first heard definitely of the death of King Edward VII., two months after the event.
On another occasion, entering a hut at a wild spot at the source of the Yenesei, I found a fur trader and his family who seemed different from the other Siberian frontiersmen I had previously seen, although I could scarcely describe in what the difference consisted. On the table I saw a newspaper printed in a European language that I could not understand. The arrangement of everything in the room seemed different, and there were certain articles of food upon the table, such as cheese, that I never saw among the Siberians. After a few sentences of conversation in Russian I found that I was in the house, not of a Siberian at all, but of a Lett from the Baltic province. I tested him to see if he understood German, which I knew would be one of his mother tongues in his original home, but he had forgotten most of it, and only retained a knowledge of Lettish. We therefore fell back upon Russian as the best means of communication, although it was the mother tongue of neither of us. It turned out that this man and his family had left the Baltic province in early youth, whether for political or other reasons I did not learn. He had settled in a frontier village in the Yenisei Government among the Siberian peasants, and, being of an adventurous nature, he had decided to seek his fortune in the forests across the frontier. Once a year, indeed, he returned to Siberia, where he got news of the outer world, and an occasional paper from the Baltic province. I asked him if he intended to go back to his old home again. "No," he said; "I am happy here. I have all I want, and no one to interfere with me, but if I went back, I might be worse off." So he lived in this
