tic-Russian and the Celestial Empire.

I was curious to compare the taste of some of the very best qualities
of both kinds, and was brought to the conclusion, confirmed by the
opinion of gentlemen interested in the sale of sea-faring tea,
that, although some of their own is more high-flavoured and stronger,
there is in the Kiakhta tea an exquisite delicacy, which will always
receive in its favour a higher price. The difference, I am told,
mainly arises from the fact that the caravan tea, exposed to the
air during its twelve months' journey in loose and clumsy and
much-shaken paper and sheep-skin bundles, gets rid of the tannin
and other gross substances, a process of purification which cannot
be effected in the necessarily sealed and hermetically-closed boxes
in which it reaches Europe by the sea-route; so that if sea-faring
tea, like port-wine, easily recommends itself to the taste and
nerves of a strong, hard-working man, a dainty, refined lady will
give preference to a cup of Kiakhta tea, as she would to a glass
of Chateau Yquem.

The interest of a European, however, would be chiefly attracted
by what is less familiar in his own part of the world; and, short
of an actual journey to the remote regions of Siberia and Central
Asia, nothing is calculated to give him a more extensive idea of
the produce of those Trans-Uralian Russian possessions than a survey
of the goods they send here for sale.

What astonishes a stranger at first sight is the quantity. You may
walk for hours along yards and sheds, the repositories of iron from
Siberia. You pass hundreds of shops of malachite and lapis-lazuli,
and a variety of gold and silver work and precious stones from the
Caucasus, cut with all the minute diligence of Asiatic skill. You
will see Turkish carpets, Persian silks, and above all things the
famous Orenburg shawls, so finely knitted, and with such patience
that one can (they say, but I have not made the experiment), be
made to pass through a lady's ring, though they be so broad on
all sides as to wrap the lady all around from head to foot.

One may, besides, have his choice of hundreds and thousands of
those delightful curiosities and knickknacks, recommendable less
for their quaintness than for the certainty one feels that there
is no possible use in the world they may be put to.

There is no novelty at Nijni; no new shape, pattern, or colour
just coming out to catch popular favour; no unknown mechanical
contrivanc