Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/43

Rh About seven o'clock passengers began to arrive in carriages and droshkies from the city of Kazán, and before eight o'clock all were on board, the last warning whistle had sounded, the lines had been cast off, and we were again under way. It was Sunday morning, and as the weather was clear and warm we spent nearly the whole day on the hurricane deck, enjoying the sunshine and the exhilarating sense of swift movement, drinking in the odorous air that came to us from the forest-clad hills on the western bank, and making notes or sketches of strange forms of boats, barges, and rafts which presented themselves from time to time, and which would have been enough to identify the Vólga as a Russian river even had we been unable to see its shores. First came a long, stately "caravan" of eight or ten huge black barges, like dismantled ocean steamers, ascending the river slowly in single file behind a powerful tug; then followed a curious kedging barge, with high bow and stern and a horse-power windlass amidships, pulling itself slowly up-stream by winding in cables attached to kedge anchors which were carried ahead and dropped in turn by two or three boats' crews; and finally we passed a little Russian hamlet of ready-made houses, with elaborately carved gables, standing on an enormous timber raft 100 feet in width by 500 in length, and intended for sale in the treeless region along the lower Vólga and around the Caspian Sea. The bareheaded, red-shirted, and blue-gowned population of this floating settlement were gathered in a picturesque group around a blazing camp-fire near one end of the raft, drinking tea; and I could not help fancying that I was looking at a fragment of a peasant village which had in some way gotten adrift in a freshet and was miraculously floating down the river with all its surviving inhabitants. Now and then there came to us faintly across the water the musical chiming of bells from the golden-domed churches here and there on the right bank, and every few moments we passed a large six-oared lódka full of men and women in bright-colored costumes, on their way to church service.