As the evening breeze freshened, the perfume of the hayfields was wafted from the distant shores in almost overpowering force.  The high right bank, called the Hills, and the low left shore, known as the Forests, sank into half-transparent vagueness, which veiled the gray log-built villages with their tiny windows, and threw into relief against the evening sky only the green roofs and blue domes of the churches, surmounted by golden crosses, which gleamed last of all in the vanishing rays of sunset.  A boatload of peasants rowing close in shore; a red-shirted solitary figure straying along the water’s edge; tiny sea-gulls darting and dipping in the waves around the steamer; a vista up some wide-mouthed affluent; and a great peaceful stillness brooding over all,—­such were the happenings, too small for incidents, which accorded perfectly with the character of the Volga.  For the Volga cannot be compared with the Rhine or the Hudson in castles or scenery.  It has, instead, a grand, placid charm of its own, imperial, indefinable, and sweet.  One yields to it, and subscribes to the Russian faith in the grand river.

No one seemed to know how much of the lost time would be made up.  Were it spring, when Mother Volga runs from fifty to a hundred and fifty miles wide, taking the adjoining country into her broad embrace, and steamers steer a bee-line course to their landings, the officers might have been able to say at what hour we should reach our destination.  As it was, they merely reiterated the characteristic “Ne znaem” (We don’t know), which possesses plural powers of irritation when uttered in the conventional half-drawl.  Perhaps they really did not know.  Owing to a recent decree in the imperial navy, officers who have served a certain number of years without having accomplished a stipulated amount of sea service are retired.  Since the Russian war vessels are not many, while the Naval Academy continues to turn out a large batch of young officers every year, the opportunities for effecting the requisite sea service are limited.  The officers who are retired, in consequence, seek positions on the Volga steamers, which are sometimes commanded by a rear-admiral, in the imperial uniform, which he is allowed to retain, in addition to receiving a grade.  But if one chances upon them during their first season on the river, their information is not equal to their fine appearance, since Mother Volga must be studied in her caprices, and navigation is open only, on the average, between the 12th of April and the 24th of November.  Useless to interrogate the old river dogs among the subordinates.  The “We don’t know” is even more inveterate with them, and it is reinforced with the just comment, “We are not the masters.”