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abreast with the light sleighs whistle over the snow and
ice fields. It is the combination of the silence of death
and the furious speed which amuses and satisfies the
Russian disposition.
In a southerly land like Italy vegetation is somewhat
uniform during the whole year. The laurels and the olive
trees are always green. In Russia, summer and winter
present two entirely different countries and aspects of
life. For a typical impression of winter the life in
Siberia in that season may be taken as described by
Korolenko, the poet of Little Russia, who returned from an
involuntary residence of several years in the department
of Yakutsk. He lived in a little house thatched with
deerskin. In such a dwelling, at the approach of winter,
blocks of ice are substituted for the windows, which
are replaced by panes of glass only when melted in the
spring. There is never a single day of thaw in winter.
It begins by barely freezing and gradually falling to fifty
to sixty degrees below zero. In order to breathe, they
wrap themselves up in a sort of boa or respirator of fur,
made of squirrel’s tails. The sun breaks through the
icy panes in strange and beautiful rainbow hues.
But the approach of spring awakes a new existence.
The fluid element, which had vanished, returns. The
real spring is detestable. But this disagreeable spring
thaw lasts only a short time, and is hardly considered in
Russia as one of the seasons. Still nothing can give the
Western-European a conception of the effect on the
mind and senses of this sudden plunge into summer.
It had been necessary to wear furs in Moscow; the
days were raw and the nights cold; it snowed and froze
until the streets, during the last of my stay (until the
middle of May), changed to a chaos of mud. Then one day
I was taken by an acquaintance to the Kursk Railway
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