All the way from Borizoff the road passes through a country but little cultivated, dreary, and covered with forests. When Napoleon entered the province of Lithuania his first bulletins proclaimed, "Here, then, is that Russia so formidable at a distance! It is a desert for which its scattered population is wholly insufficient. They will be vanquished by the very extent of territory which ought to defend them;" and, before I had travelled in it a day, I could appreciate the feeling of the soldier from La Belle France, who, hearing his Polish comrades boast of their country, exclaimed, "Et ces gueux la appellent cette pays une patrie!"
The villages are a miserable collection of straggling huts, without plan or arrangement, and separated from each other by large spaces of ground. They are about ten or twelve feet square, made of the misshapen trunks of trees heaped on each other, with the ends projecting over; the roof of large shapeless boards, and the window a small hole in the wall, answering the double purpose of admitting light and letting out smoke. The tenants of these wretched hovels exhibit the same miserable appearance both in person and manners. They are hard-boned and sallow-complexioned; the men wear coarse white woollen frocks, and a round felt cap lined with wool, and shoes made of the bark of trees, and their uncombed hair hangs low over their heads, generally of a flaxen colour. Their agricultural implements are of the rudest kind. The plough and harrow are made from the branches of the fir tree, without either iron or ropes; their carts are put together without iron, consisting of four small wheels, each of a single piece of wood; the sides are made of the bark of a tree bent round, and the shafts are a couple of fir branches; their bridles and traces platted from the bark of trees, or composed merely of twisted branches. Their only instrument to construct their huts and make their carts is a hatchet. They were servile and cringing in their expressions of respect, bowing down to the ground and stopping their carts as soon as we came near them, and stood with their caps in their hands till we were out of sight. The whole country, except in some open places around villages, is one immense forest of firs, perhaps sixty feet in height, compact and thick, but very slender. As we approached Minsk the road was sandy, and we entered by a wooden bridge over a small stream and along an avenue of trees.