The Russian Empire: Historical and Descriptive

Front Cover
T. Nelson and sons, 1882 - 528 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 283 - O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flics.
Page 469 - ... quite motionless. Only the dark bird of winter — the raven — still cleaves the icy air with slow and heavy wing, leaving behind him a long line of thin vapour marking the track of his solitary flight.
Page 513 - I could scarcely believe that I was in Central Asia, but seemed rather to be in one of the quiet little towns of Central New York. The broad dusty streets, shaded by double rows of trees ; the sound of rippling water in every direction ; the small white houses, set a little back from the streets, with trees and a palisade in front ; the large square, full of turf and flowers, with a little church in the middle — all combined to give me this familiar impression.
Page 469 - ... when they intimate this, by a distressed snort and a convulsive shaking of the head, the drivers relieve them by taking out the pieces of ice, to save them from being suffocated. When the icy ground is not covered by snow their hoofs often burst from the effect of the cold.
Page 263 - Seeing the yeare farre spent, and also very euille wether, as frost, snow, and haile, as though it had been the deepe of winter, wee thought best to winter there.
Page 519 - The Uzbeks look upon the Tadjiks with contempt, but at the same time they are dependent upon them. The Tadjiks treat the Uzbeks as fools and children of nature, and smilingly say that they have them entirely in their power. Intermarriages, however, are not uncommon. The Tadjik has none of the pride of race which the Uzbek possesses, and will rarely call himself by the name Tadjik. If asked who he is he will say, 'I am a man of Tashkent...
Page 469 - Even the rein-deer seeks the forests to protect himself from the intensity of the cold; in the tundras, where there is no shelter to be found, the whole herd crowd together as closely as possible, to gain a little warmth from each other, and may be seen standing in this way quite motionless. Only the dark bird of winter, the raven, still cleaves the icy air with slow and heavy wing, leaving behind him a long line of thin vapour, marking the track of his solitary flight. The...
Page 150 - World,' painted on the walls of the church. All the upper part of the temple is partly enveloped in shadows, like the crypts of the Pharaohs ; the pictures which cover the vault can hardly be distinguished. The artist has evidently made them for the eye of God, not for that of man ; for the eye of man can only contemplate them on the rare occasions, such as the Feast of the Assumption or a coronation-day, when the whole cathedral is illumined to its furthest corners by innumerable wax tapers. It...
Page 122 - Finnish : the inhabitants had a reddisholive skin, very high cheek-bones, obliquely-set eyes, and a peculiar costume ; none of the women and very few of the men could understand Russian, and any Russian who visited the place was regarded as a foreigner. In a second there were already some Russian inhabitants ; the others had lost something of their pure Finnish type, many of the men had discarded the old costume and spoke Russian fluently, and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In a third,...
Page 458 - Jakuti are called iron men, and I suppose that there are not any other people in the world who endure cold and hunger as they do. I have seen them frequently in the severe cold of this country, and when the fire had long been extinguished, and the light jacket had slipped off their shoulders, sleeping quietly, completely exposed to the heavens, with scarcely any clothing on, and their bodies covered with a thick coat of rime.

Bibliographic information