Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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The first third of the distance from Batoum to Tiflis is a level plain, called a steppe in Russia, which is thoroughly cultivated, but the farm homes are wretched wooden hovels. We saw the women working in the fields—which they have to do to keep the pot boiling, for the men are in the army, drawing no wages and producing nothing.

There is a good deal of timber, and we saw several droves of scraggy-looking cattle on the hillsides. Most of the cultivated land is planted to wheat and other grains. At every stopping place a portion of the platform at the end of the station house is surrendered to vegetable sellers, usually old women, who have onions, lettuce, radishes, and other garden truck piled up on little trays around them and seemed to be doing a good business. Boys peddled baskets of strawberries under the windows of the cars—and they were swindles, of course. When we had eaten off a couple of layers we found nothing but leaves. They offered us cherries in attractive form, the stems of the fruit ingeniously inserted through slits in a stick, making long red wands, some of them three feet long. There are refreshment stands at every station, at which tea, sausages, sandwiches, bread, cheese, and other edibles are offered, and the train makes long stops so that the passengers have time to drink a cup of tea or a glass of vodka and to exercise on the platform. At every station tanks of cold water and samovars of hot water are provided free for third-class passengers, who can help themselves and make their own tea, as most of them do.