rivers overflow their banks and lay a great
part of the low-lying country under water, so that many villages can
only be approached in boats; but very soon the flood subsides, and the
water falls so rapidly that by midsummer the larger steamers have
great difficulty in picking their way among the sandbanks. The Neva
alone--that queen of northern rivers--has at all times a plentiful
supply of water.

Besides the Neva, the rivers commonly visited by the tourist are the
Volga and the Don, which form part of what may be called the Russian
grand tour. Englishmen who wish to see something more than St.
Petersburg and Moscow generally go by rail to Nizhni-Novgorod, where
they visit the great fair, and then get on board one of the Volga
steamers. For those who have mastered the important fact that Russia
is not a country of fine scenery, the voyage down the river is pleasant
enough. The left bank is as flat as the banks of the Rhine below
Cologne, but the right bank is high, occasionally well wooded, and not
devoid of a certain tame picturesqueness. Early on the second day
the steamer reaches Kazan, once the capital of an independent Tartar
khanate, and still containing a considerable Tartar population. Several
metchets (as the Mahometan houses of prayer are here termed), with their
diminutive minarets in the lower part of the town, show that Islamism
still survives, though the khanate was annexed to Muscovy more than
three centuries ago; but the town, as a whole, has a European rather
than an Asiatic character. If any one visits it in the hope of getting
"a glimpse of the East," he will be grievously disappointed, unless,
indeed, he happens to be one of those imaginative tourists who always
discover what they wish to see. And yet it must be admitted that, of
all the towns on the route, Kazan is the most interesting. Though
not Oriental, it has a peculiar character of its own, whilst all the
others--Simbirsk, Samara, Saratof--are as uninteresting as Russian
provincial towns commonly are. The full force and solemnity of that
expression will be explained in the sequel.

Probably about sunrise on the third day something like a range of
mountains will appear on the horizon. It may be well to say at once, to
prevent disappointment, that in reality nothing worthy of the name
of mountain is to be found in that part of the country. The nearest
mountain-range in that direction is the Caucasus, which is hundreds of
miles distant, and c