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A traveler who had a mixed party of Cossacks and natives, relates that the former were accustomed to say their prayers three or four times on evenings when they had plenty of leisure and omit them altogether when they were fatigued. At Nijne Kolymsk Captain Wrangell found the priests holding service three times on one Sunday and then absenting themselves for two weeks.
The bar iron of the Urals is famous the world over for its excellent qualities, and commands a higher price than any other. Great quantities of iron are floated in boats down the streams flowing into the Kama and Volga. Thence it goes to the fair at Nijne Novgorod, and to the points of shipment to the maritime markets.
These carpets can be found in nearly every peasant house in Western Siberia, where they are used as bed and table coverings, floor mats, and carriage robes. From Tumen to Nijne Novgorod the post is in the hands of a company, and one can buy a ticket for any distance he chooses. We bought to Ekaterineburg, 306 versts, paying nine copecks a verst for each vehicle.
Colonel Kretegin told me that the members of the Fox embassy were much astonished at finding American goods for sale at Nijne Novgorod. It would be difficult to mention any part of the civilized world where some article of our manufacture has not penetrated. At the close of the second day at Nijne Novgorod I started for Moscow.
Villages were numerous along the Volga, and most of them were very liberally supplied with churches. We passed Makarief, which was for many years the scene of the great fair of European Russia. Fire and flood alike visited the place, and in 1816 the fair was transferred to Nijne Novgorod. One of the villages has a church spire that leans considerably toward the edge of the river.
This man, a peasant and butcher, believed himself called to deliver Russia from the Poles in 1612. He awakened his countrymen, and joined a Russian noble in leading them to expel the invaders. A bronze monument at Moscow represents Minin starting on his mission. The memorial at Nijne is of a less elaborate character.
To be truly enjoyed, our lives must be chequered with light and shadow, and varied with different scenes. The railway between Nijne Novgorod and Moscow is about two hundred and fifty miles in length, and was built by French and Russian capital combined. There is only one passenger train each way daily, at a speed not exceeding twenty miles an hour.
Including the detour to Barnaool, my sleigh ride was about thirty-six hundred miles long. From Stratensk by way of Kiachta to Irkutsk, I traveled not far from fourteen hundred miles with wheeled vehicles, and made ninety-three changes. My whole ride from steam navigation on the Amoor to the railway at Nijne Novgorod was very nearly five thousand miles.
About fifty versts from Nijne Novgorod the population of a large village was gathered, in Sunday dress, upon the ice. A baptism was in progress, and as we drove past the assemblage we caught a glimpse of a man plunging through a freshly cut hole. Half a minute later he emerged from the crowd and ran toward the nearest house, the water dripping from his garments and hair.
Between Nijne Udinsk and Kansk the snow was scanty, and the road occasionally bad. The country preserved its slightly undulating character, and presented no features of interest. Where we found sufficient snow we proceeded rapidly, sometimes leaving the summer road and taking to the open ground, and forests on either side.
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