In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the
unequal struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free
passage to all the third-class passengers. Then its competitor at
once added to the free passage half a loaf of white bread as well.
But the biggest and most significant enterprise of this city was
the engineering of the extensive river port, which had attracted
to it hundreds of thousands of labourers and which cost God knows
what money.
It must also be added, that the city was at this time celebrating
the millennial anniversary of its famous abbey, the most honoured
and the richest among all the monasteries of Russia. From all the
ends of Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen
Ocean, from the extreme south--the Black and Caspian Seas--
countless pilgrims had gathered for the worship of the local
sanctities: the abbey's saints, reposing deep underground in
calcareous caverns. Suffice it to say, that the monastery gave
shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand people daily; while
those for whom there was not enough room lay, at night, side by
side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the abbey.
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