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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



three hundred pounds, was carried on 

 top of the box, as a mere unconsidered 

 trifle. 



At home, of course, rollers would have 

 been put under the plank and the whole 

 moved forward easily ; but labor-saving 

 devices have yet to find their way into this 

 land, where man-power is the cheapest of 

 commodities. As the team of ten men 

 strained at the rope, they sang. Their 

 leader, or cantor, was a long-whiskered 

 patriarch who would have made a model 

 precentor for a Presbyterian church — 

 provided he left his dinky little round hat 

 in Russia. He carried the solo parts of 

 the chantey, and the chorus came crash- 

 ing in with deep responses, richer by far 

 than anything heard on the Potomac or 

 the Mississippi. The performance would 

 have gladdened a musician's heart, who 

 straightway would have transcribed its 

 melody. How the hardest toilers sing, 

 the world around ! 



The Russian love of music appears in 

 many forms. Frequently at ports of call 

 we would be serenaded for alms by a 

 crippled soldier and his family or by a 

 group of maimed comrades*. The man 

 would play the accordeon — the piano of 

 the peasant — and his companions would 

 sing, and sing effectively, as apparently 

 all Russians do. 



SING, EVEN THOUGH YOU SUFFER 



There is a strain of plaintiveness in 

 these folk-melodies, even as in their 

 church services, where the unaccompanied 

 choirs make music that is famous for 

 depth and richness. These long nights 

 on the river, with an accordeon or the 

 Russian triangular guitar usually within 

 sound, gave one a fondness for the strains 

 of this simple music. After all, it is a 

 fine philosophy that these cripples and 

 peasants teach: Keep your music port- 

 able ; and if you suffer, at least sing. To 

 rafts and docks and shores and passing 

 craft, as well as from the fellow-passen- 

 gers crowded on the deck below, I owe 

 a remembered debt for Volga music. 



Occasional landings break the monot- 

 ony of the voyage down the river. * Be- 

 tween Nizhni Novgorod and Astrakhan, 

 the two terminal points of the steamers, 

 there are several cities of historic and 

 commercial importance — Kazan, Sim- 



birsk, Samara, Saratov, Tzaritzuin. Pas- 

 sengers have time to go ashore for sight- 

 seeing and for shopping, although the 

 latter, nowadays, has to do strictly with 

 the food supply. 



From the American's viewpoint, Sara- 

 tov is the best city of the group, although 

 many an American town of one-fourth its 

 size is better built and kept. These lower 

 Volga cities show the predominance of 

 the Germans, who were settled there by 

 Catherine the Great and who lately have 

 been more than a little inconvenienced 

 by their German sympathies. 



This element accounts for the presence 

 of conventional western church spires in 

 these cities and towns, for the settlers 

 have remained Lutherans. Roman Catho- 

 lic churches are more numerous, also, in 

 this section. Even along the lower Volga 

 the Greek churches and cathedrals, some 

 of them very old, since this is not new 

 country, dominate the landscape. Fre- 

 quently the great church, with its domes 

 and campanile, will be the one preten- 

 tious structure in a community. The 

 vogue of the campanile, some examples 

 of which, like the churches to which they 

 are attached, are really beautiful, is sure 

 to be remarked by the Volga traveler. 



APPROACHING THE HABITAT OF" THE 

 MINARET 



Not until he comes to a few picturesque 

 Tatar mosques, as the boat nears Astra- 

 khan, does the minaret appear; and even 

 in the surprising and motley city of As- 

 trakhan the mosques are few and hum- 

 ble and their minarets resemble the stee- 

 ples of small country churches at home. 

 One who has traveled much in the Near 

 East, and is accustomed to the subordina- 

 tion of the church to the mosque, takes 

 a rather unchristian satisfaction in the 

 spectacle of an oriental region where the 

 church buildings dominate the landscape. 



That this is the East, one's ears make 

 clear at every port. The noise is the babel 

 of human voices; not the rumble of ma- 

 chinery or of motor-cars or of railways, 

 but the shrill shoutings of the Orient, 

 which does' nothing without clamor. 

 Quarrels are almost entirely verbal. I 

 have not seen one stand-up and knock- 

 down fight iri all the turbulent experiences 

 of travel in Russia ; the nearest to it was 



