olga on an iron bridge, one verst and a half, or one English
mile, in length, and high enough to allow the largest steamer pass
without lowering its funnel--a masterpiece of engineering greatly
admired by the people here, who describe it as the longest bridge
in Russia and in the world.

We went under it at midnight by a dim moonlight which barely allowed
us to see it looming in the distance not much bigger than a
telegraph-wire drawn all across the valley, the gossamer line of
the bridge and all the landscape round striking us as dreamlike
and unreal.

After crossing the river the railway proceeds to Samara, and hence
419 versts further to Orenburg, a large and thriving place on the
Ural river, the spot from which the straightest and probably the
shortest way is, or will be, open to all parts of Siberia or Central
Asia; preferable, I should think, to that of Perm and Ekaterinenburg
above-mentioned, which is now the most frequented route.

Beyond Syzran and Samara the river scenery, which has hitherto
been verdant, assumes a southerly aspect; the hill-sides sloping
to the river have a parched and faded brown look; the hill-tops are
bared and seamed with chalky ravines; every trace of the forests
has disappeared; and it is only at rare intervals that the banks
are clad with the verdure of the new growth.

[Illustration: FROM THE RAMPARTS OF THE KREMLIN NIJNI-NOVGOROD.]

From Nijni to Tsaritzin we have stopped at more than thirty different
stations, and no pen could describe the stir and bustle of goods
and passengers that awaited us at every wharf and pier.

Several of these stations are towns of 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants,
and, besides their corn trade and tobacco, they all deal in some
articles of necessity or luxury, of which they produce enough for
their own, if not always for their neighbours', consumption.

Everywhere one sees huge buildings--steam flour-mills,
tobacco-factories, salt-mines, soap and candle factories, tanneries--and
last, not least, palaces for the sale of _koumiss_ or fermented
mare's milk, a sanitary beverage; and extensive establishments,
especially near Samara, for the _koumiss_ cure,--fashionable resorts
as watering-places, frequented by persons affected by consumption,
and other real or imaginary ailments.

There is something appalling in the thought that all this busy,
and, on the whole, merry life on the banks of the Volga must come
to a dead stand-still for six or seven months