I took my leave of these Tartars and rode off the plateau down the valley to another little frontier trading station, where I arrived at the house of a Siberian wool merchant, who entertained me hospitably. His little house was built of larch logs and mud plaster, and here in this isolated spot on the Mongolian frontier steppes he lived with his wife and family all the year. Close by was a little storehouse where he kept his wool, skins and other articles of local produce. His little plot was surrounded by a pale fence, and inside the yard Siberian cattle and Mongolian horses wandered about, just as I had seen them do in the Siberian villages north of the frontier. His mode of life, however, was more free here. He could ride wherever he pleased upon the open steppes, and over the low desert hills, for, as the Siberians said, the country was "clean"—that is, free from forest. He was surrounded by the native Tartars, who came to him with the products of their flocks and herds. There was no troublesome commune to interfere with his grazing or ploughland rights, no official to come and assess him for special taxation in these wild spots. Several times a year, however, he returned to Siberia with his goods, bringing back other wares. Inside his house I found a typical Russian room, which once more reminded me of a Siberian peasant village and appeared incongruous in its surroundings. At once a comfortable feeling came over me, as if I was at home again. Surrounded by primitive nomads, whose social ideas I could not understand, I felt that the Siberian was my brother. That evening we had a pleasant and somewhat cosmopolitan gathering in the house of this wool trader, which,
