as not one branch line has been formed in
connexion with the main line.

When the line was finished, it was found that
there would not be full work for it as a military
road, so there was granted, as a great favour to
the inhabitants of the two extreme cities, liberty
to travel up and down it. After this they built
magnificent refreshment stations and engine
depôts at convenient distances, and now this is
one of the finest, safest, best arranged, and
most comfortable travelling line in the world.
The speed of travelling is limited to twenty
miles an hour. The shortest stoppage is for ten
minutes, allowing plenty of time to drink a cup
of tea and smoke a cigarette; but at each of
the principal stations the train stops for half an
hour. Hot well-cooked dinners, breakfasts, and
suppers, served by clean well-dressed waiters, are
always ready. There is plenty of time to eat,
and the price is not very high. Again, in
travelling, a first or second class passenger can
walk from one end of the train to the other. The
carriages are excellent, and built on the
American plan: with a passage up the centre, seats
at right angles to the passage, doors in the ends
of the cars, and no division anywhere. The
guard has an assistant at the door of every
carriage. The Russian third-class carriages are
superior to the English second; and the second-class
are quite equal to our first. Smoking is universal
at all the railway stations: even the ladies accept
offers of cigars. The fares are, between Moscow
and Petersburg (four hundred and eleven miles),
third class, ten roubles (thirty shillings);
second, thirteen roubles (thirty-nine shillings);
first, seventeen roubles (fifty-one shillings). As
a night has always to be passed in the carriages,
each passenger brings two pillows: the
first-class pillows are encased in silk, the second
in calico, the third in anything. These pillows
add cushions to the seats and support the back
by day, and form by night excellent
extemporised beds. The Russians make a journey to
and from Moscow an affair of pleasure, sleep
and eat alternately, gormandising at all stations
where refreshments can be had; not crowding
them, that is impossible, the rooms being so
large as to accommodate from six hundred to
eight hundred persons at once. The passengers
do strict justice to the good things on the tables,
find fault freely, and order what they require as
if they were at home in a good hotel. After the
gutta percha pork pies, mahogany cakes, and
sawdust sandwiches, bolted standing in the
English refreshment-rooms, it is pleasant to sit down
comfortably when one is tired and hungry—
napkin on knee—to a half-hour's quiet discussion
of a well-cooked meal. Beef, lamb, mutton,
vegetables, fowl, game, potatoes, fish, cutlets,
cheese, and dessert, are served by civil waiters,
in black clothes and white cravats, at the small
charge of one rouble (three shillings) each. One
can also dine very well for half this sum at
the side-table.

A place called Bullagonie is the centre station.
There, the up and down trains meet on opposite
lines, and pour out their motley freights into the
grand dining saloon, to the number of four
hundred from each train. Officers of all grades
emerge in dashing uniforms; fine ladies in silks
and brocades; lacqueys and attendants on the
same in parti-coloured liveries; fat greasy
long-bearded Russian merchants, their wives
and daughters sparkling with rings and pins,
chains, bracelets, and all manner of jewellery;
German stewards, Turks and Greeks, Tartars,
Circassians, Armenians, Jews, French, German, and
English travellers for pleasure or for business;
English and American engineers and mechanics;
Russians, of divers provinces, with beards and
without, in long caftans, long boots, long hair,
with long faces and short purses; Russian women
without hats or bonnets, their heads bound in
handkerchiefs; and a host of nondescript
creatures which appear to belong to nothing known
on earth or under the earth. They dine in twenty
minutes; and then fall to smoking, and to drinking
beer, tea, spirits, wine—champagne among
the rest—until the second bell sounds. There are
three bells, with an interval of five minutes
between each ringing; the Russians cross
themselves at the second bell, take the last puff, throw
the rest of the cigar away, and then leisurely
saunter, each to his carriage. The last bell
having sounded, gently and slowly the trains
take their departure. One to Moscow and
the other to Petersburg. There is no hurry,
no crushing, squeezing, running, or losing
seats. Yet sometimes a stranger will get out
at the wrong side, get into the wrong train, and
be fairly on the way back to his starting-point
before he finds out his mistake.

A rather curious case of this kind happened
on one of my journeys to Moscow. An old
lavishnick, or shopkeeper of the peasant class,
was my vis-à-vis in a second-class carriage. He
might be sixty years of age, and, with his long
white beard and hair, broad face and forehead,
large hooked nose, calm and wondering eyes,
loose caftan, broad belt, and long wide boots, he
looked quite Abrahamic. Evidently he had never
been on rails before. When we started from
Petersburg he reverently crossed himself three
times, and then gave himself up to whatever
might come, with patient faith. As we
proceeded, he became astonished at the awful
speed of twenty miles an hour, and I had to
undergo a deal of cross questioning: "Was I
Nemitz?" "No." "An Americansky?" "No."
"Then you are an Anglichan?" "Yes."

"Have you iron roads in England?"

"Yes—many."

"How many?"

"One, almost, to every town and village."

A long pause ensued after this answer; it
took time to get it down.

"And do they go as fast as we are going
now?"

"Some three times faster."

"Oh, sir, you are joking with an old man!"

Of course he did not believe me. When we
got to Bullagonie, he got out like the rest, and
in the dining saloon I saw him meet a friend
who belonged to the Moscow train; they kissed