y all stick by each
other; whereas a Russian, _Hospodi pomilui!_ [Lord have mercy] thinks of
himself alone, which is a disadvantage," said my humble philosopher.

We found that we had underrated the power of our man's little horse, and
had arrived at the river an hour and a half before the steamer was
appointed to sail. It should be there lading, however, and we decided to
go directly on board and wait in comfort. We gave patient Vanka liberal
"tea-money." Hard times were evidently no fiction so far as he was
concerned, and we asked if he meant to spend it on _vodka_, which
elicited fervent asseverations of teetotalism, as he thrust his buckskin
pouch into his breast.

Descending in the deep dust, with a sense of gratitude that it was not
mixed with rain, we ran the gauntlet of the assorted peddlers stationed
on both sides of the long descent with stocks of food, soap, white felt
boots, gay sashes, coarse leather slippers too large for human wear, and
other goods, and reached the covered wharf. The steamer was not there,
but we took it calmly, and asked no questions--for a space.

We whiled away the time by chaffering with the persistent Tatar venders
for things which we did not want, and came into amazed possession of
some of them. This was a tribute to our powers of bargaining which had
rarely been paid even when we had been in earnest. We contrived to avoid
the bars of yellow "egg soap" by inquiring for one of the marvels of
Kazan,--soap made from mare's milk. An amused apothecary had already
assured us that it was a product of the too fertile brain of Baedeker,
not of the local soap factories. May Baedeker himself, some day, reap a
similar harvest of mirth and astonishment from the sedate Tatars, who
can put mare's milk to much better use as a beverage!

In the hope of obtaining a conversation-lesson in Tatar, we bought a
Russo-Tatar grammar, warranted to deliver over all the secrets of that
gracefully curved language in the usual scant array of pages. But the
peddler immediately professed as profound ignorance of Tatar as he had
of Russian a few moments before, when requested to abate his exorbitant
demands for the pamphlet.

By the time we had exhausted these resources one o'clock had arrived.
The steamer had not. The office clerk replied to all inquiries with the
languid national "_saytchas_" which the dictionary defines as meaning
"immediately," but which experience proves to signify, "Be easy; any
time thi