The Boy Travellers in The Russian Empire: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with Accounts of a Tour across Siberia, Voyages on the Amoor, Volga, and Other Rivers, a Visit to Central Asia, Travels among the Exiles, and a Historical Sketch of the Empire from Its Foundation to the Present Time — John Shaqi
The Boy Travellers in The Russian Empire: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with Accounts of a Tour across Siberia, Voyages on the Amoor, Volga, and Other Rivers, a Visit to Central Asia, Travels among the Exiles, and a Historical Sketch of the Empire from Its Foundation to the Present TimeKnox, Thomas Wallace
History
The Boy Travellers in The Russian Empire: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey in European and Asiatic Russia, with Accounts of a Tour across Siberia, Voyages on the Amoor, Volga, and Other Rivers, a Visit to Central Asia, Travels among the Exiles, and a Historical Sketch of the Empire from Its Foundation to the Present Time
Knox, Thomas Wallace
Adventure stories; Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Exiles -- Juvenile fiction; Friendship -- Juvenile fiction; Natural history -- Juvenile fiction; Rivers -- Juvenile fiction; Russia -- History -- Juvenile fiction; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile
"The numerals from one to twelve are o-_deen_, dva, tree, che-_tee_-ri,
pyat, shayst, sem, vocem, _de_-vee-at, _de_-ci-at, odeen-nat-zat,
dva-nat-zat. For thirteen, fourteen, and so on, you add 'nat-zat' to the
single numerals till you get to twenty, which is 'dva-deciat,' or two
tens. Twenty-one is 'dva-deciat-odeen,' or two tens and one, and so on.
You go up to thirty, which is 'tree-deciat,' or three tens, but
generally shortened in pronunciation to 'treetsat' or 'tritsat.' All the
other tens up to ninety are formed in the same way, with the exception
of forty, which is 'sorok.' Ninety is 'deviat-na-sto' ('ten taken from
hundred'), and one hundred is 'sto;' two hundred is 'dva-sto.' The
other hundreds are formed in the same way to five hundred, which is
'pyat sot;' six hundred is 'shayst sot,' and the other hundreds go on
the same way; one thousand is 'tis-syat-_sha_.' You can now go ahead
with tens and hundreds of thousands up to a million, which is
'meel-yon'--very much like our own word for the same number.
"It helps us greatly in getting around among the people without a guide.
We can bargain with the drivers, make purchases in the shops, and do
lots and lots of things which we could not if we didn't know how to
count. Any boy or man who comes to Russia should learn to count while he
is riding from the frontier to St. Petersburg, and if he takes our
advice he will do so. He can find it all in Murray's or any other good
guide-book, and he will also find there the most useful phrases for
travelling purposes.
"In driving with the isvoshchiks, we have found them very obliging, and
both Fred and I have been many times surprised at their intelligence
when we remembered that very few of them were able to read or write
their own language. When they find we are foreigners, and do not speak
Russian, they do not jabber away like French or German drivers, or
London cabbies, but confine themselves to a very few words. Take one we
had to-day, for example: as he drove along he called our attention to
the churches and other public buildings that we passed by, pronouncing
the name of the building and nothing more. In this way we understood
him; but if he had involved the name with a dozen or twenty other words
we should have been in a perfect fog about it.
[Illustration: SLEDGE OF A HIGH OFFICIAL.]
"In winter the drosky makes way for the sledge, which is the tiniest
vehicle of the kind you can imagine. Two persons can crowd into a
sledge, though there is really room for only one. Whether you are one or
two, you sit with your face within ten or twelve inches of the driver's
back, which forms almost the entire feature of your landscape. The
sledges in winter are even more numerous than are the droskies in
summer, as many persons ride then who do not do so when the weather is
warm.
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