He will then find not only representatives of the Finnish and Tartar races, but also Armenians, Circassians, Persians, Bokhariots, and other Orientals--a motley and picturesque but decidedly unsavoury cargo.
However great the ethnographical variety on board may be, the traveller will probably find that four days on the Volga are quite enough for all practical and aesthetic purposes, and instead of going on to Astrakhan he will quit the steamer at Tsaritsin.

Here he will find a railway of about fifty miles in length, connecting the Volga and the Don.

I say advisedly a railway, and not a train, because trains on this line are not very frequent.

When I first visited the locality, thirty years ago, there were only two a week, so that if you inadvertently missed one train you had to wait about three days for the next.

Prudent, nervous people preferred travelling by the road, for on the railway the strange jolts and mysterious creakings were very alarming.