Astrakhan

“ Some years afterwards there was found in the town archives a manuscript note left by Peter the Great at his departure from Astrakhan, and in which he mentioned that very island as well suited for the site of a lazaret. A glance had enabled the tsar to perceive the importance of a locality which many engineering commissions discovered only after repeated search.
Paving is a luxury quite unknown in Astrakhan, and the streets are as sandy as the soil of the environs. ”

“ There is no city, perhaps, of eastern Europe, which has played a more important part than Astrakhan in the commercial relations between Europe and Asia. Situated at the lower extremity of the largest navigable river of Europe, it communicates on the one side by the Caspian with Turcomania and the northern regions of Persia; on the other side, by means of the Volga and the Don, it is in direct intercourse with the central provinces of the Muscovite empire, and the whole coast of the Black Sea. ”

“ In August 1669 he reappeared at Astrakhan, and accepted a fresh offer of pardon from the tsar there; the common people were fascinated by his adventures. The semi-Asiatic kingdom of Astrakhan, where the whole atmosphere was predatory and nine-tenths of the population were nomadic, was the natural milieu for such a rebellion as Stenka Razin's. In 1670 Razin, while ostensibly on his way to report himself at the Cossack headquarters on the Don, openly rebelled against the government, captured Cherkask, Tsaritsyn and other places, and on the 24th of June burst into Astrakhan itself. ”

“ Besides, our travels in Russia had accustomed us to the sympathy with which every thing French is greeted by the Poles. The last political events have not yet been able to weaken their good will towards us; they regard us as brethren, and are ready to prove it on all occasions.
Except some crown buildings occupied by the employés, there is nothing in Astrakhan to remind us of its being under foreign sway. The town has completely preserved the Asiatic physiognomy it owes to its climate, its past history, and its diversified population. ”

“ Market-gardening (mustard, water-melons, fruit) is on the increase; but pure agriculture is relatively not much developed. The government is divided into five districts, the chief towns of which are Astrakhan, Enotayevsk (pop. 2810 in 1897) , Krasnyi-yar (4680) , Chernyi-yar (5140) , and Tsarev 795 (8900) . The Kalmucks and Kirghiz have their own local administrations, and so have the Astrakhan Cossacks (25,600) .
ASTRAKHAN, a town of E. Russia, capital of the government of Astrakhan, on the left bank of the main channel of the Volga, 50 m. from the Caspian Sea, in 46° 21′ N. lat. ”

“ The czar’s soldiers murdered their officers, and went over to him; Astrakhan betrayed its governor, and received him; he was master of the whole country of the lower Volga; and on the upper course of the river, from Nijni-Novgorod to Kazan, the peasants rose to a man and murdered their lords. Had Stenka Radzin been anything better than a vulgar robber and cut-throat, he might have revolutionised Russia; but he was utterly without the qualities most requisite for success in such an enterprise. Disasters overtook him in the autumn of 1670: a division of his army was cut to pieces ”

“ She had subdued the Tartar Khanates of Kasan and Astrakhan; but their kinsmen of the Crimea were still formidable enemies to the Russians, even without Turkish aid. It was only two years after the Ottoman expedition to the Don and Volga that the Khan of the Crimea made a victorious inroad into Russia, took Moscow by storm, and sacked the city (1571) . The Czar Ivan had, in 1570, sent an ambassador, named Nossolitof, to Constantinople, to complain of the Turkish attack on Astrakhan, and to propose that there should be peace, friendship, and alliance between the two empires. ... ”

“ The small steamers that ply the Caspian are continually going in and coming out as they find their way between Petrosky and the other Caspian ports. Much grain is grown upon the steppes of Daghestan, and the larger part of it is transported to Astrakhan, to be ground into flour to feed the people of Moscow and Petersburg. At Astrakhan, the mouth of the Volga, all freight brought by steamer is transferred to barges, which ply that great river far to the northward. ”

“ In the district of Astrakhan a legend is still to be met with, to the effect that Gog and Magog were two great races, which Alexander the Great subdued and banished to the inmost recesses of the Caucasus, where they are meanwhile kept in by the terror of twelve trumpets blown by the winds, but whence they are destined ultimately to make their escape and destroy the world. ”

“ On leaving Constantinople, Ibn Batuta went again to Astrakhan, thence crossing the sandy wastes of the present Turkestan, he arrived at Khovarezen, a large populous town, then at Bokhara, half destroyed by the armies of Gengis-Khan. Some time after we hear of him at Samarcand, a religious town which greatly pleased the learned traveller, and then at Balkh which he could not reach without crossing the desert of Khorassan. ”

“ The inhabitants of Astrakhan make a regular and systematic use of them, employing them not only for fuel, but also for roofing their houses, and for thatching their waggons laden with [Pg 240] salt or fish, which they send into the interior of the country. It is in spring, before the floods caused by the melting of the snow, that the reeds begin to sprout. Their stalks, which are as thick as a finger, soon shoot up to the height of twelve or thirteen feet. Those that grow on the banks of the Volga are never quite covered in the highest floods. ”

“ While Ivan was weaving his net of policy, the English rafts were dropping down the Volga, towards Astrakhan, through hordes of Tartar horse. From Astrakhan they coasted the Caspian towards the south, landed at the port of Shabran, and, passing over the Georgian Alps, rode on camels through Shemaka and Ardabil, to Kasbin, then a residence of the Persian Shah. To him the queen had also sent a letter of friendship, and Jenkinson proposed to draw the great lines of Persian traffic by the Caspian and the Volga, to Archangel; connecting London and Kasbin by a near, a cheap, and an easy road ”

“ Corn from Middle Russia for Astrakhan is trans ferred from the railway to boats at Tsaritsyn; timber and wooden wares from the upper Volga are unloaded here and sent by rail to Katatch; and fish, salt, and fruits sent from Astrakhan by boat up the Volga are here unloaded and despatched by rail to the interior of Russia. The town has grown rapidly since the completion of the rail way system, and has a large trade in naphtha from Baku, which is shipped up the Volga to Tsaritsyn and sent thence by rail to the interior of Russia. ”

“ Astrakhan, the only town situated on that part of the coast, is obliged to fetch its provisions from a distance of 200 leagues. The Black Sea is, indeed, more favourably circumstanced; but it only affords communication with the forts on the Circassian side; and the mountaineers always wait to make their attacks in the season of rough weather, during which navigation is usually suspended, and it is exceedingly difficult to reinforce and victual the garrisons. ”

“ The procession marched all round the higher part of the town that we might see the finest buildings and the splendid view from the heights above the river, singing revolutionary songs all the way.
The summer days are hot but the nights are bitterly cold on the Upper Volga. One of our number neglected himself, and contracted pleurisy and pneumonia within twenty-four hours of our setting sail, and his illness obliged some of us to go forward to Astrakhan and return the same way to Saratov. ”

“ It matters not that we have before us the lowest grade we believe it can attain, we have but to turn our heads another way to be amazed and confounded by new discoveries revealing to us the inexhaustible combinations of nature. These reflections occurred to me more and more strongly as we approached Koumskaia. The aridity of the steppes round Odessa, the wilderness of the Volga, the parched and dismal soil of the environs of Astrakhan, in a word all we had heretofore seen that was least engaging, seemed lovely in comparison with what met our view on the banks of the Caspian. ”

“ Nor is the difficulty lessened by the fact that the costume of both sexes is closely alike.
At Astrakhan the most dangerous as well as the most arduous part of the expedition of our two travellers began. They were compelled to carry provisions with them, if they did not wish to perish of hunger on the steppes. An escort was therefore necessary, and the Russian governor selected for the post one of his best officers; a young man famed for his skill as a hunter, and as the happy owner of a falcon from which he would never separate. ”

“ There is some tanning, shipbuilding and brewing, and making of soap, tar and machinery. Astrakhan is the chief port on the Caspian Sea and the headquarters of the Russian Caspian fleet. The city consists of (1) the kreml or citadel (1550) , crowning a hill, on which stand also the spacious brick cathedral containing the tombs of two Georgian princes, the archbishop’s palace and the monastery of the Trinity; (2) the Byelogorod or White Town, containing the administrative offices and the bazaars; and (3) the suburbs, where most of the population resides. ”

“ The Persians, like the Indians, are gradually deserting Astrakhan. The prohibitive system of Russia has destroyed all their commercial resources, and now only some hundreds of them, for the most part detained by penury, are to be found in their adopted country, employed in petty retail dealings. ”

“ Once a powerful nation, they are scattered for the most part in Astrakhan, Perm, Orenburg, in the Caucasian province of Kuban, and in Tobolsk, Siberia, numbering in all about 50,000. These emigrants have crossed much with the alien populations among whom they have settled; but the pure type on the Aral Sea are a tall powerful people, with broad flat faces, large eyes, short noses and heavy chins. ”

“ The second division of the country, consists of all the steppes that extend along the left bank of the Don, to the confines of the government of the Caucasus, and along the Manitch to the frontier of Astrakhan. The soil is here unvaried; it is the Russian desert in all its uniformity, and the basin of the muddy and brackish Manitch, is perfectly in harmony with the regions it traverses. But those monotonous plains are a source of wealth to the Cossacks, who rear vast herds of horses and other cattle; several thousands of Kalmucks too find subsistence in them. ”

“ But his vengeance was not satisfied, and, having refreshed his troops by this halt, he marched northwards against Astrakhan, which he utterly destroyed. The inhabitants were driven out into the country to perish with the cold, while the commander of the city was killed by being forced beneath the ice of the Volga. Sarai next shared the same fate, and, Timur, having thus crushed for the second time the empire of Toktamish, set out on his return home by way of Derbent and Azērbāijān. ”

“ Astrachan. Also spelled Astrakhan. The name of a large and somewhat barren district comprising more than 90,000 square miles of territory in southeastern Europe; its capital city, having the same name, is situated on the Volga near its mouth.
24 26. at the rate of 300 miles a day. By no means an incredible speed; in Russia such sledge flights are not uncommon. Compare what De Quincey has to say of the glory of motion in The English Mail-Coach,—"running at the least twelve miles an hour." ”

“ It was impossible that an aggressive state like Russia should live in friendship with a marauding power like that of the Krim Tatars. The primary cause of contention was the khanate of Kazan, which was recovered by the Mongols, and lost again to Russia with that of Astrakhan in 1555. The sultan, however, declined to accept this condition of things as final, and instigated Devlet Girai, the Krim khan, to attempt their recovery. With this object the latter marched an army northwards, where, finding the road to Moscow unprotected, he pushed on in the direction of that ill-starred city. ”

“ All the fruit of the place, moreover, is very poor, if not decidedly bad. The grapes alone are tolerable and of very various kinds, suitable for the table, but none of them fit for making wine. As for the celebrated water-melons, they are held in very low esteem in the country, and the people of the town talk only of those of Kherson and the Crimea. It is very possible, however, that the fruit of Astrakhan may have deserved its high reputation previously to the Muscovite domination. ”

“ SEA-OTTER.
"It comes here from Astrachan, at the mouth of the Volga," said the Doctor. "Its preparation is one of the industries of Central Asia, for which Astrachan is the great market. This fur is black, and remarkably soft and silky. The lamb is killed immediately after he sees the light, and the younger he is at the time of his death the finer and more valuable is the skin. Persia supplies large quantities of this fur, and it varies from black to gray or white. ”

“ 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. ”