Five or six versts above the mouth of the Kama is the village of Bogorodek, from which during the spring flood one can observe an extremely majestic picture: the Volga and the mouth of the Vama are then a muddy sea of water, so much more spectacular that the opposite bank is almost invisible.
The connection between the Kama and the Volga is not indicated by any structures, but in itself it is of interest from the point of view that the Kama, pouring a huge mass of water into the Volga, immediately increases the already majestic river almost twice. It is known that the Vama, which flows through lush and cool areas, is abundantly fed, has the high water content of the Volga. From its source, in the so-called “not so distant” places, to its mouth along a long ai
1600 versts, the Kama receives 574 tributaries, the water line of which exceeds 86,000 versts; Thus, the basin of this river is essentially superior even to the Volga basin.
Many rafts and belyans, annually lowered along the Kama to the Volga, prove the enormous importance of the Kama as a waterway; and indeed, there is such abundance of forest not only along the banks of the Kama, but also in the general area of its basin that, despite diligent forest extermination, its quantity seems to hardly decrease.
One hour down from Bogorodek there is a pier called “Berezovaya Griva” or “Snassv! Zaton”. Located on the left bank of the Volga, this pier is a natural harbor and the steamships of the Navkaz and Mercury society, intended for major repairs, winter there. At first glance, the pier consists of several desks located near the deserted shore, from which the meadows begin, but when you look to the left, where a huge spit forms the harbor itself, about a mile from the desks, you see a settlement similar to a large county town; This settlement with mechanical factories, like the backwater itself, belonged to the company “Caucasus and Mercure” and the hulls of its large American-type steamships were built here. Named! The backwater received its property from the remote town of Spaoska, twelve miles away from the pier.
22 versts from Spassk, on the postal route from this city to Tetyushi, is the village of Bolgars, otherwise called Uspenskoye. There are 7 turns to the Volga from the Bolgars; During high water, it is possible to go by boat, but in the summer there is no other way to get to Bolgars than by landing in the Spassky backwater and hiring horses to the village there.
Bulgarians are the former capital of the Bulgarian kingdom. The rapidly deteriorating remains of the ancient buildings of this capital belong to the X_HGU\ century, mainly to the XIII century. The ancient city was quite the mask, judging by the fact that the traces of the ditch and rampart that surrounded it, visible to this day, make up a circumference of up to 10 miles. Adjacent to the village from the south, occupying about a mile in circumference, is a quadrangle called Maly Gorodok, which apparently represented a fortress in ancient times. All Bulgarian ruins bear the character of Arab architecture, so common in the Muslim East; along the edges of the wall there are diseased raw stones with lime, and in the middle filled with lime and small stones. Bulgarian ruins, Small minaret. In 1799, Peter the Great visited the Bulgarians on his way to Astrakhan, ordering them to write off the koshes from the overgrave Armenian and Arabic inscriptions and translate them into Russian. In 1767, Empress Catherine the Great visited the village, and in 1829, Volik Humboldt also visited the village. Even in the last century, during the visit of the village by academicians Pallas and Lepekhin, there were 44 ruins in Bolgars, but now there are not even ten of them. The main reason for such a rapid destruction of ancient monuments lies in the fact that the residents of the village of Uspenekogo, with zeal worthy of a better fate, take away the stones of old buildings for their needs and, moreover, constantly dig and undermine ancient monuments everywhere in order to find treasures. Thus, quite a few stones from ancient buildings were used for the church that now exists in the village; Even in the floor of the church and on the outside of the church wall you can see them with ancient inscriptions preserved on them.
Quite a few Tatars come to the Bulgarians, even from distant lands, in order to worship the local Muslim shrines. This is the Small Minaret, under which, according to legend, several Muslim saints are buried.