There is as much variety in the shops as in different parts of a large city. Certain sections are devoted to the wholesale trade, and others to the retail. Many of the shops are filled with large bundles and bales, while others glisten with ornamental articles. Some of the avenues hardly differ in appearance from Broadway in New York, except in the uniformity of the buildings. The windows are filled with displays of jewelry, fancy goods, toys, dry goods, clocks, and watches, furs, silks, and, indeed, everything that one would see in a great city. Some shops are devoted exclusively to furs, and the assortment is large and fine. Dried fish is a great article of commerce here. The value of the sturgeon fisheries on the Volga is estimated at two and a half million rubles, while thirty thousand casks of _caviar_ have been sent up from Astrakhan in one year. The productions of Asia are largely represented at the fair, the most important of which is the tea of China. The Chinese quarter is fitted up in Celestial style, with verandas and pagodas; but very few Chinese attend the fair of late years. Fifteen million pounds of the finest tea are brought into Russia, most of it to this bazaar. It is transported to Perm by boats, sledges, and camels, and thence by the Kama and Volga to Nijni.
Along the rivers are the coarser articles of merchandise--iron in bars and sheets, and manufactured into kettles and household utensils, millstones, vast quantities of wheat, rolls of leather from Kazan, boxes of candles from Asia, copper and platinum from the Ural Mountains, and bells of all sizes, hung so that their tone can be tested.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the fair to an American or Englishman is the people that gather there, especially the Asiatics. But the variety is by no means as great as the visitor will expect to find after reading the descriptions of them which have been published. There are plenty of Persians and Tartars in full costume, the former with knives and pistols in their belts, placed there for ornament rather than use. A few grave Chinamen may also be seen; but the great majority of the people are Russians. Unless one wishes to make it study of it, a few hours are enough to enable the stranger to see the fair.