ASTRAKHAN. This Russian province depends a good deal for its commercial pros perity on its fisheries. The Volga is scarcely equalled by any other stream in the world tor abundance of fish. This noble liver flows through the province. In the spring of tin: year its fishing-grounds, particularly between the sea and the capital, are so abundantly stocked with fish, as to employ upwards of five thousand vessels, and twice that number of persons, who are brought by the fisheries from remote places. Isinglass and caviar are brought from this region.
Goats are reared, not so much for the sake of their milk or flesh, as of their hides, with which the Russians prepare morocco-leather : there is a fine species of hair too, which either falls from the animal's back, or is combed from it, out of which a stuff of beautiful tex ture is occasionally woven. But the greatest resource possessed by the rural population and nomadic tribes of the province is their flocks of sheep, which are valuable both for their wool and for their fat.
To the principal branches of industry already enumerated we may add the manufacturing of magnesia, tallow, and soap, in considerable quantities, distilleries of brandy and spirits, and manufactories of leather, cotton, and silk. Astrakhan soap is in much request among the Russians on account of its firm substance and fragrant scent. The Volga, which secures a ready access to the eastern shores of the Cas pian Sea, has hitherto rendered the capital of this province the principal seat of the traffic carried on between Asia and the Russian do minions.
The chief city, also called Astrakhan, has a navigable communication with St. Peters burg, from which it is upwards of 1200 miles distant. The establishments for weaving silks and cottons are nearly one hundred in num ber; it manufactures also considerable quan tities of leather, particularly a superior descrip tion of morocco and shagreen, as well as tallow and soap. The business of buying and selling, more than one-half of which has been en grossed by the Armenians, is conducted in twenty eight khans or bazaars, which contain 1500 stores built of stone, and 560 wooden stalls. Raw silk and silk goods, cotton and cotton-yarn, drugs, dye-stuffs, carpets, oil, rice, and other eastern productions form the chief importations : the exportations are principally woollen cloth, iinens, cochineal, velvet, iron, salt, fruits, fish, wine, liquorice, soda, hides, skins, and grain.
The fisheries of the Volga centre principally a little below the city. Every weir has its group of huts, with a little church attached to it, in which from two to three score fishermen re side ; they are divided into divers, catchers, salting-men, and makers of caviar and isin glass. Each little colony is provided with spacious ice-cellars, which contain compart ments for storing away the fish when salted, with intervals between the compartments which are filled with ice.