wool and skins from these natives. As the sun was going down, he suggested to me that we should go to one of the native yurts and rest there for the night. So we repaired to one of the encampments on the edge of the larch forest in this romantic plateau. It was very like an English gipsy encampment. Here were a dark-skinned people living a wandering life in round felt tents, just such as one would see in a gipsy camp-ground on an English village green. Perhaps this was the kind of life which all mankind once led. A squat-faced little man with broad cheekbones and slit eyes, and dressed in rough sheepskin, came to the door of the tent. He was hideous. The sight of him at first repelled me, especially as I thought of the terror which these men once struck into the hearts of mankind when they swept over Asia and plundered Europe. But now they were only harmless, peaceful shepherds, and I reassured myself. "Ahmed Bar" (the Turkish greeting), said the Tartar, with a bow, and ushered me in. Inside I found a round space, where smouldered a log fire, the smoke of which was issuing from a hole in the roof. The women's quarters were on the right as I entered, and here an old Tartar woman and two girls were squatting on the ground preparing some food, and shyly hung their heads as my Russian companion and I entered. All round were signs of the nomad life these Tartars led. Skins of fermenting mare's milk or "kumis" could be seen hanging on a triangular frame; crumbling cheese was drying in a pan near the entrance, while some of the girls were rolling horses' hair and wool for the manufacture of felt, and others were distilling spirit in crude wooden vats from kumis. Alexieff and I
