"Coming down with a single bound to the great fair of Russia, we find that there was an annual gathering of merchants at Nijni more than five hundred years ago. Long before that time there was a fair in Kazan, then under Tartar rule, but Russian merchants were prohibited from going there by order of John the Terrible. The fair of Nijni was removed to Makarieff, seventy miles down the river, in 1641, where it remained a long time. The monks of Makarieff controlled the fair until 1751, when it passed into the hands of the Government, and has remained there ever since.
"The fair at Makarieff was held on low ground near the town. Owing to an inundation in 1816, the Government restored the fair to Nijni, and decreed that it should be held annually between the 27th of July and the 22d of September. The ordinary population of Nijni is about forty thousand; two hundred and fifty thousand merchants, laborers, and others come to the fair, so that for two months of the year nearly three hundred thousand people are assembled here."
"How are they all accommodated with lodgings and food?" one of the youths asked.
[Illustration: NIJNI NOVGOROD DURING THE FAIR.]
"The permanent town of Nijni Novgorod," said the Doctor, "is separated from Fair-town, if we may so call it, by the River Oka, which here joins the Volga. The fair is held on a tongue of land between the Volga and the Oka, and Fair-town and Nijni proper are connected by bridges of boats. It is a regular town or city, built for the purposes of trade. It has its governor, police force, fire brigade, and all the paraphernalia of a city, and the Government collects by means of a tax about fifty thousand dollars for the support of the organization."
"Then it is a city with a busy population for two months of the year, and a deserted town for the other ten?"
[Illustration: NIJNI NOVGOROD AFTER THE FAIR.]
"Exactly so," was the reply; "Fair-town at Nijni in season and out of season will remind you of the difference between Coney Island or Long Branch in July and in January.
"We'll drop the subject till to-morrow," said the Doctor, and with this suggestion the conversation was suspended.
On their arrival at Nijni, where they expected to remain two or three days, the party went to the hotel as already stated, and then made a hasty survey of the stock sights of the place. They saw the Kremlin, which is a place of considerable strength, and contains the Governor's residence, the military barracks, law-courts, telegraph station, and other public buildings. There is a fine monument to Minin and Pojarsky, and in a church not far off is the tomb of the patriotic cattle-dealer.