FORESTS OF ARCHANGEL. BB 
elder [Starist] must provide for them the things required 
—carts, horses, drivers, in accordance with their podorojna; 
but in many villages the party finds no men, or none 
except the very young and very old. Husbands are leagues 
away, fishing in the polar seas, cutting timber in the 
Kargopol forests, trapping fox and beaver in the Ural 
mountains, leaving their wives alone for months. These 
female villages are curious things, in which a man of 
pleasant manners may find an opportunity of flirting to 
his heart’s content. 
‘Villages, more villages, yet more villages! We pass a 
gang of soldiers marching by the side of a peasant’s cart, 
in which lies a prisoner, chained; we spy a wolf in the 
copse; we meet a pilgrim on his way to Solovetsk; we 
come upon a gang of boys whose clothes seem to be out at 
wash ; we pass a broken waggon; we start at the howl of 
some village dogs; and then go winding forward hour by 
hour, through the silent woods. Some touch of green and 
poetry charms our eyes in the most desolate scenes. A 
virgin freshness crisps and shakes the leaves. The air is 
pure. If nearly all the lines are level, the sky is blue, the 
sunshine gold. Many of the trees are rich with amber, 
pink, and brown; and every fragrant breeze makes music 
in the pines. A peasant and his dog troop past, reminding 
me of scenes in Kent. A convent here and there peeps 
out. A patch of forest is on fire, from the burning mass of 
which a tongue of pale pink flame laps out and up through 
a pall of purple smoke. A clearing swept by some former 
fire is all aglow with autumnal flowers. A bright beck 
dashes through the falling leaves. A comely child, with 
flaxen curls, and innocent northern eyes, stands bowing in 
the road with an almost Syrian grace. A woman comes 
up with a bowl of milk. <A group of girls are washing in 
a stream, under the care of either the virgin mother or 
some local saint. On every point the folk, if homely, are 
devotional and polite ; brightening their forest brakes with 
chapel and cross, and making their dreary wood, as it were, 
a path of light toward heaven 
