The connecting streets are some thirty or forty yards wide; and the centre avenue is yet much wider, and planted with trees. These streets much resemble those of Cairo, Smyrna, and other oriental towns. In the centre of that block of permanent buildings is located the official residence of the governor during the fair, as also all the business offices for the administration. It was in this official residence that the Duke of Edinburgh stayed during his visit to the fair a few years since. It is equivalent to the royal pavilion of some of the early English fairs. The principal avenues of the fair are connected with some ten miles of wharves or river frontage; and during the fair bridges are erected so as to give easy access from the town to the fair. The cost of preparing the site and the principal buildings was forty millions of roubles—£1,670,000 sterling. The fair, however, has long outgrown the original limits, and miles of temporary structures spring into existence for the occasion. It extends over some seven or eight square miles! _Unloading._—As the period of the fair approaches, the ordinary desolation of the location passes rapidly away. The rivers, busy indeed at all times when navigation is possible, now become almost blocked by traffic. A perfect forest of masts is visible. All distinct trace of the ordinary bridge of boats seems lost. The 400 or 500 steamers, built mainly in England and Belgium, which in the ordinary way are trading on the 1,600 miles from this to the Caspian sea, all seem concentrated here. They dart about like straws on these mighty rivers. But more striking-looking are the quaint mediæval-looking barges, coming as they do from the most distant parts of the empire, piloted through canals and rivers in order to find their appointed place here. These are all being rapidly discharged of their cargoes by an army of ragged Tartar labourers. Here will be found merchandise from every quarter of the globe; merchandise which has in some cases been several years on its way hither; merchandise which comes from localities so remote as not to be brought into voluntary association with this fair. Centuries ago, we are told by the historian of Genoa, the Genoese merchants built larger ships than were required for their regular trading operations, ships calculated to withstand the terrors of the Bay of Biscay, and the storms of the German Ocean, in order to make voyages to the Hanseatic towns, to Wisburg and Gotland, as also to the coast of Russia in order to participate in this great fair (Bent’s “Genoa,” 1881, p. 107).