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single seat, for two persons, generally a gentleman and
a lady, and the man and woman sit in such a manner
that he always has his arm about her waist, — probably
to prevent her being thrown out.
Everybody drives, even the servants who are sent
about the city. The distances are so great that, as a
rule, it is necessary, and there are twenty-five thousand
public coachmen at command. People bargain about
the price of every trip; and in the outset, when the
stranger imperfectly understands Russian, nothing is
more common than this conversation: “What do you
ask?”—“Fifteen kopecks.”—“Not at all! I will not
give more than twenty-five.”
We drive from here to the Nevski Prospekt, on a day
in early spring, with pure, clear air and sun. The driver
is a Russian peasant. During the summer he cultivates
his land, but in the winter he earns his bread as
izvoshchik. He sits there, with his face covered with beard,
under a low-crowned hat, in a long and loose coat, which
from the waist down is shaped like a wide, puckered shirt
or a loose dressing-gown, and extends quite down to the
feet. He wears an embroidered scarf about the waist.
Strange to say, in the museum at the Hermitage, among
the antiquities found in the earth at Kertsh, in the
Crimea, on the ornaments like bracelets, are to be found
figures of bearded Scythians, who in physiognomy, as
well as in dress, remind one of these peasant coachmen.
The type seems to have prevailed ever since.
It is a genuine scene of a great city, this Nevski
Prospekt in the sparkling sunlight, with three and four rows
of carriages side by side, in an endless procession.
Elegant men and women are in the carriages. On the
sidewalks are the less wealthy people, the women wrapped up
like mummies for fear of the cold,—although the worst
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