The Fair proper consists of a mass of two-story "stone" (brick and cement) buildings, inclosed on three sides by a canal in the shape of a horseshoe. Through the centre runs a broad boulevard planted with trees, ending at the open point of the horseshoe in the residence occupied by the governor during the Fair (he usually lives in the Kremlin of the Upper Town), the post-office, and other public buildings. Across the other end of the boulevard and "rows" of the Gostinny Dvor, with their arcades full of benches occupied by fat merchants or indolent visitors, and serving as a chord to the arc of the horseshoe, run the "Chinese rows," which derive their name from the style of their curving iron roofs and their ornaments, not from the nationality of the merchants, or of the goods sold there. It is, probably, a mere accident that the wholesale shops for overland tea are situated in the Chinese rows. It is a good place to see the great bales of "Kiakhta tea," still in their wrappings of rawhides, with the hair inside and the hieroglyphical addresses, weights, and so forth, cut into the skins, instead of being painted on them, just as they have been brought overland from Kiakhta on the Chinese border of Siberia. Here, also, rises the great Makary Cathedral, which towers conspicuously above the low-roofed town. Inside the boundary formed by this Belt Canal, no smoking is allowed in the streets, under penalty of twenty-five rubles for each offense. The drainage system is flushed from the river every night; and from the ventilation towers, which are placed at short intervals, the blue smoke of purifying fires curls reassuringly. Great care is necessary in this department, and the sanitary conditions, though as good as possible, are never very secure. The whole low sandspit is often submerged during the spring floods, and the retreating waters leave a deposit of slime and debris behind them, which must be cleared away, besides doing much damage to the buildings. The peculiarity of this Makary Fair is that nothing is sold by sample, in modern fashion; the whole stock of goods is on hand, and is delivered at once to purchasers. The taciturn, easy-going merchants in those insignificant-looking shops of the Gostinny Dvor "rows," and, to a small extent, in the supplementary town which has sprung up outside the canal, set the prices for tea and goods of all sorts all over Russia and Siberia for the ensuing year. Contracts for the future are dated, and last year's bills fall due, at "Makary." It is hard to realize.