as no sterlet had been caught
at this camp. When the soup made its appearance, we comprehended the
epithet "amber" and its fame. Of a deep gold, almost orange color, with
the rich fat, and clear as a topaz, it was utterly unlike anything we
had ever tasted. We understood the despair of Parisian gourmets and
cooks, and we confirmed the verdict, provisionally announced at
breakfast, that the sterlet is the king of all fish. As it is
indescribable, I may be excused for not attempting to do justice to it
in words.

While we feasted, the fishermen cooked themselves a kettle of less
dainty fish, as a treat from us, since the fish belong to the contractor
who farms the ground, not to the men. Their meal ended, the regulation
cross and prayer executed, they amiably consented to anticipate the
usual hour for casting their net, in order that we might see the
operation. The net, two hundred and fifty fathoms in length, was
manoeuvred down the long beach well out in the stream by one man in a
boat, and by five men on shore, who harnessed themselves to a long cable
by halters woven from the soft inner bark of the linden-tree. We grasped
the rope and helped them pull. We might not have been of much real
assistance, but we learned, at least, how heavy is this toil, repeated
many times a day, even when the pouch reveals so slender a catch as in
the present instance. There was nothing very valuable in it, though
there was variety enough, and we were deceived, for a moment, by several
false sterlet.

The small _samovar_ which we had brought gave us a steaming welcome, on
our return to camp. Perched on the fishermen's seatless chair and stool,
and on boxes, we drank our tea and began our preparations for departure,
bestowing a reward on the men, who had acted their parts as impromptu
hosts to perfection. It was late; but our men burst into song, when
their oars dipped in the waves, as spontaneously as the nightingales
which people these shores in springtime,--inspired probably by the full
moon, which they melodiously apostrophized as "the size of a
twenty-kopek bit." They sang of Stenka Razin, the bandit chief, who kept
the Volga and the Caspian Sea in a state of terror during the reign of
Peter the Great's father; of his "poor people, good youths, fugitives,
who were no thieves nor brigands, but only Stenka Razin's workmen." They
declared, in all seriousness, that he had been wont to navigate upon a
felt rug, like the one we had seen i