with mild grumbling, although he was very glad to do so. It was clear that they had managed to join the present excursion against his will, by employing those delicate little methods which enabled them to overcome his feeble opposition. Moreover, the anxiety about them which he displayed on the journey was quite unnecessary, for they were both thorough daughters of a soldier, and sat upon their mounts as easily and unconcernedly, as if they were sofas in their boudoir. I took Uljana, the elder, to be about seventeen years old; she was a girl of particular beauty. She was slender but not too tall, with an oval face gently tapering toward the chin. Beneath her large, broad forehead and her gracefully arched and delicate eyebrows, her nose, regular and delicately shaped with its small nostrils, advanced to meet the beautifully shaped lips of her small mouth. But the principal charm of this countenance consisted in the extraordinary purity of the features and the texture of the skin, in the grace of the tender and yet vivid red which adorned her mouth and suffused her face, and above all, in the deep blue and sparkling radiance of her eyes, which in their full beauty admitted of no comparison to describe them. In this girl’s appearance there was not a shadow of sensuality to disturb the pure pleasure which arose from the sight of her loveliness. She gave the impression of being something poetically ideal, but at the same time of possessing a maidenly pride, a mysterious power of command which would have led you involuntarily to bow your head before her. I had never before met with girlish beauty of such a type; but in dreams and in meditations it had often hovered before me ever since my childhood, and indeed I confess that she was the image of my ideal. If I had met her ten years earlier, perhaps. But let us not disturb with vain fancies the calm of a spirit which has grown cold and sober.
The younger, whose name was Duñaška, was only about fourteen years old, and was quite different in appearance, resembling more the Russian type. Instead of the radiant dark brown hair which seemed to float upon Uljana’s head, her round and chubby countenance was surrounded with an abundance of Russian curls of a golden tinge. Long lashes of the same golden color shaded her large light brown eyes, and the delicate white skin of her little face also radiated a kind of golden glimmer. For her years Duňaška was well developed, and her figure exhibited promising signs that she would become a full blosomed, plumb, alluring Russian beauty. But otherwise she was still only a romping, chattering, pampered child.
The quartette of feminine members of our company was completed by Aglaja Andrejevna (I did not discover her surname), a young relative of the Moscow surgeon with whom she was staying on a visit. She was rather a pretty girl, but with a cold reserved expression in her pale face and with a fixed smile of contempt upon her full, pink lips. She was supposed to have finished her course at a public school; I should certainly have taken her for a would-be- nihilist, if I had already heard of nihilism in Russia at that time.
To conclude this perhaps rather too conscientious description, I must mention Roman Lvovitch Suslikov, a relative of Ivan Ivanovitch, a beardless youth who spoke in a thin sing-song voice with very active gestures, and was fond of showing off his knowledge and lack of knowledge in matters concerned with western culture.
We were all mounted upon good-tempered little horses, the ladies in the more convenient side-saddles, under broad sunshades. In addition, they were equipped against the glowing sun with thick long veils, which in the meantime fluttered beneath their hats around their foreheads and curls, according to the latest fashion. The armed escort of our caravan consisted of two mounted Cossacks, sturdy fellows with tanned bearded faces. The picturesque costume of the Black Sea Cossacks, which was derived from the Circassians, suited them admirably. A high shaggy cap, a tunic reaching to the ankles and fastened round the waist, with a row of cartridge-pouches on both sides of the chest, high close-fitting boots, a long thin sword in the girdle, and slung across the back a light rifle in a cover of dark fur with long hairs. In front and behind the saddles of these Cossacks, partly tied up and partly deposited with care in the capacious “sumky” (bags), which hung down from both sides of the horse’s back, there were also eatable and uneatable necessaries for a journey, including of course, the indispensable vade mecum of the Russians, a large samovar.
We rode out from Novorossijsk, accompanied by the active curiosity of the motley population, which had partly assembled in the bazaar, and stared partly from the open “pogrebs” and “duchans” (taverns), where they were enlivening themselves with wine or vodka.
It was a beautiful May morning. Over the radiant dark blue sky a few delicate cloudlets could be seen here and there like small scattered feathers. The long bay which cut like an outstretched arm deep into the land, at the extremity of which lies Novorossijsk on the left shore, was gleaming at this moment as blue as a sapphire. Two small Turkish vessels with triangular sails were rocking gently by the shore, where their crews in picturesque attire were idly lounging on the sands. Here and there a white seagull hovered above the waves with long outstreiched wings shaped like our accent over the letter ě,—pardon me for this orthographical comparison.
An unbroken range of picturesque peaks, mostly cone-shaped, these are the smaller advanceguard of the Caucasian giants—extends along both sides of the bay, and behind Novorossijsk
