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,