Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
ROUNDABOUT TO MOSCOW
AN EPICUREAN JOURNEY
BY
JOHN BELL BOUTON
AUTHOR OF “ROUND THE BLOCK”
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1887
Copyright, 1887,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
TO
THE SYMPATHETIC COMRADE
IN THESE WANDERINGS,
MY WIFE.
PREFACE.
If any reader of this book happens to be carrying about a heavy packof fine old English prejudices, I beg that he or she will drop itbefore entering upon the eleven chapters relating to Russia. The bestpreparative for crossing the Russian frontier is to throw out ofthe carriage-window every English volume with which the tourist hasbeguiled the way in the vain hope of forming correct impressions of thecountry ahead.
Englishmen can not be trusted to treat Russia fairly. John Bull hatesIvanovitch. With him the Russian is always a Tartar or a Cossack.Though these terms are not, in fact, opprobrious—since the Tartar ofto-day is the model business man of Russia, industrious, faithful,highly respected, and the Cossack preserves none of his ancient traitsbut an excessive fondness for horses, a martial spirit, and ferventpatriotism—they are slurring words in the English sense.
Americans have no cause of quarrel with Russians. There is no Turkey onthis continent which we feel bound to save from the jaws of the Russianbear in order to devour her ourselves. We have no distant provincewith 200,000,000 inhabitants of an alien race, retained by a tenureso precarious that the approach of a rival within 500 miles of theborder throws us into a panic. We have no India[Pg vi] for Russia to invade.Americans are in a position to do what their English friends have neverdone—see and report Russia as she is.
If a sense of gratitude for the touching sympathy shown by Russia tothe United States at a time when the offensive interference of Englandin our affairs was strongly feared, shall prepossess the Americantraveler in favor of that great country and people, there is littledanger that he will paint them in colors too bright for truth. For,with his best efforts, he will find it impossible to dismiss all thefalse anti-Russian ideas with which English literature has filledhim. So clinging and powerful is their effect, that he will at timesquestion the evidence of his own senses, and be tempted to discard hispersonal experience as exceptional and misleading.
I saw no drunken priests reeling through the streets of St. Petersburgand Moscow, and not a single case of intoxication, even among themujiks. Tea is the national beverage of Russia. Beggars drew butlightly upon the little pocketful of kopecks which I had set apart forthem. I lost nothing by theft, and was not defrauded, to m