as are fit to be made foldiers are taken by lot as recruits. The peafantry are not bound to follow agriculture, the breeding of cattle, and the other employments of hufbandry, but may ftrike into trade and purfue it either alone or in conjunction with their rural concerns, as they find it moft beneficial or convenient.

The kozaks form a particular clafs originating from the peasantry. They live, exempt from taxes, in villages, forts, and petty towns, on the produce of their fields and paftures or the labour of their hands, furnish no recruits, are not given away as ferfs, and enjoy other privileges. But they all ferve as light horfemen, as early and as long as they are fit for it, providing themfelves with horfes, clothes, and accoutrements, and only receive pay when they are in actual fervice; of them, however, more is faid in another place.

The trades carried on by the Ruffians are in general the fame as are exercifed in the other parts of Europe.

The inland commerce feems but finall, as it is moftly conducted by fhopkeepers and monopolizers, and the chief tranfport of goods by land is in caravans; it is nevertheless of great importance, by giving employment and fuftenance to an innumerable body of people, by the great vent it procures for the products of nature and art, and by keeping the fpecie of the country in a conftant and quick circulation. The petty merchants carry on their bufinefs by travelling from place to place about the country; and, therefore, on all occafions make fpeedy and frequent returns of their money. By their frugal manner of living, and by the hofpitality of the boors which every where prevails, the confumption even on long journies is but fmall; and thus it frequently happens, that an apparently infignificant, unproducVOL. II. C

tive

tive traffic maintains and often enriches a number of families. Formerly all traffic was confined to the annual fairs. The merchants attended them with the commodities they had to difpofe of, and bought with the money they got from them, or bartered them againft, the products of thofe parts. For a long time paft, every city, every town*, and many great villages, has its regular market, retaining at the fame time its annual fairs. The market-places throughout the empire are, in their mode of conftruction, uniformly the fame; a quadrangular building of timber or brick, divided into fhops, with a piazza before them for the conveniency of customers in all kinds of weather. This frequently fpacious and handsome structure, which, on account of the foreigners that fometimes hire fhops in them, are called gueft-courts, and in regard to its uses, the buying or bartering-place, and where alone, and not in private houfes, articles of trade may be fold, is ufually built by the government or the magiftracy of the place. At Irbit in Siberia, at Ekatarinenburg, and above all in the monaftery of Makarief on the banks of the Volga, near Nilhney-Novgorod, yearly fairs are held, which, for the amount of the turns and returns, may vie with the moft noted in Europe.

The foreign commerce, till about the clofe of the fifteenth century, was but trifling, and almost wholly confined to Novgorod, which belonged to the hanfeatic league. The Ruffians were unacquainted with their own products; and, living as they did, in the genuine fimplicity of the children of nature, they had little occafion for articles from abroad. By imperceptible degrees the products of the country were underflood and explored; and the introduction of a more refined

* Sloboda.

+ Goftinoi dvor.

mode

mode of living occafioned a demand for foreign commodities. Under Peter the great, manufactories got up; the working of mines and all kinds of trade went on in a thriving ftate; and commercial regulations, duties, &c. gave commerce a proper direction, and fecured the balance in their favour. It is a general practice with the merchants of Ruffia to be paid half of the price beforehand of the inland commodities which they buy up and deliver to foreigners, according to contract, for exportation; but to take foreign goods upon a year's credit. Foreigners therefore only gain when all goes right; but the Ruffians always, let matters take what courfe they will. For which reason they willingly refign to foreigners the profits accruing from the tranfport, and have themselves but few fhips at fea. The most confiderable maritime commerce, as we have already feen, is at St. Petersburg and Riga, by way of the Baltic; at Archangel, on the northern ocean, &c. at Taganrok, on the Euxine; at Aftrakhan on the Cafpian, and at Kamtfhatka, on the Eastern ocean. The principal feats of the foreign commerce by land are the Ukraine, whence the ruffian merchants vifit the markets of Poland and the fairs of Germany; Orenburg, where a confiderable trade is carried on with feveral afiatic nations; and Kiachta in Daouria, where a great mercantile intercourfe is held with China.

Manufactories of wool, cotton, filk, flax, metals, &c. paper-mills, wax bleacheries, falt-petre and glass-houses, tapeftry, and porcelain fabrics, with many other eftablishments of a like nature, partly belonging to the crown, but mostly to private perfons, and efpecially the working of mines, employ an immenfe number of people, as well as artifts and tradefmen, both in town and country. The products of thefe manufactories yield in no refpect

C.2

refpect to the beft of other countries; which however cannot always be affirmed of the works of the ruffian artizans.

As the free countrymen pay a tax not only for their fields, but alfo for their heads, they follow husbandry with that licence I mentioned before; and many of them neglect it entirely in order to devote themselves to trade and bufinefs. The vaffalboors are employed, at the pleasure of their lord, either in country or city occupations, in manufactories and fabrics, the handicraft trades, or the mines. Agriculture, therefore, is not fo generally the bufinefs of the peafantry in Ruffia as in other countries. However, on the whole it is carried on to fo great an extent, as not only to furnish the nations of the empire that eat bread with that article, and the prodigious quantities of corn, at a very moderate price, confumed by the brandy diftilleries; but alfo can export a great fuperfluity to foreign countries. Even from the fifty-fifth to the fixtieth degree of north latitude in Siberia, are large tracts of arable land, mostly fertile, good crops of hay, and fpacious forefts. More to the north, cultivation is lefs to be depended on, and the whole fyftem of rural economy is very liable to failures, and attended with great difficulties. Throughout Ruffia every village has its proper territory, and every eftate its allotted inclofures and commons *. In the lefs cultivated plains of Siberia, every man takes as much ground from the open treppes as he can manage. When fuch a portion of ground is exhaufted, the countryman lets it lie fallow for a year or two, goes and turns up another piece, and fo proceeds. Frequently thefe little ftrips of ground lie fcattered at twenty, fifty, and even eighty verfis diftance from the village. The fize of thefe fields is measured eastwards+, each of

which being fixty fathom long and forty wide; but in fome parts, and all over the Ukraine, they are eighty fathom in length and forty in breadth.

In Ruffia and Siberia they cultivate winter rye and fummer rye, winter, wheat only in Ruffia as far as the Kama, fummer-wheat both in Ruffia and Siberia; barley, fpekt-barley, or bear-barley, plentifully in Ruffia; oats, in Ruffia and Siberia; few peafe, ftill fewer vetches and beans; a great deal of buck-wheat; in Siberia tartarian buck-wheat, millet, and the grain called panicum germanicum, only in Ruffia.

The manure depends much on the quality of the foil, climate, and greater or inferior population. In well peopled regions the fields are dunged, because the husbandman can afford them but little refpite; in fertile diftricts, however, of lefs numerous habitations, the good arable land endures no dung, requiring only after every five or ten years ufe, three, four, or five years reft. Such powerful foil is found in different parts of the governments of Simbirsk and Penza, and about Ufa and Orenburg, as alfo in the fouthern fteppes of Siberia, in the steppes of the Ifet, the Ifhim, the Baraba, about Irkutsk and in fouthern Daouria. The corn, after dunging, fhoots up into high ftraw, and bears no folid ears. The moft ungrateful foils are in Finnland, Archangel, and the north of Ruffia, alfo the north and north-eastern parts of Siberia, in Kamtfhatka, &c. They rarely yield an increase above threefold, and often entirely fail by the intenfenefs of the froft. The common land brings an increase of from five to eight fold, and the fresh broke pieces in the abovementioned fteppes for fome years fucceflively will give an increase of ten up to fifteen fold.

b Pihenitza. c Yeshmen. d Polba.

• Rofh. . Ovtzi. f Gretfhucha. Polygonum tataricum LINN. rufs dikusha. Profa.

The