Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life. Thomas Wallace Knox
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his feet, and wearing a chapeau like a bell-crowned hat without a brim. "The short one," said a friend near me, pointing to a little, round, fat, oily man of God, "will get very drunk when he has the opportunity. Watch him to-night and see how he leaves the dinner party."
Priests of the Greek Church wear their hair very long, frequently below the shoulders, and parted in the middle, and do not shave the beard. Unlike those of the Catholic Church, they marry and have homes and families, engaging in secular occupations which do not interfere with their religious duties. During the evening after the wedding, I was introduced to "the pope's wife;" and learned that Russian priests are called popes. As the only pope then familiar to my thoughts is considered very much a bachelor, I was rather taken aback at this bit of information. The drink-loving priest was head of a goodly sized family, and resided in a comfortable and well furnished dwelling.
Illustration: RUSSIAN MARRIAGE. Click to view.
At the wedding there was much recitation by the priests, reading from the ritual of the Church, swinging of censers, singing by the chorus of male voices, chanting and intonation, and responses by the victims. There were frequent signs of the cross with bowing or kneeling. A ring was used, and afterwards two crowns were held over the heads of the bride and bridegroom. The fatigue of holding these crowns was considerable, and required that those who performed the service should be relieved once by other bridesmen. After a time the crowns were placed on the heads they had been held over. Wearing these crowns and preceded by the priests, the pair walked three times round the altar in memory of the Holy Trinity, while a portion of the service was chanted. Then the crowns were removed and kissed by each of the marrying pair, the bridegroom first performing the osculation. A cup of water was held by the priest, first to the bridegroom and then to the bride, each of whom drank a small portion. After this the first couple retired to a little chapel and the second passed through the ordeal. The preliminary ceremony occupied about twenty minutes, and the same time was consumed by each couple.
There is no divorce in Russia, so that the union was one for life till death. Before the parties left the church they received congratulations. There was much hand-shaking, and among the women there were decorous kisses. Our party regretted that the custom of bride kissing as practiced in America does not prevail in Kamchatka.
When the affair was ended, the whole cortége returned to the house whence it came, the children carrying pictures of the Virgin and saints, and holding lighted candles before them. The employment of lamps and tapers is universal in the Russian churches, the little flame being a representation of spiritual existence and a symbol of the continued life of the soul. The Russians have adapted this idea so completely that there is no marriage, betrothal, consecration, or burial, in fact no religious ceremony whatever without the use of lamp or taper.
In the house of every adherent to the orthodox Russian faith there is a picture of the Virgin or a saint; sometimes holy pictures are in every room of the house. I have seen them in the cabins of steamboats, and in tents and other temporary structures. No Russian enters a dwelling, however humble, without removing his hat, out of respect to the holy pictures, and this custom extends to shops, hotels, in fact to every place where people dwell or transact business. During the earlier part of my travels in Russia, I was unaware of this custom, and fear that I sometimes offended it. I have been told that superstitious thieves hang veils or kerchiefs before the picture in rooms where they depredate. Enthusiastic lovers occasionally observe the same precaution. Only the eyes of the image need be covered, and secrecy may be obtained by turning the picture to the wall.
The evening began with a reception and congratulations to the married couples. Then we had tea and cakes, and then came the dinner. The party was like the African giant imported in two ships, for it was found impossible to crowd all the guests into one house. Tables were set in two houses and in the open yard between them.
The Russians have a custom of taking a little lunch just before they begin dinner. This lunch is upon a side table in the dining room, and consists of cordial, spirits or bitters, with morsels of herring, caviar, and dried meat or fish. It performs the same office as the American cocktail, but is oftener taken, is more popular and more respectable. After the lunch we sat down to dinner. Fish formed the first course and soup the second. Then we had roast beef and vegetables, followed by veal cutlets. The feast closed with cake and jelly, and was thoroughly washed down with a dozen kinds of beverages that cheer and inebriate.
The fat priest was at table and took his lunch early. His first course was a glass of something liquid, and he drank a dozen times before the soup was brought. Early in the dinner I saw him gesturing toward me.
"He wants to take a glass with you," said some one at my side.
I poured out some wine, and after a little trouble in touching glasses we drank each other's health.
Not five minutes later he repeated his gestures. To satisfy him I filled a glass with sherry, as there was no champagne handy at the moment, and again went through the clinking process. As my glass was large I put it down after sipping a few drops, but the old fellow objected. Draining and inverting his glass, he held it as one might suspend a rat by the tail, and motioned me to do the same. Luckily he soon after conceived a fondness for one of the Wright's officers, and the twain fell to drinking. The officer, assisted by three men, went on board late at night, and was reported attempting to wash his face in a tar-bucket and dry it with a chain cable. About midnight the priest was taken home on a shutter.
Illustration: RUSSIAN POPE AT HOME. Click to view.
There were toasts in a large number, with a great deal of cheering, drinking, and smoking. About ten o'clock the dinner ended, and arrangements were made for a dance. Dancing was not among my accomplishments, and I retired to the ship, satisfied that on my first day in Asia I had been treated very kindly—and very often.
For two days more the wedding festivities continued, etiquette requiring the parties to visit all who attended the dinner. On the third day the hilarity ceased, and the happy couples were left to enjoy the honeymoon with its promise of matrimonial bliss. May they have many years of it.
CHAPTER IV.
The name of Kamchatka is generally associated with snow-fields, glaciers, frozen mountains, and ice-bound shores. Its winters are long and severe; snow falls to a great depth, and ice attains a thickness proportioned to the climate. But the summers, though short, are sufficiently hot to make up for the cold of winter. Vegetation is wonderfully rapid, the grasses, trees and plants growing as much in a hundred days as in six months of a New England summer. Hardly has the snow disappeared before the trees put forth their buds and blossoms, and the hillsides are in all the verdure of an American spring. Men tell me they have seen in a single week the snows disappear, ice break in the streams, the grass spring up, and the trees beginning to bud. Nature adapts herself to all her conditions. In the Arctic as in the Torrid zone she fixes her compensations and makes her laws for the best good of her children.
It was midsummer when we reached Kamchatka, and the heat was like that of August in Richmond or Baltimore. The thermometer ranged from sixty-five to eighty. Long walks on land were out of question, unless one possessed the power of a salamander. The shore of the bay was the best place for a promenade, and we amused ourselves watching the salmon fishers at work.
Salmon form the principal food of the Kamchadales and their dogs. The fishing season in Avatcha Bay lasts about six weeks, and at its close the salmon leave the bay and ascend the streams, where they are caught by the interior natives. In the bay they are taken in seines dragged along the shore, and the number of fish caught annually is almost beyond computation.
Some years ago the fishery failed, and more than half the dogs in Kamchatka starved. The following year there was a bountiful supply, which the priests of Petropavlovsk commemorated by erecting a cross near the entrance of the harbor. The supply is always larger after a scarcity than in ordinary seasons.
The fish designed for preservation are split and dried in the sun. The odor