262 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



We started at eight o'clock, and in the broad glare 

 of the August noon there came into view from the 

 windows of the train a dusty-looking town and a river 

 broad as the Mississippi, a section of which was 

 half hidden by a multitude of rafts and shipping. 

 The dusty town was Tzaritzin, and the broad river the 

 Volga. 



After a few weeks of experience in knocking about 

 Russia, and of the inevitable disillusion of its provin- 

 cial towns, one comes to dread, rather than rejoice at 

 the prospect of making the acquaintance of a new city. 



The first glimpse of Tzaritzin was peculiarly ominous 

 and depressing, and a closer acquaintance with it am- 

 ply confirmed one's worse presentiments. People, 

 horses, droskies, drivers, houses — everything in it was 

 yellow with dust. Dust was ankle deep, even on the 

 best parts of the streets; everywhere else the spaces 

 that answer the purpose of streets offered the 

 most villainous succession of holes and humps that 

 ever disgraced a town. On the way from the station 

 to the hotel one had to cling to the ramshackle drosky 

 with both hands to escape being pitched out, and 

 the performance of the dusty jehu in keeping his narrow 

 seat was a masterpiece of equipoise. The character of 

 horses and droskies was in keeping with the streets, 

 as in other places, which in Tzaritzin means that the 

 former were the scum of the herds on the adjacent 

 steppes, and that the latter were calculated to inspire 

 in the mind of the passenger visions of broken bones. 



Happily, my acquaintance with this dust-hole of a 

 city, as well as its hotel, was destined to be brief. The 

 caravansary in question was a combination of hotel 



