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They are well planted with trees, and have spacious sidewalks on each side; but, unlike the boulevards of Paris, are only dotted at irregular intervals with houses. To the eastward lies the Katai Gorod, or Chinese City, and to the westward the Beloi Gorod, or White City.
Every where we are pilgrims on the same journey. Wherever we sojourn among men, "The dead around us lie, And the death-bell tolls." The traktirs, or tea-houses, are prominent among the remarkable institutions of Russia. In Moscow they abound in every street, lane, and by-alley. That situated near the Katai Gorod is said to be the best.
Here, outspread before us in one vast circle, lay the whole wondrous city of the Tzars a perfect sea of green roofs, dotted over with innumerable spires and cupolas. The predominant features are Asiatic, though in the quarter to the west, called the Beloi Gorod, or White City, are the evidences of a more advanced civilization.
I visted the Imperial Theatre, which the Muscovites pronounce the finest in the world. To my mind it is only equaled by La Scala at Milan, or San Carlo at Naples. Outside it reminded me of our ci-devant Academy of Music. Inside it was gorgeous, well arranged, and spacious. The Kitai Gorod, or Chinese town of Moscow, is close by the Kremlin and outside its walls.
But if you have a passion for human oddities rather than curiosities of merchandise, you must visit the second-hand markets extending along the walls of the Katai Gorod, where you will find not only every conceivable variety of old clothes, clocks, cooking utensils, and rubbish of all sorts, but the queerest imaginable conglomeration of human beings from the far East to the far West.
A favorite resort of mine during my sojourn in that strange old city of the Czars was in the markets of the Katai Gorod. Those of the Riadi and Gostovini Dvor present the greatest attractions, perhaps, in the way of shops and merchandise; for there, by the aid of time, patience, and money, you can get any thing you want, from saints' armlets and devils down to candlesticks and cucumbers.
Outside the walls of the Katai Gorod, in an open square, or plaza, are rows of wooden booths, in which innumerable varieties of living stock are offered for sale geese, ducks, chickens, rabbits, pigeons, and birds of various sorts.
Pick out all the strangest, most ragged, most uncouth figures you ever saw in old pictures, from childhood up to the present day; select from every theatrical representation within the range of your experience the most monstrous and absurd caricatures upon humanity; bring to your aid all the masquerades and burlesque fancy-balls you ever visited, tumble them together in the great bag of your imagination, and pour them out over a vague wilderness of open spaces, dirty streets, high walls, and rickety little booths, and you have no idea at all of the queer old markets of the Katai Gorod.