Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/413

Rh communication with which Russia is supplied. The Dneiper enters the Black Sea at Kherson, near Odessa; next to the Volga it is the largest river of European Russia, and flows through a fertile country. It is about twelve hundred miles long, and its navigation was formerly much obstructed by rapids and other natural obstacles. Many of these hinderances have been removed by the Government, but the river has lost some of its commercial importance since the railways were established.

"From Tsaritsin to Astrachan there is not much of interest, as the country is generally low and flat, and the towns and villages are few in number. Much of the country bordering the river is a marsh, which is overflowed at the periods of the annual floods, and therefore is of little value except for the pasturage of cattle.

"As we approached the mouth of the Volga we found the river divided into many channels; in this respect it resembles the Nile, the Ganges, the Mississippi, and other great watercourses of the globe. On one of these channels the city of Astrachan is built. It is not on the mainland, but on an island. Another channel passes not far from the one by which we came, and maintains a parallel course for a considerable distance.

"Astrachan is the most cosmopolitan city we have seen in Russia, even more so than Kazan. The character of its seventy or eighty thousand inhabitants may be understood when I tell you that it has thirty-seven Greek churches, two Roman Catholic, two Armenian, and one Protestant, and is the seat of a Greek archbishop and an Armenian bishop. Then it has an Indian temple, fifteen mosques, and a Chinese pagoda. It has a botanical garden, an ecclesiastical school, schools of all the grades peculiar to the large towns of Russia, a naval academy, and I don't know how many other institutions. Books are printed here in Russian, Tartar, and other languages, and as you walk through the bazaars your ears are greeted by nearly all the tongues of Europe and Asia.

"To get at the cosmopolitan peculiarities of the city we were obliged to go through narrow and dirty streets, which somewhat marred the pleasure of our visit. In this respect Astrachan is more Oriental than Russian; its history dates beyond the time of the Russian occupation of the lower Volga, and therefore we must expect it to have Oriental features in preponderance.