It was especially difficult to organize the supply of horses; they had to be supplied by local residents. A huge number of horses were required. From St. Petersburg to Kev, 76 camps were set up, and each station was equipped with 550 horses, a total of 41,800 horses to Kev alone. For the entire length of the journey both ways, there and back, 110 thousand horses were needed; it cost the population of Menfa 5 million rubles. The provinces placed the horses lying near the path along which the travelers were supposed to travel; provinces located far from the path of the “procession” had to pay off the horse duty with money; This is how the provinces of Kolyvan, Perm, Caucasus, Tobolsk, and Irkutsk paid in money; in the Kostroma province! and from the volost alone 830 rubles were collected (30 kopecks per soul). Moreover, the per capita tax was increased for travel expenses by 20 kopecks per person, and in this way 2 million rubles were received,
Stopping areas had to be built at all camps and food supplies had to be stocked. In some places, palaces were built, with new furniture hastily ordered, in others, covered galleries, on which tables with food, “with decent drinks and cutlery,” were placed. Each time, completely new table linen was served at the table. In cities, 25 apartments were allocated for the empress's retinue. Food supplies were required according to the schedule: “3 cattle per camp, 3 well-fed calves, 10 rams, birds: 15 chickens, 15 geese, and wild birds as much as possible, coarse flour
2 poods, Dutch cheese, a pood of cow butter, 2 buckets of cream, 500 eggs, 6 hams, a pound of tea, half a pood of coffee, half a dozen Provençal butter, a barrel of herring, 2 poods of sugar, samovars, more teapots, tray boards, tea utensils, also white and red French wines, 3 buckets each, vodka 5 damasks of French, sweet and bitter vodka, 4 dozen each of English beer, 50 lemons, table linen, cutlery, tableware and tableware, cooks and other things needed for the tables, and servants in good clothes. —
“At those camps where neither food nor overnight accommodation is indicated, everything must be prepared! And dishes, with fried various kinds of cold dishes, pies, cheese, butter, hams, in a word, food and drink supplies from all of which are mentioned above, should be supplied in half the amount as compared to the previous point.” Everything that was possible was recommended to be sent to the stanches from noble houses without laziness; money was needed more for what needed to be bought - for sweets, for spicy jam, etc., and for illumination: “Illumination is needed, for which I should send six rubles of money from each department.”
About one of the roads along which Catherine was supposed to travel, Potemkin wrote that it should be made “with a rich hand, so that it would not be inferior to Roman roads; I will call it Catherine’s path.” Triumphal arches and gates were built in different places; On the Dn$fpr, opposite Kherson, a completely new town, Aleshin, was built in six months and populated by purposely discharged Little Russians.