In terms of its appearance, Sarepta is one of the most charming corners of the Volga region: neat, with paved streets, with sidewalks lined with poplars, with pools of clean, beautiful water, it is buried in greenery, and next to the surrounding steppe it seems to the traveler the most beautiful mirage. During high water, steamboats land half a mile from Sarepta, and when the waters recede, the pier is moved a mile and a half from the columns. It is hardly necessary to talk about one of the main productions of Sarepta - mustard; In all likelihood, every reader knows that Sareshta, in a gentle expression very popular in the Volga, “upsets” not only the entire Volga region, but also the entire Rosspo. Of course, we will not recommend that the reader, when the ship stops at the pier, stock up on this methic product, but there will be quite a few others, like the sareptek gingerbreads brought to the Volga and the sareptek balsam, famous throughout Rosepo.
The right bank of the Volga, below Sarepta, presents a picture full of rather dull monotony; The villages are separated from each other by great distances and, devoid of any vegetation, have an appearance as lifeless as the lifelessness of the whole city, in which the sun-scorched steppe alternates with hot sands. On the left bank there are here and there meadows and oak forests. From time to time, before the gaze of a tourist, a fishing party flashes, as the small villages of fishermen here are called, or a couple or two of them are visible in the distance.
a crowd of nomads, kibits, lonely lost in the desert, and then again the dull steppe, again the hot air, the hot breath of which can be felt even on a steamship going a mile or more from the shore, especially if the coastal, south-eastern wind blows, carrying with it a completely hot atmosphere. Throughout this entire length, the Volga presents a picture so boring that the traveler, being on the same ship from which he had just admired the views one more magnificent than the other, now cannot wait for the end of his journey and when he gets to Astrakhan. Even more deserted, and therefore even more depressing, are the banks of the main channel of the Volga Akhtuba, which stretches almost parallel to the main Volga along its entire enormous length; Akhtuba separates from the Volga almost opposite Tsaritsyn and flows meandering in zigzags all the way to the mouth of the Volga, where it connects a little above Krasny Yar with one of the Tlava branches of the Volga delta; With its convolutions, this duct sometimes approaches the main Volga, then moves away from it, merging with it through many side small volochs.
Immediately beyond Sarepta, the right bank of the Volga already begins to belong to the Astrakhan provinces; Its left bank even higher than Kamyshin begins to enter the region of the Astrakhan region. We will call the first settlement of the Astrakhan province on the right bank of the Volga Kamenny Yar - a small village that does not represent anything remarkable. Somewhat below it, on the left bank, there is a huge settlement - the village of Vladimrovka with 8 thousand inhabitants, remarkable as a grain and salt pier. Vladimtovka is connected by a railway road with Baskunchak Lake, from which where salt is mined, transported and transported - Tatar woman. by owl, and by oxen to Vladi-
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have a length of 54 versts. Before the introduction of the salt tax, all the salt extracted from the lake was transported to Vladimrovsk on oxen and piled up here in colossal pyramids, 50 thousand poods each. Storing this was mandatory, since each excise official determined the amount of excise duty based on a preliminary calculation of the geometric volume of the salt pyramids and the calculated weight of the folded salt. Upon payment of the excise tax, the salt was loaded onto barges, and tens of thousands of ox carts brought new salt to the pier, from which new pyramids were built. The life of the kiifla at the pier at that time was extraordinary; In view of the deferred payment, the Russian man who worked in Vladimirovka paid his deferment with extraordinary speed for him and earned
I dig up to 4 rubles a day. Right there, near the pier, there were many taverns and taverns, where these labor rubles were squandered. The innkeepers earned so much that they soon turned into salt industrialists; but, of course, the treasury earned more, to which the Vladimrovskaya salt pier gave more than 8 million rubles of annual income. At present, there are no salt warehouses in Vladimrovka, and there is no need for them to be there, since salt, transported by railroad and oxen, is directly loaded onto ships; There is, of course, not the same bustling activity on the pier, there is not the same number of taverns and there is not the same revelry.