e summit;
then a stately, white-walled citadel; and the end of the ridge was
levelled down in an even line to the Volga. We were three hundred miles
from Moscow, on the direct road to Siberia.

The city being on the farther side of the Oka, the railroad terminates
at the Fair, which is a separate city, occupying the triangular level
between the two rivers. Our approach to it was first announced by heaps
of cotton-bales, bound in striped camel's-hair cloth, which had found
their way hither from the distant valleys of Turkestan and the warm
plains of Bukharia. Nearly fifty thousand camels are employed in the
transportation of this staple across the deserts of the Aral to
Orenburg,--a distance of a thousand miles. The increase of price had
doubled the production since the previous year, and the amount which now
reaches the factories of Russia through this channel cannot be less than
seventy-five thousand bales. The advance of modern civilization has so
intertwined the interests of all zones and races, that a civil war in
the United States affects the industry of Central Asia!

Next to these cotton-bales, which, to us, silently proclaimed the
downfall of that arrogant monopoly which has caused all our present woe,
came the representatives of those who produced them. Groups of
picturesque Asians--Bashkirs, Persians, Bukharians, and Uzbeks--appeared
on either side, staring impassively at the wonderful apparition. Though
there was sand under their feet, they seemed out of place in the sharp
north-wind and among the hills of fir and pine.

The train stopped: we had reached the station. As I stepped upon the
platform, I saw, over the level lines of copper roofs, the dragon-like
pinnacles of Chinese buildings, and the white minaret of a mosque. Here
was the certainty of a picturesque interest to balance the uncertainty
of our situation. We had been unable to engage quarters in advance:
there were two hundred thousand strangers before us, in a city the
normal population of which is barely forty thousand; and four of our
party were ladies. The envoy, indeed, might claim the Governor's
hospitality; but our visit was to be so brief that we had no time to
expend on ceremonies, and preferred rambling at will through the teeming
bazaars to being led about under the charge of an official escort.

A friend at Moscow, however, had considerately telegraphed in our behalf
to a French resident of Nijni, and the latter gentleman met us at t