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As a peace offering to Pauline I took with me twenty splendid pearls and six silver fox-skins, and, thus provided, I presented myself at my house at Amsterdam, to which I was at first denied admittance by the man-servant, who opened the door to me, and who had no knowledge of my identity. While we were arguing the matter; however, Pauline appeared in the hall, into which I advanced to meet her.
The imitative propensity of these singular people was brought rather oddly into play during the progress of traffic. Busby had produced a large roll of tobacco which they knew the use of, having already been shown how to use a pipe and cut off portions of it, which he gave in exchange for fox-skins, and deer-skins, and seal-skin boots.
This cloak was valued at 3400 pounds; though Mr Nicholay considers this an exaggerated estimate, and states its true value to be not over 1000 pounds. George the Fourth had a lining of black fox-skins worth 1000 pounds. The "grey fox" is a more southern species than any already described.
She turned toward him a glance from her tranquil eyes, which he did not understand. "Then you are going?" "Next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. I shall be away only ten days at most." She put on her sealskin toque, ornamented with a branch of holly. "Is it something that you can not postpone?" "Oh, yes. Fox-skins would not be worth anything in a month.
But the tears they shed were tears of joy. When we were more composed, Pauline and I and young Peter went together to look at the presents I had brought back with me. Pauline was delighted with the pearls and the fox-skins, but she at once decided that the skins would make a warm winter coat for baby, and a splendid rug for his little carriage.
Catharine tells many trifling, but interesting incidents, of various nature, in these Memoirs: of how, after the birth of her first child, she was left utterly alone and neglected, so that she famished with thirst for the lack of some one to bring her water; how her child was taken from her at its birth, and kept from her, she hardly being allowed even to see it; how it was always wrapped in fox-skins and seal-skins, till it lay in a continual bath of perspiration; how the members of the royal family itself were so badly accommodated, that sometimes they were made ill by walking through passages open to wind and rain, and sometimes stifled by over-crowded rooms; how at the imperial masquerades, during one season, the men were ordered to appear in women's dresses, and the women in the propria quae maribus, the former hideous in large whaleboned petticoats and high feathered head-dresses, the latter looking like scrubby little boys with very thick legs, and all that the Empress Elizabeth might show her tall and graceful figure and what beautiful things she used to walk with, which Catharine says were the handsomest that she ever saw; how in this court, where marriage was the mere shadow of a bond, it was yet deemed a matter of the first nuptial importance that a lady of the court should have her head dressed for the wedding by the hands of the Empress herself, or, if she were too ill, by those of the Grand Duchess; how Catharine used, at Oranienbaum, to dress herself from head to foot in male attire, and go out in a skiff, accompanied only by an old huntsman, to shoot ducks and snipe, sometimes doubling the Cape of Oranienbaum, which extends two versts into the sea, and how thus the fortunes of the Russian Empire, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were at the mercy of a spring-tide, a gust of wind, or the tipping of a shallop.
Nicholay considers this an exaggerated estimate, and states its true value to be not over 1000l. George the Fourth had a lining of black fox-skins worth 1000l. The "grey fox" is a more southern species than any already described. Its proper home is the temperate zone covered by the United States; although it extends its range into the southern parts of Canada.
The effluvia that proceeds from their persons in the summer season is quite insufferable; it is as if you applied your nose to a cask of rancid oil. In the course of the summer, several Esquimaux arrived from the westward, with a considerable quantity of fox-skins, the only fur this barren country yields.
She turned toward him a glance from her tranquil eyes, which he did not understand. "Then you are going?" "Next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. I shall be away only ten days at most." She put on her sealskin toque, ornamented with a branch of holly. "Is it something that you can not postpone?" "Oh, yes. Fox-skins would not be worth anything in a month.
These people are very poor; the skins that they make their clothes with are all poor, the animals were torn by the dogs or injured that is why they could not sell them. Those red fox-skins would have been worth two roubles each if they had been good; but the merchants will give nothing for those that are injured. They say it does not pay for the carriage. So they were glad to make them up for us."
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