remote spot in the larch forest on the Mongolian frontier, separated by a hundred miles from the nearest Siberian village. The whole country was open to him. He could trade with the encampments of native Finns; he could fish in the river that flowed at his very door; he had an endless stretch of woodland meadow for his flocks to graze upon. Was he not better off than in a Baltic town, amidst "the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world"? Thanks to his hospitality, I spent two nights with him and his family. We sat down to meals of bread and cheese and I fancied myself back in Finland or Scandinavia. I observed with interest various little signs of the family's Lettish nationality. In some respects, however, they had been Russified by constant contact with the Siberians. Nor had they apparently suffered by it, for they had been influenced by some of the best types of humanity that the Russian Empire can produce.
On another occasion I came to a Siberian fur trader's house, the farthest outpost up that particular valley. Here lived a very fine type of Siberian, who had pushed farther than all his neighbours into these wild parts. He lived in a well-built house with a large cattle-yard and trading store. Inside were spacious, well-furnished rooms, with portraits of the Tsar and other celebrities and public men. All his belongings, which were of a kind to be a credit to anyone, wild as the spot was, had been brought up over some hundred miles of river and forest. At the meal which he hospitably set before me, I found him a genial and communicative companion. Moreover, his intelligence and culture were almost startling. He might have been an educated Moscow gentleman,
