Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/20

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SIBERIA
CHAPTER IV
PAGE
A Siberian Provincial Town (Minusinsk) 60
We arrive in the Easter Holidays—Siberian Business Methods—A Religious Ceremony—Buying Horses—My First Experience of a Tartar Horse—A little Oriental Blackmail—A Typical Siberian Bank—Our Relations with Officialdom—Bureaucratic Red Tape—An Official hawking Gold Concessions—A Mining Inspector—Provincial Education and Public Institutions—A Man of Science—Social Life in a Provincial Town—Scenes in the Boulevard—A Tartar Household—A Political Exile—His Views of Siberia—I meet the Governor of the Local Gaol—I visit the Gaol.
CHAPTER V
Life in a Siberian Village 93
Typical Village Scenes—A Siberian Peasant Home, its Cleanliness, Comfort and Lack of Art—I join the Village Games—A Siberian's idea of his Neighbours in Mongolia—His Ignorance of Old Russia—The Village Schoolmaster—I meet a Revolutionary—Sunday Morning in Church—The Priest and the People—I wander in the Forests—The Beauties of a Siberian Spring—I talk with an old Ploughman—His Ideas of Agriculture—I attend a Meeting of the Village Commune—Local Government—Communal Land System and its Modifications—Siberian Peasant Society, its Toleration and Fellowship—Advantages and Disadvantages of the Commune—Economic Standard of Peasants—Conclusions.
CHAPTER VI
The Siberian Backwoodsman and Frontier Trader 135
The Pioneers of Siberian Trade—The Fur Traders on the Toundras—Their Relations with the Natives—The Borderland of Siberia and Mongolia—Its Attraction for the Siberian Fur and Wool Trader—I visit a Frontier Wool-Trading Settlement—Typical Scenes—I visit a Nomad Tartar Encampment—I spend Three Days in a Tartar Yurt—Cordial Relations between Russian and Tartar—I arrive at a Siberian Wool