AT NIJNI NOVGOROD. 273 



or better than before. He now not only sells as many 

 goods as ever at the Nijni Novgorod fair, but, by rea- 

 son of the railways, ships an equal quantity off to a 

 ever widening circle of new customers elsewhere. 



The old order of things, the smaller trade and the 

 exorbitant profits, were of course more congenial to 

 the conservative Moscow merchant, who, like any 

 other fossil, dislikes to be stirred up by the uncere- 

 monious pole of modern progress. But the consumers 

 have benefited immensely, while the only result to 

 him has been the necessity of waking up to a juster 

 and livelier sense of commercial competition. 



In the shop of a Moscow merchant I met traders 

 from widely remote parts of the Russian Empire. 

 One from far Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia, informed me 

 that it cost him three and a half rubles freight on 

 every pood of goods from Nijni to Irkutsk. At the 

 then rate of exchange, this is equivalent to $120 a ton, 

 American weight. I asked him why he didn't obtain 

 his goods by way of the Pacific and the Amoor River. 

 He replied that the paternal Russian government had 

 placed the lock of prohibitive customs duties on that 

 door, and so compelled him and his brother merchants 

 of those remote regions to come to European Russia 

 to buy goods, and to pay the enormous addition to 

 their cost in getting them home. 



My merchant friend, who had attended the Nijni 

 Novgorod Fair for twenty years past, gave me some 

 particulars of the trade. 



The fair opens officially on July 15, and ends on 

 August 25. Merchants begin to arrive and do business, 

 however, before July 15, and the fair drags along into 



