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2 about the middle of November, I left the old and venerable
3 capital of Russia. I had my own carriage, and passed through
4 the governments of Tulai, Orel, Kiew, Volhynia and Bukowina,
5 and also through Czernowitz, Dorna and Bistritz, to Kronstadt,
6 my dear and beloved native town, where I arrived on Christmas-
7 eve, in the year 1834, by the same road on which I had twenty
8 years before left my home, full of lofty ideas, and impelled by
9 my desire to see the Eastern world.
10 The season during my journey was inconvenient for me, as it
11 would have been for any one in my situation. Although I had
12 no longer to struggle against wild beasts and Arab robbers, yet
13 the severe cold was almost insupportable, and still more so were
14 the vexations and extortions I had everywhere to endure from
15 greedy Polish Jews, and cunning treacherous servants. But
16 even at the moment, when I had already left the Austrian
17 frontier behind me, and fancied I saw my native land, I was
18 near losing my life. It was in the middle of December when I
19 ascended one of those snow-covered Carpathian summits, a short
20 time before sunset. I had alighted from my carriage on account
21 of the steepness of the road, when the vehicle suddenly over
22 turned, and was precipitated down a tremendous precipice, to-
23 gether with the three horses and the coachman, and there they
24 remained all the night long. As for myself, I took refuge in a
25 chardak (cabin where the boundary guards reside), and spent the
26 night there. In the morning, my equipage was brought up by
27 the efforts of the soldiers, with the aid of a great number of oxen,
28 fetched from the neighbouring village. Who could have
29 imagined that the coachman and the horses would have been
30 alive after such a terrible fall P And yet the former was only
31 hurt, and the latter lamed ; but the coach was broken, and
32 required repairs.
33 I cannot conclude this first part of my adventures without
34 giving some account of the dee]) impression I experienced on
35 treading again the soil of my native country, after an absence of
36 so many years, in which I had had to struggle against so many
37 difficulties. But the feelings of my heart reached their highest