260 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



languages as easy to them as their own. The number 

 of Russians one meets who once knew these languages, 

 and for want of opportunities to speak them have for- 

 gotten one or all of them, is surprising. When, there- 

 fore, a party of educated Russians suddenly discover 

 the proximity of a foreigner, the circumstance reminds 

 them of their lingual abilities, which they immediately 

 proceed to exercise. 



Shortly after the Crimean war had brought home to 

 the Russian government the necessity of improving 

 communications, a short line of railroad was built be- 

 tween Tzaritzin and Kalatch, connecting the Volga 

 and the Don. The railroad was built as a temporary 

 expedient and forerunner of a canal, by means of which 

 steamers could pass from one river to the other, and it 

 early gained the reputation of being the worst piece of 

 railway traveling in the world. Two trains a week 

 used to start in a venturesome way over it, and the 

 chances of running off the rails, or breaking down, 

 raised the odds against the travelers to such a level as 

 induced many of them to prefer the old way of horses 

 and tarantasses. 



August, 1890, the canal had not been dug, but the 

 railway had improved with age, for the author found 

 nothing disreputable about it save the indifference of 

 its management to the flight of time. It now has a 

 daily train, and by means of petroleum-refuse fuel, and 

 plenty of axle-grease the fifty miles are overcome in 

 the brief space of four hours. We should have done 

 it in three hours and fifty minutes had not the con- 

 ductor lingered at one of the stations, for about ten 

 minutes, haggling over the price of a young sturgeon, 



