Volga

“ The mountain fastnesses and precipices of the Urals, the green slopes of the Caucasus, the Siberian wastes, the grey shores of the Baltic and the sunny shores of the Euxine—the Volga and the Don, and even the sacred steppes—to him they are all beautiful, to him they reflect the image of his soul and his feelings. ”

“ This is the usual route to Siberia below Nijni, and the one by which convicts are sent. Instead of going up the Kama, you could continue down the Volga, passing the large towns of Simbirsk, Saratoff, to Tsaritsin, from which there is a railroad to Kalatch, on the River Don, down which steamers descend to the Crimea. From Tsaritsin you may proceed down the river to Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea, on which steamers ply to ports in Persia and elsewhere. The Volga is the Mississippi of Russia, and of quite as much importance to that country as the Father of Waters to us. ”

“ Of course the Volga told her not to be so rude, and said that little rivers should know their place and not argue with the great.
But the Vazouza would not keep quiet, and at last she said to the Volga: "Look here, we will lie down and sleep, and we will agree that the one of us who wakes first and comes first to the sea is the wiser of the two." ”

“ Here is a case where people are to be pitied; they have only a little land, and in the springtime the Volga overflows its banks, carries away the earth, and lays it upon its own sand-banks. Then others complain that the bed of the Volga is choked up. The springtime streams and summer rains tear up the gulleys, and again earth is carried away to the river. ”

“ Vologda, and even from Galitch beyond the Volga, came news of the same universal slaughter and destruction. Three thousand men, sent as scouts to the north, returned with these tidings: “The enemy are attacking off there, they are around us far and near, they are everywhere.” ”

“ It is obvious that in a country so destitute of seaboard, its rivers must assume an immense importance. The history, the very life of Russia clusters about its three great rivers. These have been the arteries which have nourished, and indeed created, this strange empire. The Volga, with its seventy-five mouths emptying into the Caspian Sea, like a lazy leviathan brought back currents from the Orient; then the Dnieper, flowing into the Black Sea, opened up that communication with Byzantium which more than anything else has influenced the character of Russian development ”

“ The Middle Volga, flowing southward from Kazan to Czaritzin, is a remarkable moat not only to Russia but to Europe. The west shore, known as the Hill Bank, in opposition to the Meadow Bank on the other side, is a hill face, some hundred feet high, which overlooks the river for 700 miles; it is the brink of the inhabited plain, here a little raised above the sea level. ”

“ From the boundary between Europe and Asia the train takes us onwards past Ufa to Samara. The hills of the Urals [Pg 208] become lower and the country flattens out again. Snow lies everywhere in a continuous sheet, and peasants are seen on the roads with sledges laden with hay, fuel, or provisions. At Batraki we pass over the Volga by a bridge nearly a mile long. The Volga is the largest river in Europe; it is 2300 miles long, and has its source in the Valdai hills (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) at a height of only 750 feet above sea-level. ”

“ Looked at casually, Tver and Sahara’s plains are level, and it is only in crossing them that one realizes the gentle up and down beneath the horses’ feet.
Soon Steinmetz raised his head and sniffed in a loud Teutonic manner. It was the reek of water; for great rivers, like the ocean, have their smell. And the Volga is a revelation. Men travel far to see a city, but few seem curious about a river. Every river has, nevertheless, its individuality, its great silent interest. Every river has, moreover, its influence, which extends to the people who pass their lives within sight of its waters. ”

“ Her rivers equal her plains in proportion: the Obi, the Yenisei, the Amur, in Asia; the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, in Europe. The central artery of Russia is the Volga—a river that, in its winding course of nearly twenty-four hundred miles, is not altogether European. Nine tenths of the Russian territory are as yet nearly empty of inhabitants, and nevertheless the population, according to the census of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland, numbered 129,000,000; and the annual increase is very nearly two million. ”

“ The Moravian colony, shut in within a bend of the Volga, in the midst of the Kalmuck hordes, eloquently demonstrates what miracles decision and perseverance can effect. It is the first shoot planted by Europe in that remote region, amidst those pastoral tribes so jealous of their independence; and the changes wrought by the Moravian brethren on the rude soil they have fertilised, and on the still ruder character of the inhabitants, give striking evidence of the benefits of our civilisation.
Every thing breathes of peace and contentment in this little town, on which rests the blessing of God. ”

“ And we suddenly flew across the Volga in a slanting direction, keeping close to the water’s surface, with the low impetuous flight of swallows before a storm. The broad waves murmured heavily below us, the sharp river breeze beat upon us with its strong cold wing ... the high right bank began soon to rise up before us in the half-darkness. Steep mountains appeared with great ravines between. We came near to them.
‘Shout: “Lads, to the barges!”’ Alice whispered to me. I remembered the terror I had suffered at the apparition of the Roman phantoms. ”

“ After the great bulk of the people left at Saratov the ship’s human machinery ran with greater smoothness.
A trip on the Volga was supposed to be one of the great experiences of the rich traveller before the war. It is an experience anyone may be very glad and proud to have had. More of the heart and soul of Russia lies on each bank of this mighty river than can be found in Russia’s cosmopolitan cities. The country is low and fertile, except for the desert stretches of the lower reaches. The green of its grass is a bright emerald. ”

“ So Volga lay down to sleep; down lay Vazuza also. But during the night Vazuza rose silently, fled away from Volga, chose the nearest and the straightest line, and flowed away. When Volga awoke, she set off neither slowly nor hurriedly, but with just befitting speed. At Zubtsof she came up with Vazuza. So threatening was her mien, that Vazuza was frightened, declared herself to be Volga’s younger sister, and besought Volga to take her in her arms and bear her to the Caspian Sea. And so to this day Vazuza is the first to awake in the Spring, and then she arouses Volga from her wintry sleep. ”

“ The majority of this northern element is distributed along the shores of the Gulf of Riga.
The banks of the Volga were first colonized by Germans in 1763 after a proclamation issued by Empress Catherine II inviting foreigners to settle on either side of the river in the environs of Saratoff and Samara and as far as Tzaritzin. The distress that followed the Seven Years’ War in Germany determined a number of families of the afflicted provinces to seek a better lot on Russian soil. By the year 1768 there had been founded 102 German settlements containing a total population of 27,000 inhabitants. ”

“ Platinum That summer she was a good deal saddened by the news from Russia. In the broad valley of the Volga, already ravaged by the passions of armies, no spring showers had coaxed the wheat out of its matrix, and Samarans might soon be driven to devour their own children. ”

“ The Volga, like the Mississippi, is only a national river, while the Danube majestically sweeps through many principalities and kingdoms and empires of Europe and assures easy relations between regions widely separated. And, as the Danube in the past has served as the great natural route for the migrations of nations and the warring hordes of Asia and Europe, so it is now, more than ever before, one of the world’s great highways of commerce and industry, and from present indications the day is not far distant when, economically, it will be the greatest. ”

“ The scenery of the Kama and Volga rivers differs little from that of the Obi, and though the latter would be called a fine river in Europe, it appeared dwarfed, in our eyes, into insignificance after the huge lake-like Yenisei and Obi. The navigation of the Volga is in parts extremely dangerous, but the risk small, for dangerous channels are well marked with buoys, and after dark by barges, on board of which huge bonfires are kept blazing all night. ”

“ Two hundred thousand workmen flock from all parts of Russia to its banks. Fifteen thousand ships and 500 steamboats plough its waters. Kostroma, Nijni-Novgorod, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratof, Astrakhan, are filled with noise and movement. The whole life of Russia seems concentrated on the Volga. ”

“ Bell was informed of a circumstance, while travelling in Kûrdistan, which raises still higher our admiration of the falcon’s courage; for it is trained by the Tartars to fly at foxes and even wolves.
But to return to the Volga: On arriving on the 5th of November at Kazan, they found that the winter had set in, that the Volga was filled with floating ice, and that, therefore, since the nations inhabiting both banks of the river were hostile to Russia, or extremely barbarous in their manners, it would be necessary to defer the prosecution of their journey until the following spring. ”

“ As far as the eye can reach extends the vast alluvial plain, rich with culture, and occasionally dotted with forests; whilst the Volga, flowing down from Tver, [294] looks like a broad blue ribbon stretched over the country from one extremity of the horizon to the other. Much of the plain below is inundated in spring by the overflowing of the river, leaving a fertile deposit which considerably enhances the value of the land. The stationary population of the town does not exceed 30,000 or 40,000, but during the fair the inhabitants swell up to considerably over 200,000 ”

“ When I was staying in Jaroslaf one spring, I had an opportunity of seeing the extent to which the superstition of the people and their reverence for these pictures prevailed.
As soon as the Volga was cleared of ice, hundreds of pilgrims and peasants from all parts of the country poured into the town, and they might have been seen in groups lying asleep on the bare ground, both men and women, there not being lodgings sufficient for their accommodation, but they probably preferred the open air, as they [208] frequently sleep by the roadside on their marches. ”

“ From the foot of the column dedicated to Sviataslof Vsevolovitch, on the spot where he vanquished the Swedes and Poles, that rises on one of the highest summits of the great hill on which Novgorod is built, the stranger may50 contemplate a prospect that might serve as a type of a Russian landscape in winter. In the plain below sleeps the Volga, silent and still to the senses in its winter dress; for the frost, one of nature’s forces, the most imposing from its effects, has already congealed the surface of its running stream into the solidity and quiescence of the plain. ”

“ This imposing Volga is of a character truly quite exceptional. France, certainly, has no river worthy of so much admiration for its grandeur. During the summer it is enlivened with an incessant movement of steamers, and is of immense importance as a63 waterway; and during winter also it continues rendering great services to humanity, affording the means for the transport of the grain that it has fertilized with its beneficent waters. ”

“ These people have abundance of swine, honey, and wax, precious furs, and falcons. Beyond these dwell the Merdas [1] or Merdui, who are Saracens or Mahometans. Beyond them is the Etilia or Volga, the largest river I ever beheld, which comes out of the north, from the country of the Greater Bulgaria and runs southwards, into a vast lake of four months journey in circuit, of which I shall speak afterwards. In the northern region, by which we travelled, the Tanais and Volga are not above ten days journey asunder, but towards the south they are at a much farther distance ”

“ It has been said that with an increase of population this boundless empire must fall to pieces. But no part of it can exist without the other—the woody North without the fertile South, the industrial centre without both, the interior without the coast, nor without the common joint stream, navigable for four hundred miles—the Volga. ”

“ Besides the Neva, the rivers commonly visited by the tourist are the Volga and the Don, which form part of what may be called the Russian grand tour. Englishmen who wish to see something more than St. Petersburg and Moscow generally go by rail to Nizhni-Novgorod, where they visit the great fair, and then get on board one of the Volga steamers. For those who have mastered the important fact that Russia is not a country of fine scenery, the voyage down the river is pleasant enough. ”

“ Through this town pass all the productions of Siberia, and the manufactured goods intended for consumption throughout the greater part of Southern Russia. These goods are floated down the Volga as far as Doubofka, in the vicinity of Saritzin. They are then carried by land, a distance of about thirty-eight miles to Kahilnitzkaia, where they are embarked on the Don, and conveyed to Rostof, their general entrepôt. The barges on the Don and the Volga are flat; 112 feet long, from twenty to twenty-six wide, and about six feet deep. They draw only two feet of water, and cost from 300 to 500 rubles. ”

“ Sailing up the Dvina to Vologda, he noted that town as a place for future trade; crossed the water-shed of Central Russia to Jaroslav and Moscow; dropped down the river Oka; and fell into the Volga at Nijni, the only town in which trade was being done, until he reached the Caspian Sea. The Volga banks were overrun by Tartar hordes, who took their spoil from every farm, and only spared the towns from fear. In ten weeks his rafts reached Astrakhan, where he saw, to his great surprise and joy, the riches of Persia and Bokhara lying about in the bazars in heaps ”