onkeys in Benares or
doves in Venice, being considered emblems of the Holy Ghost, and
under protection of the Church. They wheel about in large blue flocks
through the air so dense as to cast shadows, like swift-moving clouds
between the sun and the earth, alighting fearlessly where they
choose, to share the beggar's crumbs or the bounty of the affluent.
It is a notable fact that this domestic bird was also considered
sacred by the old Scandinavians, who believed that for a certain
period after death the soul of the deceased under such form was
accustomed to come to eat and drink with as well as to watch the
behavior of the mourners. Beggary is sadly prevalent in the streets
of the Muscovite capital,--the number of maimed and wretched-looking
human beings forcibly recalling the same class in Spanish and Italian
cities. This condition of poverty was the more remarkable when
contrasted with its absence in St. Petersburg, where a person seen
soliciting alms upon the streets or in tattered garments is very
rare.

CHAPTER XVII.

Nijni-Novgorod. -- Hot Weather. -- The River Volga. -- Hundreds
of Steamers. -- Great Annual Fair. -- Peculiar Character of the
Trade. -- Motley Collection of Humanity. -- An Army of Beggars.
-- Rare and Precious Stones. -- The Famous Brick Tea. -- A Costly
Beverage. -- Sanitary Measures. -- Disgraceful Dance Halls. --
Fatal Beauty. -- A Sad History. -- Light-Fingered Gentry. --
Convicts. -- Facts About Siberia. -- Local Customs. -- Russian
Punishment.

A journey of about three hundred miles (or as the Russians state it,
four hundred and ten versts) in a northeasterly direction from
Moscow, by way of the historic town of Vladimir, famous for its
battles with the Tartars, brings us to Nijni-Novgorod,--that is,
Lower Novgorod, being so called to distinguish it from the famous
place of the same name located on the Volkhov, and known as Novgorod
the Great. It is older than Moscow, antedating it a century or more,
and is the capital of a province bearing the same name. The residence
of the governor of the district, the courts of law, and the citadel
are within the Kremlin, where there is also a fine monument in the
form of an obelisk eighty feet high, erected to the memory of Mininn
and Pojarski, the two patriots who liberated their country from the
Poles in 1612. This Kremlin, like that at Moscow, is situated on an
elevation overlooking the town and the broad valley of the Vo