Northern Lands; Or, Young America in Russia and PrussiaOptic, Oliver
General
Northern Lands; Or, Young America in Russia and Prussia
Optic, Oliver
Prussia (Germany) -- Description and travel -- Juvenile fiction; Russia -- Description and travel -- Juvenile fiction
There is as much variety in the shops as in different parts of a
large city. Certain sections are devoted to the wholesale trade, and
others to the retail. Many of the shops are filled with large bundles
and bales, while others glisten with ornamental articles. Some of
the avenues hardly differ in appearance from Broadway in New York,
except in the uniformity of the buildings. The windows are filled with
displays of jewelry, fancy goods, toys, dry goods, clocks, and watches,
furs, silks, and, indeed, everything that one would see in a great
city. Some shops are devoted exclusively to furs, and the assortment
is large and fine. Dried fish is a great article of commerce here. The
value of the sturgeon fisheries on the Volga is estimated at two and
a half million rubles, while thirty thousand casks of _caviar_ have
been sent up from Astrakhan in one year. The productions of Asia are
largely represented at the fair, the most important of which is the
tea of China. The Chinese quarter is fitted up in Celestial style,
with verandas and pagodas; but very few Chinese attend the fair of
late years. Fifteen million pounds of the finest tea are brought into
Russia, most of it to this bazaar. It is transported to Perm by boats,
sledges, and camels, and thence by the Kama and Volga to Nijni.
Along the rivers are the coarser articles of merchandise--iron
in bars and sheets, and manufactured into kettles and household
utensils, millstones, vast quantities of wheat, rolls of leather from
Kazan, boxes of candles from Asia, copper and platinum from the Ural
Mountains, and bells of all sizes, hung so that their tone can be
tested.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the fair to an American or
Englishman is the people that gather there, especially the Asiatics.
But the variety is by no means as great as the visitor will expect to
find after reading the descriptions of them which have been published.
There are plenty of Persians and Tartars in full costume, the former
with knives and pistols in their belts, placed there for ornament
rather than use. A few grave Chinamen may also be seen; but the great
majority of the people are Russians. Unless one wishes to make it study
of it, a few hours are enough to enable the stranger to see the fair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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