lass, the anchor carried up-stream for several hundred yards and dropped, and the ship hauled up to it by winding up the anchor cable with the windlass. But these vessels are nearly all laden either with fish from Astrakhan, to feed the peasantry of the central provinces, or with iron or copper from Siberia and the Ural on its way to the manufacturing district of Tula. Local traffic there is very little; for the country is peopled only by peasants whose life is simple, and whose wants are few. Many villages are not even Russian, but belong to some of the various Finnish tribes-Tchouvasses, Tcheremisses, Mordvins-who formerly occupied the whole of this region, though most of them have now adopted, or are fast adopting, the religion, customs, and tongue of their Slavonic masters. In another half-century the country will be completely Russian.

But the through traffic, as a railway man would say, is great and still increasing, and for its sake the government have taken some pains with the Volga navigation, which the numerous shoals and sandspits render very troublesome. Buoys are anchored in many dangerous spots, landmarks are placed along the shore, and at night coloured lights are shewn. Although our steamer drew only four feet of water there were so many shoals and sandbanks about, that, instead of holding an even course down the middle of the stream, she was perpetually darting across it from the one shore to the other, so as to keep in the deepest part of the channel. Whenever one of the shallower parts was reached a bell was rung, which

brought some of the crew forward, and one of them took his place armed with a long pole, the lower part of which was marked in colours, just like the "stick" in croquet, each foot's length having a different colour. This pole he nimbly plunged into the water just before the bow, till it touched the bottom, and then seeing by the marks on it what the depth was, he sang out, "vosem," "sem," "shest" (eight, seven, six), as the case might be, the vessel still advancing. As the smaller numbers began to be reached, a slight thrill ran through the group that watched, and when "piat" (five) followed, the engines were slowed or stopped in a moment, and we glided softly along over the shoal till "sem," "vosem," "deviat" (nine), following in succession, told that the risk of grounding was for the moment past.

Watching these manœuvres, and the constantly changing yet singularly uniform landscapes which revealed themselves as we rounded one promontory after another, time wore pleasantly on, till about noon on the second day we saw the towers of the famous city of Kazan rise above the low north-eastern shore, and found that there was just time to drive there and back in a swift droshky, so that to the end of one's life one might talk of having done Kazan. Though in our maps Kazan appears as standing on the Volga, it is really nearly three miles from the summer bed of the stream, on an eminence beyond a flat piece of ground over which the spring floods pour. The country round is so level that the hill, which is covered by its kremlin, seems quite imposing, albeit only some forty

feet high. This elevation, with the battlements of the kremlin wall, two or three old towers, and the blue and gilded domes of the churches, gives the city from a distance a somewhat lordly look, not unworthy of the former capital of a great Tatar Khanate. Inside, however, it is disappointing to find scarcely a trace of antiquity. One of the towers of the kremlin, a curious pyramid of brick, is said to come down from the days of independence, but the rest was destroyed and rebuilt by the Czar Ivan the Terrible (a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth), and the town, like most places in Russia, has been so often burnt down that now everything is new. Long straight streets with stuccoed houses, a university with a stiff Corinthian portico (columns also of stucco) and dreary corridors to right and left, official buildings without end, and shops with glass fronts to them, give it an air of respectability and civilization very different from most Russian towns, which are chiefly open spaces of grass or mud, interrupted here and there by brick cottages and wooden shanties. But there is nothing except a few slender minarets in the lower town to betray that Oriental character which we had been wont to associate with its sounding Oriental name. Among the people in the streets, who were few enough, there were some with the black sheepskin hats which the Tatars affect; otherwise there was little to distinguish them from ordinary Russians. However, the truth is that the diversity of blood in all this part of the country gives rise to many types of face, and one finds it hard to say which is the true Russian. In the

centre, between Kief, Moscow, and Petersburg, there is no doubt a purer Slavonic race; but in these more easterly governments the Muscovites are only comparatively recent colonists among Finnish and Turkish tribes. The Tatars of Kazan, who are no doubt Turks, retain not only their language and their religion but their social usages; they rarely or never intermarry with the Russians, but otherwise live on good enough terms with them, and do not seem to complain of the Christian government, which has been wise enough not to meddle with their faith. Since the fall of their Khanate three hundred years ago, they have rarely given any trouble, and now serve in the army like other subjects of the Czar. They are usually strong men, lithe and sinewy, of a make more spare than that of the Russians, and do most of the hard work both here, in their own country, and at Nijni and other trading spots along the river. In their faces is seen a good deal of that grave fixity which gives a dignity even to the humblest Oriental, and contrasts so markedly with the mobile features of the Slav.

Sailing away from Kazan, and seeing its glittering towers and domes sink slowly from view into the boundless plain, we inquired from everyone we could talk to about the ruins of the ancient capital of the Bulgarians, which are said to exist some few miles from the river to the east, huge shapeless mounds which are now the only memorial of a kingdom older than any of the Russian principalities, a kingdom which flourished in the sixth and seventh centuries,

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before the Bulgarian hordes descended into the Danube valley to vex the Byzantine emperors. But no one knew anything of the ruins; indeed I doubt if any one on board had heard of them before. Archæology, except perhaps as a branch of hagiology, has scarcely begun to exist in Russia; it is one of the latest births of time everywhere, and, as one may see from the fate of so many of our own pre-historic monuments, does not commend itself to the practical mind of the agriculturist. The only countries in which the traveller finds the common people knowing and revering the monuments and legends of their remote past are Norway and Iceland, where the sagas read aloud in the long nights of winter from manuscripts preserved in lonely farm-houses, have through many generations fired the imagination and ennobled the life of the peasant, who knew no other literature and history than that of his own ancestors.

Below Kazan the scenery of the river remains much the same for many miles. On the east the Kama comes in, a majestic stream, about one-third of a mile wide, bearing on its calm bosom flotillas of vessels laden with iron from Perm and the Ural, and tea brought by caravan across Siberia. After the confluence the Volga is not at first sensibly wider, but it grows deeper, and the steamer, instead of flitting like a dragon-fly hither and thither across the current, holds on an even course down the middle, leaving on the left a labyrinth of low and generally wooded isles. Gradually the bank on the right increases in height, and strata of chalk begin to crop out on its face, till