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Thanks to Napoleon's statecraft, the peoples of Europe from the Volga to the Tagus were now embattled in a mighty phalanx, and were about to enter in triumph the city that only twenty-five years before had heralded the dawn of their nascent liberties. And what of Napoleon, in part the product and in part the cause, of this strange reaction?
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.
This Ban happened to have his appointed residence in inferior pastures, and one day when drunk, he said to his people, that being of the race of Zingis as well as Baatu, whose brother or nephew he was, he thought himself entitled to feed his flocks on the fine plains of the Volga as freely as Baatu himself.
Our life at Prince X.'s estate on the Volga flowed on in a semi-monotonous, wholly delightful state of lotus-eating idleness, though it assuredly was not a case which came under the witty description once launched by Turgeneff broadside at his countrymen: "The Russian country proprietor comes to revel and simmer in his ennui like a mushroom frying in sour cream." Ennui shunned that happy valley.
Happily things are improving, even in this outlying part of the country. Now there is one train daily, and it goes at a less funereal pace. From Kalatch, at the Don end of the line, a steamer starts for Rostoff, which is situated near the mouth of the river. The navigation of the Don is much more difficult than that of the Volga.
The latter owns six large steamers, with cargo capacity of from sixty to eighty thousand poods, liquid measurement, for oil-tank purposes, equalling nine hundred to twelve hundred tons. They have German under-officers, and Russian captains. It is likely that the German officers come from the German colonies on the Volga, and probably some of the capital also comes from that quarter.
Bati, the Tartar chieftain, who was encamped with his army on the banks of the Volga and the Don, died in the year 1257, and his bloody sword, the only scepter of his power, passed into the hands of his brother Berki. Alexander felt compelled to hasten to the Tartar camp, with expressions of homage to the new captain, and with rich presents to conciliate his favor.
The Huns, having crossed the Volga, drove the Alani before them to the Danube. Valens, the then Emperor of the East, was a weak, incapable ruler; he failed to recognize the peril by which his empire would ere long be threatened, and permitted the Alani to find a refuge in his dominions.
After the first hundred pages, the book is a prolonged anti-climax, desperately dull. Altogether the best passage in the story is the description of the river in spring, impressive not merely for its beauty and accuracy of language, but because the Volga is interpreted as a symbol of the spirit of the Russian people, with vast but unawakened possibilities.
The Huns, a Slavonic race, most hideous and revolting savages, Tartar hordes, with swarthy faces, sunken eyes, flat noses, square bodies, big heads, broad shoulders, low stature, without pity, or fear, or mercy equally the enemies of the Romans and the Germans races thus far incapable of civilization, now spread themselves from the Volga to the Danube, from the shores of the Caspian to the Hadriatic.
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