to the Siberians, and were helping them in collecting, packing and despatching wool and hides to Siberia. In the courtyards I observed how the Russian and Tartar children played games together, mingling as though they were one family. How strange it was to see! How slight the difference here between Russian and Tartar! The Eastern Slav is born to conquer and assimilate the Asiatic races, because in character and in habits he is so Asiatic himself that he can in fact absorb his neighbours without either absorber or absorbed being aware of the process.
But, besides Russian and Tartar, there is another element in the population of this frontier steppe. Here for the first time I saw that enigma of the East, the Chinaman. Seven years before, as I was assured by a Russian, there was not a Chinaman in the place, but now half-a-dozen little shops, built of mud bricks, had sprung up, testifying to the recent Chinese activity in the western part of the Celestial Empire. In these little shops one could buy Chinese brick tea, silk and little choice articles from the flowery land, and there sat the moon-eyed celestials cross-legged on the counter ready to barter their wares. Behind these little shops there was often a den where an old Chinaman would be preparing an evening meal, a messy brew of some choice seaweed brought all the way from China. How weird and uncanny these people looked! I instinctively gravitated toward the Russian, for him I knew and could understand, whereas of the Chinaman I knew nothing. Here he was in the farthest corner of his empire, the same as he always is, laborious, thrifty and most mysterious. His standard of living was utterly different from anything I saw around me. The
