Page three Annie Gwen

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From Warsaw we traversed a level and monotonous country until we came to Kief, which is one of the most interesting and historic towns in Russia. It is the Rome of Russia, the Jerusalem, but I shall have occasion to speak of it at greater length when speaking of Russian Religion the Greek Orthodox Church. After two to three days continual travelling we reached Charkoff, one of the most important towns in South Russia, we reached our journeys end and found ourselves planted one memorable Sunday morning at an early hour in October on a lonely dreary station called Charsisky on the Steppes. Here there were conveyances awaiting us. A drive of 15 versts, about 17 miles, brought me to the spot that was to be my home for some years, Hughesovska, that was if I could endure such a long period

Charkoff, about the size of Cardiff, is the principal seat of trade in South Russia, being the centre from which products and manufactures of North and Central Russia are opened throughout the provinces to the South and to the Caucasus. Beetroot, sugar, corn, brandy, wool and hides are largely sold at five fairs held each year. There is also a university at Charkoff with several hundred students. It was at Charkoff I saw my first piano, arranged like a washstand with pedals and also saw guests arriving with their own bedding.

By the way, Russian distance is measured by versts, one verst being equal to 2/3 of a mile. To correspond to our milestones long wooden posts like telegraph poles are used in preference to stones on account of the snow. Bleak, barren woodless miles of endless plains stretched out on all sides, not a house or hut in sight anywhere so that at the end of the drive my heart sank within me and an intense Hiraeth for the hills and vales of Wales came upon me. No escape however was possible, but even the Steppes, parched, cracked and dusty one day and presenting the next a surface of mud, monotonous, lonely and uninviting have there charm and when the time came to leave a strange unaccountable sadness possessed me, for they, too, in their monotony have their variety. Occasionally (for a fortnight or so in the spring) some parts are literally covered over with sweet smelling violets which are renowned for their perfume as Parma violets and other beautiful flowers which delighted us, crocuses, for-get-me-nots, buttercups and daffodils were in great abundance, but of my home favourites, daisy, cowslip, bluebell and primrose I saw none. Even the ivy, which grows at home in such abundance, is very rare. Sometimes, but very seldom, it was our good fortune to come across a perfect Oasis in the desert; a very small, beautifully wooded and well-watered spot would meet our gaze. Lilies of the Valley even nestled there and grew wild in abundance and we often drove a distance of 20 to 30 versts to obtain them.

There are only cart tracks across wide stretches of uninteresting Steppes spreading like billows for weary miles and seeming to have no end, tracks indeed with nothing definite about them, fifty yards wide with every driver selecting his own course. It was a great weariness riding across the gaunt Steppes with hardly anything to gaze upon for days together with undulating parched land, baked, and caked with heat.

In springtime, which is exceedingly short, the Steppes are infested with a rat known as the Steppe rat, which is considered a terrible plague, quite as much as the rabbit plague of Australia. They create great havoc and are an endless source of destruction to the crops. All landed proprietors and even peasants are compelled by the Russian Government to send to the nearest headquarters an enormous number of their feet annually or pay a heavy fine. This is the way to decrease their numbers. They adopt a most peculiar way of killing these creatures whose burrows remind you of rabbit burrows. Peasants are hired, they light a fire here and there, heat the water that they have conveyed in flasks, then pour the boiling water into the rat holes. The rats come to the surface and are caught. They then have their feet cut off; these are carefully guarded and then sent off when the prescribed numbers have been got together.

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