orizon is bounded by low
pine-covered hills and occasional forests of birch. No high mountains
or abrupt outlines are any where visible--all is broad and sweeping,
conveying some premonition of the vastness of the steppes that divide
this region from the Ural Mountains. Waving fields of grain, pastures
of almost boundless extent, and solitary farm-houses lie dim in the
distance, while in the immediate vicinity of the city cultivation has
been carried to considerable perfection, and the villas and estates of
the nobility present something more of the appearance of civilization
than perhaps any thing of a similar kind to be seen in Russia.
Contrasted with the country around St. Petersburg, and the desert of
scrubby pines and marshes lying for a distance of nearly five hundred
miles along the line of the railway between the two great cities, the
neighborhood of Moscow is wonderfully rich in rural and pastoral
beauties. Viewing it in connection with the city from the tower of
Ivan Veliki, I certainly derived the most exquisite sensations of
pleasure from the novelty, extent, and variety of the whole scene.
Yet, calmly and peacefully as it now slumbers in the genial sunshine
of a summer's afternoon, what visions it conjures up of bloodshed and
rapine, plague, pestilence, and famine, and of all the calamities
wrought by human hands, and all the appalling visitations of a divine
power by which this ill-fated spot has been afflicted. Looking back
through the wide waste of years, the mighty hosts of Tamerlane uprise
before us, pouring through the passes of the Ural, and sweeping over
the plains with their glittering and bloodstained crests like demons
of destruction carrying death and desolation before them. Then the
giant Czars, half saints, half devils, loom through the flames of the
ill-fated city, with their myriads of fierce and defiant warriors
stemming the torrent of invasion with the bodies of the dying and the
dead. Then are the streets choked with blackened ruins and putrid
masses, and the days of sorrow and wailing come, when the living are
unable to bury the dead. Again, a great famine has come upon the city
after the days of its early tribulations have passed away, and strong
men, driven to desperation by the pangs of hunger, slay their wives
and children, and feed upon the dead bodies, and mothers devour the
sucking babes in their arms; and horror grows upon horror, till, amid
the slaughter, ruin, and madness wrough