Out of the depths of this ancient, but still little known, land, have these goods been brought on the backs of camels. A few months earlier I had watched long camel trains of Persian traders crossing the Nucha Desert, leisurely plodding the hot, sandy stretches with the goods of their country with which they thought to please other eyes. At Nijni I was not tempted to buy any of these goods, for in my rooms in St. Petersburg I had enough table-covers and hand-embroidered squares to supply a host of friends with souvenirs. I had picked them up in Tiflis, in Transcaucasia, during one of the pitched battles between the Armenians and Tartars. The Armenians had taken possession of a hill in the town just above the Persian quarter, and began firing upon the Tartars whose quarter adjoins the Persians’. The Tartars returned the fire smartly, but as neither of these nationalities are notoriously good shots, the innocent Persians, who unluckily were between the two camps, were the chief sufferers. When the Russian troops came up they fired indiscriminately upon the Armenians and Tartars; likewise upon the Persians, who could not be distinguished. The result of the mêlée was the almost complete demolition of the Persian quarter. These unhappy merchants and traders started in panic for their native country, and those who had managed to save any of their goods at all were glad enough to sell them in quantities for a song. But even at Nijni these Persian stuffs are inexpensive. I saw groups of admiring muzhiks clad in what some one has called their “national costume of rags” venturing to invest a hard-earned ruble in a gaudy table-cover. Interesting as are the bazars with all their varied displays, the crowds of patrons were surpassingly fascinating. Beautiful Tartar women, with faces half-veiled lest the eyes of a strange man should rest upon them. Mohammedan molla in silken robes of many colors like little Joseph’s, with snowy turbans wound round their shaved heads, setting into bold contrast the polished olive skins of their faces. Peasants in shoals who stare and stare. Housewives who question and price a thousand things, and sometimes risk a purchase. It was with a feeling of refreshment and no little regret that I boarded a Volga flat-bottomed steamer to proceed on my journey to Kazan. Kazan had long been a troubled government. The nearer one approached to the famine belt, the stronger were the sentiments of insurrection. So complete was the failure of crops in some counties of Kazan this year that the harvest would not suffice for a single month! The estimated amount of government relief needed for Kazan government for that year alone was thirty-two million rubles--$16,000,000--a sum so vast that it was already known that the central government, as usual in straitened circumstances, would be obliged to cut it down so largely that appalling suffering was inevitable.