer of 

 about two hundred tons burden, and, like the spinster 

 in the story, of uncertain age. Fresh paint gives it, 

 again like the spinster in the story, the bloom of youth, 

 but in the dining-saloon you discover that it was doing 

 service'on the Don twenty- one years ago, and probably 

 several years before. In 1869 the Emperor, Alexan- 

 der III, then Czarevitch, ascended the Don in this 

 steamer, and his autograph, commemorative of the 

 event, written with a lead-pencil on a plaster of Paris 

 ground, hangs in the dining-saloon. 



Above it depends a big steel portrait of the Czar, 

 and beside it, but in a corner, and curiously inconspicu- 

 ous, is a tiny ikon. The size and prominence of pic- 

 tures of the Czar and the smallness and unobtrusive 

 position of the ikons — those two features of every Rus- 

 sian public hall and most private rooms, representing 

 "God and the Czar" — were among the writer's most 

 vivid impressions of South Russia. 



In a former chapter something was said of the emo- 

 tional display on the platforms of Russian railways at 

 the departure of a train. A new revelation broke over 

 my astonished senses upon the departure of our steamer 

 from Rostoff. Every passenger must have had at least 

 twenty friends at the landing to see him or her off. 

 And the flood of tears, kisses, laughter, injunctions, 

 admonitions, and all-around emotion — how can mere 

 words depict it? One would think these people were 



