Travel by Night.--A Rencounter.--A Traveller's Message.--Lithuania.--Poverty of the Country.--Agricultural Implements.--Minsk.--Polish Jews.--A Coin of Freedom.--Riding in a Basket.--Brezc.--The Bug.--A searching Operation.--Women Labourers.--Warsaw.
IT was after dark when we returned to our wagon, still standing at the end of the bridge opposite Borizoff. Our postillion, like a sensible man, had lain down to sleep at the head of his horses, so they could not move without treading on him and waking him; and, when we roused him, the pain of his beating was over, and with it all sense of the indignity; and, in fact, we made him very grateful for the flogging by promising him a few additional kopeks.
We hauled up the straw and seated ourselves in the bottom of our kibitka. Night closed upon us amid the gloomy forests bordering the banks of the Berezina. We talked for a little while, and by degrees drawing our cloaks around us, each fell into a revery. The continued tinkling of the bell, which, on my first entering Russia, grated on my ear, had become agreeable to me, and in a dark night particularly was a pleasing sound. The song of the postillion, too, harmonized with the repose of spirit at that moment most grateful to us; that too died away, the bell almost ceased its tinkling, and, in spite of the alarum of war which we had all day been ringing in our own ears, we should probably soon have fallen into a sleep as sound, for a little while at least, as that of them who slept under the waters of the Berezina, but we were suddenly roused by a shock as alarming to quiet travellers as the hourra of the Cossack in the ears of the flying Frenchmen. Our horses sprang out of the road, but not in time to avoid a concussion with another wagon going toward Borizoff. Both postillions were thrown off their seats; and the stranger, picking himself up, came at us with a stream of Lithuanian Russian almost harsh enough to frighten the horses. I will not suggest what its effect was upon us, but only that, as to myself, it seemed at first equal to the voice of at least a dozen freebooters and marauders; and if the English of it had been "stand and deliver," I should probably have given up my carpet-bag without asking to reserve a change of linen. But I was restored by the return fire of our postillion, who drowned completely the attack of his adversary by his outrageous clamour; and when he stopped to take breath my companion followed up the defence, and this brought out a fourth voice from the bottom of the opposite wagon. A truce was called, and waiving the question on which side the fault lay, we all got out to ascertain the damage. Our antagonist passenger was a German merchant, used to roughing it twice every year between Berlin, Warsaw, Petersburgh, and Moscow, and took our smashing together at night in this desolate forest as coolly as a rub of the shoulders in the streets; and, when satisfied that his wagon was not injured, kindly asked us if we had any bones broken. We returned his kind inquiries; and, after farther interchanges of politeness, he said that he was happy to make our acquaintance, and invited us to come and see him at Berlin. We wanted him to go back and let us have a look at him by torchlight, but he declined; and, after feeling him stretched out in his bed in the bottom of his wagon, we started him on his way.