lines are constructed.

The water-communication has likewise in recent years been greatly
improved. On the principal rivers there are now good steamers.
Unfortunately, the climate puts serious obstructions in the way of
navigation. For nearly half of the year the rivers are covered with ice,
and during a great part of the open season navigation is difficult. When
the ice and snow melt the rivers overflow their banks and lay a great
part of the low-lying country under water, so that many villages can
only be approached in boats; but very soon the flood subsides, and the
water falls so rapidly that by midsummer the larger steamers have
great difficulty in picking their way among the sandbanks. The Neva
alone--that queen of northern rivers--has at all times a plentiful
supply of water.

Besides the Neva, the rivers commonly visited by the tourist are the
Volga and the Don, which form part of what may be called the Russian
grand tour. Englishmen who wish to see something more than St.
Petersburg and Moscow generally go by rail to Nizhni-Novgorod, where
they visit the great fair, and then get on board one of the Volga
steamers. For those who have mastered the important fact that Russia
is not a country of fine scenery, the voyage down the river is pleasant
enough. The left bank is as flat as the banks of the Rhine below
Cologne, but the right bank is high, occasionally well wooded, and not
devoid of a certain tame picturesqueness. Early on the second day
the steamer reaches Kazan, once the capital of an independent Tartar
khanate, and still containing a considerable Tartar population. Several
metchets (as the Mahometan houses of prayer are here termed), with their
diminutive minarets in the lower part of the town, show that Islamism
still survives, though the khanate was annexed to Muscovy more than