inhabited wastes, I now saw wide tracks of the black earth zone dotted over with peasant communities, quietly pursuing their agricultural occupations. The agriculture was indeed rude and primitive, but the peasant farmers were living their simple lives with few wants and apparently few cares.
I have in this chapter attempted to give a description, admittedly imperfect, of the social and economic conditions of the Siberian peasants, from information which I gathered during the time that I lived in their midst. To one who wishes to see something of the real life of the Siberian peasant, and glean some small idea of the conditions of his existence, the isolated village communities at the head of the main valleys and tributaries of the Yenisei in Central Siberia are the most likely to present the truest pictures. It is these peasants, along with the fur traders and frontiersmen, who are the pioneers of Russia's Eastern Empire in Asia. For centuries past, by dint of their rapid increase, their hardy nature and their social organization, they have overcome the natural and physical difficulties which beset them. The Canadian settler is willing to go off on his own, build his log-hut in the backwoods and live a life of terrible isolation for months, perhaps years, for the sake of the material gains that he sets his heart upon. A few Siberian hunters and traders do this now for the sake of greater gains, but, speaking generally, the Siberians overcome the natural obstacles around them by attacking them in unison. As, however, communications improve and urban centres begin to spring up where villages were before, these pioneers move on as an advanced guard, avoid-
