Baden; 2008-05-05
The country through which she passed had been a year before an unoccupied waste. In European Russia, there is an average of a town or village to every four or seven square miles, and in the Caucasus, one to every nine square miles; but in Asiatic Russia the average varies; for example, in Samarkand there is one to every fourteen square miles, and in the province of Yakutsk, one to every 2,760 square miles. Now, by Potemkin's extraordinary efforts, the empress found it dotted thick with towns and cities which had been erected for the occasion, filled with a busy population which swarmed along the riverside to greet the sovereign with applause. It was only a chain of fantom towns and cities, made of painted wood and canvas; but while Catharine was there they were very real, seeming to have solid buildings, magnificent arches, bustling industries, and beautiful stretches of fertile country. Attached to it is a mausoleum, which contains the tombs of many of the khans. There are in the place no fewer than thirty-six mosques. And the splendid and never again to be equalled pageant of the life of Catherine the Great, who conceived an unnatural passion for a beautiful white bull, which Neptune had presented to the king, had just been unrolled for the amazement of Europe. No human being, concealed within a wooden statue of a cow, as many of the spectators believed, ever wrought on so great a scale so marvelous a miracle of stage-management.