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of the operative department, is let out by contract to an American company, while the government supervises the financial department, and reserves to itself the municipal control.1 It is a remarkable fact, characteristic of the Russians, that while they possess uncommon capacity to acquire all the details of engineering, and are by no means lacking in mechanical skill, they are utterly deficient in management and administrative capacity. Wasteful, improvident, and short-sighted, they can never do any thing without the aid of more sagacious and economical heads to keep them within the bounds of reason. Thus, at one time, when they undertook to run this line on their own account, although they started with an extraordinary surplus of material, they soon ran the cars off their wheels, forgetting to keep up a supply of new ones as they went along; ran the engines out of working order; kept nothing in repair; provided against no contingency; and were finally likely to break down entirely, when they determined that it would be better to give this branch of the business out by contract. One great fault with them is, they labor under an idea that nothing can be done without an extraordinary number of officers, soldiers, policemen, and employés of every description – upon the principle, I suppose, that if two heads are better than one, the ignorance or inefficiency of a small number of employés can be remedied by having a very great number of the same kind. In other words, they seem to think that if five hundred men can not be industrious, skillful, and economical, five thousand trained in exactly the same schools, and with precisely the same propensities, must be ten times better. Even now there is not a station, and scarcely a foot of the railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, that is not infested with an extraordinary surplus of useless men in uniform. At the great dépôts in each of these cities the traveler is fairly confused with the crowds of officers and employés through which he is obliged to make his way. Before he enters the doorways, liveried porters outside offer to take his baggage; then he passes by guards, who look at him carefully and let him go in; then he finds guards who show him where to find the ticket-office; when he arrives at the ticket-office, he finds a guard or two outside, and half a dozen clerks inside; then he buys his ticket, and an officer examines it as he goes into the wirthsaal; there he finds other officers stationed to preserve order; when the bell rings the doors are opened; numerous officers outside show him where to find the cars, and which car he must get into; and when he gets into a car he sits for a quarter of an hour, and sees officers going up and down outside all the time, and thinks to himself that people certainly can not be supposed to have very good eyes, ears, or understanding of their own in this country, since nobody is deemed capable of using them on his individual responsibility. I only wonder that they don’t eat, drink, sleep, and travel for a man at once by proxy, and thereby save him the trouble of living or moving at all. In fact, I had some thought of asking one of these licensed gentlemen if the regulations could not be stretched a point so as to embrace the payment of my expenses; but it occurred to me that if I were relieved of that responsibility, they might undertake at the same time to write these letters for me, which would be likely to alter the tone and thereby destroy my individuality. But it must be admitted that good order, convenience, politeness, and comfort are the predominant characteristics of railway travel in Russia. The conductors usually speak French, German, and English, and are exceedingly attentive to the comfort of the passengers. The hours of starting and stopping are punctually observed – so punctually that you can calculate to the exact minute when you will arrive at any given point. Having no watch, I always knew the time by looking at my ticket. Between St. Petersburg and Moscow there are thirty-three stations, seven of which are the grand stations of Lubanskaia, Malovischerskaia, Okoulourskaia, Bologovskaia, Spirovskaia, Tver, and Klinskaia. The rest are small intermediate stations. At every seventy-five versts – about fifty miles – the cars stop twenty minutes, and refreshments may be had by paying a pretty heavy price for them. At the points above-named there are large and substantial edifices built by the company, containing various offices, spacious eating-saloons, ante-chambers, etc., and attached to which are extensive machine-shops, and various outbuildings required by the service. Occasionally towns may be seen in the vicinity of these stations, but for the most part they stand out desolate and alone in the dreary waste of country lying between the two great cities. At every twenty-five versts are sub-stations, where the cars stop for a few minutes. These are also large and very substantial edifices, but not distinguished for architectural beauty, like many of the stations in France and Germany. Usually the Russian station consists of an immense plain circular building, constructed of brick, with very thick walls, and a plain zinc roof, the outside painted red, the roof green; wings or flanges built of the same material extending along the track; a broad wooden esplanade in front, upon which the passengers can amuse themselves promenading, and a neat garden, with other accommodations, at one end. Some of the large stations are not only massive and of enormous extent, but present rather a striking and picturesque appearance as they are approached from the distance, standing as they do in the great deserts of space like solitary sentinels of civilization. The passengers rush out at every stopping-place just as they do in other parts of the world, some to stretch their limbs, others to replenish the waste that seems to be constantly going on in the stomachs of the traveling public. I don’t know how it is, but it appears to me that people who travel by railway are always either tired, thirsty, or hungry. The voracity with which plates of soup, cutlets, sandwiches, salad, scalding hot tea, wine, beer, and brandy are swallowed down by these hungry and thirsty Russians, is quite as striking as any thing I ever saw done in the same line at Washoe. But it is not a feature confined to Russia. I notice the same thing every where all over the world; and what vexes me about it is that I never get tired myself, and rarely hungry or thirsty. Here, in midsummer, with a sweltering hot sun, and an atmosphere that would almost smother a salamander, were whole legions of officers, elegantly-dressed ladies, and a rabble of miscellaneous second and third class passengers like myself, puffing, blowing, eating, drinking, sweating, and toiling, as if their very existence depended upon keeping up the internal fires and blowing them off again. It is dreadful to see people so hard pushed to live. I really can’t conjecture what sort of a commotion they will make when they come to die. A sandwich or two and a glass of tea lasted me all the way to Moscow – a journey of eighteen hours, and I never suffered from hunger, thirst, or fatigue the whole way. If I had “gone in” like other people, I would certainly have been a dead man before I got half way; and yet, I think, two sandwiches more would have lasted me to the Ural Mountains. It continually bothers me to know how the human stomach can bear to be tormented in this frightful way. Per Baccho! I would as soon be shot in the hand with an escopette ball as drink the quantity of wine and eat the quantity of food that I have seen even women and children dispose of, as if it were mere pastime, on these railway journeys. I think it must be either this or the frost that accounts for the extraordinary prevalence of red noses in Russia, and it even occurred to me that the stations are painted a fiery red, so that when travelers come within range of the refracted color their noses may look pale by contrast, and thereby remind them that it is time to renew the caloric.
With the exception of the seventy-five versts between Moscow and Tver, I can not remember that I ever traveled over so desolate and uninteresting a stretch of country as that lying between St. Petersburg and Moscow. For a short distance out of St. Petersburg there are some few villas and farms to relieve the monotony of the gloomy pine forests; then the country opens out into immense undulating plains, marshy meadows, scrubby groves of young pine, without any apparent limit; here and there a bleak and solitary village of log huts; a herd of cattle in the meadows; a wretched, sterile-looking farm, with plowed fields, at remote intervals, and so on hour after hour, the scene offering but little variety the whole way to Tver. The villages are wholly destitute of picturesque effect. Such rude and miserable hovels as they are composed of could scarcely be found in the wildest frontier region of the United States. These cabins or hovels are built of logs, and are very low and small, generally consisting of only one or two rooms. I saw none that were whitewashed or painted, and nothing like order or regularity was perceptible about them, all seeming to be huddled together as if they happened there by accident, and were obliged to keep at close quarters in order to avoid freezing during the terrible winters. Some of them are not unlike the city of Eden in Martin Chuzzlewit. The entire absence of every thing approaching taste, comfort, or rural beauty in the appearance of these villages; the weird and desolate aspect of the boggy and grass-grown streets; the utter want of interest in progress or improvement on the part of the peasantry who inhabit
This contract terminated last year (1865).
