o hire a _tarantas_, or
posting-carriage, a very inferior kind of conveyance. In consequence,
besides, of the fair at Pultowa, every vehicle of this description had
been taken up except one, which was of course the worst in the town. When
they had loaded their luggage and spread hay to lie upon, they started;
but before they were out of sight of the stable the crazy vehicle broke
down, and they were detained till nearly eleven o'clock at night, whilst
it was being repaired. In this new kind of conveyance they experienced
great discomfort: they could neither sit nor lie with ease, as the space
was much too small for three passengers. The country they passed, through
was very rich; it may be called the granary of Russia; they found the
harvest more advanced the farther they penetrated into the south.

At Koursk they hired a fresh _tarantas_. The roads were inferior to
those along which they had travelled, but the country was more
picturesque, still fertile, and producing much wheat; the weather was very
hot, as it had been all the way from Petersburg. On the 27th, at midnight,
they reached Kharkov.

We have travelled, says John Yeardley, four days and nights in succession
from Moscow to this place. The conveyances of the country are exceedingly
bad; they almost shook our bones asunder.

The next day they visited Pastor Landesen, to whom they had a letter of
introduction from Pastor Dietrich. They spent the day with the family of
this intelligent and pious man. Tea was spread in the garden, to which
meal a number of Christian friends were invited.

The pastor's wife, says John Yeardley, is a sweet-spirited woman. After
much social converse our garden-visit closed with a religious occasion, in
which I expressed a few words of exhortation. I think we were sensible of
the nearness of the presence of our Divine Master, which proved a brook by
the dreary way. We met at the pastor's Louse Superintendent Huber, a
worthy and experienced Christian, kind and fatherly to us.

The next day William Rasche went with Pastor Landesen to hire a carriage.
No such thing, however, was to be had, and they would have been happy if
they could have engaged as good a vehicle as their old crazy
_tarantas_; for the only alternative was a _bauer-wagen_
(peasant's cart), if we except the very expensive extra-post carriage,
with which they would have been obliged to take a conductor. It happened
that a young man, an apothecary's assistant,