"The best goods are in the Gostinna Dvor proper, while the inferior ones are in the annexes. Some of the shops have fixed prices, but in most of them there is a system of bargaining which is not agreeable to the traveller from the Occident. He is never certain that he has paid the proper price, even when he has brought the merchant down to what appears to be his lowest figure.
IMPORTUNING A VISITOR.
"We bought a few articles of Russian manufacture to send home to our friends. Among them were samovars, inlaid goods from Tula, embroidered slippers and sashes from the Tartar provinces, malachite and lapis-lazuli jewellery, and some Circassian ornaments of silver. Many of the articles sold in the Gostinna Dvor are of English, German, and French manufacture, which are largely increased in price owing to the duties placed upon them by the custom-house.
"Our guide directed us from the rear of the building along the Bolshoia Sadovaia, or Great Garden Street, which is a line of shops and bazaars, to the Sennaia Ploshad, or Hay-market. This is a large open place or square, which is less interesting now than in winter. In summer it is devoted to the sale of hay and live-stock, but in winter it is filled not only with the hay, grain, and live-stock of summer, but with frozen animals, which form the principal food of the inhabitants of the city. Here is what one traveller has written about the frozen market:
FROZEN ANIMALS IN THE MARKET.
"'On one side you see a collection of frozen sheep—stiff, ghastly objects—some poised on their hoofs like the wooden animals in a child's "Noah's Ark;" others on their sides, with their legs projecting at right angles to their bodies; others, again, on their backs, with their feet in the air like inverted tables. The oxen are only less grotesque from having been cleft down their backs—an operation which seems to take them out of the category of oxen and place them in that of beef. The pigs are drawn up in line against the wall, standing on their hind legs, with their forefeet extended above their heads, like trick-dogs going through their performances.