was paid to the Siberian merchants by the Mongols. Within the last five years, however, Mongolian raw material has come into greater demand on the Siberian markets, while the sale of Russian manufactures has suffered severely from Chinese competition. Silver, therefore, has begun to flow the reverse way—namely, from Siberia into Mongolia—in payment of the balance of Mongolian raw material in excess of the exported Russian manufactures. Russian firms have their agents in the Siberian frontier towns of Biisk, Minusinsk and Irkutsk. These agents despatch their previous season’s wool and skins by the first steamer after the ice on the Siberian rivers has melted to the markets of European Russia via the Siberian railway, and during May and June they set out in carts or with pack-horse caravans for Mongolia, where they remain all the summer trading with the Mongols. They bring with them consignments of Russian manufactured goods which they have bought from the wholesale firms, and lump silver which they have borrowed from the Siberian banks to enable them to carry out the next season's purchases. But the Siberian wool merchant, who formerly obtained Mongolian wool in exchange for tea and cotton manufactures, is now more and more forced to buy his wool for silver, and to see the Chinaman undersell his Russian manufactures at his very door. Thus on the Kemchik steppes of the Upper Yenisei plateau Siberian wool merchants, who formerly obtained wool and skins from the Mongols by giving them tea and cotton manufactures in exchange, now have to buy their wool from the Chinese traders, paying cash in lump silver. In Ulankhom, a trading station in North-West Mongolia, the Siberian wool
