PEREYASLAVL, or Pereslavl (called Zalyesskii, or “Beyond the Forest,” to distinguish it from the older town in Poltava after which it was named), is one of the earliest and most interesting cities in north-west Russia, situated in Vladimir government, 87 miles east of Moscow on the road to Yaroslavl, and on both banks of the Trubezh near its entrance into Lake Pleshtcheevo. Pereyaslavl was formerly remarkable for the number and importance of its ecclesiastical foundations (there were in 1764 no fewer than eleven monasteries in the town and neighbourhood, and the churches about the same period numbered thirtyseven). Among those still standing are the 12th-century cathedral of the Transfiguration (with ancient wall-paintings and the graves of Demetrius, son of Alexander Nevskii, and other princes), and the church of the Birth of John the Baptist, founded by Euphrosyne, wife of Demetrius Donskii, in the close of the 14th century. It is by its extensive cotton manufactures (the spinning factory alone employing 1700 hands and producing to the annual value of £195,000) that Pereyaslavl is now best known throughout Russia; and it also manufactures linen, leather, and tobacco. The fisheries on the lake (20 square miles in extent and 175 feet deep) have long been of great value. The population was 6253 in 1864, 7210 in 1870, and 8700 in 1880....