d.
While it really is of importance commercially, owing to its position on
the Volga and on the railway from central Russia, as a depot for the
great Siberian trade through Orenburg, the impression of alertness which
it produces is undoubtedly due to the fact that it presents itself to
full view in the foreground, instead of lying at a distance from the
wharves, or entirely concealed. An American, who is accustomed to see
railways and steamers run through the very heart of the cities which
they serve, never gets thoroughly inured to the Russian trick of taking
important towns on faith, because it has happened to be convenient to
place the stations out of sight and hearing, sometimes miles out of the
city. Another striking point about Samara is the abundance of red brick
buildings, which is very unusual, not to say unprecedented, in most of
the older Russian towns, which revel in stucco washed with white, blue,
and yellow.

But the immediate foreground was occupied with something more attractive
than this. The wharves, the space between them, and all the ground round
about were fairly heaped with fruit: apples in bewildering variety,
ranging from the pink-and-whiteskinned "golden seeds" through the whole
gamut of apple hues; round striped watermelons and oval cantaloupes with
perfumed orange-colored flesh, from Astrakhan; plums and grapes. After
wrestling with these fascinations and with the merry _izvostchiki_, we
set out on a little voyage of discovery, preparatory to driving out to
the famous kumys establishments, where we had decided to stay instead of
in the town itself.

Much of Samara is too new in its architecture, and too closely resembles
the simple, thrifty builders' designs of a mushroom American settlement,
to require special description. Although it is said to have been founded
at the close of the sixteenth century, to protect the Russians from the
incursions of the Kalmucks, Bashkirs, and Nogai Tatars, four disastrous
conflagrations within the last forty-five years have made way for
"improvements" and entailed the loss of characteristic features, while
its rank as one of the chief marts for the great Siberian trade has
caused a rapid increase in population, which now numbers between
seventy-five and eighty thousand.

One modern feature fully compensates, however, by its originality, for a
good many commonplace antiquities. Near the wharves, on our way out of
the town, we passed a lumber-yard, which deal