talking,
wrangling, haranguing, and bargaining. Everything which can be bought
or sold seemed to be heaped up in this square. Furs, precious stones,
silks, Cashmere shawls, Turkey carpets, weapons from the Caucasus,
gauzes from Smyrna and Ispahan. Tiflis armor, caravan teas. European
bronzes, Swiss clocks, velvets and silks from Lyons, English cottons,
harness, fruits, vegetables, minerals from the Ural, malachite,
lapis-lazuli, spices, perfumes, medicinal herbs, wood, tar, rope, horn,
pumpkins, water-melons, etc--all the products of India, China, Persia,
from the shores of the Caspian and the Black Sea, from America and
Europe, were united at this corner of the globe.

It is scarcely possible truly to portray the moving mass of human beings
surging here and there, the excitement, the confusion, the hubbub;
demonstrative as were the natives and the inferior classes, they were
completely outdone by their visitors. There were merchants from Central
Asia, who had occupied a year in escorting their merchandise across its
vast plains, and who would not again see their shops and counting-houses
for another year to come. In short, of such importance is this fair of
Nijni-Novgorod, that the sum total of its transactions amounts yearly to
nearly a hundred million dollars.

On one of the open spaces between the quarters of this temporary city
were numbers of mountebanks of every description; gypsies from the
mountains, telling fortunes to the credulous fools who are ever to
be found in such assemblies; Zingaris or Tsiganes--a name which the
Russians give to the gypsies who are the descendants of the ancient
Copts--singing their wildest melodies and dancing their most original
dances; comedians of foreign theaters, acting Shakespeare, adapted to
the taste of spectators who crowded to witness them. In the long avenues
the bear showmen accompanied their four-footed dancers, menageries
resounded with the hoarse cries of animals under the influence of the
stinging whip or red-hot irons of the tamer; and, besides all these
numberless performers, in the middle of the central square, surrounded
by a circle four deep of enthusiastic amateurs, was a band of "mariners
of the Volga," sitting on the ground, as on the deck of their vessel,
imitating the action of rowing, guided by the stick of the master of the
orchestra, the veritable helmsman of this imaginary vessel! A whimsical
and pleasing custom!

Suddenly, according to a time-honore