70 THE RED FOREST AND 



help of constant pruning and uprooting, the houses 

 begin to peep less blindly through the trees, while 

 a tolerably vigorous town government prevents the 

 deposit of filth in the public thoroughfares, the 

 back of the fever lias been broken. 



The wonderful richness of the soil is sufficiently 

 shown by a statement made to me by a settler here 

 to-day: ' If I don't clear my garden three times a 

 year from new growths, I should be unable to force 

 a way through it at the end of a twelvemonth.' 

 It was in his garden that I saw this afternoon some 

 of the largest gourds I ever set eyes on, some 

 weighing over eighty pounds, while he assured me 

 that they sometimes reached as much as 120 or 

 130 pounds. The people here make a substance 

 called cassia of them, on which they live, and with 

 which they feed their pigs. 



Trade seemed to be very brisk in the town. The 

 fair was crowded, the shops full, and the streets 

 alive with conveyances of every description. The 

 number of military stationed here appears consider- 

 able, and the barracks are fairly imposing edifices. 



Ekaterinodar boasts of two cathedrals, of which 

 the old one, now in disuse, is to my mind the finest. 

 At night I visited the fair again, and a very lively 

 scene I found it. Out in the open stood numerous 

 littletables, at which nips of vodka and other liqueurs 

 were dispensed, for the most part by German Jews, 

 to little crowds of half-drunk Cossacks. Close by, 



