of surprise and alarm escaped me. I remained motionless before the unexpected scene that presented itself to my eyes—a whole gipsy camp, realising one of Sir Walter Scott's most striking fictions. Dispersed over the whole surface of the globe, and placed at the bottom of the social scale, this vagrant people forms in Russia, as elsewhere, a real tribe of pariahs, whose presence is regarded with disgust, even by the peasants. The government has attempted to settle a colony of these Bedouins of Europe in Bessarabia, but with little success hitherto. True to the traditional usages of their race, the Tsigans abhor every thing belonging to agriculture and regular habits. No bond has ever been found strong enough to check that nomade humour they inherit from their forefathers, and which has resisted the rude climate of Russia and the despotism of its government. Just as in Italy and Spain, they roam from village to village, plying various trades, stealing horses, poultry, and fruit, telling fortunes, procuring by fraud or entreaty the means of barely keeping themselves alive, and infinitely preferring such a vagabond and lazy existence to the comfort they might easily secure with a moderate amount of labour.
Their manner of travelling reminds one of the emigrations of barbarous tribes. Marching always in numerous bodies, they pass from place to place with all they possess. The women, children, and aged persons, are huddled together in a sort of cart called pavoshk, drawn each by one or two small horses with long manes. All their wealth consists of a few coarse brown blankets, which form their tents by night, and in some tools employed in their chief trade, that of farriery.
All travellers who have visited Russia, speak with enthusiasm of the gipsy singing heard in the Moscow salons. No race perhaps possesses an aptitude for music in a higher degree than these gipsies. In many other respects too, their intelligence appeared to us remarkable. A long abode in Moldavia, where there are said to be more than 100,000 Tsigans, enabled us to study with facility the curious habits of this people, and to collect a great number of facts, which would not perhaps be without interest for the majority of readers.[7]
The Tsigans pass the fine season in travelling from fair to fair, encamping for some weeks in the neighbourhood of the towns, and living, heedless of the future, in thorough Asiatic indolence; but when the snows set in, and the northern blasts sweep those vast plains as level as the sea, the condition of these wretched creatures is such, as may well excite the strongest pity. But half clad, cowling in huts sunk below the surface of the ground, and destitute of the commonest necessaries, it is inconceivable how they live through the winter. Horrible as such a state of existence must be, they never give it a thought from the moment the breath of the south enables them to resume their vagrant career. Recklessness is the predominant feature in their character, and the most frightful sufferings cannot force them to bestow a moment's consideration on the future.
The singular apparition that had suddenly arrested my steps by the road side, was that of a troop of gipsies encamped for the night in that lonely spot, about thirty yards from the road, near a field of water-melons. Their pavoshks were arranged in a circle, with the shafts turned upwards, and support the cloths of their tents, which could only be entered by creeping on all fours. Two large fires burned at a little distance from the tents, and round them sat about fifty persons of the most frightful appearance. Their sooty colour, matted hair, wild features, and the rags that scarcely covered them, seen by the capricious light of the flames, that sometimes glared up strongly, and at other moments suddenly sank down and left every thing in darkness, produced a sort of demoniacal spectacle, that recalled to the imagination those sinister scenes of which they have so long been made the heroes.
The history of all that is most repulsive in penury and the habits of a vagrant life, was legible in their haggard faces, in the restless expression of their large black eyes, and the sort of voluptuousness with which they grovelled in the dust; one would have said it was their native element, and that they felt themselves born for the mire with all swarming creatures of uncleanness. The women especially appeared hideous to me. Covered only with a tattered petticoat, their breasts, arms, and part of their legs bare, their eyes haggard, and their faces almost hidden under their straggling locks, they retained no semblance of their sex, or even of humanity.
The faces of some old men struck me, however, by their perfect regularity of features, and by the contrast between their white hair and the olive hue of their skins. All were smoking, men, women, and children. It is a pleasure they esteem almost as much as drinking spirits. What painter's imagination ever conceived a wilder or more fantastic picture!
Hitherto they had not perceived me, but the noise of our carriage, which was rapidly advancing, and my husband's voice, put them on the alert. The whole gang instantly started to their feet, and I found myself, not without some degree of dread, surrounded by a dozen of perfectly naked children, all bawling to me for alms. Some young girls seeing the fright I was in began to sing in so sweet and melodious a manner, that even our Cossack seemed affected. We remained a long while listening to them, and admiring the picturesque effect of their encampment in the steppes, under the beautiful and lucid night sky. No thought of serious danger crossed our minds, and, indeed, it would have been quite absurd; but in any other country than Russia such an encounter would have been far from agreeable.
In the course of the following day we reached Rostof, a pretty little town on the Don, entirely different in appearance from the other Russian towns. You have here none of the cold, monotonous straight lines that afflict the traveller's sight from one end of the empire to the other; but the inequality of the ground, and the wish to keep near the harbour, have obliged the inhabitants to build their houses in an irregular manner, which has a very picturesque effect.
The population, too, a mixture of Russians, Greeks, and Cossacks, have in their ways and habits nothing at all analogous to the systematic stiffness and military drill that seem to regulate all the actions of the Russians. The influence of a people long free has changed even the character of the chancery employés, who are here exempt from that arrogance and self-sufficiency that distinguish the petty nobles of Russia. Hence society is much more agreeable in Rostof than in most of the continental towns. The ridiculous pretensions of tchin (rank) do not there assail you at every step; there is a complete fusion of nationality, tastes, and ideas, to the great advantage of all parties.
This secret influence exercised by the Cossacks on the Russians, is worthy of note, and seems to prove that the defects of the latter are attributable rather to their political system, than to the inherent character of the nation.
Their natural gaiety, kept down by the secret inquisition of a sovereign power, readily gets the upper hand when opportunity offers. The public functionaries associate freely in Rostof, with the Cossacks and the Greek merchants, without any appearance of the haughty exclusiveness elsewhere conspicuous in their class.
One thing that greatly surprised us, and that shows how much liberal ideas are in favour in this town, is the establishment of a sort of casino, where all grades of society assemble on Sunday, to dance and hold parties of pleasure. This is without a parallel elsewhere.
This casino contains a large ball-room, handsome gardens, billiard and refreshment-rooms, and every thing else that can be desired in an establishment of the sort. Though all persons are at liberty to enter without payment, it is nevertheless frequented by the best society, who dance there as heartily as in the most aristocratic salons. All distinctions vanish in the casino: public functionaries, shopkeepers, officers' wives, work-girls, foreigners, persons, in short, of all ranks and conditions mingle together, forming an amusing pell-mell, that reminds one, by its unceremonious gaiety, of the bals champêtres of the environs of Paris. Every thing is a matter of surprise to the traveller in this little town, so remote from all civilisation: the hotels are provided with good restaurants, clean chambers, each furnished with a bed, and all appurtenances complete (a thing unheard of everywhere else in the interior of Russia), besides many other things that are hardly to be found even in Odessa.
Rostof is the centre of all
