Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

192THE CITIES OF WOOL AND FUES.

same obhgation to be patient as he would have if he had travelled a thousand leagues to learn the practice of that virtue of the vanquished.

I forgot to notice a city of cashmere wool. In seeing this vile, dusty hair, bound in enormous bales, I thought of the beautiful shoulders that it would one day cover; the splendid attires that, when transformed into shawls, it would complete.

I saw also a city of furs, and another of potash. I use this word city purposely ; it alone can give an idea of the extent of the various depots which surround the fah`, and which invest it with a character of grandeur that no other fair will ever possess.

Such a commercial phenomenon could only be produced in Russia. To create a fair like Nijni requires that there should be an extreme desire for luxuries among tribes still half barbarous, living in countries separated by incommensurable distances, without prompt or easy means of communication, and where the inclemency of the seasons isolate the population during a great part of the year. The combination of these, and doubtless many other circumstances which I do not discern, could alone induce commercial people to submit to the difficulties, expenses, and personal fatigues of annually resorting, and of bringing all the riches of the soil and of industry to one single point of the country, at a fixed season. The time may be predicted, and I think it is not far distant, when the progress of material civilisation in Russia will greatly diminish the importance of the fair of Nijni, at present, as I have already said, the largest in the world.

In a suburb, separated by an arm of the Oka, is a