Sovereign, year in and year out. These operations, indeed, were nearly all carried out in kind, and no coin passed. Coined money was an uncommon thing, as a rule, monopolized by a few rare capitalists, and especially by the Sovereign, the greatest hoarder in the country.
The only rival of this fair, as regards business and extent, was that held at Lampojnia, to which I have already referred, and which did a special and considerable trade in furs bought from the Samoyedes. For an axe, these savages would give as many sable skins as could be passed, all bound together, through the hole into which the wooden haft fitted. The Lithuanian merchants had their own special meeting-place, close to a monastery of the Trinity—not the celebrated abbey of that name in the province of Moscow—on the banks of the Dnieper, in the province of Smolensk.
These exchanges with foreign countries were detestably one-sided, for the Russian products were generally sold at very low prices, and foreign merchandise was very dear. An archine (2733100 inches) of velvet, damask, or satin, cost a rouble, a piece of fine English cloth 30 roubles, a barrel of French wine 4 roubles. Gold crowns were also imported merchandise, the coinage of the country not sufficing for its needs, and these paid duty like any other commodity.
The Russian merchants of that period, though their cleverness and spirit of enterprise were much admired, otherwise enjoyed a sufficiently evil reputation. Foreigners were never tired of complaining of their cunning and bad faith, and this without exception, save as to the men of Pskov and Novgorod, though, even in their case, the fame of their ancient honesty was tarnished. The local proverb, 'Merchandise is made for the eyes,' was freely applied, and so was the habit of raising the price asked for a thing tenfold if the would-be purchaser happened to appear rich and simple-minded. Wholesale merchants generally employed experts, but these very frequently tried to get money out of both parties to the bargain. Foreigners noticed that the more a merchant called on God, and took Him to witness as to his own honesty, the more he was likely to cheat them. Dishonest dealings as to the quality, origin, and weight of merchandise, the sale of imitations, the substitution of one article for another, just before it was delivered—these were common practices.
The success of foreign traders—the sort of privilege over the Muscovite markets, won as early as in the fifteenth century, by various importing and exporting houses, German, Flemish, and Dutch, previous to the real monopoly of the English company—are in great measure explained by these odious proceedings. Not, indeed, that the foreigners did not end by imitating
