The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

402 RUSSIA IN EUROPE.of a temporary character, have been run up in an open field west of the sewer.The fixed population of Nijni-Novgorod, under 50,000, is swollen to over 200,000during the busy season, but amongst the buyers and visitors the Asiatics are fewerthan formerly, nearly all transactions now being made by means of brokers.However, Georgians, Persians, and Bokha riots still frequent the fair.The chief trade of Nijni is in cotton and woollen stuffs, after which comehardware goods, skius, leathers, and fancy wares. But the great facilities offeredby the sea route from Shanghae and Canton to Odessa have lately caused adecline in the imports of Chinese teas, although about 100,000 chests still findtheir way overland to the Nijni market. The mean value of the imports fromAsia is about £3,000,000 ; and the general exchanges have gone on steadilyincreasing from decade to decade, from about £500,000 at the Makaryev fair, inthe middle of the last century, to £2,000,000 in 1S17, at the first held in Nijni,amounting at present to some £20,000,000, while the value of the goods notdisposed of during the sales bus remained stationary during the last fifty years.Middle Volga and Kama Basins.(Kazan, Yiatka, Perm, Ufa.)In this section of the Volga basin the Asiatic and European races are alreadyintermingled, Tatars dwelling side by side with Great Russian Slavs in the townsand surrounding districts, while the greater part of the wooded tracts is occupiedby Finnish tribes. The various races, which in the Upper Volga basin arefused into one nationality, here still maintain an independent position, either intheir outward garb, their speech, manner of life, or at all events in their traditionsand some other special features. Scattered over vast plains, separated fromeach other by intervening Russian settlements, without any national bond ofunion or common hopes, these non-Slav or allogenous peoples have hitherto beencondemned to complete moral and political isolation. Through the Slav elementalone these fragments of oldraces, Finns, Ugrians, and Tatars, can hope to enterinto mutual relations, and make any progress in social culture.The Mordvinians.Historic research has revealed the remarkable fact that these Asiatic populationshave been subjected to Russian influence from two distinct quarters. TheRussian traders advancing by the river Oka congregated largely in the town ofBolgar, which Arab writers include amongst the cities of Slavonia even so earlyas the tenth century. The Indian and Chinese objects discovered here and therein Biarmia, as well as the Persian, Bactrian, Arab, Byzantine, and Anglo-Saxoncoins found on the sites of the old trading places, bear witness to the extensivecommerce at that time carried on in these regions. Some Slav elements musthave been introduced into this eastern world by the constant visits of the Slavmerchants, as well as by the incursions of the Russian marauders, who penetrated