TRANSCAUCASIA AND ARARAT. CHAPTER I. THE VOLGA AND THE STEPPE OF SOUTHERN RUSSIA. NORTH-WESTERN Russia, although it is now pretty easy of access from Western Europe, and contains two such wonderfully striking cities as Moscow and St. Petersburg, is very little visited by travellers. South-eastern Russia is hardly visited at all. Nijni Novgorod, whose great fair draws some few sightseers as well as men of business from Germany and the farther west, seems to be the limit of the tourist, and beyond it, all the way to Tiflis or Constantinople, one does not see a single stranger travelling for pleasure, and discovers from the attentions which the western visitor receives, how rare such a visitor is. I need, therefore, make no apology for giving some short account of the Lower Volga, and the great steppe of Southern Russia, before getting to the Caucasus and Armenia, for all four are likely to be equally unfamiliar to English readers. As this does not apply to the gathering which has made Nijni famous, there is no occasion to describe it here, especially as a full account of the fair and its humours may be found in B a lively little book of collected letters published three years ago by Mr. Butler Johnstone. One or two observations, however, it is worth while to make by way of advice to future travellers. People are constantly told that Nijni Fair is Oriental and picturesque, that they will find in it specimens of all the peoples of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, dressed and demeaning themselves each after its several kind-that it is in fact a sort of Eastern ethnological museum. This may have been true twenty years ago; it is not true now. The fair is picturesque, and in a certain way, which I will mention presently, more striking than one expects, but there is no longer any great richness of costume, any great variety of national types observable. Asiatic as well as European Russians have now, except in the peasant class, taken to Western fashions in dress, and so far as the outer man goes it is hard to tell a Siberian of Irkutsk from an Odessa or Riga merchant. The Finnish tribes from both sides of the Ural Mountains, and the various Turkish or Mongol tribes of the steppe, Kirghiz, Bashkirs, Kalmucks, and such like, are not represented, or at any rate not so as to be a noticeable feature; it is only the Persians and the few Turkmans who come from Tashkend or Bokhara that give anything of an Oriental character to the vast crowd, estimated at 100,000 people, that is gathered here every July. Nor, again, are there many beautiful articles to be seen exposed for sale. The display of jewellery was not larger or better than one might see in any two good shops in St. Peters burg; and the other goods shewn-silks and carpets from Tiflis and Persia, furs from Siberia, ornamental work of various kinds from different places in Russia -might have been bought as good, if not as cheap, in the bazaars of Moscow or in Regent Street. The interest of the fair lies deeper, and is matter for the economist or politician rather than for the artist. Here one stands at the great centre of Russian commerce and influence, the heart which pulsates over Eastern Europe and the half of Asia. The limits of its influence, the remotest points whence people flock to attend it, are Teheran and Bokhara to the southeast, Kiakhta, on the Chinese frontier, to the east, Warsaw and Riga on the west. Over all this area Russia practically commands the markets, and here her manufactured goods, iron, pottery, cotton stuffs, and so forth, are exchanged for the caravan tea which has been brought across Siberia, carpets and silks from Persia, wool from Turkestan. The absence from the stalls of English, French, and German goods makes one realize how successful the Russian protective tariff has been in shutting out foreign competition; while the roughness and tastelessness of the home manufactures, which imitate Western patterns without Western finish, shew how little chance Russian manufacturers would as yet have against their neighbours in a fair field. Here you have under your eyes, in the substantial form of long islands covered with Siberian or Uralian iron, of fleets laden with fish from Astrakhan, of a whole suburb built with bales of caravan tea, the evi |