158 FORESTRY IN EASTERN RUSSIA. 



paying back with the other. Of course, there are failures 

 and liquidations every year, as there are sure to be on such 

 a rotten foundation as that — all on credit — and all trading 

 on Government money, which consists also of bills of credit. 

 The wholesale merchants and manufacturers from Moscow 

 and the surrounding district put on 15 and 20 per cent, per 

 annum for this long credit. The retailer makes systematically 

 a compound with his creditors about every five or six years, 

 after getting all in order for this. And this seems to be 

 an established and understood thing among them. 



' During the fair there are said to be in Irbit at one time 

 from 200,000 to 300,000 people — that is why lodgings are so 

 dear, from 50 to 250 roubles a month. At other times 

 there are only about 7000 inhabitants. There are no 

 hotels, but there are several restaurants — the Exchange 

 gostinistya, or restaurant, has a good menu, but there is 

 an abominable featiire about all of them, the least said 

 about which the better. In fact, all yarmokies which I 

 have seen, except Troitsk — and Nijni more than any of 

 them, are just a den of infamy, and a sink of iniquity, 

 without any effort at concealment. The roads to Irbit, 

 after you leave the Siberian track at Wamaskloff, are 

 something execrable — over vast drifts of snow on the open 

 plains, which are worn into deep hollows, one after another 

 in close succession, by the great amount of sledges passing 

 over them night and day without intermission for two 

 months before the fair ; so that, as you are dragged over 

 these, trenches, I call them, you go jolting and rocking up 

 and down, from side to side, like being in a chopping sea, 

 and experience the same unpleasant sensation, only in a 

 worse and aggravated form ; and this from year to year, with- 

 out any attempt being made by anybody towards ameliora- 

 ting the intolerable misery that everybody is growling 

 about. After the fair is over, if you return, you do find 

 a man or two here and there pattering and shuffling about 

 on the road, but as they say themselves, " One man on a 

 plain is not a battle." 



' Mention has been made of the fair at Troitsk. Troitsk 



