Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/104

76 Major. “Whoever has seen much, has much to tell,” says the proverb, Achmatow, in his sledge or kibitka, had passed often through Asia, from the Arctic Ocean to the frontiers of China, without thinking that he was passing through it, for when I asked him if there were many fortresses upon the line which separates Europe from Asia, he looked at me with wide staring eyes, and asked what Asia was. Upon another occasion, he asked me how many minutes there were in an hour. This want of education, however, was compensated by knowledge of a different kind. He related to us, for instance, how bieluga, a fish from which they make caviar, is caught at Astrachan; he told us that this fish was a quarter of a verst long, and that when drawn from the water it wept, and begged the fishers to let it go. In other respects, as I have already said, he was a very honest man, and behaved very well towards us. A few months after he was appointed Gorodniczy, a sort of mayor, in a small town in Asia.

After a journey of two days, we arrived at