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Why, there were the market at Nijni Novgorod, and the Arab merchants with their camels, and the Chinese with their blue trousers and bamboo staves. And then there was the great river Volga, with men on the banks towing ships against the stream. Yes, and she saw a sturgeon asleep in a deep pool. "Oh! oh! oh!" says the little pretty one, as she saw all these things.
Thus their conversation started. I was sitting not far from these two travellers, and, as the train was not in motion, I could catch bits of their conversation when others were not talking. They talked first of the prices of goods and the condition of business; they referred to a person whom they both knew; then they plunged into the fair at Nijni Novgorod.
The site of Nijni is somewhat like what I still remember of St. Louis after a seventeen years' interval. We travelled from Moscow over a distance of 273 miles in thirteen hours. For the last hour or two before we reached our journey's end, we had on our right the river Oka and a hilly ridge rising all along it and forming its southern bank.
There was once an old peasant, and he must have had more brains under his hair than ever I had, for he was a merchant, and used to take things every year to sell at the big fair of Nijni Novgorod. Well, I could never do that. I could never be anything better than an old forester. "Never mind, grandfather," said Maroosia.
Both partners in the firm were in the pay of the Ministry of the Interior, hence it was not difficult to arrange that the whole cargo should be sent to Vologda and Nijni to relieve there the growing shortage of meat. I strove to combat the clever plot, but was, alas! unable to do so. Every precaution was taken against possible failure.
From this fate it was saved by one of the common people, a butcher of Nijni Novgorod, Kozma Minin by name. Brave, honest, patriotic, and sensible, this man aroused his fellow-citizens, who took up arms for the deliverance of their country.
Whatever of civilization can exist within it must be of forced growth, and be maintained under the most adverse circumstances. South of this, between the fifty-fifth and sixtieth degrees of latitude, comes a still wider and more extensive region, comprising St. Petersburg, Riga, Moscow, Smolensk, and a portion of Irkutsk and Nijni Novgorod.
The following are a few examples of the sort of work done in the "Saturdayings." Briansk hospitals were improperly heated because of lack of the local transport necessary to bring them wood. Having no horses, they harnessed themselves to sledges in groups of ten, and brought in the wood required. At Nijni 800 persons spent their Saturday afternoon in unloading barges.
"Is it nerves or is it Petersburg?" she asked abruptly. "I think it is Petersburg. I hate Petersburg." "Why Petersburg more than Moscow or Nijni or Tver?" She drew in a long, slow breath, looking him up and down the while from the corners of her eyes. "I do not know," she replied collectedly; "I think it is damp. These houses are built on reclaimed land, I believe. This was all marsh, was it not?"
Of those who muster sufficiently strong at the evening promenade on the Boulevard, indigenous or resident, for the most part, rather the look than the number is formidable; and it is here in Nijni, as it is generally in Russia, that a Mussulman becomes convinced of the wisdom of his Arabian prophet, who invented the yashmak as man's best protection, and hallowed it; for of the charms of most Russian women, blessed are those who believe without seeing!
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