be bought for a
very reasonable price in the Oriental shops, together with jeweled arms
and ornaments, rugs, and a great variety of fascinating wares.

The choicest "overland" tea--the true name is "Kiakhta tea"--can be
had only by wholesale, alas! and it is the same with very many things.
There are shops full of rolls of _sarpinka_, a fine, changeable gingham
in pink and blue, green and yellow, and a score of other combinations,
which washes perfectly, and is made by the peasants far down the Volga,
in the season when agricultural labor is impossible. There are furs of
more sorts than the foreign visitor is likely ever to have seen before;
iron from the Ural mines by the ton, on a detached sand-spit in the Oka
River; dried and salted fish by the cord, in a distant, too odorous
spot; goldsmiths' shops; old-clothes shops, where quaint and beautiful
old costumes of Russia abound; Tatar shops, filled with fine,
multi-colored leather work and other Tatar goods, presided over by the
stately Tatars from whom we had bought at Kazan; shops piled with every
variety of dried fruit, where prime Sultana raisins cost forty cents for
a box of one hundred and twenty pounds. Altogether, it is a varied and
instructive medley.

We learned several trade tricks. For example, we came upon the agency of
a Moscow factory, which makes a woolen imitation of an Oriental silken
fabric, known as _termalama_. The agent acknowledged that it was an
imitation, and said that the price by the piece was twenty-five cents a
yard. In the Moscow Oriental shops the dealers sell it for eight times
that price, and swear that it is genuine from the East. A Russian friend
of ours had been cheated in this way, and the dealers attempted to cheat
us also,--in vain, after our Nizhni investigations.

Every one seemed to be absorbed in business, to the exclusion of every
other thought. But sometimes, as we wandered along the boulevard, and
among the rows, we found the ground of the Gostinny Dvor strewn with
fresh sprays of fragrant fir, which we took at first to be a token that
a funeral had occurred among some of the merchants' clerks who lived
over the shops. However, it appeared that a holy picture had been
carried along the rows, and into the shops of those who desired its
blessing on their trade, and a short service had been held. The "zeal"
of these numerous devout persons must have enriched the church where the
_ikona_ dwelt, judging from the number, of time