dense crowds that obstruct the approaches disappear as soon as you penetrate the interior lines of stalls. The city of the fair is, like all the other modern Eus-sian cities, too vast for its population, although that population, including the amphibious community scattered in boats on the river, and the flying camps which environ the fair, properly so called, amounts to 200,000 souls. The houses of the merchants stand upon a subterranean city, an immense vaulted sewer; in whieh labyrinth he would be lost who should attempt to penetrate without an experienced guide. Each street in the fair is doubled by a gallery, which follows its whole length, under earth, and serves as an issue for all refuse. The sewers are constructed of stone, and are cleansed several times daily, by a multitude of pumps, which introduce the water from the neighbouring rivers. They are entered by large and handsome stone staircases.
These catacombs of filth, which are also for the prevention of every thing offensive in the open streets, are placed under the charge of cossacks, who form its police, and who politely invite the individual to descend. They are one of the most imposing works I have seen in Russia, and might suggest models to the constructors of the sewers at Paris. So much vastness and solidity reminds one of the descriptions of Eonie. They were built by the Emperor Alexander, who, like his predecessors, pretended to conquer nature by establishing the fair on a soil inundated during one half of the year. He lavished millions in remedying the inconveniences of the injudicious choice made when the fair of Makarief was transported to Nijni.
SINGULAR APPEARANCE OF THE RIVER. 187
The Oka, which separates the city of the fair from the permanent city, is here more than four times the breadth of the Seine. Forty thousand men sleep every night upon its bosom, making themselves nests in boats, which form a kind of floating camp. From the surface of the aquatic city rises, at evening, the heavy murmur of voices that might be easily taken for the gurgling of the waves. All these boats have masts, and form a river-forest, peopled by men from every corner of the earth : their faces and their costumes are equally strange. The sight has struck me more than any other in the immense fair. Rivers thus inhabited remind one of the descriptions of China.
Some of the peasants in this part of Russia wear white tunic shirts, ornamented with red boi`dcrs: the costumes is borrowed from the Tartars. At nighttime, the white linen gives them the appearance of spectres moving in the dark. Yet, notwithstanding its many singular and interesting objects, the fair of Nijni is not picturesque : it is a formal plan rather than a graceful sketch. The man devoted to political economy, or arithmetical calculations, has more business here than the poet or the painter : the subjects relate to the commercial balance and progress of the two principal quarters of the world — nothing more and nothing less. From one end of Russia to the other I perceive a minute, Dutch-taught government, hypocritically carrying on war against the primitive faculties of an ingenious, lively, poetical, oriental people, a people born for the arts.
The merchandise of every part of the world is collected in the immense streets of the fair ; but it is
188
ORIGIN OF THE FAIR.
also lost in them. The scarcest objects are buyers. I have seen nothing yet in this country without exclaiming, ' the people are too few for the space ! ' It is just the contrary in ancient communities, where the land fails the civilisation. The French and English stalls are the most elegant; while viewing them, the beholder might fancy himself at Paris or at London: but this Bond-street of the East, this Palais Koyal of the steppes, does not constitute the real wealth of the market of Nijni. To have a just idea of the importance of this fair it is necessary to recollect its origin, and the place where it was first held. Before flourishing at Makaricf it was established at Kazan : the two extremes of the ancient world, western Europe and China, met in that ancient capital of Russian Tartary to exchange their various products. This is now done at Nijni. But a very incomplete idea of a market for the commodities of two continents would be formed, if the spectator did not leave the regular stalls and elegant pavilions which adorn the modern bazaar of Alexander, and survey some of the different camps by which it is flanked. The line and rule do not follow the merchant into the suburbs of the fair : these suburbs are like the farm- yard of a chateau — however stately and orderly the principal habitation, the disorder of nature reigns in its dependencies.
It is no easy task to traverse, even rapidly, these exterior depots, for they are themselves each as large as cities. A continual and really imposing activity pervades them, — a true mercantile chaos, which it is needful to see in order to believe.
To commence with the city of tea : It is an Asiatic
THE CITY OF TEA.
189
camp, whieh extends on the banks of the two rivers to the point of land where they meet. The tea eomes from China by Kiatka, which is in the back part of Asia. At this first depot it is exchanged for merchandise, and from thence transported in packages, whieh resemble small ehests, in the shape of dice, about two feet deep every way. These packages are frames, covered with skins ; the buyers thrust into them a kind of probe, by withdrawing which they ascertain the quality of the article. From Kiatka the tea travels by land to Tomsk; it is there placed in boats, and sails along several rivers, of whieh the Irtish and the Tobol are the principal, till it arrives at Tourmine, from whence it is again transported by land to Perm, in Siberia, where it is re-shipped on the Kama, which carries it into the Volga, and up that river it ascends to Xijni. Russia receives yearly 75,000 or 80,000 ehests of tea, one half of whieh remains in Siberia, to be transported to Moscow during the winter, by sledges, and the other half arrives at this fair.
The principal tea-merehant in Russia is the individual who wrote for me the above itinerary. I do not answer for either the orthography or the geography of that opulent man ; but a millionnaire is generally correct, for he buys the science of others.
It will be seen that this famous tea of the caravans, so delicate, as is said, beeause it eomes over-land, travels nearly always by water: to be sure, it is fresh water; and the mists of rivers do not produce such efteets as the ocean fogs.
Forty thousand ehests of tea is an amount easily named ; but the reader can have no idea of the time it
190THE CITY OF BAGS.
takes to survey them, though it be only by passing before the piles of boxes. This year, thirty-five thousand were sold in three days. A single individual, my geographical merchant, took fourteen thousand, which cost him ten million silver roubles (paper roubles are not current here), a part payable down, the rest in one year.
It is the rate of tea which fixes the price of all the commodities of the fair: before this rate is published, the other bai`gains are only made conditionally.
There is another city as large, but less elegant, and less perfumed than the city of tea — that, namely, of rags. Fortunately, before bringing the tatters of all Russia to the fair, those into whose hands they have fallen, cause them to be washed. This commodity, necessary to the manufacture of paper, has become so precious, that
