COXe’s TRAVELS IN RUSSIA. 649

bird of the partridge fpecies, we fauntered out while fupper was preparing, towards aneighbouring hill, which attrafted our attention.

Two miles from the village, in the middle of a vaft plain, rifes, in a circular form, aninfulated hill of fand and clay ; the lower parts are thickly (h ewed with detached piecesof red and grey granite, timilar to many others which appear about the adjacent country,I meafured one of thefe maffes, and found it twelve feet broad, eight thick, -and fiveabove the furface of the ground*.

On the fummit hands a brick white wafhed church, which is a pleafing objeft fromthe adjacent grounds f. From the top we had a lingular and extenfive profpedt. Be-neath, the country is fomewhat open, and divided into large enclofures of pafture andcorn ; towards the fouth rife the Valdai hills, fkirting an immenfe plain, which ftretchestowards the north, eaft, and weft, as far as the eye can reach ; a vaft expanfe without afingle hillock to obftruct the view; it feemed an endlefs foreft, dotted with a few fo-litary wooden villages, which appeared fo many points in a boundlefs defert. Beyond,at a great diftance, we obferved the fpires of Novogorod, and the lake Ilmen fcarcelydifcernible through the thick gloom of the trees.

The forwardnefs of the harveft in this northern climate has been already mentioned :it had been fome time taken in, and the new corn was fpringing up in many places.The corn remains, during winter, buried under fnow; at the melting of which, in fpring,it fhoots up fpeedily in thefe countries, where vegetation is rapid, on the returningwarmth of the feafon. But as the fhortnefs of the fummer does not always allow thegrain time to ripen, the peafants ufe the following method of drying it. They raife awooden building, without windows, fimilar to the fhell of the cottages ; under thisftru&ure is a large cavity, in which a fire being made, the corn is laid upon the floorand dried ; it is then hung upon frames in the open air, and afterwards threfhed.

In this part of our journey, we pafied numberlefs herds of oxen, moving towards Pe-terfburgh ; molt of them were driven from the Ukraine , the neareft part of whichcountry is diftant eight hundred miles from the metropolis. During this long progrefsthe drivers feldom enter any houfe ; they feed their cattle upon the flips of pafture oneach fide of the road, and have no other fhelter in bad weather than the foliage of thetrees. In the evening the (till filence of the country was interrupted by the occafionallowing of the oxen, and carols of the drivers; w'hile the folitary gloom of the foreftwas enlivened with the glare of numerous fires, furrounded by different groups ofherdfmen in various attitudes ; fome were fitting round the flame, fome employed indreiTmg their provifions, and others fleeping upon the bare ground. They refembled,in drefs and manners, a rambling horde of Tartars .

The route from Mofcow to Peterfburgh is continued during a fpaqe of five hundredmiles, almoft in a ftraight line cut through the foreft, and is extremely tedious : oneach fide the trees are cleared to the breadth of forty or fifty paces, and the whole wayruns chiefly through endlefs tracts of wood, only broken by villages, round which, to afmall diftance, the grounds are open and cultivated.

The road is of an equal breadth, and formed by trunks \ of trees laid tranfverfely,and bound down in the center, and at each extremity, by long poles, or beams, fattened

into

* See fome curious conjectures upon thefe granite flones of Bronitza, in Pallas’s Travels ; and alfo inHiftoire des Decouvertes dans plufieurs Contrees de la Ruffia, &c. vol. i. p. 42, &c.

f This eminence was remarkable, in the times of idolatry, for an oracular temple, built in the place nowoccupied by the church.

f Mr.Hanway makes a curious calculation of the number of trees employed to make a road of one hun-dred and fifty verfts. “ Allowing one tree with another to be nine inches diameter, and the length

vol. vi. 4 o twenty-