I begged Mr. K — to illustrate this by an example. " Oh, there ai-e examples enough," said he. " But very lately there was a quantity of wood-earring wanted for a newly-built church. I made my calculation very exactly according to the plan laid down, the time in which the work must be finished, &c., and found I could not do it under 12,000 rubles. A Russian offered to take the contract at 7000 ; it was given him, but he was not ready in time, and the consecration of the church had to be put off in consequence. Through the mediation of friends, not only the delay was excused, but he got the other 5000 rubles, under the pretence that a greater quantity of work had been required than was agreed for, and that it could not possibly be done for the sum bargained for. The work has scarcely been finished two years, and the gilding is tarnished already."
Every thing in Russia is managed much in the same manner, and there are abundance of such stories of promise and non-performance.
THE RASNOSHTSHIKS (PEDLERS).
I know not whether it be the unquiet nomadic element mingled in the Russian blood, which does not allow any person or thing to be so stable and sedentary as in our more soHd Germany, or whether it must be ascribed to the active spirit of speculation, which urges them to look on all sides for the best market for their wares ; but it is certain that nowhere are there so many wandering merchants and artisans as in Russia. Perhaps the severity of the climate, which requires constant movement, has something to do with it. The enormous extent of the empire may also be a cause for this ; for, in many instances, if the sellers did not go to the buyers, their wares would not be bought at all. The suppleness and address of the Russians, who can turn all things to account, and are never to be found at a loss, render easy to them much that would be impossible to a German.
The Russians call these wandering traders Rasnoshtshiks, or Prominishlenniks. For this kind of commerce every Russian has a decided talent, and adopts it more readily than any other. Peter the Great knew this well, when he advised the Jews not to come to Russia, where they would find their masters, in the art of bargaining. Among the hundred nations that obey the Russian sceptre, the native of Great Russia, properly so called, is exclusively the travelling merchant, or pedler, except in the Polish provinces, where the Jew is his rival.
As India has been conquered by English merchants, so has Siberia been conquered by the Russian pedlers, who, exploring by degrees these vast countries in the interest of their trade, not only first wound around them the bonds that were to unite them to Russia, but took up arms to assist in the incorporation. In the east and on the Persian frontier, in the south-west towards Moldavia and Walachia, and in the extreme north of Lapland the active and far-reaching Prominishlenniki, are spinning the same threads.
The centre of Russian pedlering, as of all other peculiarly Russian enterprises, is Moscow. The great manufacturing chiefs of that city are connected with multitudes of Rasnashtshiks, who have a certain amount of credit with them. Thus furnished, the trader nails his saint's picture to his one-horse Telega, and sets out cheerfully to visit all parts of the known and the unknown world Whole caravans of them are to be met with traversing the empire in every direction, with their carts decked out with saints' pictures and the herbs of the steppes. They cross the Black Sea to the Tartars, though these are but poor customers, pass the Caucasian chain, traverse Siberia, and seek gain at the very foot of the Chinese wall. Persia is not too hot for them, nor Kamschatka too cold, when the chnk of the silver ruble is heard. If the market among the barbarians is not profitable, they hasten across the Lena, the Yenisei, and the Ob, to the Baltic and St. Petersburg. What they cannot get rid of there, they carry among the "swamp people,'' as the Finns call themselves, and return at last to Moscow alter two or three years absence, to pay their creditor, who, in the mean time, probably has never heard a syllable of them.