THE SITUATION of Nizhniy is the most beautiful that I have beheld in Russia. I see no longer a little ridge of low banks falling upon a large river, but a real mountain, which looks down on the confluence of the Volga and the Oka, two equally noble rivers; for the Oka, at its mouth, appears as large as the more celebrated stream. The lofty town of Nizhny, built on this mountain, commands a plain, vast as the sea. A land without bounds spreads before it, and at its foot is held the largest fair in the world. During six weeks of the year the commerce of the two richest quarters of the globe meet at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga. It is a spot worthy of being painted. Hitherto, the only truly picturesque scenes that I had admired in Russia were the streets of Moscow and the quays of Petersburg. But those scenes were the creations of man: here, the country is naturally beautiful. The ancient city of Nizhny, instead, however, of seeking the rivers, and profiting by the riches they offer, hides itself behind the mountain; and there, lost in the background, seems to shrink from its glory and prosperity. This ill-advised situation has struck the Emperor Nicholas, who exclaimed the first time he saw the place—“At Nizhny, nature has done everything, but man has spoilt all.” To remedy the errors of the founders of Nizhny Novgorod, a suburb, in the form of a quay, has been built under the hill, on that one of the two points of land separating the rivers, which forms the right bank of the Oka. This new town increases every year; it is becoming more populous and important than the ancient city, from which it is separated by the old Kremlin of Nizhny; for every Russian city has its Kremlin.
The fair is held on the other side of the Oka, upon a low tract, which forms a triangle between it and the Volga. The Oka is crossed by a bridge of boats, which serves as the road from the city to the fair, and which appears as long as that of the Rhine at Mainz. The two banks of the river thus connected, are very different in character: the one which is the promontory of Nizhny, rises majestically in the midst of the plain called Russia; the other, nearly on a level with the water which inundates it during a part of the year, forms a portion of this immense plain. The singular beauty of the contrast did not escape the glance of the Emperor Nicholas: that prince, with his characteristic sagacity, has also perceived that Nizhny is one of the most important points in his empire. He is very fond of this central spot, thus favored by nature, and which has become the rendezvous of the most distant populations, who here congregate from all parts, drawn together by a powerful commercial interest. His Majesty has neglected nothing that could tend to beautify, enlarge, and enrich the city. The fair of Makarev, which was held formerly on the estate of a boyar, twenty leagues below, following the course of the Volga towards Asia, was forfeited for the benefit of the crown and country; and the Emperor Alexander transferred it to Nizhny. I regret the Asiatic fair held on the domains of a Muscovite prince: it must have been more original and picturesque, though less immense and regular than the one I find here.
I have already said that every Russian city has its Kremlin, just as every Spanish city has its Alcazar. The Kremlin of Nizhny, with its many-shaped towers, its pinnacles and embattled ramparts, which circle round a mountain far loftier than the hill of the Kremlin at Moscow, is nearly half a league in circumference.
When the traveler perceives this fortress from the plain he is struck with astonishment. It is the pharos, towards whose shining turrets and white walls, rising above the stunted forest pines, he shapes his course through the sandy deserts which defend the approach to Nizhny on the side of Yaroslavl. The effect of this national architecture is always powerful: but here, the grotesque towers and Christian minarets that constitute the ornament of all the Kremlins, are heightened in effect by the striking character of the site, which in certain places opposes real precipices to the creations of the architect. In the thickness of the walls have been worked, as at Moscow, staircases, which lead, from battlement to battlement, up to the very summit of the crowning ramparts. These commanding stairs, with the towers by which they are flanked, the slopes, the vaults, the arcades which sustain them, form a picture from whichsoever point of approach they are viewed.
The fair of Nizhny, now become the most considerable in the world, is the rendezvous of the people the least alike in person, costume, language, religion, and manners. Men from Tibet, from Bukhara, from the regions bordering upon China, come to meet Persians, Finns, Greeks, English, and Parisians: it is like the merchants’ doomsday. The number of strangers present at Nizhny every day during the fair, exceeds two hundred thousand. The men who compose this yearly gathering come and go daily; but the average number always continues pretty nearly the same: nevertheless, on certain days, there are at Nizhny as many as three hundred thousand. The usual consumption of bread in this pacific camp amounts to four hundred thousand pounds weight per day. Except at the season of this saturnalia of trade and industry, the city is lifeless. Nizhny scarcely numbers twenty thousand stationary inhabitants, who are lost in its vast streets and naked squares during the nine months that the fairground remains forsaken.
The fair occasions little disorder. In Russia disorder is unknown: it would be a progressive movement, for it is the child of liberty. The love of gain, and the ever-increasing need of luxuries, felt now by even barbarous nations, cause the semibarbarous populations who resort here from Persia and Bukhara to recognize the advantages of orderly demeanor and good faith: besides, it must be admitted that in general the Mohammedans are upright in money matters.
Though I have only been a few hours in the city, I have already seen the governor. I had several flattering letters of introduction to him: he appears hospitable, and, for a Russian, open and communicative. His name is illustrious in the ancient history of Russia—it is that of Burtulin. The Burtulins are a family of old boyars; a class of men that is becoming rare.
I have scarcely encountered any really dense crowd in Russia, except at Nizhny, on the bridge over the Oka, the only road which leads from the city to the fairground, and the road also by which we approach Nizhny from Yaroslavl. At the entrance of the fair, you turn to the right to cross the bridge, leaving on the left the booths, and the temporary palace of the governor, a pavilion which forms a species of administrative observatory, whither he repairs every morning, and from whence he surveys all the streets, all the rows of shops, and presides over the general arrangements of the fair. The dust, the din, the carriages, the foot passengers, the soldiers charged with maintaining order, greatly obstruct the passage of the bridge, the use and character of which it is difficult at first to understand; for the surface of the water being covered by a multitude of boats, at the first glance, you suppose the river to be dry. The boats are so crowded together at the confluence of the Volga and the Oka that the latter river may be crossed by striding from junk to junk. I use this Chinese word because a great portion of the vessels which resort to Nizhny bring to the fair the merchandise, more especially the tea, of China.
Yesterday, on arriving, I expected that our horses would have run over twenty individuals before reaching the quay of the Oka, which is New Nizhny, a suburb that will in a few years more be very extensive.
When I had gained the desired shore, I found that many other difficulties awaited me: before everything else it was necessary to obtain a lodging, and the inns were full. My Feldjäger knocked at the very door, and always returned with the same smile, ferocious by its very immobility, to tell me that he could not procure a single chamber. He advised me to appeal to the hospitality of the governor; but this I was unwilling to do.
At length, arrived at the extremity of the long street that forms this suburb, at the foot of the steep hill which leads to the old city, and the summit of which is crowned by the Kremlin of Nizhny, we perceived a coffeehouse, the approach to which was obstructed by a covered public market, from whence issued odors that were anything but perfumes. Here I alighted, and was politely received by the landlord, who conducted me through a series of apartments, all filled with men in pelisses, drinking tea and other liquors, until, by bringing me to the last room, he demonstrated to me that he had not one single chamber unoccupied.
“This room forms the corner of your house,” I observed: “has it a private entrance?”
“Yes.”
“Very good: lock the door which separates it from the other apartments, and let me have it for a bedchamber.”
The air that I breathed already suffocated me. It was a mixture of the most opposite emanations: the grease of sheepskins, the musk of dressed leather, the blacking of boots, the smell of cabbage, which is the principal food of the peasants, the steam of coffee, tea, liqueurs, and brandy, all thickened the atmosphere. The whole was poison: but what could I do? it was my last resource. I hoped, also, that after being cleared of its guests, swept, and washed, the bad odors of the apartment would dissipate. I therefore insisted on the Feldjäger clearly explaining my proposal to the keeper of the coffeehouse.
“I shall lose by it,” replied the man.
“I will pay you what you please; provided you also find somewhere a lodging for my valet and my courier.”
The bargain was concluded; and here I am, quite proud of having taken by storm, in a dirty public house, a room for which I have to pay more than the price of the finest apartment in the Hôtel des Princes, at Paris. It is only in Russia, in a country where the whims of men supposed to be powerful, know no obstacle, that one is able to convert, in a moment, the public hall of a coffeehouse into a sleeping apartment.
My Feldjäger undertook to make the drinkers retire: they rose without offering the least objection, were crowded into the next room, and the door was fastened upon them by the species of lock I have already mentioned. A score of tables filled up the chamber: but a swarm of priests in their robes, in other words, a troop of waiters in white shirts, precipitated themselves upon the furniture, and left me with bare walls in a few moments. But what a sight then met my eyes! Under the spot where each table had stood, under every stool, multitudes of vermin were crawling, of a kind I have never before seen: they were black insects, about half an inch long, thick, soft, viscid, and tolerably nimble in their movements. This loathsome animal is known in a portion of eastern Europe, in Volhynia, the Ukraine, Russia, and a part of Poland, where it is called, I believe, persica, because it was brought from Asia. I cannot recollect the name given to it by the coffeehouse waiters of Nizhny. On seeing the floor of my chamber mottled over with these moving insects, crushed under the foot at every step, not by hundreds, but by thousands, and on perceiving the new kind of ill savor exhaled by this massacre, I was seized with despair, fled from my chamber to the street, and proceeded to present myself to the governor. I did not re-enter my detestable lodging until assured that it had been rendered as clean as was practicable. My bed, filled with fresh hay, was placed in the middle of the room, its four feet standing in earthen vessels full of water. Notwithstanding these precautions, I did not fail to find, on awaking from a restless unrefreshing sleep, two or three persicas on my pillow. They are not noxious; but I cannot express the disgust with which they inspire me. The filthiness, the apathy, which their presence in the habitations of man betrays, make me regret my journey to this part of the globe. I feel as though there were a moral degradation in being approached by these offal-bred creatures: physical antipathy triumphs over all the efforts of reason.
A merchant of Moscow, who has the most splendid and extensive silk-magazine in the fair, is coming this morning to take me over it, and to show me everything in detail.
I again find here the dust and suffocating heat of a southern clime. I was therefore well advised not to go on foot to the fair: but the concourse of strangers is at this time so great at Nizhny, that I could not get a vehicle on hire; I was therefore obliged to use the by-no-means elegant one in which I arrived from Moscow, and to attach to it two horses only, which annoyed me as much as though I had been a Russian. It is not through vanity that they drive four horses: the animals have spirit, but they want power; they soon tire when they have much weight to draw.
On entering the carriage with the merchant who was so good as to act as my cicerone, and with his brother, I told my Feldjäger to follow us. He, without hesitating or waiting to ask my permission, deliberately stepped into the calèche, and, with a coolness that amazed me, seated himself by the side of M. ——— ’s brother, who, notwithstanding my expostulations, was determined to sit with his back to the horses. In this country, it is not unusual to see the owner of a carriage seated facing the horses, when even he is not by the side of a lady, whilst his friends place themselves opposite. This impoliteness, which would not be committed among us excepting where there was the strictest intimacy, here astonishes nobody.
Fearing lest the familiarity of the courier should shock my obliging companions, I considered it necessary to make him remove; and told him, very civilly, to mount the seat by the side of the coachman.
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” answered the Feldjäger, with imperturbable sangfroid.
“What is the reason that you do not obey me?” I asked, in a yet calmer tone; for I know that among this half-Oriental nation, it is necessary to maintain perfect impassibility in order to preserve your authority.
We spoke in German:—“It would be a derogation,” answered the Russian, in the same quiet tone.
This reminded me of the disputes about precedence among the boyars, which, under the reigns of the Ivans, were often so serious as to fill many pages of the Russian history of that epoch.
“What do you mean by a derogation?” I continued. “Is not that the place which you have occupied since we left Moscow?”
“It is true, sir, that is my place in traveling; but in taking a drive, I ought to be in the carriage. I wear a uniform.”
This uniform, which I have described elsewhere, is that of an agent of the post.
“I wear uniform, sir; I possess a rank in the chin; I am not a private servant; I am in the employ of the emperor.”
“I care very little what you are; though I never said to you that you were a servant.”
“I should have the appearance of being one, were I to sit in that place when you take a ride in the city. I have been many years in the service; and, as a recompense for my good conduct, they hold out to me the prospect of nobility: I am endeavoring to obtain it, for I am ambitious.”
This confusion of our old aristocratic ideas with the new vanity instilled by despots into a people diseased with envy, took me by surprise. I had before me a specimen of the worst kind of emulation—that of the parvenant already giving himself the airs of the parvenu!
After a moment’s silence, I answered: “I approve your pride, if it is well founded; but being little acquainted with the usages of your country, I shall, before allowing you to enter my coach, submit your claims to the governor. My intention is to require nothing from you beyond what you owe me in accordance with the orders given you when you were sent to me: in my uncertainty as to your pretensions, I dispense with your services for today; I shall proceed without you.”
I felt inclined to laugh at the tone of importance with which I spoke; but I considered this dramatic dignity necessary to my comfort during the rest of the journey. There is nothing, however ridiculous, which may not be excused by the conditions and the inevitable consequences of despotism.
This aspirant to nobility, and scrupulous observer of the etiquette of the highway, costs me, notwithstanding his pride, three hundred francs, in wages, per month. He reddened when he heard my last words, and, without making any reply, he left the carriage and re-entered the house in silence.
The ground on which the fair is held is very spacious; and I congratulated myself that I did not proceed to that city of a month on foot, for the heat continues to be great during a day in which the sun still darts his rays for fifteen hours.
The men of every land, but especially those of the extreme East, here meet together: these men are however more singular in name than in appearance. All the Asiatics resemble each other, or they may, at least, be divided into two classes: those having the faces of apes, as the Kalmyks, Mongols, Bashkirs, and Chinese; and those having the Greek profile, as the Circassians, Persians, Georgians, Indians, &c.
The fair of Nizhny is held, as I have already said, on an immense triangle of sandy and perfectly level land, which runs to a point between the Oka, at its embouchure into the Volga, and the broad stream of the latter river. It is, therefore, bordered on either side by one of the two rivers. The soil upon which so immense an amount of wealth is heaped, scarcely rises above the water. This merchant city consists of a vast assemblage of long and broad streets: their perfect straightness injures their picturesque effect. A dozen of buildings called Chinese pavilions rise above the shops; but their fantastic style is not sufficient to correct the dullness and monotony of the general aspect of the edifices. The whole forms an oblong bazaar, which appears solitary, so vast is it in extent. The dense crowds that obstruct the approaches disappear as soon as you penetrate the interior lines of stalls. The city of the fair is, like all the other modern Russian cities, too vast for its population, although that population, including the amphibious community scattered in boats on the river, and among the flying camps which environ the fair properly so called, amounts to two hundred thousand souls. The houses of the merchants stand upon a subterranean city, an immense vaulted sewer; in which labyrinth he would be lost who should attempt to penetrate without an experienced guide. Each street in the fair is doubled by a gallery, which follows its whole length, underground, and serves as an issue for all refuse. The sewers are constructed of stone, and are cleansed several times daily, by a multitude of pumps, which introduce the water from the neighboring rivers. They are entered by large and handsome stone staircases.
These catacombs of filth, which serve also for the prevention of everything offensive in the open streets, are placed under the charge of Cossacks, who form its police, and who politely invite any individual tempted to soil the street to descend. They are one of the most imposing works I have seen in Russia, and might suggest models to the constructors of the sewers at Paris. So much vastness and solidity reminds one of the descriptions of Rome. They were built by the Emperor Alexander, who, like his predecessors, pretended to conquer nature by establishing the fair on a soil inundated during one half of the year. He lavished millions in remedying the inconveniences of the injudicious choice made when the fair of Makarev was transported to Nizhny.
The Oka, which separates the city of the fair from the permanent city, is here more than four times the breadth of the Seine. Forty thousand men sleep every night upon its bosom, making themselves nests in boats, which form a kind of floating camp. From the surface of the aquatic city rises, at evening, the heavy murmur of voices that might be easily taken for the gurgling of the waves. All these boats have masts, and form a river-forest peopled by men from every corner of the earth: their faces and their costumes are equally strange. The sight has struck me more than any other in the immense fair. Rivers thus inhabited remind one of the descriptions of China.
Some of the peasants in this part of Russia wear white tunic shirts, ornamented with red borders: the costume is borrowed from the Tartars. At nighttime, the white linen gives them the appearance of specters moving in the dark. Yet, notwithstanding its many singular and interesting objects, the fair of Nizhny is not picturesque: it is a formal plan rather than a graceful sketch. The man devoted to political economy, or arithmetical calculations, has more business here than the poet or the painter: the subjects relate to the commercial balance and progress of the two principal quarters of the world—nothing more and nothing less. From one end of Russia to the other I perceive a minute, Dutch-taught government, hypocritically carrying on war against the primitive faculties of an ingenious, lively, poetical, Oriental people, a people born for the arts.
The merchandise of every part of the world is collected in the immense streets of the fair; but it is also lost in them. The scarcest objects are buyers. I have seen nothing yet in this country without exclaiming, “The people are too few for the space!” It is just the contrary in ancient communities, where the land is insufficient for the progress of civilization. The French and English stalls are the most elegant; while viewing them, the beholder might fancy himself at Paris or at London: but this Bond Street of the East, this Palais Royal of the steppes, does not constitute the real wealth of the market of Nizhny. To have a just idea of the importance of the fair, it is necessary to recollect its origin, and the place where it was first held. Before flourishing at Makarev it was established at Kazan. The two extremes of the ancient world, western Europe and China, met in that old capital of Russian Tartary to exchange their various products. This is now done at Nizhny. But a very incomplete idea of a market for the commodities of two continents would be formed, if the spectator did not leave the regular stalls and elegant pavilions which adorn the modern bazaar of Alexander, and survey some of the different camps by which it is flanked. The line and rule do not follow the merchants into the suburbs of the fair: these suburbs are like the farmyard of a château,—however stately and orderly the principal habitation, the disorder of nature reigns in its dependencies.
It is no easy task to traverse, even rapidly, these exterior depots, for they are themselves each as large as cities. A continual and really imposing activity pervades them,—a true merchantile chaos, which it is necessary to see in order to believe.
To commence with the city of tea: it is an Asiatic camp, which extends on the banks of the two rivers to the point of land where they meet. The tea comes from China by Kiakhta, which is in the back part of Asia. At this first depot, it is exchanged for merchandise, and from thence transported in packages, which resemble small chests in the shape of dice, about two feet square. These packages are frames, covered with skins; the buyers thrust into them a kind of probe, by withdrawing which they ascertain the quality of the article. From Kiakhta the tea travels by land to Tomsk; it is there placed in boats, and sails along several rivers, of which the Irtysh and the Tobol are the principal, till it arrives at Tyumen, from whence it is again transported by land to Perm, in Siberia, where it is reshipped on the Kama, which carries it into the Volga, and up that river it ascends to Nizhny. Russia receives yearly seventy-five to eighty thousand chests of tea, one half of which remains in Siberia, to be transported to Moscow during the winter by sledges, and the other half arrives at this fair.
The principal tea merchant in Russia is the individual who wrote for me the above itinerary. I do not answer for either the spelling or the geography of that opulent man; but a millionnaire is generally correct, for he buys the science of others.
It will be seen that this famous tea of the caravans, so delicate, as is said, because it comes overland, travels nearly all the way by water: to be sure, it is fresh water; and the mists of rivers do not produce such effects as the ocean fogs.
Forty thousand chests of tea is an amount easily named; but the reader can have no idea of the time it 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 rubles (paper rubles 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 bargains 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 its exportation with extreme severity.
Another town which attracted my attention among the suburbs, was that of barked timber. Like the suburbs 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—these 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.
Another city, and it is, I believe, the most extensive and curious of all, serves as a depot for the iron of Siberia. I walked for a quarter of a league under galleries, in which are to be found, artistically arranged, every known species of iron bar, grating, and wrought iron; pyramids built of the utensils of husbandry and housekeeping, magazines full of vessels of cast iron; in short, a city of the metal which forms one of the principal sources of the wealth of the empire. The sight of such wealth made me shudder. How many criminals must it not have required to dig up those treasures? and if there are not criminals enough in that subterranean world which produces iron, their number is made up by the unfortunate victims of despotism. The system which regulates the miners of the Ural would be a curious subject of inquiry, if it were permitted, to foreigners. But the means of pursuing this study would be as difficult for a European from the West, as the journey to Mecca is for a Christian.
All these towns form only chapels-of-ease to the principal fair, round which, as a common center, they extend without any plan or order. Their outer, or general circumference, would equal that of the larger European capitals. A day would not afford sufficient time to pass through all the temporary suburbs. Amid such an abyss of riches it is impossible to see everything; the spectator is obliged to select.
I must abridge my descriptions. In Russia we resign ourselves to monotony; it is a condition of existence: but in France, where I shall be read, I have no right to expect the reader to submit to it with the same good grace that I do here. He has not the same obligation to be patient as he would have if he had traveled 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 fair, 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 Nizhny 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 isolates 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 civilization in Russia will greatly diminish the importance of the fair of Nizhny, at present, as I have already said, the largest in the world.
In a suburb, separated by an arm of the Oka, is a Persian village, the shops of which are filled exclusively with Persian merchandise. Among these objects, I more particularly admired the carpets, which appeared magnificent, the raw silk, and the termolama, a species of silk-cashmere, manufactured, they say, only in Persia.
The forms and dress of the Persians do not greatly strike in this country, where the indigenous population is itself Asiatic, and preserves traces of its origin.
I also traversed a city destined solely as a receptacle for the dried and salted fish which are sent from the Caspian Sea for the Russian Lents.[1] The Greek devotees are great consumers of these aquatic mummies. Four months of abstinence among the Muscovites enriches the Mohammedans of Persia and Tartary. This city of fishes is situated on the borders of the river; some of the fish are piled upon earth, the remainder lay within the holds of the vessels that brought them. The dead bodies, heaped together in millions, exhale, even in the open air, a disagreeable perfume. Another division forms the city of leather; an article of the first importance at Nizhny; as enough is brought there to supply the consumption of all the west of Russia.
Another is the city of furs. The skins of every animal may be seen there, from the sable, the blue fox, and certain bearskins,—to obtain a pelisse of which costs twelve thousand francs,—to the common foxes and wolves, which cost nothing. The keepers of the treasures make themselves tents for the night with their merchandise, savage lairs, the aspect of which is picturesque. These men, although they inhabit cold countries, live on little, clothe lightly, and sleep in the open air in fine weather. They are the true lazzaroni of the North, though less gay, witty, or buffoonish, and more dirty than those of Naples; because, to the uncleanliness of their persons is added that of their garments, which they never take off.
What I have already written will serve to give an idea of the exterior of the fair: the interior, I repeat, is much less interesting. Without, are carts and wheelbarrows moving amid a crowd where reign disorder, cries, songs, and in short, liberty: within, are regularity, silence, solitude, order, the police, and in one word, Russia! Immense files of houses, or rather stalls, separate about a dozen long and broad streets, which terminate in a Russian church and in twelve Chinese pavilions. The united length of all the streets and alleys of the fair, properly so called, and without speaking of the suburbs, is ten leagues.
The Emperor Alexander, after having selected the new ground for the fair, ordered the necessary works for its establishment, but he never saw it. He was ignorant of the immense sums that had to be added to his budget, to make this low land fitted to the use for which it was destined. By means of amazing efforts and enormous expenditure the fair is now habitable during summer, which is all that is required for commerce. But it is not the less badly situated: being rendered dusty or miry by the first ray of sun or smallest rain, and remaining unhealthy at all times; which is no small evil for the merchants, obliged to sleep above their magazines for the space of six weeks.
Notwithstanding the taste of the Russians for straight lines, many think with me that it would have been better to have placed the fair by the side of the old city, on the crest of the mountain, the summit of which might have been rendered accessible by gentle, terraced slopes. At the foot of the hill, on the borders of the Oka, the objects too heavy and bulky to be carried up, might have still remained, by the side of their vessels, while the livelier retail fair would have been held on a spacious platform at the gate of the lofty city. Imagine a hill crowded with the representatives of all the Asiatic and European nations. Such a peopled mountain would have produced a grand effect: the marsh, where the traveling population now swarms, produces very little.
The modern engineers, so skillful in all lands, would then have had whereon to exercise their talents; the poets, the painters, the admirers of noble sites and picturesque effects, the sightseers, who are become quite a nation in this century, in which the abuses of activity produce fanatics in idleness,— all these men useful through the money which they expend, would have enjoyed a magnificent promenade, far more attractive than that afforded them in a bazaar where no point of view can be gained, and where the air breathed is mephitic; while it merits consideration, that such a result would have been obtained at much less expenditure of money than it has cost the emperor to establish his aquatic fair.
The Russian peasants are the principal commercial agents in this prodigious market. Nevertheless, the law forbids the serf to ask, or the freemen to grant him, a credit of more than five rubles. And yet they deal with some of these people, on the strength of their word only, for from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand francs; and the dates for payment are very distant. These slavish millionnaires, these Aguados of the soil, do not know how to read. In Russia, men sometimes deploy a prodigious intelligence to compensate for their ignorance. The people are very ignorant of arithmetic. For centuries they have reckoned their accounts by frames, containing series of movable balls. Every line has its color; each indicates units, tens, hundreds, &c. This mode of calculation is sure and rapid.
It must not be forgotten that the lord of these enormously wealthy serfs could despoil them in a day of all they possess, provided he did not injure their persons. Such acts of violence, it is true, are rare, but they are possible.
No one remembers that any merchant ever suffered by his confidence in the peasants with whom he dealt: so true it is, that in every society, if only it be stable, the progress of morals corrects the faults of institutions.
I have, however, been told that, on the other hand, the father of a Count Sheremetev, who is still living, once promised liberty to a family of peasants, in consideration of the exorbitant sum of fifty thousand rubles. He received the money, and retained among his serfs the despoiled family.
Such is the school of good faith and probity in which the Russian peasants are instructed, under the aristocratic despotism which crushes them, in spite of the autocratic despotism which governs them, and which is often powerless against its rival. Imperial pride contents itself with words, forms, and numbers; aristocratic ambition aims at things, and makes a profit of words. Never did a master receive more adulation and less obedience than the deceived, soi-disant absolute sovereign of the Russian Empire: disobedience is indeed perilous; but the country is vast, and solitude is dumb.
The governor of Nizhny, M. Burtulin, has very politely invited me to dine with him daily during my stay in the city; tomorrow he will explain to me how conduct similar to that of Count Sheremetev’s, rare everywhere and in every age, cannot be now repeated in Russia. I will give the summary of his conversation, if I can make anything out of it; for hitherto I have gathered little from the lips of the Russians but confused language. Is this owing to the want of logical minds, or is it done purposely, with the view of perplexing foreigners? It is, I believe, attributable to both causes. By continually endeavoring to hide truth from the eyes of others, people become at last unable to perceive it themselves, except through a veil, which daily thickens.
Nothing is cheap at the fair of Nizhny, except articles that no one cares to buy. The epoch of great differences in price in different localities, is passed: everywhere the value of things is known: the Tartars themselves, who come from the center of Asia to Nizhny to pay very dear for the objects of luxury supplied by Paris and London, bring, in exchange, commodities of which they perfectly well know the value. The merchants may still avail themselves of the situation of the buyers to refuse them articles at a just price; but they cannot deceive them. Yet they do not abate their prices; they coolly ask too much; and their probity consists in never departing from their most exaggerated demands.
From a financial point of view, the importance of the fair continues to increase yearly; but the interest which attaches to the singularity and picturesque appearance of the assemblage diminishes. In general, the fair of Nizhny would disappoint the lover of the grotesque and the amusing. Everything is dull, stiff, and regular in Russia, except, at least, in moments when the long-repressed instinct of liberty bursts forth in an explosion: then the peasants roast their lord, or the lord marries his slave; but these rare outbreaks are little talked of: the distances and the measures taken by the police prevent isolated facts from being circulated among the mass.
In my walks through the central portion of the fair, I saw the Bukharans. These people inhabit a corner of Tibet bordering upon China. They come to Nizhny to sell precious stones. The turquoises that I bought of them are as dear, as those sold in Paris; and all stones of any value are equally high in price. The dealers in these stones pass the year in their journey, for it takes them, they say, more than eight months to go and come only. Neither their persons nor dress struck me as very remarkable. I scarcely believe in the genuineness of the Chinese at Nizhny; but the Tartars, Persians, Kirgiz, and Kalmyks suffice for curiosity.
The two last-named barbarians bring, from the solitudes of their steppes, herds of small wild horses to sell at the fair. These animals have many good qualities, both physical and moral; but their make does not recommend them. They are, nevertheless, excellent for the saddle; and their disposition causes them to be valued. Poor creatures! they have better hearts than many men: they love each other with a tenderness and a passion that prevents them from ever voluntarily separating. So long as they remain together, they forget exile and slavery, and seem to believe themselves in their own country. When one is sold, he has to be cast, and forcibly dragged with cords out of the enclosure where his brethren are confined, who, during this violence, never cease attempting to escape or rebel, and all the while neigh most piteously. Never have I seen the horses of our own country show so many proofs of sensibility. I have seldom been more affected than I was yesterday, by the sight of these unhappy creatures torn from the freedom of the desert and violently separated from those they love. I may be answered by the line of Gilbert:
Un papillon souffrant lui fait verser des larmes.
But I shall not care for being laughed at, feeling sure that if the reader had seen the carrying out of these cruel bargains, he would have shared my feeling. Crime, when recognized as such by the laws, has its judges in this world: but permitted cruelty is only punished by the pity of kindly disposed people for the victims, and, I hope also, by Divine equity. It is this tolerated barbarity which makes me regret the narrow limits of my eloquence; a Rousseau or a Sterne would know how to make the reader weep over the fate of these poor Kirgiz horses, destined to carry, in Europe, men as much slaves as themselves, but whose condition does not always deserve as great pity as that of the enslaved brute.
Towards evening the aspect of the plain became imposing. The horizon was lightly veiled in mist, which afterwards fell in dew on the dust of Nizhny, a kind of fine brown sand, the reflection of which imparted to the heavens a reddish tint. The depths of the shade were pierced by the fantastic light of a multitude of lamps in the bivouacs by which the fair was surrounded. Everything had a voice;—from the distant forest, from the bosom of the inhabited river, a murmur brought to the attentive ear the sounds of life. What an imposing gathering together of mankind! what different languages and contrasting habits! and yet what uniformity of sentiments and ideas! The object of this great meeting, of each individual it comprised, was simply to gain a little money. Elsewhere the gaiety of the people conceals their cupidity; here, commerce stands naked, and the sterile rapacity of the merchant predominates over the frivolity of the lounger; nothing is poetical; everything is mercenary. I am wrong,—the poetry of fear and of sorrow is at the bottom of everything in this country: but where is the voice that dares express it? Nevertheless, there are a few pictures to console the imagination and to refresh the eye.
On the roads which connect the different merchant encampments may be seen long files of singular vehicles, being pairs of wheels united by an axle, which, when attached to others, so as to form an equipage of four or six wheels, had served to carry the beams and poles used in the construction of some of the temporary erections of the fair. They return thus detached, drawn by one horse, guided by men who stand upright on the axle, balancing themselves with a savage grace, and managing their half-broken steeds with a dexterity I have seen nowhere but in Russia. They remind me of the charioteers of the Byzantian circus; their shirts form a Greek tunic that is truly antique. As the Russian female peasants are the only women on earth who make themselves a waist above the bosom, so are their male relatives the only men I have ever seen who wear their shirts over their pantaloons.
In wandering at night about the fair, I was struck with the brilliancy of the eating booths, the little theaters, the taverns, and the coffeehouses. But from the midst of so much light there rose no sound, save a dull suppressed murmur; and the contrast formed by the illumination of the place and the taciturnity of the people, gave the idea of magic. I could have believed the human beings had been touched by the wand of an enchanter. The men of Asia continue grave and serious, even in their diversions: and the Russians are Asiatics, drilled, but not civilized.
[1]There are four Lents in the Greek church.—Trans.