Peter exterminated the streltsi, the men who first of all his subjects had supported his claims and protected his rights; it is in connection with the streltsi that Peter is most enduringly associated with Moscow. The scenes of that long struggle were, for the most part, enacted outside the Kremlin; in the Kitai-Gorod of the merchants, in the Bielo-Gorod of the freemen, in the sloboda of the foreign settlers, and the Preobrajenski quarter where Peter was reared. It is this Moscow that has suffered most from the invader and from fire; its memorials of antiquity are few, those appertaining to Peter the Great and his time may be counted on the fingers of one mutilated hand. The most conspicuous marks are those of the Church. Continuing by that route indicated in the last chapter, on issuing by the Valdimirski Gate from the Kitai-Gorod, the road north is the Big Lubianka, running along the crest of the hill towards the old village of [Illustration: SRIETENKA--SDKHAREV BASHNIA] Kuchko, long since incorporated with the town; on the right hand is the palace of that Count Rostopchin who ordered the destruction of Moscow in 1812; on the left at the corner of the Kuznetski Most is the old church, set apart from time immemorial for the benediction of fruit. As an old writer states, "the Mahommedans would as soon eat pork as a Russian unconsecrated apples." Further on, also on the left is the old monastery of the Srietenka (Meeting), founded by Vasili Dmitrivich in gratitude of the deliverance of Moscow threatened by the Tartars under Tamerlane in 1397; rebuilt by Theodore II. and containing a chapel to the Patriarch Joachim, constructed by Peter I. in 1706. It has two other old churches, one dedicated to St Nicholas, and the other to the Egyptian Virgin Mary, neither of particular interest. This is a part of Moscow longest inhabited by the peasant class, and continuing on past the boulevard, which marks the old wall of the Bielo-Gorod, the Srietenka traverses the Zemliaa Gorod, or earthen town, until the Sadovia is reached, where was once the by no means formidable rampart of the outer wall; beyond this the Miaschanska continues the road to the Kammer College earth rampart at the Krestovski-Zastava. Beyond that is the highway to Ostankina, the Marina Roshcha, and the village of Mordva. The eighteenth church passed after leaving the Grand Square is dedicated to the Trinity and is remarkable for a number of small shops within its walls, the windows but a couple of feet high and the ceiling so near the pavement that buyers have to stoop or kneel to bargain. An old order forbids that shops be within a church, and a more recent one, any without it. These being neither within nor without continue unmolested. In this district the Streltsi were living at the close of the seventeenth century, and a little further on is the Sukharev Bashnia, Peter's memorial to the fidelity of a regiment of the force he exterminated. It is a curious