Page:Thirty-five years in the East.djvu/121

Rh when on a sudden the gate opened, and a troop of chimney-sweepers rushed in, whom my host informed me were his own servants, I looked for an excuse to leave as soon as possible the house of the chimney-sweeper; and after-wards I was informed that this profession is a very lucrative one in Russia, and that those who follow it are generally rich and respectable men.

Of what further occurred to me after my return to St.Petersburgh, I have nothing to relate, for I left the capital immediately after my arrival there, and set off for Moscow. The arrangement of my affairs having now been completed, I felt no stronger desire than that of again seeing my native country. It was in the winter season, and the ground was covered with snow, when about the middle of November, I left the old and venerable capital of Russia. I had my own carriage, and passed through the governments of Tulai, Orel, Kiew, Volhynia and Bukowina, and also through Czernowitz, Dorna, and Bistritz, to Kronstadt, my dear and beloved native town, where I arrived on Christmas-eve, in the year 1834, by the same road on which I had twenty years before left my home, full of lofty ideas, and impelled by my desire to see the Eastern world.

The season during my journey was inconvenient for me, as it would have been for any one in my situation. Although I had no longer to struggle against wild beasts and Arab robbers, yet the severe cold was almost insupportable, and still more so were the vexations and extortions I had everywhere to endure from greedy Polish Jews, and cunning treacherous servants. But even at the moment, when I had already left the Austrian frontier behind me, and fancied I saw my native land, I was near losing my life. It was in the middle of December when I ascended one of those snow-covered Carpathian summits, a short time before sunset. I had alighted from my carriage on account of the steepness of the road, when the vehicle suddenly overturned, and was precipitated down a tremendous precipice, toeether with the three horses and the coachman, and there they remained all the night long.