402 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



of a temporary character, have been run up in an opan field west of the sewer. 

 The fixed population of Nijni-Novgorod, under 50,000, is swollen to over 200,000 

 during the busy season, but amongst the buyers and visitors the Asiatics are fewer 

 than formerly, nearly all transactions now being made by means of brokers. 

 However, Georgians, Persians, and Bokhariots still frequent the fair. 



The chief trade of Nijni is in cotton and woollen stufi's, after which come 

 hardware goods, skins, leathers, and fancy wares. But the great facilities offered 

 by the sea route from Shanghae and Canton to Odessa have lately caused a 

 decline in the imports of Chinese teas, although about 100,000 chests still find 

 their way overland to the Nijni market. The mean value of the imports from 

 Asia is about £3,000,000 ; and the general exchanges have gone on steadily 

 increasing from decade to decade, from about £500,000 at the Makaryev fair, in 

 the middle of the last century, to £2,000,000 m 1817, at the first held in Nijni, 

 amounting at present to some £20,000,000, while the value of the goods not 

 disposed of during the sales has remained stationary during the last fifty years. 



Middle Volga and Kama Basins. 



(Kazan-, Viatka, Perm, Ufa.) 



In this section of the Volga basin the Asiatic and European races are already 

 intermingled, Tatars dwelling side by side with Great Russian Slavs in the towns 

 and surrounding districts, while the greater part of the wooded tracts is occu- 

 pied by Finnish tribes. The various races, which in the Upper Volga basin are 

 fused into one nationality, here still maintain an independent position, either in 

 their outward garb, their speech, manner of life, or at all events in their tradi- 

 tions and some other special features. Scattered over vast plains, separated from 

 each other by intervening Russian settlements, without any national bond of 

 union or common hopes, these non-Slav or allogenous peoples have hitherto been 

 condemned to complete moral und political isolation. Through the Slav element 

 alone these fragments of old races, Finns, TJgrians, and Tatars, can hope to enter 

 into mutual relations, and make any progress in social culture. 



The Mokdvinians. 



Historic research has revealed the remarkable fact that these Asiatic popula- 

 tions have been subjected to Russian influence from two distinct quarters. The 

 Russian traders advancing by the river Oka congregated largely in the town of 

 Bolgar, which Arab writers include amongst the cities of Slavonia even so early 

 as the tenth century. The Indian and Chinese objects discovered here and there 

 in Biarmia, as well as the Persian, Bactrian, Arab, Byzantine, and Anglo-Saxon 

 coins found on the sites of the old trading places, bear witness to the extensive 

 commerce at that time carried on in these regions. Some Slav elements must 

 have been introduced into this eastern world by the constant visits of the Slav 

 merchants, as well as by the incursions of the Russian marauders, who penetrated 



