Down the Volga. 185 



mementoes and relics from the holy city of Kiev, and manufactured articles 

 said to have been fashioned by St. Vladimir or his descendants. To enter 

 one of these cabins with covered head is the unpardonable sin, not on account 

 of incivility to the inmates of the cabin, but disrespect to the holy corner. To 

 such an extent is this accompaniment of the Greek church carried that every 

 railway depot of Central and East Russia has its ever-burning taper illu- 

 minating a relic corner; but its presence in such public places is only recog- 

 nized by the uncovered heads and the solemn demeanor and sign of the 

 cross of the ever-faithful who enter the room. 



The only exceptions to the common neatness of expression of the cities 

 and villages from Nizhni to Kazan are those of the Finnish tribes of the 

 province of Cheremy. True to the habits and traditions of their fathers in 

 their natal land, these people are represented by dirt, awkward expression 

 of dwellings and extreme superstition. As an instance of the latter, in their 

 capital city on a public square is a great carved image of Nicholas, the " mir- 

 acle worker." In the open space in front of this statue the people meet to 

 adjust all disputes and differences without judge or jury. The assumption 

 is that in this august presence the parties and their witnesses can only tell 

 the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 



Our entrance into the ancient North Tartar city of Kazan was quite late 

 in the evening. As we had read of it as one of the main capitals of the North 

 Tartars, we were much surprised to find the streets neatly and smoothly 

 paved and curbed, and the neat and showy business fronts brilliantly lighted 

 by inner and outer electrical lamps, of the Ball patent, such as we had not 

 seen since leaving Moscow, 500 miles to the westward. Our first and last 

 impression of this Tartar city of near 100,000 inhabitants was that it was 

 singularly neat and clean, and full of interest on account of the queer min- 

 gling of Oriental styles of architecture with the best modern work of English, 

 German and Italian architects and builders. Its university is provided with 

 a library of over 100,000 volumes, a first-class museum containing thousands 

 of interesting relics from the cities without historic record of the great east 

 plain, and a student roll of over 500. The nihilistic tendencies of the English 

 and French speaking students were not hidden from the trusted American 

 visitors, and we have not been surprised to read since our visit that whole 

 classes of them have been sent to Siberia. 



Kazan boasts of the possession of 130 manufacturing establishments, and 

 has long been enriched by the control, to a large extent, of the traflSc of the 

 Kama river, which for ages has been the main artery of trade of the Volga 

 region with Northeastern Asia, including North China, Mongolia and Siberia. 

 At the great forestry convention at Moscow we had met the manager of for- 

 ests of the province of Kazan, who promised to go with us to visit some 

 of the fruit-growing estates and peasant orchards of this interesting section. 

 He had assured us that we would here find hundreds of peasant orchardists 

 who derived their incomes entirely from the sale of orchard fruits, and that 

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