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€OXE’S TRAVELS IN RUSSIA. 649
bird of the partridge fpecies, we fauntered out while fupper was preparing, towards a
neighbouring hill, which attracted our attention.
Two miles from the village, in the middle ofa vaft plain, rifes, ina circular form, an
infulated ‘hill of fand and clay ; the lower parts are thickly {trewed with detached pieces
of red and grey granite, fimilar to many others which appear about the adjacent country,
I meafured one of thefe mafles, and found it twelve feet broad, eight thick, and five
above the furface of the ground *.
On the fummit ftands a brick white-wafhed church, which is a pleafing obje& from
the adjacent grounds+. From the top we had a fingular and extenfive profpect. Be-
neath, the country is fomewhat open, and divided into large enclofures of pafture and
corn; towards the fouth rife the Valdai hills, {kirting an immenfe plain, which ftretches
towards the north, eaft, and weft, as far as the eye can reach ; a vaft expanfe without a
fingle hillock to obftruct the view; it feemed an endlefs foreft, dotted with a few fo-
litary wooden villages, which appeared fo many points in a boundlefs defert. Beyond,
at agreat diftance, we obferved the f{pires of Novogorod, and the lake Imen fcarcely
difcernible through the thick gloom of the trees.
The forwardnefs of the harveft in this northern climate has been already mentioned :
it had been fome time taken in, and the new corn was {pringing up in many places.
The corn remains, during winter, buried under {now; at the melting of which, in {pring,
it fhoots up fpeedily in thefe countries, where vegetation is rapid, on the returning
warmth of the feafon. But as the fhortnefs of the fummer does not always allow the
grain time to ripen, the peafants ufe the following method of drying it. They raife a
wooden building, without windows, fimilar to the fhell of the cottages; under this
ftructure is a large cavity, in which a fire being made, the corn is laid upon the floor
and dried; it is then hung upon frames in the open air, and afterwards threfhed.
In this part of eur journey, we paffled numberlefs herds of oxen, moving towards Pe-
terfburgh ; moft of them were driven from the Ukraine, the neareft part of which
country is diftant eight hundred miles from the metropolis. During this long progrefs
the drivers feldom enter any houfe; they feed their cattle upon the flips of pafture on
each fide of the road, and have no other fhelter in bad weather than the foliage of the
trees, In the evening the ftill filence of the country was interrupted by the occafional
lowing of the oxen, and carols of the drivers; while the folitary gloom of the foreft
was enlivened with the glare of numerous fires, furrounded by different groups of
herdfmen in various attitudes; fome were fitting round the flame, fome employed in
dreffing their provifions, and others fleeping upon the bare ground. ‘They refembled,
in drefs and manners, a rambling horde of ‘Vartars.
The route from Mofcow to Peterfburgh is continued during a {pace of five hundred
miles, almoft in a ftraight line cut through the foreft, and is extremely tedious: on
each fide the trees are cleared to the breadth of forty or fifty paces, and the whole way
runs chiefly through endlefs tracts of wood, only broken by villages, round which, to a
{mall diftance, the grounds are open and cultivated.
The road is of an equal breadth, and formed by trunks { of trees laid tranfverfely,
and bound down in the center, and at each extremity, by long poles, or beams, faftened
into
* See fome curious conjectures upon thefe granite ftones of Bronitza, in Pallas’s Travels ; and alfo in
Hiftoire des Decouvertes dans plufieurs Contrées de la Ruffia, &c. vol. i. p. 42, &c.
+ This eminence was remarkable, in the times of idolatry, for an oracular temple, built in the place now
occupied by the church.
Mr. Hanway makes a curious calculation of the number of trees employed to make a road of one hun-
dred and fifty verfts, ‘ Allowing one tree with another to be nine inches diameter, and the length
VOL. VI. 40 twenty-
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