116 MANUFACTUKES OF KUSSIA. 



strong corporations and send trusted travellers to buy or prepare the materials iu 

 •listant places. The manufactured goods are rarely sold at home but most often taken 

 to the fairs, where they are either sold directly to the consumers or to middlemen 

 who sometimes dispose of them in distant places. 



The wares of cartwrights and carriage builders are principally of the roughest 

 description and remarkable for their cheapness. The colonist wagons of the Xovo- 

 rossisk district and the tarantasses of the Yiatka district are however of excellent 

 quality. In the village of Pogorelka of Shouisk district iu the government of Vla- 

 dimir the peasants manufacture 2,000 sledges made of juniper wood. In the districts 

 of Khvalynsk and Kouznetzk, in the government of Saratov, the cartwright trade is 

 highly developed and a quantity of carts, axletrees. sledges, wheels, tires and shafts 

 are made. The village of Koutoshikha iu the Valdai district of the govern- 

 ment of Novgorod makes a specialry of wheels: the tires are principally bent out 

 of the poplar, felled from August to March, as that cut in spring and summer is 

 not strong enough for tires. Willow is also often used instead of poplar for tires, 

 because they are better and stronger, so that wheels made with willow tires are 

 the more expensive; nevertheless by far the greater quantity are made of poplar as 

 thick willow is now rather hard to find. The naves of the wheels are made of birch, 

 alder or likewise of poplar. Birch is the best wood for this pui-pose and next, alder. 

 When ready, the naves are coated with hot tar to increase their strength. The 

 spokes are principally made of mountain ash, sometimes also of birch: the former 

 are preferred as they are stronger. A pair of wheels with poplar tires cost 1.50 

 roubles, and a pair with willow tires, 2 roubles. 



It would be impossible to enumerate here all the villages engaged in the cart- 

 ^yl'ight trade on a large scale, but one particularly Eussian branch of the industry 

 may be mentioned, namely the manufacture of dongas, (shaft bows) which is carried 

 on in many places, one of the principal centres being the village of Kroutoi-Log in 

 the Belogorodsk district of the government of Kiev, where it has existed for a very 

 long time. In former times the Belogorodsk dougas were famous in the south of 

 Russia and were eagerly bought up at the fairs. Later on when the railway lines 

 brought about a decline in the carrier trade, the shaft bow business became slack 

 and the demand for them in the southern fairs fell off so that new markets had to 

 be found, such as Moscow and the regions beyond the Urals. These shaft bows are 

 made of Cf/tism logs which are principally purchased from landed proprietors, and 

 sometimes from peasants. It is curious to note that in some parts of the govern- 

 ment of Koiu'sk and in the border villages of the government of Voronezh and 

 Kharkov the peasants are ctiltivating a special kind of tough cytisus to sell to the 

 maker of shaft bows, and it seems to be a profitable undertaking as the wood grows 

 rapidly and does not require much attention. 



The cooper trade is as widely spread as that of cartwrights and has attained 

 considerable development in the governments of Viatka, Biazan, Tver and Novgorod. 

 In 17 villages out of the 21 in the Yasenovsk volost iu the Vyshnevolotsk district 

 of the government of Tver nearly all the peasants are coopers, who in the latter 

 locality principally use fir wood, although utensils made of red pine ai-e more 

 expensive. They manufacture butter tubs at 5 kopecks a piece, kegs at from 

 '-^ tr. 10 kopecks according to size, double-botommed wooden vessels, all kinds 



