ress. These Volga steamers had
afforded me a subject for meditations on this point, at a distance, even
before I was obliged to undergo personal experience of the defects of
conservatism. Before I had sailed four and twenty hours on the broad
bosom of Matushka Volga, I was able to pick out the steamers of all the
rival lines at sight with the accuracy of a veteran river pilot. There
was no great cleverness in that, I hasten to add; anybody but a blind
man could have done as much; but that only makes my point the more
forcible. It was when we set out for Samara that we realized most keenly
the beauties of enterprise in this direction.

We had, nominally, a wide latitude of choice, as all the lines made a
stop at our landing. But when we got tired of waiting for the steamer of
our preference,--the boats of all the lines being long overdue, as
usual, owing to low water in the river,--and took the first which
presented itself, we found that the latitude in choice, so far as
accommodations were concerned, was even greater than had been apparent
at first sight.

Fate allotted us one of the smaller steamers, the more commodious boats
having probably "sat down on a sand-bar," as the local expression goes.
The one on which we embarked had only a small dining-room and saloon,
one first-class cabin for men and one for women, all nearly on a level
with the water, instead of high aloft, as in the steamers which we had
hitherto patronized, and devoid of deck-room for promenading. The
third-class cabin was on the forward deck. The second-class cabin was
down a pair of steep, narrow stairs, whose existence we did not discover
when we went on board at midnight, and which did not tempt us to
investigation even when we arose the next morning. Fortunately, there
were no candidates except ourselves and a Russian friend for the six red
velvet divans ranged round the walls of the tiny "ladies' cabin," and
the adjoining toilet-room, and the man of the party enjoyed complete
seclusion in the men's cabin. In the large boats, for the same price, we
should have had separate staterooms, each accommodating two persons.
However, everything was beautifully clean, as usual on Russian steamers
so far as my experience goes, and it made no difference for one night.
The experience was merely of interest as a warning.

The city of Samara, as it presented itself to our eyes the next morning,
was the liveliest place on the river Volga next to Nizhni Novgoro