Part 19 (1/2)
The milking-pails are of tin or of oak wood, and, like the oaken k.u.mys churn, have been boiled in strong lye to extract the acid, and well dried and aired. In addition to the daily was.h.i.+ng they are well smoked with rotten birch trunks, in order to destroy all particles of k.u.mys which may cling to them.
The next step after the milk is obtained is to ferment it. The ferment, or yeast, is obtained by collecting the sediment of the k.u.mys which has already germinated, and was.h.i.+ng it off thoroughly with milk or water. It is then pressed and dried in the sun, the result being a reddish-brown ma.s.s composed of the micro-organisms contained in k.u.mys ferment, casein, and a small quant.i.ty of fat. Twenty grains of this yeast are ground up in a small quant.i.ty of freshly drawn milk in a clean porcelain mortar, and shaken in a quart bottle with one pound of fresh milk,--all mare's milk, naturally,--after which it is lightly corked with a bit of wadding and set away in a temperature of +22 degrees to +26 degrees Reaumur. In about twenty-four hours small bubbles begin to make their appearance, accompanied by the sour odor of k.u.mys. The bottle is then shaken from time to time, and the air admitted, until it is in a condition to be used as a ferment with fresh milk. Sometimes this ferment fails, in which case an artificial ferment is prepared.
One pint of ferment is allowed to every five pints of fresh milk in the cask or churn, and the whole is beaten with the dasher for about an hour, when it is set aside in a temperature of +18 degrees to +26 degrees Reaumur. When, at the expiration of a few hours, the milk turns sour and begins to ferment vigorously, it is beaten again several times for about fifteen minutes, with intervals, with a dasher which terminates in a perforated disk, after which it is left undisturbed for several hours at the same temperature as before, until the liquid begins to exhale an odor of spirits of wine. The delicate offices of our Tatar beauty, the taster, come in at this point to determine how much freshly drawn and cooled milk is to be added in order rightly to temper the sour taste. After standing over night it is ready for use, and is put up in seltzer or champagne bottles, and kept at a temperature of +8 degrees to +12 degrees Reaumur. At a lower temperature vinegar fermentation sets in and spoils the k.u.mys, while too high a temperature brings about equally disastrous results of another sort. k.u.mys has a different chemical composition according to whether it has stood only a few hours or several days, and consequently its action differs, also.
The weak k.u.mys is ready for use at the expiration of six hours after fermentation has been excited in the mare's milk, and must be put into the strongest bottles. The medium quality is obtained after from twelve to fourteen hours of fermentation, and, if well corked, will keep two or three days in a cool atmosphere. The third and strongest quality is the product of diligent daily churning during twenty-four to thirty-six hours, and is thinner than the medium quality, even watery. When bottled, it soon separates into three layers, with the fatty particles on top, the whey in the middle, and the casein at the bottom. Strong k.u.mys can be kept for a very long time, but it must be shaken before it is used. It is very easy for a person unaccustomed to k.u.mys to become intoxicated on this strong quality of milk wine.
The nouris.h.i.+ng effects of this spirituous beverage are argued, primarily, from the example of the Bashkirs and the Kirghiz, who are gaunt and worn by the hunger and cold of winter, but who blossom into rounded outlines and freshness of complexion three or four days after the spring pasturage for their mares begins. Some persons argue that life with these Bashkirs and an exclusive diet of k.u.mys will effect a speedy cure of their ailments. Hence they join one of the nomad hordes.
This course, however, not only deprives them of medical advice and the comforts to which they have been accustomed, but often gives them k.u.mys which is difficult to take because of its rank taste and smell, due to the lack of that scrupulous cleanliness which its proper preparation demands.
There are establishments near St. Petersburg and Moscow where k.u.mys may be obtained by those who do not care to make the long journey to the steppe; but the quality and chemical const.i.tuents are very different from those of the steppe k.u.mys, especially at the best period, May and June, when the plumegra.s.s and wild strawberry are at their finest development for food, and before the excessive heats of midsummer have begun.
As I have said, when people wish to make the cure on their own estates, the indispensable Tatar is sent for, and the requisite number of middle-aged mares, of which no work is required, are set aside for the purpose. But from all I have heard, I am inclined to think that benefit is rarely derived from these private cures, and this for several reasons. Not only is the k.u.mys said to be inferior when prepared in such small quant.i.ties, but no specialist or any other doctor can be constantly on hand to regulate the functional disorders which this diet frequently occasions. Moreover, the air of the steppe plays an important part in the cure. When a person drinks from five to fifteen or more bottles a day, and sometimes adds the proper amount of fatty, starchy, and saccharine elements, some other means than the stomach are indispensable for disposing of the refuse. As a matter of fact, in the hot, dry, even temperature of the steppe, where patients are encouraged to remain out-of-doors all day and drink slowly, they perspire k.u.mys.
When the system becomes thoroughly saturated with this food-drink, catarrh often makes its appearance, but disappears at the close of the cure. Colic, constipation, diarrhoea, nose-bleed, and bleeding from the lungs are also present at times, as well as sleeplessness, toothache, and other disorders. The effects of k.u.mys are considered of especial value in cases of weak lungs, anaemia, general debility caused by any wasting illness, ailments of the digestive organs, and scurvy, for which it is taken by many naval officers.
In short, although it is not a cure for all earthly ills, it is of value in many which proceed from imperfect nutrition producing exhaustion of the patient. There are some conditions of the lungs in which it cannot be used, as well as in organic diseases of the brain and heart, epilepsy, certain disorders of the liver, and when gallstones are present. It is drunk at the temperature of the air which surrounds the patient, but must be warmed with hot water, not in the sun, and sipped slowly, with pauses, not drunk down in haste; and generally exercise must be taken. Turn where we would in those k.u.mys establishments, we encountered a patient engaged in a.s.siduous promenading, with a bottle of k.u.mys suspended from his arm and a gla.s.sful in his hand.
Coffee, chocolate, and wine are some of the luxuries which must be renounced during a k.u.mys cure, and though black tea (occasionally with lemon) is allowed, no milk or cream can be permitted to contend with the action of the mare's milk unless by express permission of the physician.
”Cream k.u.mys,” which is advertised as a delicacy in America, is a contradiction in terms, it will be seen, as it is made of cow's milk, and cream would be contrary to the nature of k.u.mys, even if the mare's milk produced anything which could rightly pa.s.s as such. Fish and fruits are also forbidden, with the exception of _klubniki_, which accord well with k.u.mys. _Klubnika_ is a berry similar to the strawberry in appearance, but with an entirely different taste. Patients who violate these dietary rules are said to suffer for it,--in which case there must have been a good deal of agony inside the tall fence of our establishment, judging by the thriving trade in fruits driven by the old women, who did not confine themselves to the outside of the gate, as the rules required, but slipped past the porter and guardians to the house itself.
We found the k.u.mys a very agreeable beverage, and could readily perceive that the patients might come to have a very strong taste for it. We even sympathized with the thorough-going patient of whom we were told that he set oft regularly every morning to lose himself for the day on the steppe, armed with an umbrella against possible cooling breezes, and with a basket containing sixteen bottles of k.u.mys, his allowance of food and medicine until sundown. The programme consisted of a walk in the sun, a drink, a walk, a drink, with umbrella interludes, until darkness drove him home to bed and to his base of supplies.
We did not remain long enough, or drink enough k.u.mys, to observe any particular effects on our own persons. As I have said, we ate in town, chiefly, after that breakfast of k.u.mys-mare beefsteak and potatoes of the size and consistency of bullets. During our food and shopping excursions we found that Samara was a decidedly wide-awake and driving town, though it seemed to possess no specialties in buildings, curiosities, or manufactures, and the statue to Alexander II., which now adorns one of its squares, was then swathed in canvas awaiting its unveiling. It is merely a sort of grand junction, through which other cities and provinces sift their products. In k.u.mys alone does Samara possess a characteristic unique throughout Russia. Consequently, it is for k.u.mys that mult.i.tudes of Russians flock thither every spring.
The soil of the steppe, on which grows the nutritious plume-gra.s.s requisite for the food of the k.u.mys mares, is very fertile, and immense crops of rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and so forth are raised whenever the rainfall is not too meagre. Unfortunately, the rainfall is frequently insufficient, and the province of Samara often comes to the attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891, because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the government. In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches, there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without peril. Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it, and many peasants are attracted from the ”black-bread governments” to Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they hire out for the harvest.
But such a singular combination of conditions prevails there, as elsewhere in Russia, that an abundant harvest is often more disastrous than a scanty harvest. The price of grain falls so low that the cost of gathering it is greater than the market value, and it is often left to fall unreaped in the fields. When the price falls very low, complaints arise that there is no place to send it, since, when the ruble stands high, as it invariably does at the prospect of large crops, the demand from abroad is stopped. The result is that those people who are situated near a market sell as much grain and leave as little at home as possible in order to meet their bills. The price rises; the unreaped surplus of the districts lying far from markets cannot fill the ensuing demand. The income from estates falls, and the discouraged owners who have nothing to live on resolve to plant a smaller area thereafter. Estates are mortgaged and sold by auction; prices are very low, and often there are no buyers.
The immediate result of an over-abundant harvest in far-off Samara is that the peasants who have come hither to earn a little money at reaping return home penniless, or worse, to their suffering families. Some of them are legitimate seekers after work; that is to say, they have no grain of their own to attend to, or they reap their own a little earlier or a little later, and go away to earn the ready money to meet taxes and indispensable expenditures of the household, such as oil, and so on.
”_Pri khlyeby bez khlyeby_” is their own way of expressing the situation, which we may translate freely as ”starvation in the midst of plenty.” Thus the extremes of famine-harvest and the harvest which is an embarra.s.sment of riches are equally disastrous to the poor peasant.
Samara offers a curious ill.u.s.tration of several agricultural problems, and a proof of some peculiar paradoxes. The peasants of the neighboring governments, which are not populated to a particularly dense degree,-- twenty male inhabitants to a square verst (two thirds of a mile), and not all engaged in agriculture,--have long been accustomed to look upon Samara as a sort of promised land. They still regard it in that light, and endeavor to emigrate thither, for the sake of obtaining grants of state land, and certain immunities and privileges which are accorded to colonists. This action is the result of the paradox that overproduction exists hand in hand with too small a parcel of land for each peasant!
Volumes have been written, and more volumes might still be written, on this subject. But I must content myself here with saying that I believe there is no province which ill.u.s.trates so thoroughly all the distressing features of these manifold and complicated problems of colonization, of permanent settlements, with the old evils of both landlords and peasants cropping up afresh, abundant and scanty harvests equally a.s.sociated with famine, and all the troubles which follow in their train, as Samara.
Hence it is that I can never recall the k.u.mys, which is so intimately connected with the name of Samara, without also recalling the famine, which is, alas, almost as intimately bound up with it.
XII.
MOSCOW MEMORIES.
St. Petersburg is handsome, grand, impressive. Moscow is beautiful, poetic, sympathetic, and pervaded by an atmosphere of ancient Russia, which is indescribable, though it penetrates to the marrow of one's bones if he tarry long within her walls. Emperor Peter's new capital will not bear comparison, for originality, individuality, and picturesqueness with Tzar Peter's Heart of Holy Russia, to which the heart of one who loves her must, perforce, often return with longing in after days,--”white-stoned golden-domed, Holy Mother Moscow.”
But a volume of guide-book details, highly colored impressionist sketches, and dainty miniature painting combined would not do justice to Moscow. Therefore, I shall confine myself to a few random reminiscences which may serve to ill.u.s.trate habits or traits in the character of the city or the people.
”'Eography,” says Mrs. b.o.o.by, in one of the famous old Russian comedies which we were so fortunate as to witness on the Moscow stage: ”Ah! good heavens! And what are cabmen for, then? That's their business. It's not a genteel branch of learning. A gentleman merely says: 'Take me to such or such a place,' and the cabman drives him wherever he pleases.”
Nowadays, it is advisable to be vulgar and know the geography of Moscow, if one is really enjoying it independently. It is a trifle less complicated than the geography of the Balkan Princ.i.p.alities, and, unlike that of the Balkan Princ.i.p.alities, it has its humorous side, which affords alleviation. The Moscow cabby has now, as in the time of Mrs.
b.o.o.by, the reputation of being a very hard customer to deal with. He is not often so ingenuous, even in appearance, as the man who drove close to the sidewalk and entreated our custom by warbling, sweetly: ”We must have work or we can't have bread.” He is only to be dreaded, however, if one be genteelly ignorant, after Mrs. b.o.o.by's plan. I cannot say that I ever had any difficulty in finding any place I wanted, either with the aid (or hindrance) of an _izvostchik_, or on foot, in Moscow or other Russian towns. But for this and other similar reasons I acquired a nickname among the natives,--_molodyetz_, that is to say, a das.h.i.+ng, enterprising young fellow, the feminine form of the word being nonexistent. A Russian view of the matter is amusing, however.
”I never saw such a town in which to hunt up any one,” said a St.
Petersburg man in Moscow to me. ”They give you an address: 'Such and such a street, such a house.' For instance, 'Green Street, house of Mr.