Once, during a severe drought, the peasants of the village of Batrakov decided that Shambarov’s grave had called to them, and that if his ashes were dug out of the ground and thrown into the Volga, the drought would pass; but when they began to dig a grave, in its place there turned out to be an incredibly deep pit, the bottom of which could not be reached with any ropes. From that time on, it became clear to everyone that Shambarov had fallen through the earth into the underworld.
As one of the Volga region centers of grain trade and, to tell the truth, much more than other similar centers, the city of Syzran is the so-called “monkey’s nest”. But the reader needs to explain what is generally meant by calling the Volzhek or Syzran monkey.
According to Mr. Demyanov’s clear definition, the monkey is a new type, brought up in the traditions of the Kolupaevs, Razuvaevs and B0. According to his official profession, the monkey is nothing more than a clerk for a dry goods merchant. In essence, he is the inventor and executor of all sorts of ingenious tricks, the whole system of which is to decorate the grain trade. The ideals of the monkey are to cheat as cunningly as possible, as cleverly as possible to exploit small grain sellers, who often turned out to be peasants. The monkey is more inventive on this side, tfm is superior to him in the eyes of his patron. Some merchants keep flocks of monkeys in their dfl. These packs work hard, trying to cheat on legal grounds and leaving the patron to rake in the heat with their hands. At the same time, a working monkey always knows: if his tricks end successfully, the owner will reward him properly, but if, even more unexpectedly, he goes overboard and, by cheating, ends up in criminal justice, the owner will be the first to abandon him. It often happens that a monkey abandoned by his patron bears on his shoulders all the ill-fated consequences of his vile profession, but in the end, having somehow escaped from the misfortune, he begins to monkey again and, perhaps, even at his former patron. There is no doubt that it is the peasants who have to lose the most from the monkeys, since the large producers of grain goods - the pomp producers - are beyond their power.
Somewhat further down the Volga, “water” thieves are popularly called monkeys, but monkeys have no bearing whatsoever until Syzran. We added the word “water” because thieving monkeys commit thefts exclusively on water, and not one of them dares to commit the most common theft on land; They steal from barges, boats, and sometimes from steamships, of course, mostly towboats, which are easier to climb onto; they approach the ship being robbed in a light boat, choosing, of course, the darkest night.
The villages located on the Volga below Syzran to Balakovo and even to Volsk, without exception, owe their origin to schismatics. The first city you come across here on the way below Syzran, located on the right bank, is Khvalynsek, the provincial city of the Saratov province.
Khvalynsk received its name in memory of the ancient inhabitants of the Khvalies, who inhabited the space of the Volga coast from the location of the present Khvalynsk to the Kassh Sea. Khvalynevk began its existence as a city in 1780, when, by royal decree, it was renamed into a city from the village of Sosnovy Ostrov, having also received its present name. there are up to 25 thousand clerics in the city and from this number up to 3 thousand schismatics; The latter concentrate large capitals in their hands, and therefore constitute the main force of swindle trade.
25 below Khvalynsk, on the right bank of the Volga, there is a fortified settlement
Bald Mountain; the shape of the mountain is oblong, its surface is smooth; from the west it is surrounded by ravines, from the east and north by ramparts. All this hints that in ancient times there was some kind of town or fortress on the mountain, which disappeared from the face of the earth. 8 versts from Bald Mountain is the large village of AlexVevskoye with 8 thousand inhabitants, and near the village there is a backwater in which the steamships of the Samolet society winter; There is also a mechanical plant belonging to the company right here. There is a fair in Aleksevsky during 'Groitskaya Week'.