ORENBURG  , a

town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the Ural river; connected by rail with Samara (262 m.), and since 1905 with Tashkent (1150 M.) . Pop . (190o) 65,906, of whom about 30% were Tatars, Jews, Bashkirs, &c . The town now includes the former suburbs of Golubinaya and Novaya . It is an episcopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church and the headquarters of the hetman of the Oren-burg Cossacks . To a " barter house," 3 M. from the town, the camel caravans bring carpets, silks, cottons, lambskins, dried fruits, &c., from Bokhara, Khiva, Kokand and Tashkent, to be bartered against the textiles, metallic goods, sugar and manufactured wares of Russia . From 20,000 to 100,000 horses, 40,000 to 16o,000 cattle, and 450,000 to 750,000 sheep are also sold every year at the barter 'house . Formerly most of these were sent alive to Russia; now some 200,000 head of cattle and sheep are killed every year, and exported in cold-storage wagons . Cattle are also bought by wandering merchants in the Steppe provinces and Turkestan . Every year many tons of tallow, hams, sausages, butter, cheese and game are exported by rail to Samara . Besides these, nearly a million hides and sheepskins, goat and astrakhan skins, as well as wool, horsehair, bristles, down, horns, bones, &c., are exported . There are two cadet corps, a theological seminary, seminaries for Russian and Kirghiz teachers, a museum, branches of the Russian Geographical Society and the Gardening Society, and a military arsenal .