ABSTRACT
EARLY in the morning of the 23rd we reached the banks of the Dnieper, and were transported across in a German ferry-boat; the carriage was no longer with immense difficulty placed across the boat, but was comfortably driven into one end of it. Why the Russians, who are so practical a people, continue their absurd practice, I cannot understand. Some German colonists had charge of this ferry, and we soon reached the colony of Rosenthal, belonging to the great German Mennonite settlement in the Circle of Khortitz. We felt at once transported to the valleys of the Vistula, in West Prussia, so thoroughly German was everything around us: not merely the people, their language, dress, and dwellings, but every plate and vessel, nay even the domestic animals, the dog, cow, and goat, were German. These colonists have even succeeded in giving a German aspect to nature itself throughout the whole district; a land-
scape-painter might very well call the scenery German. The same mode of dividing and cultivating the fields prevails as in Germany; the meadows are enclosed with German hedges. The plan of the villages, and the detached farmhouses, with gardens, plants, vegetables, and above all potatoes, are all German. This was not at all the case with the colony on the Volga, the inhabitants of which had remained Germans only in language, dress, and manners. Everything about them had much more of a Russian character, with the addition of German conveniences.
