Odessa.
The best-laid plans of mice and cyclists "gang aft agley." So we discovered after making up our minds to reach Odessa by a certain date. The tracks across the barren Russian steppes are hardly: the routes one would choose to break records over. 'They are admirable, however, to break machines upon. With dust-lined throats and aching eyes, we one morning turned aside from the rutty and uneven path to what seemed a stretch of rank grass and weeds, It' was an evil genius that led us, for in five minutes we were outdoing' the exploits of the troops in Flanders. Those most accursed weeds were going to seed, and every seed was as large asa pea, and' shot forth a dozen needle-like spikes. First, one of us shouted, My back tyre is going down"; then come an echo, "So is mine," followed by a mournful groan, "And I'm hanged if mine isn't doing the same." We dismounted and picked out a few hundred of those spiked seeds. After that we looked for the damage. One Dunlop tyre had eleven punctures; another six. _Mournful-visaged, we sat on our haunches patching up, each trying to persuade the other two that the thing was rather a joke. But in future we avoided pieces of inviting grass with as much care as a certain unappreciated personage shuns sanctified water.
Tt would require a man with a particularly exuberant imagination to work up enthusiasm about scenery in South Russi The place is less romantic than a brickfield. For days and days there was nothing but billowy steppes of black land. And billowy steppes are not necessarily poetical, but rather palling. Nor was there a single stone by the wayside, or indeed anywhere else, that one could fling at the howling, wolf-like packs of hounds that dashed upon us from every wretched hovel. Two of us who, for reasons, have never been boast ful of our shanks, managed to escape the "brutes with comparative ease. But the man with the good calves wishes often they were not quite so good. For those dogs, with much discrimination, dance energetically in circles about him, making a horrible din, snarling and clashing their teeth, and throwing hungry eyes, as though quite aware of the meal that lies beneath worsted stockings. A vow of vengeance has, however, lately been taken that the next molesting. dog will have his appetite satisfied for ever ona very small piece of cold lead.
Over the great lone land though which we have travelled there has hovered the tragedy of history, of the strong races crushing the weak, of the cruel Tartar hordes—" the scourge of God"—sweeping the inhabitants from existence, and then dashing on to the extermination of other peoples. On these steppes were waged the conflicts between the Aryan and Turanian races. But to-day there is no evidence of those tumultuous, devastating times, except now and then in the sullen Turanian features of the peasants. Twice we ran. into villages that were German colonies. Tt seems strange that Germans should forsake their own country for the inhospitable steppes of Russia. But, then, forsake ing their Fatherland has become quite a habit with Teutons, as others besides Russians can tell. However, in this particular case it was Russia's wily and winsome empress, Catherine, that invited them to come. She failed to favour the nomadic tribes that wandered everywhere and settled nowhere. She thought the Germans—stolid, industrious enterprising folk—would set a good example, And so the colonies she founded did, and do to this very day. 'The' German villages we saw, Strasburg and: Mannheim, were bright patches.in -an arid wilderness,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.