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

190THE CITY OF BAGS.

takes to survey them, though it be only by passing before the piles of boxes. This year, thirty-five thousand were sold in three days. A single individual, my geographical merchant, took fourteen thousand, which cost him ten million silver roubles (paper roubles are not current here), a part payable down, the rest in one year.

It is the rate of tea which fixes the price of all the commodities of the fair: before this rate is published, the other bai`gains are only made conditionally.

There is another city as large, but less elegant, and less perfumed than the city of tea — that, namely, of rags. Fortunately, before bringing the tatters of all Russia to the fair, those into whose hands they have fallen, cause them to be washed. This commodity, necessary to the manufacture of paper, has become so precious, that the Russian custom-house forbids the exportation with extreme severity.

Another town which attracted my attention among the suburbs, was that of barked timber. Like the faubourgs of Vienna, these secondary cities are larger than the principal. The one of which I speak serves as a magazine for the wood, brought from Siberia, destined to form the wheels of the Russian carts, and the collars of the horses — those semicircles formed of a single piece of bended wood, which are seen fixed in so picturesque a manner at the extremities of the shafts, and which rise above the heads of all the shaft-horses in the empire. The store necessary to furnish these wheels and collars to "Western Russia forms here, mountains of wood, of which our timber-yards at Paris cannot give even an idea.