12 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



tion ; but after all, at this season, it is only an attenuated 

 thing compared with what it will be in spring, when, with 

 the melting of the snows and rains, it swells, and swells, 

 and overflows its banks, and inundates thousands of 

 square miles in the different provinces through which it 

 flows, leaving behind it, as it retires, a rare residue of 

 fever and ague, for a season, the terror of all eastward- 

 bound travellers, and the bete noire of the peasants who 

 dwell upon the littoral. This noble river, which has 

 already run a long course, and has still fourteen hundred 

 miles to flow before it empties its waters into the Caspian 

 Sea, is at present literally crowded with barges and steam- 

 boats, and the Volga now carries upwards of six hundred 

 steamers on its bosom. There they are, from Astrakhan, 

 and the Caspian, and Kazan, barges that have sailed 

 down the rivers of Siberia and the noble Kama, to lay 

 the produce of the frozen North and of the Urals at the 

 feet of the merchants of Europe assembled for trade 

 purposes at Nijni-Novgorod. These busy rivers are in 

 themselves sights not to be forgotten ; but after all, the 

 sight par excellence is the fair itself, and thither accord- 

 ingly we wend our way. Once across the bridge of boats, 

 we are into it at once, or more accurately into it and a 

 cloud of dust. This last is easily accounted for. Once 

 that the fair is officially closed, all the booths and ware- 

 houses are locked up, the merchants leave as fast as they 

 can get away, and the residents in the locality, having 

 transferred themselves and their belongings to the town 

 proper, the fair is left to rats, and mice, and solitary 

 policemen. What becomes of the rats and mice at a 

 later season, which is also an earlier, for it is the spring I 

 speak of, deponent knoweth not, but at that season the 

 quiet and tenth-rate dressed guardians of the peace must 

 leave their solitary beat, for when the Oka and Volga 

 overflow their banks, the vast plain on which the fair is 

 built is covered with muddy water, to the depth of never 

 less than fifteen feet. Granted, then, the fierce summer's 

 sun, and the incessant tramping of many thousands of 



