The foreign shops lie in the handsomest part of the town, near the boulevard and the palaces, for whose especial service they are destined. They contain little that is peculiar and characteristic. French milllnerv, Swiss watches, English cloths, and French wines, as at St. Petersburg. Their elegance leaves nothing to be wished for. In the Mai'sellles wine-shops, t;he corks of the bottles are gilt or silvered, the champagne tastefully wrapped up in gold or silver paper, and every article is neatly arranged, as it might be in a chemist's shop. The French and English tailors exhibit their goods in saloons with looking-glasses and chandeliers, and Paris itself could hardly offer a more tempting selection of laces, caps, and ribbons, than the apartments of Mademoiselle S., who was formerly a governess, but afterwards went to Paris, and laid in a stock of millinery for the wealthy dames of Odessa, with whose tastes she was well acquainted. She made her fortune, and Is about t-o retire, and will carry with her the " regrets" of all the ladies of the place. One must remember what an enchanter trjide is, to understand how all these fine things could find their way through such crooked passages, round so many capes and peninsulas, these barbarous shores of tlie steppes.
The Greek bazaar contains early fruit, delicate vegetables, and spices, mostly from Constantinople, which are brought here by the steamboat ; but the shops most peculiar to Odessa are the tobacco-vaults, the arrangement of which is altogether Turkish, except that the spaciousness of every place in Odessa has enabled them to assume an air of elegance and convenience, not easily obtained in the narrow intricate lanes of the capital of the Padishah.
The Turkish pipe heads are gilt and decorated with a tasteful variety of brilliant colours, and ornamentally -disposed glass and crystal vases ; and there are also all manner of elegant ornaments for pipes, very pretty to look at, but very difficult to describe in words. In every shop is also sold a machine for cutting the tobacco excessively fine, for the Greeks say the Russians cut it like cabbage. Every shop is provided with looking-glasses and divans, for the orientals when they buy tobacco like to be able to smoke a part of it on the spot. There are never wanting some smoking and chattering Greeks, Turks, or Armenians, who consider these tobacco-shops as regular lounging-places, like the coffee-houses, the bath, or the sha\dng-roonis.
There exists no Gostinnoi Dvor at Odessa, where, as in other Russian cities, all descnptions of merchandise may be miited under one roof. The Privosdni Bazaar, however, is an excellent theatre for the exhibition of local and national peculiarities — especially of the Moldavians and Gipsies. The principal wares sold here are different kinds of fuel for the use of the city, which are brought in enormous quantities. Perhaps there is not a city in the world that employs such various articles forthis purj^ose as Odessa. Wood from Poland and Bessarabia, coals from England, charcoal from the country about Kisheneff, reeds from the Dnieper and Dniester, straw from the villages on the steppe, and dried dung and withered vine-branches from the German colonies.
Each of these materials has its particular use — straw for baking-ovens, coals and wood for the kitchens of the rich, reeds and dung for those of the poor. The people have also learned to distinguish with great accuracy the duration of heat to be looked for from each of them. They know that straw keeps the heat much longer than reeds, milfoil much longer than the stalks of the wild clover, &c.