ome to it fresh from a stay of (at most) three weeks in St.
Petersburg and Moscow only, we should have been much impressed by the
variety of types and goods, I have no doubt. But we had spent nearly two
years in the land, and were familiar with the types and goods of the
capitals and of other places, so that there was little that was new to
us. Consequently, though we found the Fair very interesting, we were not
able to excite ourselves to any extravagant degree of amazement or
rapture.

The Fair proper consists of a mass of two-story "stone" (brick and
cement) buildings, inclosed on three sides by a canal in the shape of a
horseshoe. Through the centre runs a broad boulevard planted with trees,
ending at the open point of the horseshoe in the residence occupied by
the governor during the Fair (he usually lives in the Kremlin of the
Upper Town), the post-office, and other public buildings. Across the
other end of the boulevard and "rows" of the Gostinny Dvor, with their
arcades full of benches occupied by fat merchants or indolent visitors,
and serving as a chord to the arc of the horseshoe, run the "Chinese
rows," which derive their name from the style of their curving iron
roofs and their ornaments, not from the nationality of the merchants, or
of the goods sold there. It is, probably, a mere accident that the
wholesale shops for overland tea are situated in the Chinese rows. It is
a good place to see the great bales of "Kiakhta tea," still in their
wrappings of rawhides, with the hair inside and the hieroglyphical
addresses, weights, and so forth, cut into the skins, instead of being
painted on them, just as they have been brought overland from Kiakhta on
the Chinese border of Siberia. Here, also, rises the great Makary
Cathedral, which towers conspicuously above the low-roofed town. Inside
the boundary formed by this Belt Canal, no smoking is allowed in the
streets, under penalty of twenty-five rubles for each offense. The
drainage system is flushed from the river every night; and from the
ventilation towers, which are placed at short intervals, the blue smoke
of purifying fires curls reassuringly. Great care is necessary in this
department, and the sanitary conditions, though as good as possible, are
never very secure. The whole low sandspit is often submerged during the
spring floods, and the retreating waters leave a deposit of slime and
debris behind them, which must be cleared away, besides doing much
damage to