regions and along the Mongolian frontier before the value of the black earth belt was known, were compelled to live for months and even years among the Finnish and Tartar tribes of those regions. After the establishment of the Cossacks in that country, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hostility between the two races dwindled, and the relation between Cossack and Siberian traders on the one hand, and native Finns and Tartars on the other, became one of forbearance, if not of cordiality. Being also of a nomadic nature the Cossack and the trader often adopted the habits and sometimes the clothing of the natives, while, on the other hand, the natives would often imitate Russian customs, and even in places show signs of giving up their nomadic life. Many of the Tartars, especially on the plateau steppes, even before the coming of the Russians, engaged in a rude agriculture and sowed rye and millet. The tendency to give up nomadic life and to settle was especially pronounced in the plateau steppes of the Altai, where the Russification of the Tartars has gradually and almost imperceptibly been at work for the last century. The policy of the Russians was everywhere one of peaceful penetration.
Russians, Tartars and Finns lived side by side for months; their children played together; Tartars often became Russian servants, living in the same house with their masters and eating the same meals. Not infrequently marriages took place between Russians and Altai Tartars, and occasionally, although not in response to any organized propaganda, a Tartar became Christian, or nominally Christian, and married a Russian girl.
But, as is the case with every subject race, there
