jerks as we slid down a steep bank, and we found ourselves
on what appeared to be a broad high-road. Here the sight of many
masts and shipping which, bound in by the fetters of a relentless
winter, would remain imbedded in the ice till the ensuing spring,
showed me that we were on the Volga. It was an animated spectacle,
this frozen highway, thronged with peasants who strode beside their
sledges, which were bringing cotton and other goods from Orenburg
to the railway. Now a smart _troika_ would dash by us, its driver
shouting as he passed, when our Jehu, stimulating his steeds by
loud cries and frequent applications of the whip, would vainly
strive to overtake his brother coachman. Old and young alike seemed
like octogenarians, their short thick beards and mustaches being
white as hoar-frost from the congealed breath. According to all
accounts the river had not been long frozen, and till very recently
steamers laden with corn from Southern Russia had plied between
Sizeran and Samara. The price of corn is here forty copecks the
pood of forty pounds, while the same quantity at Samara could be
purchased for eighteen copecks. An iron bridge was being constructed
a little farther down the Volga. Here the railroad was to pass,
and it was said that in two years' time there would be railway
communication, not only between Samara and the capital, but even
as far as Orenburg.

Presently the scenery became very picturesque as we raced over the
glistening surface, which flashed like a burnished cuirass beneath
the rays of the rising sun. Now we approach a spot where seemingly
the waters from some violent blast or other had been in a state
of foam and commotion, when a stern frost transformed them into a
solid mass. Pillars and blocks of the shining and hardened element
were seen modelled into a thousand quaint and grotesque patterns.
Here a fountain, perfectly formed with Ionic and Doric columns,
was reflecting a thousand prismatic hues from the diamond-like
stalactites which had attached themselves to its crest. There a
huge obelisk, which, if of stone, might have come from ancient
Thebes, lay half buried beneath a pile of fleecy snow. Farther
on we came to what might have been a Roman temple or vast hall in
the palace of a Caesar, where many half-hidden pillars and monuments
erected their tapering summits above the piles of the _debris_. The
wind had done in that northern latitude what has been performed
by some violent pre-ada