ny Gardens. --
Present Commercial Prosperity. -- Local Sentiment. -- Concerning
Polish Ladies and Jewish Beauties.

From Moscow to Warsaw one travels a long and rather dreary seven
hundred miles, the first half of which is characterized by such
sameness, verst after verst, as to render the journey extremely
monotonous. The country through which we passed is heavily wooded,
and affords some attractive sport to foreign hunters who resort
hither for wolf-shooting. In the summer season these repulsive
creatures are seldom dangerous to man, except when they go mad (which
in fact they are rather liable to do), in which condition they rush
through field and forest heedless of hunters, dogs, or aught else,
biting every creature they meet; and such animals, man or beast,
surely die of hydrophobia. The wolves are at all seasons more or less
destructive to small domestic stock, and sometimes in the severity of
a hard winter they will gather in large numbers and attack human
beings under the craze of ravenous hunger. But as a rule they are
timid, and keep out of the way of man. There are also some desirable
game-birds in these forests which are sought for by sportsmen, but
the wolves are all that the foreign hunter seeks. The wild bison
still exist here, though it is forbidden to shoot them, as they are
considered to belong to the Crown, but the gradual diminution of
their numbers from natural causes threatens their extinction. If they
were not fed by man during the long winters they would starve. The
Emperor sometimes presents a specimen to foreign zoological gardens.

As we advanced, the country put on a different aspect. The beautiful
lavender color of the flax-fields interspersed with the peach-bloom
of broad, level acres of buckwheat produced a cheerful aspect. These
fields were alternated by miles of intensely green oats, rye, and
other cereals; indeed, we have seen no finer display of grain-fields
except in western America. The hay-makers in picturesque groups were
busy along the line of the railroad, nine tenths of them being women.
The borders of Poland exhibited a scene of great fertility and
successful agricultural enterprise. As we crossed the frontier a
difference in the dress of the common people was at once obvious. Men
no longer wore red shirts outside of their pantaloons, and the
scarlet disappeared from the dress of the women, giving place to more
subdued hues. The stolid square faces of the Russian peasan