the company's tug to pick up and tow
to Nizhni with a string of other barges.

It is probably a vulgar detail, but I must chronicle the fact that the
cooking on these Volga steamers--on the line we patronized, at least
--is among the very best to be found in Russia, in my experience. On
the voyage upstream, when they are well supplied with sterlet and other
fish, all alive, from Astrakhan, the dinners are treats for which one
may sigh in vain in the capitals of St. Petersburg and Moscow, with
their mongrel German-French-Russian cookery. The dishes are very
Russian, but they are very good.

I remember one particularly delicious concoction was composed of fresh
sterlet and sour cabbage, with white grapes on top, baked to a brown
crispness.

We arrived at our wharf on the Volga front of the old town of Nizhni
Novgorod about five o'clock in the afternoon. Above us rose the steep
green hills on whose crest stood the Kremlin, containing several ancient
churches, the governor's house, and so forth. On a lower terrace, to
right and left, stood monasteries and churches intermingled with shops
and mediocre dwellings. The only noteworthy church was that in front of
us, with its picturesque but un-Russian rococo plaster decoration on red
brick, crowned by genuine Russian domes and crosses of elaborately
beautiful patterns.

But we did not pause long to admire this part of the view, which was
already familiar to us. What a change had come over the scene since we
had bidden it farewell on our way downstream! Then everything was dead,
or slumbering, except the old town, the city proper; and that had not
seemed to be any too much awake or alive. The Fair town, situated on the
sand-spit between the Volga and the mouth of the Oka, stood locked up
and deserted, as it had stood since the close of last year's Fair. Now,
as we gazed over the prow of the steamer, we could see the bridge across
the Oka black with the swarming masses of pedestrians and equipages.

The steamer company allows its patrons to sleep (but not to eat) on
board the night after arrival and the night before starting, and we
availed ourselves of the privilege, having heard that it was often no
easy matter to secure accommodations in the Fair, and having no
intention of returning to our former hotel, miles from all the fun, in
the upper town, if we could help it.

The only vacant rooms in the Fair seemed to be at the "best hotel," to
which we had been recommended,