k.

They are the descendants of the old warriors of Genghis Khan and
Timour the Lame, of the ruthless savages who for 200 years overran
all Russia, spreading death and desolation wherever their coursers'
hoofs trod, making slaves of the people, and tributary vassals of
their Princes; but, who by their short-sighted policy favoured the
rise of that dynasty of Moscow Grand Princes, who presently became
strong enough to extend their sway both over Russ and Tartar.

The great merchants of Moscow and St. Petersburg or their
representatives and partners come here for a few days, partners and
clerks taking up the task by turns, according as business allows
them absence from their chief establishments.

They bring here no goods, but merely samples of goods--tea, cotton,
woollen and linen tissues, silk, cutlery, jewellery, and generally
all articles of European (home Russian) manufacture.

They have most of them good apartments in the upper floors of their
warehouses; they see their customers, mostly provincial retail
dealers; they show their samples, drive their bargains, receive
orders, attend on 'Change (for they have a _Bourse_ at the fair,
near the bridge), smoke indoors (for in the streets that indulgence
is forbidden all over the fair for fear of fire), lunch or dine
together often by mutual invitation.

They are gentlemenly men, young men for the most part (for their
elders are at home minding the main business), young Russians or
Russified Germans, some of whom adopt and even affect and exaggerate
Russian feeling and habits; young men to whom it seems to be a
principle that easy-made money should be readily spent; leisurely,
business young men, who sit up late and get up later, take the world
and its work and pleasure at their ease; understand little and
care even less about politics; profess to be neither great readers
nor great thinkers; but are, as a rule, free-handed, hospitable,
sociable, most amiable, and anything rather than unintelligent men.

Of all the articles of trade which come to court public favour
in Nijni, the most important and valuable is tea; and although
the Moscow merchants, by the excellence of their sea-faring tea,
chiefly imported from Odessa or through England, have almost entirely
driven from the market the caravan tea, still about one-tenth of
the enormous quantity of tea sold here is grown in the north of
China, and comes overland from Kiakhta, the city on the border
between the Asia