RUSSIAN PRIEST.
The government is endeavoring to diminish the power and influence of the priests, and the number of saints’ days, when men must abstain from, labor. Heretofore the priests have enjoyed the privilege of recruiting the clergy from their own members. When a village priest died his office fell to his son, and if he had no male heir the revenues went to his eldest daughter until some priest married her and took charge of the parish. By special order of the emperor any vacancy is hereafter to be filled by the most deserving candidate.
It is said that during the Crimean war the governor of Moscow notified the pastor of the English church in that city that the prayer for the success of Her Brittanic Majesty’s armies must be omitted. The pastor appealed to the emperor, who replied that prayers of regular form might continue to be read, no matter what they contained. The governor made no further interference.
About three o’clock in the afternoon of the second day from Kazan, the yemshick pointed out the spires of Nijne Novgorod, on the southern bank of the Volga. A fleet of steamers, barges, and soudnas lay sealed in the ice along the shore, waiting for the moving of the waters. The road to the north bank was marked with pine boughs, that fringed the moving line of sleighs and sledges. We threaded our way among the stationary vessels, and at length came before the town. A friend had commended me to the Hotel de la Poste, and I ordered the yemshick to drive there. With an eye to his pocket the fellow carried me to an establishment of the same name on the other side of the Oka. I had a suspicion that I was being swindled, but as they blandly informed me that no other hotel with that title existed, I alighted and ordered my baggage up.
This was the end of my sleigh ride. I had passed two hundred and nine stations, with as many changes of horses and drivers. Nearly seven hundred horses had been attached to my sleigh, and had drawn me over a road of greatly varied character. Out of forty days from Irkutsk, I spent sixteen at the cities and towns on the way. I slept twenty-six nights in my sleigh with the thermometer varying from thirty-five degrees above zero to forty-five below, and encountered four severe storms and a variety of smaller ones. Including the detour to Barnaool, my sleigh ride was about thirty-six hundred miles long. From Stratensk by way of Kiachta to Irkutsk, I traveled not far from fourteen hundred miles with wheeled vehicles, and made ninety-three changes. My whole ride from steam navigation on the Amoor to the railway at Nijne Novgorod was very nearly five thousand miles.
There was a manifest desire to swindle me at the bogus Hotel de la Poste. Half a dozen attendants carried my baggage to my room, and each demanded a reward. When I gave the yemshick his “na vodka,” an officious attendant suggested that the gentleman should be very liberal at the end of his ride. I asked for a bath, and they ordered a sleigh to take me to a bathing establishment several squares away. My proposition to be content for the present with a wash basin was pronounced impossible, until I finished the argument with my left boot. The waiter finally became affectionate, and when I ordered supper he suggested comforts not on the bill of fare. The landlord proposed to purchase my sleigh and superfluous furs, and we concluded a bargain at less than a twelfth of their cost.
After a night’s rest I recrossed the Oka and drove to the town. Here I found the veritable Hotel de la Poste, to which I immediately changed my quarters. The house overlooked a little park enclosing a pond, where a hundred or more persons were skating. The park was well shaded, and must be quite pleasant in summer. The town hardly deserves the name of Nijne (Lower) Novgorod, as it stands on a bluff nearly two hundred feet above the river. Its lower town contains little else than small shops, storehouses, poor hotels, and steamboat offices. The Kremlin, or fortress, looks down from a very picturesque position, and its strong walls have a defiant air. From the edge of the bluff the view is wide; the low field and forest land on the opposite side of the river, the sinuous Volga and its tributary, the Oka, are all visible for a long distance. Opposite, on a tongue of land between the Volga and the Oka, is the scene of the fair of Nijne Novgorod, the greatest, I believe, in the world.
There are many fine houses in the upper town, with indications of considerable wealth. I had a letter of introduction to the Chief of Police, Colonel Kretegin, who kindly showed me the principal objects of interest in and around the Kremlin. The monument to the memory of Minin Sukhoruky possessed the greatest historical importance. This man, a peasant and butcher, believed himself called to deliver Russia from the Poles in 1612. He awakened his countrymen, and joined a Russian noble in leading them to expel the invaders. A bronze monument at Moscow represents Minin starting on his mission. The memorial at Nijne is of a less elaborate character.
We drove through the fair grounds, which wore as empty of occupants as Goldsmith’s deserted village. It is laid out like a regular town or city, and most of its houses are substantially built. So much has been written about this commercial center that I will not attempt its description, especially as I was not there in fair season. The population of the town—ordinarily forty thousand—becomes three hundred thousand during the fair. More than half a million persons have visited the city in a single summer, and the value of goods sold or exchanged during each fair is about two hundred millions of roubles.
Colonel Kretegin told me that the members of the Fox embassy were much astonished at finding American goods for sale at Nijne Novgorod. It would be difficult to mention any part of the civilized world where some article of our manufacture has not penetrated.