latter, there is a Parisian, who, by dint of washing and rewashing wool, and that too on another's account, has managed to amass nearly 12,000l. in less than eight years. The lavoirs of MM. Vassal and Potier are the most considerable in Kherson, giving daily employment to more than 600 men.
The Dniepr seen from Kherson, resembles a vast lake studded with islands; the views it presents are very beautiful, and partake very much of the character of maritime scenery. The estate we were going to lay on the other side of the river, and we had the pleasure of travelling about fifteen versts by water, through the labyrinth of islands, and a constant succession of the most enchanting views. We found horses waiting for us on the opposite bank, and in less than four hours we were at Clarofka, our journey's end.
M. Potier, the proprietor of Clarofka, is an ex-pupil of the Polytechnic School, who was sent to St. Petersburg by Napoleon, with three colleagues, to establish a school of civil engineering. In 1812, the government fearing lest they should join the French, sent them away to the confines of China, where they were detained more than two years. When our troops had evacuated Russia, and the presence of these young men was no longer to be feared, the Emperor Alexander recalled them, and gave them each a pension of 6000 rubles, to indemnify them for their exile. From that time forth, they all made rapid progress in fortune and in honours. M. Potier was for a long while director of the civil engineering institution. He is highly esteemed by the Emperor Nicholas, who wished to attach him completely to his court, by conferring on him a post of the highest importance, but M. Potier always refused, and at last succeeded in obtaining permission to retire. He is the son-in-law of M. Rouvier, who made himself popular in Russia and even in France, by being the first to introduce the breed of Merino sheep into Southern Russia. M. Potier followed his father-in-law's example, and has more than 20,000 sheep on his estate.
The estate of M. Vassal, another son-in-law and successor of M. Rouvier, is but a dozen versts from Clarofka. It is larger than many a German duchy; but instead of the fertile fields and thriving villages that adorn Germany, it presents to view only a vast desert with numerous tumuli, salt lakes, and a few sheep folds. These tumuli exact models of mole-hills, from ten to fifteen yards high, are the only hills in the country, and appear to be the burial-places of its old masters, the Scythians. Several of them have been opened, and nothing found in them but some bones, copper coins of the kings of Bosphorus, and coarse earthen utensils. Similar tombs in the Crimea have been found to contain objects of more value, both as regards material and workmanship. This difference is easily accounted for; the Milesian colonies that occupied part of the Crimea 200 years ago, spread a taste for opulence and the fine arts all through the peninsula; their tombs would, therefore, bear token of the degree of civilisation they had reached. They had a regular government, princes, and all the elements and accessories of a kingdom; whilst our poor Scythians, divided into nomade tribes like the Kirghises and Kalmucks of the present day, led a rude life in the midst of the herds of cattle that constituted their sole wealth.
Agriculture could never have yielded much in these steppes, where rain is extremely rare in summer, where there are neither brooks nor wells for irrigation, and where hot winds scorch up every thing during the greater part of the fine season. It is only on the banks of the rivers that vegetation makes its appearance and the eye rests on cultivated fields and green pastures. There are indeed here and there a few depressions, where the grass retains its verdure during a part of the year, and some stunted trees spread their meagre branches over a less unkindly soil than that of the steppe; but these are unusual circumstances, and one must often travel hundreds of versts to find a single shrub. Such being the general configuration of the country, it may easily be imagined how cheerless is the aspect of those vast plains with nothing to vary their surface except the tumuli, and with no other boundaries than the sea. No one who is unaccustomed to that monotonous nature can long endure its influence. Those dreary wastes seem to him a boundless prison in which he vainly exerts himself without a hope of escape. And yet that flat and barren soil from which the eye turns away so contemptuously, has become a source of wealth to its present proprietors by the great success of the first experiments in Merino sheep-breeding. It was M. Rouvier, who first conceived the happy idea of turning the unproductive steppes into pasture. The Emperor Alexander, always ready to encourage liberal ideas, not only advanced the projector a sum of a hundred thousand rubles, but gave him even a man-of-war to go and make his first purchases in Spain, and on his return, granted him an immense extent of land, where the flocks, increasing rapidly, brought in a considerable fortune to M. Rouvier in a few years. His sons-in-law, General Potier and M. Vassal inherited it, and formed those great establishments of which we have spoken. Thenceforth the stock of merinos increased with incredible rapidity in New Russia; but an enormous fall in the price of wool soon occurred, and many proprietors have now reason to regret their outlay in that branch of rural economy, and are endeavouring to get rid of their flocks. The rams which fetched 500 or 600 francs in 1834 and 1835, were not worth more than 250 or 300 in 1841. In 1842, a landowner of our acquaintance had made up his mind to part with his best thorough-bred rams for 140 and even 100 francs a head. The exportation of wool increased, nevertheless, during the last years of our stay in Russia; but this was only because the landowners, after holding out a long while, found themselves at last constrained to accept prices one-half lower than those current a few years before, and to dispose of the wools they had long kept in their warehouses. Here was another instance of the disastrous consequences of the Russian prohibitive system; it has been as fatal to the wool-trade as to that in corn.
Clarofka is a village consisting of fifteen or twenty houses, each containing two families of peasants. It is some distance from the farm, which alone contains more dwellings and inmates than the whole village.
The steward resides in a very long, low house, with small windows in the Russian fashion, and an earthen roof, and standing at the edge of a large pond, the fetid exhalations from which are very unwholesome during the hot season. A few weeping-willows wave their branches over the stagnant water, and increase still more the melancholy appearance of the spot. The pond is frequented by a multitude of water-fowl, such as teal, gulls, ducks, pelicans, and kourlis, that make their nests in the thick reeds on the margin. Beside the house, according to the Russian custom, stand the kitchens and other offices, the icehouse, poultry-yard, wash-house, cellar for fruit and vegetables, &c. A little further on are the stables and coach-houses, containing a great number of carriages, caleches, droshkies, and a dozen horses; other buildings, including the workmen's barracks, the forge, the gardener's and the miller's dwellings are scattered irregularly here and there. Two great wind-mills lift their huge wings above the road leading to the village. All this is not very handsome; but there is one thing indicative of princely sumptuousness, namely, an immense garden that spreads out behind the house, and almost makes one forget the steppes, so thick is the foliage of its beautiful alleys. One is at a loss to conceive by what miracle this park, with its large trees, its fine fruit, and its charming walks, can have thus sprung up out of the scorched and arid soil, that waits whole months for a few drops of water to clothe it in transient verdure. And indeed to create such an oasis in the heart of so barren a land, there needed not one miracle, but a series of miracles of perseverance, toil, and resolution, seconded by all the means at the disposal of a Russian lord. All kinds of fruit are here collected together; we counted more than fifty varieties of the pear in one alley. Grapes of all kinds, strawberries, beds of asparagus of incomparable flavour, every thing in short that the most capricious taste can desire, grows there in such abundance, that seeing all these things one really feels transported into the midst of regions the most favoured by nature.
No one but a Russian lord could have effected such metamorphoses. Master of a whole population of slaves, he has never to pay for labour; and whims which would be ruinous to others, cost him only the trouble of conceiving them. In the dry season, which often lasts for more than five months, chain pumps worked by horses supply water to every part of this extensive garden, and thus afford what the unkind skies deny it. The work to be done in the spring season generally requires the labour of more than 200 pair of hands daily, and during the rest of the year three-score peasants are constantly employed in pruning the trees, plucking up the weeds that rapidly spring up in the walks, training the vines, and attending to the flowers. In return for all this expenditure the general
