SIAN
AND NOMAD

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RUSSIAN AND NOMAD

ZAKIR BEK, THE HUNTER

Russian and Nomad

TALES OF THE KIRGHIZ STEPPES

BY

E. NELSON FELL

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
DUFFIELD AND COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
DUFFIELD AND COMPANV

2*0 4 \~

i D

TO
Anne, the Baibsha,
Marian, 1 T,
.-. } THE KlZIMKAS,
Olivia, )
Nelson, the Baidan Bala,
who shared these adventures, this
book is dedicated, by the author.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction  jri
A Son of the Steppes  3
The Purchase of the Mine of the Assumption .... 25
Loans and Discounts  44
The Union of Unions  57
Father and Son  74
Easter Day  93
Simple Addition  104
A Copper Kettle  118
The Pavlodar Club  129
The Pominka  142
The Turquoise Lake  155
The Mannikin  170
A Hunt with Eagles  188

ILLUSTRATIONS
ZAKIR Bek, The HUNTER  -" Frontispiece
Kirghiz Tents at Kooyandy Fair  Facing t- 4
Moghila Sarum Sakti  " 8
Interior of Moghila  " 8
Kirghiz Moghilas, or Tombs  " 10
A Prehistoric Monument of Stone  " 10
A Moghila on the Hungry Steppes  " 12
The River Tchiderti in Summertime  " 16
A Kirghiz Aool or Village  " 16
Young America at the Door of His Kirghiz Tent " 18
Kirghiz Zimofkas, or Winter Quarters  " 18
Sultan Djingir  " 22
The Limitless Expanse of the Steppes  " 28
The Great Snow Camel of the North  " 32
A Rich Kirghiz with His Secretaries  " 46
Group of Girls at a Kirghiz Wedding  " 48
Kirghiz Working-women and Children  " 48
Some of Adam Bai's Friends  " 52
Lake Djessubai  " 68
A Russian Post-house  80
Kirghiz Horsemen  80
The Little Church on the Hill  " 100
Kirghiz Blast-furnace Men  I2°
A Large Zimofka in Early Winter  I2°
Kirghiz Carriers  I24
Ready to Haul Copper to Market  I26
Teamsters and Camels at the Weigh Scales ... " 126
Ferry Across the River Irtish at Pavlodar ... " 136

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Cossack Village of Bayan Aool  Facing p. 140
Ospan with His Children  " 144
A Yurta in the Making  " 148
A Finished Yurta  " 148
Gathering for the Start of the Race  " 150
Kirghiz Women Wrestling  " 150
Two Kirghiz  " 152
Moghd-as Near Lake Balkhash  " 160
Large Moghilas on the Arid Steppes  " 160
Tundus Bek Drinking Tea with His Companions . " 162
On the Shores of Lake Balkhash  " 166
Winter Travel on the Steppes  " 180
When the Road Is Bad, Horses Must Be Harnessed
Tandem  " 180
Tauk  " 190
The Mountains of Kisil Tav, or Red Rock ... " 194
Tauk and Her Brother  " 198
Young Malik with His Eagle  " 198

INTRODUCTION
THE scene of the tales which follow is laid in
the Kirghiz Steppes, part of the central Asiatic
plateau, which is the ultimate birthplace of all
our western modes of thought and culture and
religion. About fifty years ago this part of the world
came under the sway of the Russian Empire, and
an especial district was organized, comprising
three governments, known as the governments of
Akmolinsk (the white burial grounds), Semi-
palatinsk (the seven tents) and Semiretchinsk
(the seven rivers); the whole placed under the
supreme control of the "Governor-General of the
Steppes." Roughly, the region, which is covered
by the authority of this high official, is enclosed
within the following boundaries: on the north,
the Siberian Railway; on the east, the river
Irtish; on the south, the governments of the
Turkestans; on the west, the governments of
Orenburg and Turgai. xi

xii RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
As its title implies, the governmental system
is military in form, and its political organization
and its laws differ materially from those of the
regular civil governments, as normally organized
in the European division of the Empire.
From 1902 till 1908 the writer was directing the
operations of a London mining company, which,
in 1903, purchased some copper mines, coal mines
and smelting works in the centre of the Steppes,
near the headwaters of the river Ishim, two hun
dred miles or more north of Lake Balkhash.
With new capital the mines and works were
developed into an important and successful en
terprise, employing a small army of men; Kirghiz
carriers, miners and labourers; Russian mechanics,
engineers, superintendents, accountants. The num
ber of foreigners employed was very small and,
both by policy and inclination, we endeavoured to
work in close and sympathetic harmony with the
Russians themselves, and the Russian organized
system. In this way we came into close contact
with numerous and large classes of Russians with
whom the ordinary visitor is not usually familiar;
the Tchinovnik in his official capacity, the peas
ant, the Cossack, the mechanic, the engineer, to
gether with a small sprinkling of the "intelli
gentsia," that is, men with a university training.
The period of the writer's connection with the
works covered the period of the Russo-Japanese
War, simultaneously with which, possibly in con-

INTRODUCTION xiii
sequence of which, the whole internal organiza
tion of the Russian Empire was exposed to a
strain, which might almost be dignified by the
name of revolution.
Before the coming of the Russians this vast
stretch of country was inhabited, or more properly
speaking roamed over, by the largest branch of
the Kirghiz race, calling themselves Kazaks, of
Turkish - Mongolian origin. The word Kazak
means "a rider," and the Russians had already
adopted this word for their own group or or
ganization (which amounts almost to a caste, so
close it is) which we know under the name of
"Cossack"; so when they absorbed the Kirghiz
Kazaks into their body politic, in order to avoid
the confusion of terms, they abandoned the use
of the word Kazak, when referring to the native
race, and use, simply, the word "Kirghiz." The
natives have retained the word and never speak
of themselves otherwise than as "Kazaks," but, in
the following stories, the Russian style is adopted
and they are referred to exclusively as "Kirghiz."
Along the northern limits of the Kirghiz Steppes,
the Siberian Railway runs in an east and westerly
direction. Three towns mark the course of the
railway: at the northwest corner, the town of
Kourgan; in the centre, the city of Petropavlovsk
(where the railway crosses the river Ishim); at
the northeast corner, the city of Omsk, where the
railway crosses the river Irtish.

xiv RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Along the railway, the land is gently undulating
and is, agriculturally speaking, good land. It is
treeless, except for islands of birch trees, scattered
irregularly through it, some large, some small.
The timber itself is seldom large but diversifies
the landscape very agreeably. Whether seen in
the spring, with their delicate green leaves shiv
ering in the breeze, or in the winter, when the
snow is on the ground, with the silver bark and
the delicate tracery of the boughs shining in the
red light of the setting sun, the birch glades seem
to offer a home of enchantment, in which the
Dryads of one's fancy can appropriately dance
and play. And if you will wander through these
glades, you will find that your fancy is fact; and
you will see them madly revelling amid the flut
tering boughs and the rustling leaves and the
swirling snow.
Besides the Dryads, who had preempted this
district countless generations ago, there is prac
tically no settlement at all. If the post road and
the telegraph line did not beckon you forward,
you would think you had arrived at the end of
everything. But as your carriage follows the
slender thread, you are reassured by seeing, every
twenty or twenty-five versts, the Government
post house; a square four-room log house, built,
but well built, with an axe. It is surrounded
with a compound for the horses. On a board out
side is painted in black and white the imperial

INTRODUCTION xV
eagle, the name of the station, the distance in
versts from the preceding station and the distance
to the next.
Each post-house keeper is required to keep a
definite number of horses and to hire them to
travellers at fixed rates. He is also required to
furnish provisions at fixed prices, all of which are
extraordinarily low. As a matter of fact, the trav
eller, who is not a Tchinovnik (Government offi
cial), will usually find it advisable to offer about
double the official rate; even then he will not pay
an extravagant price. If he is not willing to be
so "imposed upon," he is likely to find his rate of
progress seriously impaired.
It is naturally to be supposed that the travel
ler's comfort and convenience largely depend
upon the amiability of the post-house keeper; and
as is quite natural, some are good and some are bad.
The student of human nature, especially if he be
a believer in the improvement of mankind through
material progress, will note with pained interest
that, as he recedes from the railway, the post
masters become increasingly amiable and oblig
ing; but that, as he approaches it, they become
more and more unaccommodating and surly.
On the whole the service is satisfactory and
efficient, and the traveller may feel grateful that
it is as good as it is, when conditions are consid
ered. Villages occur at rare intervals; some settled

xvi RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
by peasants, others by Cossacks; the two classes
are not mixed. The Cossack system of land tenure
is interwoven with the privileges and obligations
of their caste. These are passed down from father
to son. If a Cossack wishes, he can de-Cossack
himself, but this is not often done. They are
proud of their position and their caste.
The peasant is in a class by himself, rigidly
denned by law; once a peasant always a peasant.
He is one of a community of which the members
own their lands in common. Each man has the
use of a certain plot of land for a few years and he
then exchanges plots with someone else. It is a
deadening system from a good-farming point of
view. Under it, the land is doomed to inevitable
impoverishment ; and until the system is changed,
there seems to be little hope for the peasant, in
spite of the fatherly solicitude with which he is
treated by the Imperial Government.
The peasants are under the direct supervision
and control of a special officer who, in the Steppes,
goes by the title of Krestyansky Natchalnik
(peasant official).
The Cossacks are more nearly self-governing
and independent, and are proportionately better
developed and better off.
The farther south you go, the fewer villages
there are; meaning both Cossack stanitsas (the
term for the Cossack village organization) and
posiolqks (the term used for the village of the

INTRODUCTION xvii
peasant) . Before our company took possession of
the mines, there were none within a hundred and
fifty miles of our works. Six years later, the Gov
ernment had made provision for the settlement of
twenty-five or thirty thousand peasants in the
best river bottoms, in the neighbourhood of the
works. Villages were laid out and settled with
Little Russians from the congested districts of
southwest Russia, Poltava, Kharkov and Kief.
The Government carried them two thousand
versts for five dollars per head; gave them the
land, fifty dollars each in cash, timber for their
houses, agricultural machinery and seed wheat.
Our works were chosen as a centre point, for it
was hoped that the peasants would always be able
to find work there in case of need. Our mines were
the outpost of what the West, in its childish glee,
calls civilization. Beyond us, the nomad Kirghiz
held undisputed sway. Already the intrusion of
the Russian agriculturist into the region, which
the Kirghiz considered their own, was causing
the latter anxiety. Fortunately for them, they and
their flocks and herds can live where agricultural
man cannot. But it is hard for them to be ex
pelled from their favourite pasture grounds by the
new comers. It is the old conflict between the
free range and the farm.
Southward the general level of the land rises,
the hills become more numerous and there are
frequent rocky ridges which can almost be digni-

xviii RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
fied by the name of mountains. They look more
imposing than they are, for their outlines are
rugged and abrupt. This country has not ex
perienced the destructive erosion of ice and the
erosion by water is very slight, hence the outline
of the hills is jagged and sharp, like a piece of
broken glass.
The country is far too stern and unfriendly for
the charming Dryads of the birch forests, and there
is no timber; a low bush known as karagand, a
few stunted cedars and junipers; nothing more.
Slates, sandstones, conglomerates and lime
stones are the prevailing rocks, with occasional
islands of granite, some of them very large, cov
ering hundreds of square miles. The large granite
areas are covered with serviceable pine timber.
Though they are of the utmost importance on
this account, they are not large enough or fre
quent enough to affect the general description of
the Steppes as given above.
The Steppes are indifferently watered. The
rivers are few and seem easily discouraged. Many
of them run for some miles and then disappear.
Some man once sang (not having a very wide
area of observation) that streams "flow on for
ever." That is precisely what the Steppes streams
do not do. Sometimes they flow, sometimes they
don't. Most of them grow tired of their thirsty
journey through the hot sand, abandon the strug
gle, and die.

INTRODUCTION xix
Lakes are numerous, but often brackish and
sometimes very salt. Some are so salt that a mas
sive incrustation of brine is thrown up at the
water's edge. Each year, as this is carried off
for commercial purposes, the lake throws up an
other deposit. In certain places the salt is an im
portant industry. There are springs, but not
many, and the good ones are very rare, even the
best is only a small trickle, but it is cold and
clean and gushes from a rock and cannot be trod
den into mud by the cattle. When you have been
starving for days on brackish water and the sun
is burning hot, then you know the value of such a
spring. There is no beauty in such a country which can
be described, but there is a beauty which can be
felt, as I have tried to show in some of the stories
which follow. I have usually spoken of it as
"the desert," and though it is not the desert of
shifting sands that we all know, I think the word
describes it better than any other. Certainly it
describes fairly well that portion of the Steppes
which forms the frame for these stories; the land
farther south is even more arid and unproductive
and desert-like.
The climate is severe; extremely hot and dry
in the four months of summer, and extremely cold
and stormy in the seven months of winter. The
blizzards (Bouran) compare favourably with the
fancy variety which we have on the prairies of

xx RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
the North American continent. The thermometer
sinks to fifty-five or sixty below zero (Fahrenheit)
and it does not hesitate to do this while the
fiercest winds are blowing. Under these conditions
it is unwise to venture out of doors. Even the
Kirghiz suffer terribly if they are caught in such
a storm, and their faces show the ravages of the
furious icy winds, when they reach their haven.
But wild as the storms are, I have never seen one
which the camel, the great snow camel, cannot
face. The twelfth month of the year, the one month
of spring, is nearly sufficient in delight to com
pensate for the severe extremes of the other
eleven. The earth and sky reawake to such a
glory of life and colour as are unknown to the
dweller in more temperate climes. The song of the
thousand skylarks which rise before your carriage,
as you drive along in the early morning, chases
away all remembrance of the wintry chains which
have bound the earth so long.
Copper deposits are found over a wide area.
The number and extent of them is extraordinary.
The rich deposits have nearly all been worked to
a shallow depth by a race preceding the Kirghiz.
The ores are oxidized from the surface to a depth
of about seventy feet, and a zone of secondary
enrichment extends to three hundred feet. Some
of these deposits are of such size and richness that
it is possible that this district may some day be-

INTRODUCTION xxJ
come a factor in the world's copper production.
The deposits of low grade ore are innumerable
and of large size. Unfortunately the ores are very
siliceous, and for this and other reasons offer some
difficulties of treatment. On the other hand,
there are coal deposits of vast extent and they
are often found side by side with the copper mines.
The quality of the coal is not of the first class,
but is a good quality of the second class. An in
teresting botanical feature is observable in con
nection with the copper deposits. At a certain
time of the year a little pink flower appears in
blossom, wherever there are signs of copper and
nowhere else. Standing on a hill, these flowers
could be observed in patches and wherever they
were seen, copper signs were always found. I
regret to say that nature did not carry the phe
nomenon a step farther and tinge the flower with
a shade of pink corresponding with the contents
of copper in the ore. She always stops short of
making the solution of her problems too easy.
The copper deposits usually occur in the sedi
mentary rocks. In the granite areas, gold is
found and precious stones; such deposits are
usually irregular and precarious.
On the whole, life in the remote Steppes is not
too difficult, in spite of certain obvious drawbacks
and offers a charm which is all its own. Our
houses were built with massive stone walls and the
very efficient Russian stove kept them effectively

xxii RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
warm and required little attention. Life in the
cold prairies of the United States would be consid
erably simplified if our people were not the vic
tims of cast and sheet iron stoves, but would
adopt the Russian form of brick stove. With
abundance of coal, no one at our mines suffered
from cold, unless he were compelled to make a
long journey in the bitter winter weather. When
necessary, such journeys were a serious test of the
traveller's patience and endurance.
The Russian people received us cordially and
with great hospitality. We endeavoured to show
our appreciation of their attitude by learning their
language, and by attempting to enter into their
ways of life and thought with whole-heartedness.
We were repaid ten thousand fold. Their ami
ability is irresistible and their hearts are very
warm. The simplicity and naturalness of their
outlook upon life are refreshing, and reveal to you
in startling outline the conventionalism in which
you have been trained, and whose limitations you
have never realized before. When talking to
Russians you feel that this is a young race, and
that the world is opening before it like a flower;
you feel very much as you do when you are lis
tening to the nascent intelligence of a youth.
One of their most charming traits is an entire lack
of self -consciousness. The simplest peasant will
enter a room full of notables, and without hesi
tation, but with great dignity and self-respect,

INTRODUCTION xxiii
address his remarks to the chief. He stands erect,
he does not shift from foot to foot, his hands do
not seek his pockets, he is not thinking of himself.
Rank is insisted on, nowhere more insisted on,
than in Russia; but this is part of the machinery
of law and order; humanly, each man feels him
self on an equality with the next. You are Ivan
Ivanovitch (John, the son of John) to the com
monest workman and to your personal friend and
to the governor-general, all alike, and so are they
to you.
The women are a thing apart from the men;
at table they prefer to sit together at one end, and
the men at the other. There is not much sus
tained conversation at the women's end, but the
man's end is a continual stream of talk. The
woman's function is primarily to be the mother
of the children, and secondarily, to care for the
house; chiefly the kitchen; the rest of the house
does not receive much care. The raising of chil
dren is, however, an art not well understood by
the ordinary Russian woman. I was once talking
to the mother of four living children, the youngest
was a mere baby, the eldest was in the hospital
seriously ill with fever. I asked her how the
child was.
"Oh! very ill," she said.
"I hope not so seriously as you seem to think,"
I said. "Oh, yes; she will surely die," she went on.

xxiv RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
"Oh, do not be so discouraged, why do you say
that?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know; I am sure she will die; I
never can keep more than three alive at one time."
"Pree Bogoo jiviom" (we live in the sight of
God) ; what is destined, will be.
A very large proportion of the Russians at the
works had come from Little Russia and I have no
doubt that the life, as I saw it, was tinged with
the colour of Little Russian manners and customs.
The dancing, the music, the gaiety, the expan-
siveness were decidedly Little Russian in char
acter. The few Great Russians who were at the
works sometimes told me with regret that we were
only meeting one half of the Russian people, and
wished that their brethren from Great Russia
were better represented. When considering the
dwellers of an enormous territory like the Russian
Empire it is necessary to remember that the
people in different sections are likely to vary
markedly in racial character.
Of the other race, the Kirghiz, the real Steppe
dwellers, it is difficult to write with as sure a touch
as of the Russians. Language, racial traits, re
ligion and immemorial customs stand between you
and them. Moreover, although we came into very
close relations with thousands of them at the
works, we realized that they only partially repre
sented the sentiment of the real Kirghiz. Our
labouring class was not, by any means, the aris-

INTRODUCTION xxv
tocracy of the race; that was out on the Steppes
watching the flocks by day and night. Still, we
lived with them for six years, as employers of the
proletariat and as hosts and guests of the aris
tocracy; and some at least of our impressions
should be worthy of record.
" In the summer they lead a life of enchantment,
for a few months of which most of us would barter
our whole lives ; in the winter they fly to the other
extreme and lead a semi-underground existence of
such physical discomfort, or even hardship, com
bined with odours of such nauseating quality,
that you feel that the endurance of such condi
tions for twenty-four hours is impossible. The
subterranean hovel contains one room, with one
tiny window tightly sealed; the entry is through
a large closed stable yard, full of horses, camels,
goats and sheep. The yard itself is tightly covered
in and closed on all sides and the only air the room
receives is from this yard, through the rarely
opened door. The building has a floor of dirt and
walls of mud and has never been cleaned since it
was built. The room is full of the acrid smoke of
burning dung. Only a few rays of dull light pass
through the single pane of window glass. Unless
you had done it yourself, you would be prepared
to deny that you could possibly eat food prepared
under such conditions. There is not a single rule
or principle of ventilation, heat, cold, cleanliness,
sunlight or nutrition, which is not broken sixty

xxvi RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
times in every hour of every day of the seven
months in each year, by the Kirghiz^ And yet the
men are scrupulously clean about their persons,
and if you are with them at night you will see them
take off their sodden and worn outer, coverings,
and taking off layer after layer, they will gradu
ally emerge in a spotless silk undergarment of a
voluminous pyjama variety, and their skin is as
fresh as the silk itself. At all times their personal
habits are delightful; they do not drink or smoke
or chew or spit; they would rather starve than
eat their food, filthy as it may be, without first
washing their hands. It is impossible for them to
enter a tent or a house without removing their
outer boots, inside of which they wear another
pair of boots to the knee, but made of their soft
gaily coloured and embroidered leather. This
same habit of removing the outer shoes also be
longs to the Russians, who have learned many of
their customs from the Oriental races, with whom
they are in such close contact. Anyone who has ever
acquired this habit in the East is shocked when he
returns to the West and sees again the spectacle
of persons walking into a house, with all the dirt
and refuse of the street clinging to their boots.
If the Kirghiz has learnt his delightful personal
habits from the teachings of Mahommed, I can
only regret that our western religions have over
looked these details.
The youth of property is married, when still

INTRODUCTION xxvii
young, to a girl older than himself, who is sup
posed to instruct him in the ways which he should
follow; ten years later, when the youth is in his
prime and the girl is already mature, he takes a
second young wife, and the first wife takes the
position of dowager. But she continues to occupy
the principal post of honour in the tent and the
young wife is subordinate. They rarely have more
than two wives. They must be bought and paid
for with horses or stock, and few can afford even
two. If a man dies, his brother must marry his
widow and adopt his children. Under this rule,
the existence of widows and orphans is impossible.
One of our coal tenders was a lad of sixteen, who
had acquired a wife and four children under such
circumstances; he groaned under the load but had
to make the best of it. On the whole their social
system seems to work well and does not lead to
such frequent scandals as ours.
These stories are written in grateful memory of
the pleasant years spent with these two races;
each in its way so genial, so hospitable, so willing to
give the best of itself whole-heartedly to the strang
er ; and in the hope that the reader may be induced
to share the writer's affection for the great Russian
people, which is now, for the first time, beginning
to take its place in the family of westerly nations.
"The Turquoise Lake," and also "The Eagle's
Song" which follows "A Hunt with Eagles" were
written by my daughter Marian, one of the "Ki-
zimkas."

RUSSIAN AND NOMAD

RUSSIAN AND NOMAD

A SON OF THE STEPPES
"In the distance between two hills, lies
the child of a hare;
Do not despise, do not scorn all the
children of the Kirghiz." — Kirghiz Poem.
WE met him first at Bayan Aool on our way
from Kooyandy Fair. The Russian annual
Yarmarka or fair is a very venerable institution, and
owes its existence to the times when railways and
telegraphs and mails were not known. Different
fairs have acquired special reputations. Of course,
the fair at Nijni Novgorod (the " Lower Newtown "
to distinguish it from the old "Newtown" near
Petersburg) has always been the most celebrated
of all, and was and is the great meeting place where
the West meets the East, and trades and drinks
tea and establishes unbelievably long credits;
and at Nijni everything is sold from a camel to a
mowing machine. Some towns have fairs every
six months. The little town of Irbit, in north
western Siberia, is a dead village during eleven
3

4 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
months of the year, but, during the twelfth, it is
packed with a miscellaneous population indus
triously engaged in buying and selling furs. It
is the great market from which practically the
entire fur crop of Siberia is distributed. On the
one side are the hunters and trappers and small
merchants, and on the other side the city men,
largely Jews, of Moscow, Petersburg and Leipzig,
one selling, the other buying.
The specialty at Kooyandy is live stock: cattle,
sheep and horses, especially horses. Kooyandy
lies on the margin of a large lake, whose shores are
encrusted with brine thrown up by the waves. It is
in the centre of a barren undulating plain, on the
post road between Bayan Aool and Karkaralinsk,
three or four hundred miles south of Omsk, a
large town where the Siberian Railway crosses the
river Irtish. On the north and south, respectively,
the great granite ranges of Bayan Aool and Kar
karalinsk enclose the picture with jagged blue lines.
If you pass through Kooyandy at ordinary times
of the year, you see a few large buildings, on
which are painted the names of merchants and
banks which have a familiar air; but all is de
serted, the buildings closed, not a soul stirs. It
looks as if it were dead and buried beyond hope.
But come back again in the summer and you will
be ready to confess that there are ways of doing
things, which you have never dreamed of. For,
once every year this square mile of desert blossoms
into life, such an active, surging, mooing, bleating,

KIRGHIZ TENTS AT KOOYANDY FAIR
Once a year the Governor-General puts up his snow-white tent

A SON OF THE STEPPES 5
neighing life as has never entered your mind. For
months before the Fair month, its influence has
been felt for a thousand miles around; Sarts
and Kirghiz have been gathering their herds
and flocks in the South for their lonely journey
across the "Hungry Steppes," a great barrier
of salt and alkaline desert where no water is,
and where there is no food or drink for man
or beast. At the appointed time they all gather
together at Kooyandy. The Imperial Bank opens
its doors, the great merchants of Pavlodar and
Semipalatinsk and Omsk fill their stores with
every kind of ware; the Governor General of
the Steppes puts up his huge snow-white Kirghiz
tent or Yurta, and comes down from Omsk with his
suite and holds high court with his special corps
of magistrates and police. The empty desert has
suddenly blossomed into a full-blown town.
On our way to the fair we passed through
Bayan Aool, a Cossack village, lying at the foot
of a massive range of granite. These Cossack
villages are all alike. The houses are built of logs,
neatly put together and carefully chinked with
mortar, the window frames usually decorated with
ornamental scroll work painted white; the roofs
are of iron painted green. Each house is within
its own compound. The church stands on a hill
on the highest ground in the town, always snowy
white, with several domes shaped like onions,
usually green but sometimes blue, sometimes
dotted with golden stars; on the principal dome

6 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
stands the cross. The town is encircled with a
cordon of wind-mills where the staple food of the
villagers is ground. The Russian has a positive
passion for growing wheat, and no wonder; for
the happiness of their lives for the next year de
pends upon the success of the harvest. Whole
wheat bread, milk, tea and fish form the diet on
which they live; if the wheat crop fails the vil
lage is plunged in misery during the following
year; for money is very scarce and it costs money
to bring in wheat from the outside. Besides,
money is needed for vodka.
The weather had been bad for some time, the
roads through the mountains were almost impas
sable and we were glad to stop for the night at the
house of our Cossack friend Ivan Feodorovitch
Razmuzzin. The huge wooden door of the com
pound creaked and our tired horses were as glad
as we were — to drop for a few hours the struggle
with the awful roads. When you are tired, a good
Cossack house is about as pleasant a place to come
to as you can wish. The whole house is spotlessly
clean, one room is always reserved for guests;
the bed is a four-poster, covered with snow-white
linen; the windows are full of exotic plants,
oleanders, plumbago and geraniums; the walls
are covered with framed prints which are of two
kinds, one being pictures of the Russo-Japanese
war of a most bloody cast, and the other being
scenes from the lives of the Saints, Nicolai, Sergei

A SON OF THE STEPPES 7
and others; in the corner opposite the door, as
you come in, is the ikon before which, if it is a
holiday, a small hanging lamp is burning.
The next morning, rain was still falling and the
streets were full of travellers to and from the fair.
The black mud was thicker than ever. Our road
ran down to a small stream and into it we plunged
— and stuck. The drivers yelled and lashed the
horses, the horses plunged and reared and fell down
and did everything except move the heavy car
riage. It looked quite hopeless. Then another
carriage drove up and the drivers took out two
of their horses and, with wonderful contrivances
of camel's-hair rope and rawhide, tied their horses
one to the end of each of our shafts and, jumping
on their backs, urged them forward. So now we
had five plunging horses struggling in the mud
and water; still the carriage refused to budge.
Then four well-mounted Kirghiz rode up and went
through a manoeuvre of an original kind. They
were riding beautiful horses with long tails almost
sweeping the ground. Two came on each side of
our carriage, one at each axle (which in the Rus
sian carriage has a hook at the end of it). They
leaned over their horses and tied, each one the
tail of his horse, to the axle, and then all the
nine horses were urged by very loud noise and much
whipping and spurring, to do their best. For a
few minutes it was a wild scene of splashing,
plunging horses. Every minute I expected to

8 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
see the tail pulled out of some poor horse, but,
somehow they all held fast, the carriage creaked
and moved and we were safely landed on the
opposite bank. The horsemen unknotted their
horses' tails and the leader said, "I am the Vol-
ostnoi Oopravitel (magistrate) of Kisil Kool, my
name is Aboobakir Koorman, kaida bourassin?"
(where are you going?) So our friendship began,
and before we parted we became fast friends and
we promised to go and spend some days with him
at his tent village or Aool, on the shores of Lake
Djusali. So, one fine spring morning, we started in our
Korobok or basket (literally, a large basket car
ried on boards, buckboard fashion, between the
wheels) drawn by our three beautiful piebalds, and
left the road for the open Steppe.
The beauty of the Steppes is a beauty which
fills the heart and masters the mind. The appeal
is not made to the eye and the senses. There are
no charming nooks and valleys, no mighty moun
tain peaks with forest-clad foot-hills and ice-capped
summits, no sheltered lakes, no tamed charm of
valley which man has fenced in and turned into
a little corner of Paradise. It is true that there
is a beauty of detail; acres of anemones which
burst into blossom in the spring, wild roses
which cover the hillsides a little later, and es
pecially the wonderful colours in which the
whole atmosphere seems bathed; but the real

INTERIOR OF MOGHILA

MOGHILA SARUM SAKTI
The tomb of the yellow reeds

A SON OF THE STEPPES 9
beauty is the limitless expanse which little by
little feeds the mind with a sense of universal
harmony. This is the oldest country in the world, the
country which has been the longest settled by
civilized man. Yet man has here left only the
most shadowy traces of himself — and the men
who are living here now are leaving still less for
the future. If civilization means the desire of
man to leave a record of himself for posterity, the
desire to leave such an inheritance of knowledge
that his children will advance farther than he has
gone, the desire of man to lift himself out of and
distinguish himself from the rest of nature, the
desire of knowledge of good and evil, then the
native inhabitants of the Kirghiz Steppes cannot
be considered civilized ; but if civilization means a
kindly heart, a power of self-restraint carried to
the last degree, a sense of the dignity of man as
superior to but not set apart from the rest of
creation, a devout understanding of nature lead
ing to and culminating in one God, then we must
concede to them a very high conception of the
problems which we are all trying to solve. They
belong to the rocks and the plains and the rolling
hills just as do the flowers and birds and the herds.
In the winter they bury themselves like cocoons,
under the ground; with the first warmth of the
spring sun they break their shells and emerge in
their brightly coloured fluttering clothes and flit

io RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
to and fro like butterflies over the Steppes, resting
now at this spring and now at that. When they
reach a valley where the ground is moist, and
fertile, they pitch their tents and stay till the grass
is eaten down, and then flit a few miles further.
When they leave a camping ground they leave no
sign behind them; no ugly refuse, no empty cans
and broken litter. So they, and the races which
have preceded them, have done for centuries,
and the earth shows no more sign of their passage
than of the flights of birds. They have no interest
in the past, no traditions; their memories do not
extend beyond their fathers' time. They refer
vaguely to their predecessors as Kalmucks, but
the reference is so undefined that it is of no value
whatever. There are few, very few, traces left of
the race which inhabited this country before the
Kirghiz. The most impressive remains of human
activity are the old workings of the copper mines.
These are undoubtedly exceedingly ancient and
are referred by some to an age before iron was
known. Large stones also are found, about six
feet long and about twelve by eighteen inches
square. They are usually of granite, and one side
is ornamented with outline carvings of a human
face and other marks, the whole nearly obliterated
by time. In one place we saw a large number of
them standing in the ground upright. The whole
had the appearance of a cemetery, but we had no
opportunity for investigation. These also are

A PREHISTORIC MONUMENT OF STONE

KIRGHIZ MOGHILAS, OR TOMBS
For the poor man, simple walls

A SON OF THE STEPPES n
obviously ante-Kirghiz; no Kirghiz ever wasted
his time carving stone.
Another evidence of ancient human endeavour
were two parallel walls buried in the ground.
These could be traced in an absolutely straight
line for two or three hundred yards. They sug
gested an aqueduct; but whatever it might have
been, it was certainly not made by the Kirghiz.
The only monuments which the Kirghiz are
leaving are their moghilas or tombs. Philosophers,
detached philosophers, as they are, they share with
the rest of humanity the reluctance to be snuffed
out, body and soul, by death, and to leave noth
ing behind by which they will be remembered by
their heirs. So that, while thousands must die
and leave no trace behind them, still, some try to
keep their memories green by building moghilas.
For the poor man, simple walls enclosing a few
feet of the desert; for the well-to-do, a covered
structure, shaped like a hen's egg cut in two, with
a small opening on one side; for the rich man, a
structure displaying a considerable sense of the art
of architectural proportions and symmetry ; having
usually a square base with a round dome rising
from the centre, ornamented with crenelations,
little towers and openwork lattice, as elaborate
as the crumbling character of the material will
allow. For, alas! the material is only the sun-
dried clay brick, bound together with a little
straw and mud, doomed to a quick decay. To

12 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
work with his hands is hateful to a Kirghiz and
he refuses to build even an ancestral tomb with
anything less pliable than mud. One tomb which
we saw, made of clay puddled with mare's milk,
betrayed a pitiful effort of the builder to increase
its durability without increasing his own work.
Once built and finished, they receive no further
care, no repair, no cleaning, and I surmise that,
if the dead Kirghiz' soul depends for its safety
upon the prayers of the survivors, it is in a haz
ardous position.
To an "intelligent traveller," the really note
worthy feature of the work on these tombs is
that it is carried out in precisely the form and
method of construction of two thousand years
ago. One form of brick ornamentation is par
ticularly noticeable, because it is everywhere
found in the work of people who came under the
influence of the Greeks at the time of the expedi
tions of Alexander of Macedonia. If the "in
telligent traveller" has been wandering for days
over the Steppes without seeing a living being
and suddenly comes across one of these domed and
turreted tombs, with the handwriting of Alexander
on the walls, he experiences a sensation that he
never felt on Broadway or Piccadilly or anywhere
else on this planet. From the marriage of Greek
and Semitic thought, which met in these Steppes
two thousand or more years ago, has been trans
mitted to him the whole sum of all that he knows.

i

P:i? - r.

WfaMW

I

fei««igiw.

A MOGHILA ON THE HUNGRY STEPPES
Built, alas, of sun-dried brick!

A SON OF THE STEPPES 13
Anyhow the present Kirghiz know nothing
about mines or stone monuments and are not in
the least interested in them. They are the chil
dren of the Steppes, living and dying in them,
as the animals do, leaving no enduring trace or
vestige behind them.
If you come from the western world where man
has grown to consider himself as set apart from the
rest of nature, where he wages an eternal war
against her, where he tries to wrest her secrets
from her by force, where he spends his time in what
he calls the struggle for existence ; if you come from
the struggle of such a world, and stand on the
borders of this vast expanse, and gaze across its
unsoiled surface, you feel a conception of the har
mony of nature which first confuses and then
overwhelms you, and you are ready to bow your
head and acknowledge that, in the smoke and
confusion of the turmoil which you left behind,
there were many things hidden from you and
many things which, had you seen, you could not
have understood.
One early morning we were driving along a
broad valley. Dawn was breaking, the sky was
tinged with yellow toward the east; the sky
larks were rising to meet the sun. We saw a
solitary horseman riding two or three miles ahead
of us. He was climbing the slopes of the highest
hill and he reached the top as the first rays of the
sun appeared. He had ridden to the top of the

14 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
hill to meet his truest friend, and when he ap
peared above the horizon and filled the earth
with a golden light, the solitary figure got down
from his horse and prostrated himself many times
to the ground in adoration. For several minutes
he stood there, gazing at infinity, then mounted
his horse and rode away. I cannot tell what his
thoughts were, but I know that our thoughts told
us that there were in this world a great many
things of which we had never thought before and
of which our civilization had told us nothing.
Truly the majesty of nature, when man is in
harmony with her and not striving to master
her, has a breadth and depth, which seizes and
dominates the soul. Amid such surroundings was
monotheism born and I never saw the Kirghiz
and watched them at their simple daily life with
out thinking that to them and to their forebears,
wandering in their eternal solitudes, with the cur
tain of the stars their only shelter by night, we
owed the germs of thought which grew into a
conception of one and only one God and brought
the rest of the world into one harmonious whole
with nature.
We had about seventy miles to travel to reach
Lake Djusali. Spring time on the Steppes is a
wonder of delight; nature seems in such a hurry to
be sure and lose none of the precious moments of
the short summer. Our road led us through Tasty
Adir, an old Kalmuck mine, where we had recently

A SON OF THE STEPPES 15
done some work. It lay in a basin, carpeted with
green grass and flowers, surrounded by hills. We
entered the basin through a rocky defile and
stopped for a while at the hut of the Kirghiz
Akin whom we had sent there in the previous
autumn, as watchman. Seven months ago he
had left the works with his wife and child and
with his winter supplies: three barrels of flour, two
pounds of tea, three pounds of sugar, two gallons
of kerosene and four boxes of matches and his
cow. He was at his post when we drove up and
he looked upon our arrival as the act of God, for
his provisions were running rather low. By whom,
and when, these old mines were worked we do
not know. Whoever they were, they worked the
rich surface deposits by large open cuts which they
filled behind them as they worked, so that it re
quires a practised eye to detect the workings at
all. We arrived at Lake Asoomal Kool in the eve
ning, one of the red lakes occasionally seen in the
Steppes, with water of a vivid dark brick-red
colour, and our Russian driver was much averse
to going farther, said the horses were tired and
that he could not find his way in the dark. But
we told him that there was a full moon that night
and insisted upon his going on. In due course
the moon arose and we explained to him what a
valuable asset real knowledge was and if he had
a little more, etc. He drove sulkily on. We dozed

16 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
in our basket. We soon heard his voice calling
and woke up. The night was clear, the stars
were sparkling, but it was dark.
"Where is your moon, Barin?" he asked, "I
cannot see the road."
It was a fact, the moon had disappeared: it
was a total eclipse. My reputation with that
driver was gone forever. We had to stop where
we were without food or water. Of course, it was
sheer hard luck and such a combination might
not arise again for a thousand years, but my lec
ture on the usefulness of knowledge fell very flat.
Next morning we drove into the Aool of our
friend Koorman; a camp of a dozen or more felt
tents, into the whitest of which we were escorted.
The great skin of koomiss was brought in, a huge
skin, three feet in diameter, with a narrow neck.
It was churned to a foam with a wooden dasher and
served in large painted bowls ; the skin is rawhide
with the hair side inside, a considerable portion of
which is served with the koomiss. You must not
be fussy when you are living with the Kirghiz
and you must abandon all preconceived ideas of
germs and bacilli; for the skin is never emptied
but always replenished with fresh milk, which of
course becomes immediately sour. During my
six years' stay in the Steppes, I never dared to
look inside one of their koomiss skins. Koomiss
itself, when it is good and fairly clean, is not
unpleasant, and as it contains about three per cent

THE RIVER TCHIDERTI IN SUMMERTIME
In the soft ground accidents often happen

A KIRGHIZ AOOL, OR VILLAGE

A SON OF THE STEPPES 17
of alcohol it is quite exhilarating; but indifferent
koomiss is so bad that, even at this distance of
time and space, its memory is unendurable. In
appearance it reminded me of a dish we used to
have as children which we called "floating island,"
but if our watchful mothers could have seen the
islands floating on the koomiss, which we were
condemned to consume, they would have de
spaired of our lives.
Somehow the Kirghiz live on it and thrive on
it and sweet milk is an abomination to them;
they do not consider it fit for human food; it is
absolutely forbidden to them by their religion,
a much easier milk standard to live up to than
ours. What they can do with sour milk is sur
prising. It appears in numerous different forms,
solid and liquid, and with boiled meat forms their
unvarying food; healthy enough they seem, with
exceptionally fine teeth — even the old men and
women have perfect ivory semicircles.
After koomiss came the samovar and tea. The
samovar is heated with burning dung, and the
acrid smell of the smoke combined with the sour
milk and rattcid cheese is a combination which
immediately surfeits all your senses at once.
Then came the crowning act of hospitality,
what we should call "ordering the dinner." The
host's men led up to the door of the tent a beau
tiful piebald two-year-old horse, the greatest com
pliment they can pay to guests of distinction,

1 8 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
and then and there at the door of the tent, it was
slaughtered and carried away to the tent where
the cooking is done. At this point the entertain
ment had reached a gastronomical climax which I
found very difficult to endure. Koorman broke
the silence through the interpreter, who spoke in
Russian. "The Bai (this is a Kirghiz word for
lord or master) is a very rich man, he builds great
smelting-works and railways and employs thou
sands of men; he is welcome to our Aool ; although
we have very little, he is very welcome here;
everything we have is at his service."
I did not disturb his ideas of my individual
wealth, but murmured some suitable reply. In
any case, pretty speeches sadly lose their effect
when reproduced by an interpreter; I have often
spent hours preparing suitable speeches in Rus
sian, only to have my Russo-Kirghiz interpreter
reduce them to half a dozen words, which meant
nothing. "The Bai is so rich, that, what we have, must
seem very small to him; but he has seen our
herds, does he think our horses beautiful?"
I replied that we admired his horses very much
and that, although they were not so large as ours,
their conformation was very fine.
"I have a thousand horses," continued Koor
man, "how many has the Bai?"
I stammered that I owned five. This informa
tion produced a most depressing effect.

YOUNG AMERICA AT THE DOOR OF HIS KIRGHIZ TENT

KIRGHIZ ZIMOFKAS, OR WINTER QUARTERS

A SON OF THE STEPPES 19
"The Bai is so rich," he said, "and yet only
owns five horses. I do not understand it; Sultan
Djingir has four thousand horses, Sultan Djuma-
bek has two thousand and Adam Bai is said to
have three thousand, and you say that you have
only five! How many sheep does the Bai own?"
"I regret to say that I own no sheep," I replied.
"Ah! Probably the Bai owns large herds of
cattle?" "I have two cows," I said.
The conversation was assuming a most unfortu
nate turn and I felt I was losing ground every
minute. Something desperate had to be done.
I remembered that I had in my pocket a coloured
photograph of the Poinciana Hotel at Palm Beach
which I had lately received from a friend in Florida.
"It is true, my friend," I said, "that I do not
own any cattle or sheep or horses, but see the
house in which I live when I am in my own coun
try," and I showed them the brightly coloured
print. The effect was magical. The card was
passed from hand to hand with every expression
of amazement and delight; my stock bounded
upward and never, after that, fell below par. May
I be forgiven for my deception!
I had now regained my courage and again at
tacked the horse question with confidence.
"Horses in our country are very expensive,"
I said. Koorman's interest was instantly aroused.

2o RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
"How much does a good horse sell for in your
country?" I thought of the sale of Ormond for one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars and replied:
"A good horse fetches two hundred and forty
thousand roubles."
"That sounds incredible," said Koorman, "it
is impossible to pay such a sum for a horse which
twenty or thirty men will consume in a day."
I dropped the subject for I knew he could not
quickly grasp such a novel and absurd view of
the horse, the subject which he really knew from
top to bottom. To the Kirghiz the horse is the
best of all animals; it is the most easily wintered,
the mares give the best milk and are never ridden
or worked, the horses furnish the finest meats
and are their faithful servants for moving their
camps, for watching their flocks, for herding their
cattle. . It is impossible to conceive of life on the
Steppes without the horse. Noticing that Koor
man wore a green cap, I next asked him about his
pilgrimage to Mecca. If the Kirghiz has any ob
ject in life except life itself, it is to visit the shrine
of the prophet at Mecca. Only the wealthy are
able to attain it and the returning pilgrim is
stamped with the seal of spiritual and worldly
success. "We first went," Koorman related, "by rail
as far as we could, and then embarked in a large
boat on a lake which entirely surrounds the island

A SON OF THE STEPPES 21
on which Mecca, stands; and this lake is filled
with the most horrible stinking water, which
causes you and your fellow pilgrims to vomit
in the most frightful manner, and I shall never go
to Mecca again on account of the stinking water
of the lake which surrounds it."
It was apparent that his ideas of oceans and
geography in general were fairly vague and that
subject, also, I abandoned.
I then asked him about the education of his
children and how he managed to have them taught.
"I have my own schoolmaster," he replied,
"and he teaches my children and other children
who care to be taught; let us go and see him at
work." We went into another tent whence a Babel of
chattering voices proceeded. Entering, we found
about a dozen children sitting in a row, the
teacher standing before them. Each child was
holding before him a fragment of what once had
apparently been a book, printed in Arabic and
bound in paper boards ; or perhaps the remains of
several books. One child had one side of a cover,
another had the other side, a third had one frag
ment of the printed pages, a fourth had a different
page; all were apparently reading as fast as pos
sible and in the shrillest possible tones. As we
entered, the teacher called forsilence and we asked
him some questions about his pupils. He told us
that they were now studying the Koran, that

22 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
they never studied anything else and that they
studied in this way for several hours daily. He
gave the signal and instantly every child began
to shout at the top of his voice, apparently read
ing from the pasteboard cover in his hands. The
marvel is that reading and writing can survive
at all under such a system. It must be said that
the survival is very limited.
As we went back to our tent the sun was low
and the flocks and herds were coming in from the
pasture. For handling stock the Kirghiz need no
teacher, they and the animals are one, the horses
are reared as colts with the babies in the tents,
so are the weak kids and lambs ; no force is ever
used ; just patience. It would be impossible to imag
ine two methods of accomplishing the same end
more different in character, than that of the Kirghiz
in the East, and the American cowboy in the West.
No whirling lariats, no bucking horses, no violence
of voice or action. What would the western
plainsman think if he could see a steer saddled
and a man sitting thereon, herding his horses!
By the full moon we wandered through the
acres of animals which had carefully sorted them
selves and were resting for the night. Everything
was still. The effect of the extraordinary still
ness, where there was so much possibility of mo
tion and noise, was overpowering. The whole
world seemed to be at rest and at peace.
But we had our gastronomical duties to finish

SULTAN DJINGIR
The owner of four thousand horses

A SON OF THE STEPPES 23
and, as soon as we came back to our tent, our
host and his sons and the bard and the chief men
of the Aool came in and the huge steaming platter
was brought in. It was entirely anatomical; you
recognized every portion sprawling in its boiled
helplessness; every internal organ was there com
plete and, from the centre, the two lustreless eyes
gazed upon you with reproachful stare. I knew
that the taper fingers of our hospitable host would
soon convey these hideous morsels to my mouth.
It was too much for me; I fled. What they
thought of me I do not know. My western or
ganization could not stand the strain.
In the evening the bard came in and, sitting
on the ground, twanged his wooden dombra and
filled the air with piercing wails, extolling the vir
tue and bewailing the weakness of human nature.
It was very much like hearing the Proverbs of
Solomon or the Psalms of David; but if David
used his harp as our bard played on his dombra,
Saul is to be excused for attempting to slay him
with his javelin.
Unfortunately, it was not the season for hunting
and the great eagles sat idly on their perches, with
their heads hooded, waiting for the winter when
they would be turned loose on the foxes and wolves
and bighorn sheep.
So the days passed and we harnessed up the
piebalds and prepared to leave. Koorman was
also packing up his tents and moving to the next

24 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
pasture. The operation was carried out with the
most incredible speed. In the morning there was
a village with all the necessary equipment for a
hundred or more souls and in three hours it was
all on the backs of camels and moving away.
Where they had been living for a month there
was not a sign of their occupancy left; no scraps,
no half -burnt fires, no litter; nothing. What a
simple thing is life when there are no wants ex
cept the bare necessities.
"Kosh," they cried as we moved away, many
of them riding a few miles with us to see us safely
on our road.
Whatever else our visit accomplished it estab
lished our position forever as the trusted friends
of the Kirghiz, and this was worth all the trouble
that it cost us. And if we could not succeed in
teaching them that the world is round, they suc
ceeded in teaching us that a people can be happy
and can lead a life of dignity and graceful gentle
ness, amidst a simplicity of surroundings such as
we had never before imgained to be possible, and
we began to realize how ridiculously complicated
are the conditions which we have laboriously
built up for and around ourselves.

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE
OF THE ASSUMPTION.
THE task was assigned to me of closing the
deal for the mines, and I met the Russian
lawyers at Tcheliabinsk, which is an important
railway point on the Siberian Railway, about six
hours east of the summit of the Ural Mountains,
geographically in Siberia, but administratively in
Russia. It was in June, 1904, while the Japanese
war was in progress, and the station and railway
packed with officers and soldiers, and a motley
crowd of travellers, Tartars and peasants. We
there left the bustle and confusion of the main
line and started on a branch railway, for the
mining town of Yekaterinburg.
The Siberian Railway is operated with a con
siderable amount of precision and dash, but our
line was a survival of ancient days and the train
proceeded with the utmost deliberation. We left
behind us the electrically lighted train with its
charming "Wagon Restaurant" where the most
delicious five-course dinners are served for fifty
cents, and made ourselves as comfortable as we
could in our dreary compartment, lighted with a
25

26 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
single candle. Twelve weary hours of visible dark
ness were passed in this fashion. When the train
finally pulled into the station of Yekaterinburg
there was the usual crowd of vociferating zvost-
chiks and we selected the smartest looking one we
could see. The town had a pleasant look and we
were glad to be out again in the sunshine. We
rattled gaily over the cobblestones. Suddenly the
carriage gave a lurch and came to a sudden stop;
I was thrown out and began to think of abusive
terms in Russian but was hopelessly outpaced by
the lawyer.
"Thou ultimate past master of devildom, why
dost thou travel in that fashion!"
"Oh master, kind master, dost thou not see my
little wheel? See yonder how fast it goes," mur
mured the driver.
And truly it was a fact, one of the front wheels
had come off and was bowling down the street until
it fell on its side in the gutter.
" Confound you and your little wheel! Call an
other carriage for us!"
"Oh, but master, I will quickly fetch my little
wheel and in a few minutes . . . you will see."
And in a few minutes with the aid of much
string and the invocation of many devils we were
safely landed at the hotel.
Yekaterinburg is an interesting old town, cre
ated and still enduring by reason of the large
mines which have been opened in its neighbour-

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 27
hood, on the eastern flanks of the Ural Mountains.
Gold, platinum, copper and iron have been mined
and manufactured in the neighbourhood for cen
turies. To these mines the family of Demidov
now owes its wealth and princely rank, originating
with old Nikita Demidov, who gained the favour
of Peter the Great by his skill in the blacksmith's
art. A mining town always has a flavour of its
own and Yekaterinburg is full of old families
which form a sort of aristocracy of wealth and
tradition. Of such a type was the family which
now owned the mine of the Assumption, for the
purchase of which we had come to the town. The
grandfather, Ivan, had been a sturdy pioneer and
had laid the foundations of the family fortunes;
the father, Dmitrii, had come into possession of
the mine of the Assumption through his old friend
Yegorov. Yegorov had been for years a prisoner
in the hands of the Kirghiz and he made himself
so useful to them that they made him a present of
a hundred versts of land. Guided by a prospec
tor's instincts, he selected the land which became
later the site of very profitable mines. To obtain
capital to work them he applied to his old friend
Dmitrii and, for fifty years prior to our arrival,
they were worked with much profit. This oper
ation denotes a certain hardihood of character
which attracts attention, for, until very recently,
the only connection between the mines and the
base at Yekaterinburg was the open steppe; the

28 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
distance was about seven or eight hundred miles
and the journey required about twenty or thirty
days for ordinary travellers, and about two or
three months for the transport of supplies. But
when I sympathized with the owners on such dif
ficulties they grew scornful and asked me how I
would have liked to operate their mines on the
Amoor river, when there was no Trans-Siberian
railway? Even while we were staying in Yekater
inburg, the carriers begged us to let them carry
the machinery, which we were purchasing, to the
mines, at the price of twenty-two dollars per long
ton; as one horse and wagon can draw about half
a ton, it follows that one horse and wagon travel
for seven hundred miles and back again for eleven
dollars. These offers were made by responsible
carrying firms corresponding to our leading express
companies. Thirteen or fourteen hundred miles
seems a long trip for a horse and wagon for eleven
dollars. To return to our mine-selling family, the sturdy
pioneers were now dead and only the mother of the
numerous heirs, with whom we had to treat, sur
vived. She was a grand specimen of the old school,
full of dignity, native wit and common sense, and,
although she received from all her children a full
measure of respect, she seemed to be separated
from them by a wide gulf of time.
There were two married daughters and three
sons, all grown men. None of them seemed to have

THE LIMITLESS EXPANSE OF THE STEPPES

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 29
the depth and dignity of the mother, although
agreeable and kindly in their manners. They had
all been to Paris, the goal of their desires, and all
seemed to take a flippant view of life. It had not
occurred to any of them that study might have a
practical application; they regarded it as an orna
ment they could very well dispense with. One of
them had been for several years the local man
ager of the mine. He was not a certificated engi
neer and, after considerable prevarication, was
forced to go before the Mining Board at Tomsk
to pass the legal examination. Full of confidence
in his good looks and his family name, he duly
appeared before the Board for his viva voce test.
In due course the subject of pumps was introduced
and the question was asked by the professor,
"When the plunger rises in the cylinder, the water
follows it and rises too; what is the cause of this?"
The answer came like a flash "Tchort vo neezoo"
(the devil below). I never could obtain a direct
reply from him, when I asked him whether he had
received his diploma or not. As a matter of fact,
he maintains to this day that he is right, and that
there is a devil below who does these wonderful
feats. Perhaps he really is right!
It appeared that the first step in our negotia
tions must be a formal call on the family, at which
time we would be presented to the heirs. So,
arrayed in our most beautiful clothes, my lawyer
friends and I selected a carriage whose "little
3

30 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
wheels" seemed fairly secure, and started. Our
road led us through the huge square at one end of
which stands the great church of St. Catherine.
We were about half way across, rattling over the
cobblestones near one side of the square, when my
friends became very much agitated.
"Spit, spit!" they cried, and they began to spit
and to gesticulate wildly to the driver.
"Na pravo, na pravo, tchort vosmee," (the
devil take you, go to the right).
Were these sober lawyers from Moscow or was
I escorting two madmen? The driver began to
spit and yelled to his horse, jerked its head toward
the other side of the square and did not draw rein
till he had reached it. The danger seemed to be
over now and everyone relieved.
"May I ask," I said, "as an intelligent and ob
servant foreigner, whether it is customary for
Russian lawyers to become insane when driving in
public squares?"
"Did you not see the priest?" they both cried.
"And what of it?" I asked.
"Surely you know," they said, "that you dare
not pass a priest on the public road and that, if
you do, you must spit three times; otherwise you
will have dreadful luck."
"Hush," I said, "someone may hear you and
take you to an asylum."
And it was not until we arrived at the house of
the heirs that they regained their composure.

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 31
The house we stopped at was an imposing
structure, built in a court, entirely surrounded by
a high wall, with the dignity which is characteristic
of the houses of well-to-do residents in Russian
provincial towns.
We were led through room after room and finally
into the large salon. All the rooms were elaborately
decorated, but the only physical need • which
seemed to be provided for was that of sitting down
— small chairs lined the walls of each room, and
sometimes in a corner there was a table with a
vase upon it. The effect of space was excellent
and it was very convenient for a ball, but it was
not an arrangement to make heirs and lawyers
feel at their ease when they first met.
We were a little stiff until the notary arrived;
but when he came, he seemed to take charge of
the whole business. I wondered why we or the
heirs were there at all, it would have been much
simpler to let him raise all the questions and
answer them himself. He did it all anyway, and
none of us were at all necessary. He told us we
must pay so much, and that they must release
certain claims and that we must come back in
three days with the money in cash, and that
they must obtain the releases of the wives of all
the dead ancestors, and finally would we honour
him by drinking tea with him on the following
day? By that time, he had us all under such com
plete control that we would have done anything to

32 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
oblige such an all-knowing and all-powerful being,
and we expressed our pleasure in suitable terms.
"My wife and I are alone," he said, "and it will
give us much pleasure to drink tea with such dis
tinguished visitors."
The next morning we went to the bank on which
our draft was drawn, to identify ourselves and
leave our signatures and transact other formali
ties. When it came to my turn and I presented
my passport and credentials, an unusual look of
intelligence gleamed in the clerk's eye and he
hurried off with the documents to his chief, who
looked at me, then at the passport, then back at
me and finally sent for the manager. They all
came up to me and engaged me in conversation,
in what seemed to me of an unnecessary and in
terminable length. The condition of the weather
at Petersburg, the probable duration of the war,
my impressions of the value of democratic versus
oligarchical institutions in the development of a
new country, these and many other subjects were
thoroughly threshed out. I protested that though
these subjects were intensely interesting and of
the greatest possible theoretical importance, the
business of the day was not being advanced in
the least by the discussion of them at that moment.
This remark only seemed to whet their appetites
for general information and they became more
and more talkative, until the door was thrown
open and the President rushed into the room.

THE GREAT SNOW CAMEL OF THE NORTH

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 33
"Here comes the President," they said. "Glory
be to God!" and turning to the newcomer —
"Mr. President, it has fallen to our happy lot
to enable you to arrest the desperate criminal and
forger of whose activities the chief of police at
Moscow has warned us."
Sensation! At this supreme moment, when,
by all the rules of the game, I should have turned
on my accusers and, with a look of cold and
haughty disdain, have overwhelmed them with
shame and confusion, I regret to say that my be
haviour and manner must have convinced them of
my guilt. I remember feeling very nervous and
I am able to testify that the mind which is con
scious of right works exceedingly slowly at critical
times, and, when most needed, often leaves the poor
body without support for a cruel length of time.
The President of the bank was the first to
speak. "I regret," he said, "that the zeal of these em
ployees should have been the cause of any annoy
ance to you and I am delighted that the evidence
in our hands should be so complete, as to leave no
doubt that an unfortunate mistake has been made.
Sir, pray accept our heartfelt apologies. You will
however, agree, when you see these papers, that
there is some excuse for the mistaken zeal of our
officers; in our business we must be suspicious."
He then showed me letters from myself to the
Moscow police, letters from the police to all

34 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
mayors, bank officials and others, the purport of
which was, that, whenever a person with passport
in the name of E. Nelson Fell, American citizen,
(then followed general description) presented him
self, the police should be notified and the man be
immediately arrested, for he was a dangerous crim
inal. Like a flash I remembered the whole inci
dent of our acquaintance with X. He had joined
us as an interpreter when we first came to Siberia ;
he was a clever man with an extraordinary knowl
edge of languages and, in his position, had an
opportunity of acquiring a certain intimate knowl
edge of our affairs and history. After six months'
acquaintance with him we caught him red-handed
in some rascality and discharged him. The man
then obtained by fraud, a passport in my name
from the American Embassy in Petersburg and
then proceeded to go up and down the country,
victimizing trusting persons in my name. The
matter caused me so much annoyance and trouble
that I took energetic steps to stop it by writing to
the police in Moscow and other officials. These
steps had evidently been effective as, for several
years I had heard of no new exploits of my friend
and had forgotten all about the matter until my
memory was so rudely refreshed in the bank.
About six months later X. was arrested for some
crime and a most extraordinary record of success
ful roguery was laid bare. All of which shows that
a passport may be a dangerous weapon in the

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 35
hands of villainy, as well as a useful tool in
honest hands.
A curious echo of this passport incident was
heard in far-away Colombia where I was travelling
six years later. I called on the United States con
sul at Barranquilla and presented to him my pass
port for registry at Bogota. There was an un
usual delay in returning the passport and it turned
out that one of the Secretaries at Bogota had been
Secretary at Petersburg during my passport inci
dent and refused to record it, until thoroughly sat
isfied that it was genuine. Which calls up a vari
ety of reflections, none of which would advance
this story a particle and are therefore postponed
to a more convenient season.
The next day after the usual massive dinner
which is served in hotels in most small towns in
Russia at about two, we went to the home of our
new friend, the all-masterful but very agreeable
Notary, anticipating the delicious tea, which is
served in such a pleasant manner in Russia.
There is no more fascinating method of nourish
ing the human frame than drinking tea in a well-
appointed Russian house. The Russians are
naturally good talkers and they seem to draw in
spiration from the tea itself and the surroundings.
The hostess sits at the samovar and does not tire
of polishing the glasses and saucers when she rinses
them in their never-ending procession; the sam
ovar never falters in its important rdle of pro-

36 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
viding boiling water in unfailing supply; the sec
ond glass is as good as the first, so are the third and
fourth; conversation ripples gaily, the hours pass
unnoticed. The intellect is brightened, the nerves
are soothed. It is altogether and entirely charm
ing. After a brief pause, we were introduced to our
hostess who invited us into the next room, as she
said, "to take a little refreshment." The "next
room" was furnished with a large table elaborately
laid for dinner for five persons and we were es
corted to a side table which was covered with an
extraordinary and bewildering display of cold
dishes; several large fresh fish cooked whole, a
half of a smoked salmon, the same of a sturgeon, a
large bowl of fresh ikra (caviar), also one of salt
roe, a ham, a smoking plate of stewed kidneys on
a chafing dish, chicken jellies, rye bread, brown
bread, white bread, and a dangerous looking row
of bottles. My ideas of a Russian "glass of tea"
received a rude shock.
The Notary immediately took the nearest bottle
of vodka and putting glasses into our hands, filled
them, and with a toast of "I drink to your excel
lencies' health, pray make merry," he tossed off
his glass and of course we followed suit.
"Begin with this caviar," he said, "it is fresh
from the Volga."
"Not before I have drunk your health," cried
the lawyer. And that meant another glass; then

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 37
came a helping of one fish and then another, and
between each one the apparently necessary glass
of vodka.
"I am glad you like the vodka," said the Notary.
"It is a good brand, but you must now try my
sherry and bitters, that too is good," and with
this he filled our plates with stewed kidneys and
our glasses with sherry, and then (I think, though
I confess my memory becomes hazy) with white
port. After that, I kept eating in a continuous
fashion, but my memory fails to distinguish be
tween the ham and the fish and the roe and the
kidneys. My recollection is that I remained eat
ing in a purely mechanical manner, apparently to
oblige my host. My mind was, however, quite
clear to the fact that the situation was one of
extreme gravity and that I must sit next the host
ess at dinner and talk Russian to her.
"Aha ! " cried our host, "dinner is served, I
hope you have good appetites."
Miserable humourist, thought I, at any rate
you shall not escape, what I eat you shall eat!
And he did, plate for plate and glass for glass; it
was a fair fight, no evasions sought or offered.
We sat down to the table. Now it is a recog
nized mistake for a beginner to attempt to talk
Russian to a lady, unless his mind is quite clear,
but my lawyer friends were growing gloomy and
silent, and the situation had to be faced and some
body had to make conversation.

38 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Dinner was served. First the bortsch, a de
licious but heavy soup served in generous helpings
by our host — sherry — then a mountain of crawfish
was brought on, which were rather nice, for they
are troublesome to eat and a great deal of time
can be spent with a very small consumption of
food — Rhine wine was served with the crawfish.
Then came cutlets, served with Bass's Ale; next
roast turkey and ham, with champagne, a great
deal of it ; next a sweet cream with port and then
a variety of small dishes with sweet wines, which
are not separated from one another with any dis
tinctness in my recollection. My lawyer friends
were absolutely silent. Our host, fortunately,
maintained a steady stream of conversation, and
my face maintained a fixed expression of absorbed
interest. If he paused for a moment, I immedi
ately begged him to proceed. The hands of the
clock pointed to nine; I hoped that the ordeal
was near its close. While I felt my inferiority to
my host, yet I also felt that I was doing fairly well
for an amateur and I prayed for strength to sur
vive to the end.
Our hosts rose from the table; according to
custom we shook hands with them, thanked them
for their charming hospitality, praised the excel
lence of the dinner and proceeded to take our
leave. "Oh, you cannot go now, you must have a glass
of tea, the samovar is in the next room."

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 39
Ominous words, "a glass of tea"; the same
which he had used the day before to lure us to
our doom.
But he spoke truly this time; the samovar was
hissing on the table and the tea seemed particu
larly refreshing. Conversation became freer, the
hands of the clock pointed to eleven. Again we
rose to take our leave.
"Charming hostess, amiable host, as we take
our leave, we leave our hearts in your keeping."
"Oh, but you are not thinking of going now, we
are just about to have supper," he laced an arm
with ours, "come and I will drink your health."
The lights seemed to fade and the earth to grow
dark; all hope fled as we once more passed the
fatal doors into the dining room. There was an
audible groan; the author was never discovered,
each accused the other. Our host maintained his
imperturbable flow of conversation, but we were
pretty nearly done for. I knew my look of ani
mated interest could not stand the strain of an
other ordeal like the last. Nor did it, it was re
placed with a glazed smile, but I am proud to say
that I believe our host did not notice it.
We went through all the forms prescribed by
usage; we stood at the side table and did again at
midnight what we had done in the afternoon; the
same voice announced the approach of supper; a
series of courses appeared similar to those we had
had at dinner, but of entirely new and freshly

4o RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
cooked dishes; the same voice spoke unceasingly,
the same smile froze my lips; the hands of the
clock pointed to two. Again we took our leave,
this time successfully. There is no doubt that it
is possible to push a good thing too far, even "a
glass of tea."
The next day was Thursday and we had our
final conference with the heirs, to arrange about
the details of closing the purchase. We were to
pay over about two hundred thousand roubles and
we proposed to hand them a certified cheque for
this sum.
But they would not hear of it, the payments
must be made in actual cash. This was a serious
matter, for Friday and Saturday were bank holi
days and in order to have the money available on
Friday we must draw the money on Thursday
afternoon and keep it in our rooms in the hotel all
Thursday night. A very unpleasant prospect. It
was during the dark days in Russia, when law and
order were at a low ebb, when all kinds of crimes
of violence were being committed, robbery, bri
gandage, arson, murder. Our arrival in town had
been widely heralded; it was known on all sides
that we were handling a large sum of money, curi
ous eyes watched every movement we made, every
visit we made to the bank was at once noted. We
did not at all relish the idea of taking travelling
bags to the bank and then returning with them
full of money to the hotel. However, we yielded

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 41
the point and agreed to bring the cash the next
day, Friday morning at ten o'clock.
"Impossible!" they said. "We are of the 'old
faith, ' tomorrow is a holiday of peculiar meaning
for us; under no circumstances can we transact
business tomorrow. Rather would we abandon
the sale of the mine. We can live without selling
the mine but we cannot live without favour in the
sight of God."
Their ideas were absolutely fixed on these two
points; no business on Friday; actual real cash
on Saturday. The meeting adjourned.
That afternoon we went to the bank with our
travelling bags and told them that we must have
the two hundred thousand roubles in cash. They
had expected us to take a certified cheque and to
obtain so much cash in two hours was difficult.
With the help of the Merchants Bank and of the
Imperial Bank, the money was finally collected.
But so much coming and going, with bags full of
eash, had attracted wide attention and the bank
managers were not reassuring.
"You are acting contrary to our advice," they
said. " By this time everyone in town knows that
you have a large sum of money in your possession.
You have no place of safety in your hotel where
you can deposit it. The town is full of desperate
criminals." Cheerful conversation, indeed, but there was no
help for it. and we came out of the bank with two

42 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
large suit cases stuffed full of notes, amidst an
admiring crowd. The hotel porter greeted us with
a knowing smile: "The Barin's travelling bags
are very heavy: there are many in town who
would like to have the honour of carrying the
Barin's bags for him."
All that evening and night, all the next day and
night we kept watch over those miserable travel
ling bags. No weary saint, keeping his lonely
vigil, ever welcomed the dawn of his liberation
more joyfully than we welcomed the dawn of the
second day, and, at the appointed hour, we drove
to the Notary's office. All the heirs were present,
they sat in a circle round the walls of the room.
The Notary stood at a table in the centre. Our
lawyers entered the room and took seats at the
table; I was to stay in a small room adjoining,
with my precious bags. I waited and waited, but
heard nothing except the low murmur of voices.
Finally the door was thrown open and I was in
vited to come in.
Every eye in the room was instantly fixed on the
two bags which I was carrying. They contained
the solution of all the hopes and fears and doubts
which had been surging in our breasts for so many
weeks. Here was real human money; not bank
credits and drafts and such like intangible assets,
but the real thing, with which each one could pay
his debts or cut his own particular dash according
to his own particular pattern. The Notary an-

THE PURCHASE OF THE MINE 43
nounced that the conveyances had been properly
executed, that all formalities were in order. "Will
you please," he said to me, "be kind enough to
pay the stipulated sum of money."
The bags were emptied on the table; the eyes
of the heirs glowed brightly; the Notary counted
the money and announced its correctness. He re
tained complete control of the situation to the end.
He divided the money into several piles; so much
for John and so much for Tom and so much for
Mary; he bade each one take his * share. In five
minutes there was no money and nobody left in
the room. The rape of the cash was absolutely
complete. The heirs were all gone. We and the
Notary stood alone.
A great chance for a moralist, but only a pedant
would have found it necessary to put our thoughts
into words.
The Notary smiled, we all smiled ; a very under
standing man, well versed in human fears and
weaknesses. We paid him his fee, paid his stenographers, paid
the porter, paid the charwoman, paid the clerks at
the bank who had helped us count the money, paid
everybody something, and we went away with our
bags and pockets feeling very light. After all, the
heirs were probably right; there is nothing quite
like the actual real cash.

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS.
IT had been a long, tedious winter. All winters
are tedious when they are seven months long.
The first dash of the frost giants over the hills in
the autumn is inspiriting, and the first jangle of
sleigh bells over fresh snow makes the blood tingle,
but before the first of May has come, the fierce
winds have swept bare the level places, and where
the snow lies it is driven into ice drifts and glazed
by the emery blasts of the ceaseless storms. The
landscape looks tired and it is tired, and so are you.
Your fur coat and felt overshoes are hateful burdens ;
the storm doors and windows oppress your house
with an airless grasp ; each year it seems as though
spring were delayed and would never come.
It was toward the end of April, 1906, that
Henry Fordham and I were sitting in the com
pany's office, lamenting the slow progress of the
seasons, wondering whether the weather was show
ing any signs of change. The old Kirghiz, Baijan,
was making up the stoves for the night; in the
next room could be heard the ceaseless click of the
counting boards, as the clerks were adding the
interminable payrolls. Outside, a camel trans-
44

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS 45
port train had just arrived from the mines —
heavy two-humped beasts, with long fur knicker
bockers and humps lying flabby on their backs,
the only living animal that can look an icy blizzard
in the face without quailing — each camel lashed
to a small pair of runners on which was fastened
a basket, in which was piled about seven hundred
pounds of rich copper ore. Inside the carrier's
office, the Kirghiz drivers were thawing out and
chattering in shrill voices: "Aksha kerek, aksha
kerek Bai" (Give us our money, boss!), and we
could hear the invariable answer of our transpor
tation clerk: "Aksha djok, aida!" (there is no
money, go away). But this did not satisfy them
at all, and the hubbub rose and fell till Fordham
yawned and murmured something about sending
the cashier to Akmolinsk for cash, and then rous
ing himself called in a loud tone, "Ivan, O Ivan!"
and the felt-lined door opened and Ivan Korde
came in, a large Esthonian, of the Guild of Ac
countants of St. Petersburg, bonded to the com
pany by his guild.
"Ivan, can you go to Akmolinsk tomorrow?"
"Yes, I can."
"How much money do we need?"
"Twenty thousand roubles."
"Well, make out a cheque on the Imperial Bank,
and get ready to go ; we need the money for pay
day next week; and — O Ivan— send Tokai for
the stables foreman."
4

46 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
And in due time the starosta or stables foreman
appeared :
"What are your orders?" said the starosta.
"I want the cashier to leave tomorrow morning
at four o'clock for Akmolinsk. Send the chestnut
horses forward at once to the Noura River for a
relay, and the bays to Badpak, and let him start
with the piebalds : he can hire horses at Beresovski
for the last stretch to Akmolinsk," said Fordham.
"Your honour knows," replied the starosta, "but
I have lived in this country many years and know
the signs, and if the cashier leaves tomorrow for
Akmolinsk, he will not return for at least three
weeks: the thaw is beginning and the rivers will
soon be in flood ; he may reach Akmolinsk, but he
will have time to drink much vodka before he
can return."
"But the money, the money!" said Fordham,
"we must have the money, he must go to Akmo
linsk." "Your honour knows about the money," cooed
the starosta, "but I know, that if Ivan leaves
for Akmolinsk tomorrow, he will not return for
many weeks."
Fordham's face was troubled; we had of late
frequently disappointed the workmen through lack
of cash, and we dreaded to think of another pay-
less payday. But the starosta was right, and al
ready, as we left the office, the air had a tender
feeling. The next morning, there was no doubt;

A RICH KIRGHIZ WITH HIS SECRETARIES
A Russian interpreter is seated on the left

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS 47
a warm wind was blowing, the ground was soft,
little rivulets were trickling down the gullies; the
starosta was right, spring had come. But, in spite
of spring, there was no joy in Fordham's face
when we met the next morning.
"What can we do?" he said. "We cannot face
our men again when payday comes, if we have no
money; it will be a scandal." ;.\ And the situation
was serious; we were absolutely cut off from the
world, without apparently any possibility of se
curing cash for at least a month. We inquired
here, there and everywhere; we could not scrape
together a thousand roubles from all sources. And
then the Kirghiz Kusain appeared and said:
"Your honour needs money?"
I was provoked and answered hastily:
"Of course I need money, everyone needs
money, you need it too."
"Ah, but your honour needs it worse than
I do." "And if I do, can you supply it?"
"No, your honour, I am a poor man; but there
are Kirghiz who are rich, very rich, who keep
their money in rouble bills, locked in their tin-
bound trunks. There is Adam Bai, brother of
Djingir whose herd of mares you saw when we
crossed the Noura together the other day. Djingir
is rich, very rich, but he has not much money.
Adam Bai is rich too, and he keeps his riches in
money; perhaps he may lend you some of it, but

48 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
he will charge a great deal. O, he is rich, he is
very rich!"
"Kusain — we will go and see him — where is he
now?" "He is now in his tents on the Ilinski River be
hind the Kisil Tav mountains, thirty miles from
here." "We will leave tomorrow and go and see him."
"You cannot leave tomorrow to see Adam Bai.
Your honour is a great lord and Adam Bai is a
great lord; tomorrow I will send two messengers
on horses, who will tell Adam Bai that you are
coming, and the next day you can go yourself and
Adam Bai will be ready to receive you."
So on the third day, arrayed in our most beauti
ful clothes, with our best teams harnessed three
horses abreast, each with our attendant interpre
ter, and with numerous mounted guards and es
corts, we dashed off at full gallop through our
little village, out on to the rolling steppes. Three
days of spring had worked a miracle. The air was
balmy and moist, and a mat of flowers was chasing
the snow as it fled up the hills. Spring on the
steppe is an ecstasy of nascent life; flowers, birds
and animals all know that their day at last has
come. As we came near to Adam Bai's encampment,
an escort of horsemen rode out to meet us and led
us to the tent which had been prepared for us. It
was a beautiful yurta or circular tent, about

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS 49
twenty-five feet in diameter, with an outside cov
ering of snowy white felt supported on a light
wooden trellis with dome-shaped roof. As there
are no poles inside, the whole floor space is clear.
The floor was covered with gorgeous rugs and the
walls were hung with silk mats. We took off our
shoes and entered. The tunduk or cover was
partly thrown back, and the setting sun filled the
tent with red light. Around our tent were those
of Adam Bai and his followers. They were arriving
from all sides, driving in the herds before them;
great herds of camels and sheep and goats and some
cattle, which sorted themselves without confusion,
the sheep lying down by themselves, the camels by
themselves, the goats by themselves, and the cattle
by themselves. Nature is so harmonious when she
is undisturbed. They lay together and waited
patiently for the rest which comes with darkness.
The old men were gathered by the doors of their
tents. Rachel was drawing water from the well;
so they had been doing for forty centuries and
more. The cradle of our race had been rocked
under these stars, here had our childhood been
spent. Adam Bai came in with his sons and his friends,
his secretary and his bard, Izat by name. We sat
in a circle on the rugs, and the huge skin of koomiss
was brought in, which was ladled out to us in
painted wooden bowls. A colt was led in and
Adam Bai explained that he was about to slaugh-

So RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
ter it for us, but to his chagrin, we begged him to
substitute a sheep. After the koomiss was fin
ished the samovar was brought in and tea and
sweets were served, with rock-like cheese and bur-
saks, little pellets of bread fried in tallow, the only
food these people eat which is not either meat or
milk. The evening wore away in unceasing chatter,
and I frequently asked Kusain whether the pro
pitious moment for a business talk had arrived,
and the answer was always "No." Finally, when
our enfeebled western natures could absorb no
more sour milk, several huge platters of boiled
sheep were brought in; a young Kirghiz brought
round to each person a copper kettle and bowl
and poured water over our hands, and the real
business of the day began. I never felt my infe
riority so keenly before. Full to the high water
mark with tea and sour milk and sour cheese, I
dipped my hand in the dish and made bold passes
at the hateful meat; but all my ruses were de
tected, and Adam Bai reproved my restraint, and,
picking out with his fingers the eye of the sheep
which was lying lustreless in the sodden mass, he
thrust it into my mouth, a compliment of peculiar
meaning. Never have I felt so helpless! It
seemed the power of swallowing was lost to me
forever. It seemed to be hours while I turned
that horrible eye round in my mouth. Somehow
the merciful end came at last, and Adam Bai

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS 51
seized a huge lump of tallow and crammed it into
the eager mouth of Kusain. What a delicious
morsel to chew during the silent night.
Next morning we prepared to go, and I was
growing alarmed lest the overwhelming hospitality
of our host should thwart the business on which
we came and which was so urgent, but at the last
moment Kusain and the Secretary had some con
versation, and it was explained to me that Adam
Bai, considering the watchful care which we had
always taken of the poor unfortunate Kirghiz who
were compelled to work for money, would lend us
the sum of twenty thousand roubles, provided we
would repay him twenty-two thousand roubles
within one month. Visions of the successful trades
which Jacob had made on these very hills flitted
before our minds, and, bowing with profound re
spect to such historic precedents reenacted for
our benefit, we invited this successful son of the
desert to visit us at our office one week from that
day and bring with him his treasure. But there
was not one word from Adam Bai himself. He sat
stolid and unmoved. Not tall, but very fat, as
all rich Kirghiz must be; a mass of wadded and
embroidered clothes, squatted cross-legged on the
floor, his small well-kept hands folded in front of
him, his face without the shadow of any expres
sion. And he said "Kosh" (goodbye), and we
said "Kosh," and so we rolled away in our car
riages, determined to take at least a correspond-

52 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
ence school course of desert training, before at
tempting again to enter the paths of high finance.
The days passed and payday was drawing near.
The memory of the horrible deal we had made
haunted us, and still more, the dread lest Adam
Bai should fail us. As the workmen passed us
they would ask "Will the money come?" and we
set our teeth and replied "The money will come,"
and with "Glory be to God" on their lips they
passed on. But one fine day the word reached us
that tomorrow Adam Bai would come, and we
killed the sheep and made ready to receive the
wily financier. And the next morning he came
with a rush; with a cloud of outriders, tearing at
full gallop through the street, drivers shouting and
lashing their horses, a disreputable-looking car
riage with impossible harness, Adam Bai sitting
in it like a Chinese idol with his poet by his side.
And after he had divested himself of numerous
fur coats, we escorted him to his seat of honour, in
which he sat and grunted loudly, for it was a chair
and he detested chairs, for they made his fat old
body ache. But we felt a malicious delight in
making him sit on our chairs, as the stork felt when
he fed the fox from a long-necked bottle in return
for the hospitality of the fox, which had fed him
soup from a shallow platter.
Tea was brought in and conversation passed an
hour or more, and in the first pause I said to Ku
sain, "Ask him if he has brought the money."

SOME OF ADAM BAI'S FRIENDS

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS 53
"Hush," said Kusain, "he might hear you."
Then the poet sang :
"Life is like a road; if you lose your way,
It is not your enemies who will show you the path,
But your friends.
The true friend is like the oaken stick upon which you
lean and rest,
But the false friend is like the reed upon which you lean
and it breaks and the splinters pierce your hand."
I ask Kusain: "Is Adam Bai the oak or the
reed? Has he brought the money?"
And Kusain replies again: "Hush, he might
hear you!"
After the poet has finished, dinner is served, and
several sheep rapidly disappear; but the only ex
pression which Adam Bai's face betrays is anger
with his hateful chair. He is fed by his attendants
and consumes many dried cherries, the stones of
which he emits with great force and explosive
sounds, and those which do not fall on our plates,
fall on the table cloth around us. And the day
wears on and we are growing convinced that the
chances of money are vanishing, when the Secre
tary begins to talk Russian and Adam Bai sinks
lower and lower in his chair. And we send for the
notary, and the local policeman, and the judge,
and the Russian manager, and the attorney, and
all the other officers of the works arrive, and Bai-
jan the stove tender, and all our servants, and the

54 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
room is filled to suffocation. It is the most solemn
and important transaction which has ever taken
place at the works. Ink is brought and green sand
and long pens and sealing wax and seals, and
everybody begins to write, and nearly everybody
to sign, while the policeman threads the papers on
red tape and seals them. Only Adam Bai is mo
tionless; he is almost lying in his chair now. I
say to Kusain: "Everything is nearly ready now,
ask where the money is?"
"Hush," says Kusain, "you must sign these
papers." "But I won't hush; tell Adam Bai to make his
servants bring the money."
But nobody seems to care about the money
except myself, so interested are they all in the legal
formalities; and the notary ties up his bag, and
the policeman buckles on his sword and the whole
ceremony seems to be over.
But I begin to lose my patience and I tell Kusain
that something else must happen pretty soon, and
Kusain whispers to the Secretary and the Secre
tary whispers into the wadded clothes, and the
wadded clothes grunt. And then a most extraor
dinary scene begins. The old man is lying in
the chair swaddled in countless layers of wadded
cotton coats, his fat arms dangling over the arms
of the chair. Two of his men rush at him, one
from each side, they plunge their hands into the
recesses of his clothing, and grope and pull; and

LOANS AND DISCOUNTS 55
now one pulls out a bundle of notes and now an
other, and Adam Bai lies grunting, and as each
bundle of notes is dragged from its hiding place, he
emits a groan of despair; and the last bundle is a
particularly big bundle, and his groan is the most
pitiful of all, and he sinks down in utter collapse.
So much money on the table has fascinated the
spectators who stand speechless with awe. The
policeman takes charge of the situation and as
signs the different bundles to different persons to
count. The abacus is brought in and the little
balls begin to click.
Adam Bai begins to stir in his chair, his attend
ants begin to search for their coats and caps.
"Nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-
seven roubles," said the policeman to me.
Everybody was putting on his coat.
"Kusain," I said, "there is a shortage of three
roubles." Kusain apparently did not hear and began a
search for my hat.
"Kusain," I said, "tell the Secretary we are
three roubles short."
"Tut, tut!" said the Secretary, "I must help
Adam Bai, the business is concluded, he wants
to go."
"Kusain," I shouted, "tell the Secretary to tell
Adam Bai that he has given us three roubles too
little." The Secretary turned to Adam Bai, who sat up

56 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
.in his chair, and motioned for his boots. Nobody
was paying any attention to me.
"Three roubles," I shouted, "three roubles
short!" "Impossible!" said Adam Bai, and he seemed to
have waked up, "it must be under the blotter, or
it may have fallen under the table."
"No," said I, "it is not under the blotter nor
under the table ; it is short, and I must have it to
make our bargain good."
At this, the Secretary began to look under pa
pers, and Adam Bai assumed great interest in all
the out-of-the-way corners where a stray three-
rouble bill might lie, and they all looked at me in
an injured way with their mild innocent eyes,
till I felt ashamed of my insistence. But I waited
while they hunted and everyone hunted, until we
were stopped by a cry from Adam Bai, " See here,"
he said (he was looking into his sleeve), "is it not
strange, I have found a three-rouble bill up my
sleeve; perhaps this is the one which was lost; I
wonder how it got up my sleeve."
Oh, Adam Bai! Well art thou named Adam.
Thou hast carried down to this generation the
glorious tradition of original sin untarnished. Go
in peace. Jacob's secrets are safe in thy hands.
And a deep silence fell on the room, and Adam
Bai gathered up his clothes and left. And during
the years which followed, he never forgave me our
three roubles.

THE UNION OF UNIONS.
DURING the autumn of 1905 things had been
going very badly for Russia and in Russia.
The war in Manchuria had always been unpopular;
the rare Russian successes aroused no enthusiasm
in the masses and the more frequent failures
created only a sullen discontent. Within the
boundaries of the Empire this discontent was
being fomented by social agitators into seething
discord, which broke out in attacks on the large
land proprietors, in mutinies, in massacres and
in movements which almost reached, in places,
the dimensions of revolutions. Even in our
remote steppes, five hundred miles from the rail
way, where the nearest post and telegraph offices
were a hundred and seventy miles away, a feeling
of uneasiness could be felt. The Russian Govern
ment had extended its dominions into the Kirghiz
Steppes about fifty years before the date of this
story, and the country was still under a military
system of government, under the general control
of the Governor General of the Steppes. On the
whole the system had worked well and seemed well
suited for the particular conditions which existed.
57

58 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Along the Siberian Railway the soil is level and
rich and more or less thickly settled with Russians
and Tartars, farmers and merchants respectively.
Proceeding southward the level of the ground grad
ually rises and it becomes more hilly. At times
the hills become mountains, great granite crags
two or three thousand feet high. The valleys con
tract, the rainfall is notably less and arable land
is confined to the valleys of the infrequent rivers.
Timber almost entirely disappears. The farther
south you go, the more pronounced these con
ditions become; the Tartar is rarely found away
from the railway and the larger towns, and the
Russian is chiefly represented by the Cossack, a
very remarkable type of man, with the soul of a
pioneer, a love of freedom and_j a passionate ador
ation of his caste. He has the utmost contempt
for the Russian peasant and the deepest reverence
for God and Czar. He is never lukewarm ; if he
dislikes, he hates; if he likes, he loves; his hatred
covers all Germans, Jews and Poles and his love
for Russia is a childlike adoration. You can rec
ognize him at once; his house is clean, his carriage
erect and full of dignity. I remember sleeping one
night in the house of an Ataman (chief) at a ford
over the river Noura. The house was spotless with
fresh whitewash and paint, the windows were full
of plants and flowers ; the best bedroom had been
assigned to me and my host was wishing me good
night :

THE UNION OF UNIONS 59
"Where is Kleb?" I asked.
"Gone to the war," said the old man.
"Where is Gregory?" I said.
"He, also, is gone to the war."
"You have no other sons?"
"I have no other sons."
I felt sorry for the lonely man and I made some
commonplace remark about the hardship of seeing
all one's sons go off to the war so many thousand
miles away ; but the old man's eyes began to blaze
and he rose from his chair, and standing bolt up
right he raised his hand to the salute and said:
" It is for God and the Czar! "
There he stood, the sentinel of Russia, gazing
across the pathless solitudes which form her bor
ders, the very incarnation of childlike simple faith.
I took off my hat to the old man and we have been
firm friends ever since.
To the southward, where the country is too
poor for the peasant and the merchant, the
Kirghiz love to roam and herd their flocks and en
dure the extreme of privation, provided they can
escape the extremity of degradation, the necessity
of manual work. And the Government treats
them with a happy mixture of control and liberty.
Their old system of patriarchal justice and law is
left to them; they have their own codes and pun
ishments and their own ways of enforcing their
own penalties.
Under their system of property ownership and

60 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
with their diet of sour milk, it is hardly possible for
them to commit a crime worthy of headlines in a
New York newspaper, and they rarely have any
difficulties with the Russians. As the country be
comes more settled, conditions may change; but,
at present, life on the Steppes proceeds with very
little interference from the officials of the Govern
ment. Probably the cult of the Mahommedan
religion has a peculiar sway over the pastoral Kir
ghiz, and the absence of liquor certainly removes
one common form of offence; but, whatever the
cause, the fact remains that the Kirghiz are a
people of great self-restraint, and the result is a
very happy one.
But even in this remote Elysian garden, dis
quietude and mistrust had begun to make them
selves felt. Since we had taken possession of the
mines and smelting works in 1902, we had very
much enlarged the scope of all the operations and
we were now employing, one way or another, close
upon ten thousand men. The Russian Govern
ment, seeing the magnitude of our enterprise, had
been favouring our neighbourhood, and had been
laying out villages in the most fertile valleys, for
the reception of immigrants from the crowded
districts of Russia, especially Little Russia; Hohols,
as they are called in local slang, as we say Hoosiers
from Indiana, or Cockneys from London.
The chief of police at Akmolinsk, Nicolai Grego-
rievitch Niehoroshkoff , taking note of the prevail-

THE UNION OF UNIONS 61
ing restlessness, had driven over in state and con
ferred with us long and earnestly. When we first
arrived in the country and were new to the lan
guage and customs, the arrival of- this most im
pressive officer used to terrify us a little bit. He
would dash up to the house in a splendid uniform
with rattling sabre, and two armed policemen
riding by his side. His face was clean shaven ex
cept for the most terrific pair of mustaches. Im
mediately upon arrival at our house he took
possession of all available space, established his
office and began to receive the local officials. As
we gradually learned the language and became fa
miliar with the manners of the country, we found
that his impressive exterior and military manners
covered a peculiarly kind heart and a genial supply
of merry humour. And as time passed he began
to realize that we were serious in our work and
that we could be relied upon to handle conditions
with discretion and good judgment. In fact he
was beginning to depend upon us for the preserva
tion of order in our district.
But on the occasion of his last visit, he was
worried :
"My friends," he said, "I am troubled, seri
ously troubled; everywhere there is trouble; in
Russia the peasants are rising against the land
lords, there is mutiny in the fleet, in Siberia there
are everywhere disturbances. As yet, in our dis
trict all is quiet; but who can tell how long it may

62 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
remain so; already I know of some suspicious
characters who have taken service in your employ ;
the utmost caution is necessary on your part ; one
false step and we may be plunged into a welter of
confusion and an indiscriminate slaughter. I am
helpless, all the Cossacks have left for the war,
other force have I none and I shall be the first
victim myself. For God's sake, my friends, be cau
tious; where is Andrei Michaelovitch Topornin?"
"He is at the Yuspenssky copper mines, in the
position of manager during the vacation of Han-
nen, the English engineer."
" Is he in complete control as attorney under the
Russian law?"
"He is," I replied.
"Ah, my friend, that is bad. I have my grave
suspicions about that man; I tried to prevent his
arrival here but failed. I fear his presence bodes
no good; watch him, my friend. Has his conduct
so far been good?"
"Exemplary."
"Watch him, my friend. Goodbye, may God be
with you and help you; keep me informed of what
is happening and call upon me for anything in my
power. Farewell. Now Djumbek! Where is that
devil Abdrachman! Put the pillows in the carriage,
give me my shuba and my cap ! " He disappeared
into the carriage behind a mass of pillows and
rugs; the whips cracked; the horses plunged, and
he was gone.

THE UNION OF UNIONS 63
We all became a little serious after he left. We
began to realize how utterly unprepared we were
to deal with a serious situation should it arise.
The Chief of Police had warned us that he was
unable to offer us any protection, whatever the
need, and that we must rely upon our wits. Under
the Russian mining laws all the heads of depart
ments were Russians; and we, half dozen English
and Americans without official position or power,
were all that stood between the hordes of Russians
and Kirghiz and the safety of the property which
had been intrusted to us. We scanned the list of
all our department chiefs and we speculated on the
reliability of each one. There was the general
manager, the smelter manager, the railway man
ager, the colliery manager, the doctor, the priest,
the manager of the copper mine, the same Topor-
nin against whom our friend had warned us. They
all had their powers of attorney, they were in
complete legal control; we were only advisers,
mere ciphers ; what actual power we had lay in our
control of the funds. Who was false, and who was
true? Where you do not know what to do, the
safest thing is to do nothing. We scanned with
great care all the reports which came in and es
pecially those of Topornin from the copper mine.
But they were all composed with scrupulous accu
racy and as the weeks passed we began to think that
the fears of our friend were groundless and that he
had been suffering from the nightmare of suspicion.

64 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
On the twentieth of January, 1906, we were
gathered in Kirghiz fashion around a low table in
our sitting-room, drinking tea. It was our fa
vourite hour of the day; the work was done, the
candles were burning brightly, the curtains shut
out the darkness and, within the thick stone walls
of the^house, we were able to forget for a few
moments the twisting, swirling blizzard outside.
Two Englishmen were with us, the Russian doctor
(a brilliant visionary who called himself a Social
Democrat, a graduate of Moscow University) and
our general manager, who was a Pole from Lodz.
We heard the outside doors creak and our Kir
ghiz house servant, Noorman, came in and said
that the messenger Ecubas had brought a letter
from the copper mine. Ecubas came in and deliv
ered the letter, which read as follows:
To the Director :
We, the undersigned employees and workmen at your
copper mine, demand that our wages be doubled, that our
quarters be enlarged and provided with new windows, that
there must be a resident doctor here instead of an apoth
ecary as at present, and that, unless these requests are
granted, we, and all the workmen at the mine, will go on
strike forty-eight hours from the time of writing this letter.
Andrei Topornin.
And a lot of signatures in And a dozen other sig-
Arabic purporting to be the natures including that of
signatures of the Kirghiz. the apothecary himself.
One reading of the letter was enough to make
plain to all of us that the letter had not been writ-

THE UNION OF UNIONS 65
ten with the object of having any wrongs put right,
but that it was a declaration of war. The general
manager, Topornin, had affixed his signature in
company with that of the men and it was plain
that the chief of police had judged him correctly,
and that the man was an organizer of trouble. We
questioned the messenger Ecubas:
"Was there any suggestion of trouble when you
left the Assumption Copper Mine?"
"None." "Do you know of any discontent amongst the
Kirghiz workmen?"
"I do not."
"Ecubas, you are a good man and have worked
faithfully all your life in the service of these mines.
You have received good wages and you must now
do us a great service. You have ridden eighty
miles today, but you cannot rest yet; I will write
a letter to the Volostnoi Oopravitel (Kirghiz mag
istrate) Tocsan, and you must deliver it to him
tomorrow morning; where is Tocsan now?"
"He is in his winter quarters at Nildi, twenty-
five miles from the mines."
"I shall arrive at the mines tomorrow after
noon, and Tocsan must be there; you must be
there too."
"Djaksi, Kosh." (It is well, goodbye.)
"Go to the stables and tell the starosta to give
you two good saddle horses and order my horses
for me at seven o'clock, with relays at Baidevlet,

66 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Kisiltav and Sarasu. Doctor, will you come with
me? You are a bit of an anarchist yourself and
the men will perhaps listen to you when they may
not listen to me."
"Yes, yes, I will come; call at my house as you
drive by."
And he left, and our guests left, and Ecubas
came for his letter and left, and we were alone with
our thoughts. There was of course the chance
that we had misjudged the situation, that the let
ter was genuine and was intended to formulate
some specific complaints and that the whole
matter could be readily adjusted; but this seemed
a slender thread of hope and on the whole our
thoughts were not cheerful.
I left the next morning at dawn and, picking up
the doctor at his house, the sleigh lurched along
the misty winter road, a mere track in the waste
of snow. Old Djumabek was driving and Kusain
was on the box by his side, ready in case of need.
The going was fairly good except when we passed
the long transport trains of camel-drawn sleds
bringing in the ore from the mines; then we
had to push out into the untrodden snow and the
horses had a desperate struggle. We drank our
midday tea at the hut of the teamster at Kisiltav.
In the winter time the Kirghiz forsake their tents
and immure themselves in underground quarters;
no air is ever allowed to enter and only very few
rays of light. But how often has the frozen trav-

THE UNION OF UNIONS 67
eller welcomed these shelters as havens of ecstatic
delight, after struggling for hours, sometimes
days and nights, with the persistent blizzard out
side! The settlement around the Assumption Copper
Mine never impressed one very cheerfully, but that
day it was peculiarly forbidding. No welcoming
hails greeted us and, as we drove up to the office
and residence combined, there was a great crowd
of men assembled, all with firearms, and we passed
through a silent lane of faces into the house. To
my great relief, on entering the room I saw, squat
ting on our sofa with his feet tucked in under him,
the impassive figure of the Kirghiz magistrate,
Tocsan. Well had Ecubas done his work! Here
at least was one shadow of authority which the
strikers would probably respect, for they would
surely never dare to injure a v Kirghiz, without
whose aid they could not expect to win the fight.
After giving us a few moments in which to drink
tea, a note was brought to me from Topornin by
a self-styled committee of three, saying that he
was waiting for me in his office. I replied by a
note saying that he was discharged ; in a few min
utes the committee returned and notified me that
the strike would begin at six o'clock and that I
had better see to the pumps and boilers myself.
I spoke a few words to Tocsan and he waddled
out, and when he returned he told me that he had
assigned some Kirghiz to see to the safety of the

68 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
pumps and had placed watchmen at different
points to guard against fire.
The evening passed in a fruitless wrangle with
the committee of three. They argued that Topor
nin was the legally qualified manager, that he had
promised them the demands they had made, that
the strike was organized under the direction of the
Union of Unions at Moscow, that I had better
acquiesce or they would destroy the copper mine
and then go on to the smelting works and destroy
that too.
I asked them why, if Topornin was the manager
and had promised them double pay and all their
other demands, they did not go back to work ; did
they doubt whether he would pay them? Yes,
they did doubt it, they wanted the director to
confirm it.
"Well," I said, "I never will confirm it, not to
day, nor tomorrow nor any day : Topornin is dis
charged, and if you do not return to work without
delay you will be discharged too."
The next morning I sent for different men whom
I knew well to come and talk to me, but the mes
sengers reported that the strikers would not allow
them to deliver my message. So I prepared to go
myself; but when I reached the door of the house,
I was surrounded by half a dozen armed men, the
committee of three being amongst them, who told
me I could only see my friends in their presence.
Finally it was agreed that I should meet all the

LAKE DJESSUBAI
A small sweet-water lake in the granite range near the Cossack village of Bayan Aool

THE UNION OF UNIONS 69
miners at a meeting, to be held in the afternoon at
the store. I knew that if I could only talk to the
leading men individually, I could win them over;
but I had not much confidence in being able to
accomplish anything in the presence of the strike
organizers. However, the attempt must be made.
Now, Russian is not an easy language to learn,
and, while a man may be able to use it fairly freely
in ordinary conversation, yet he feels his inferior
ity keenly, when he stands before an angry Russian
mob of a couple of hundred strikers, led by profes
sional agitators, and tries to touch their senses or
their hearts, in words which he has only learned to
use in the last two or three years. Whenever I
nearly succeeded in making a point, the agitators
started a tremendous clamour and my voice was
drowned in the uproar. After an hour's wrangle,
I felt the situation was growing rapidly worse, and
left the meeting.
That evening the water carrier and coal carrier
did not call at our house and we were told that all
supplies were stopped. On examining our stocks
I found there was practically nothing left, only
coal and water for the next day and scarcely any
food at all. No one was allowed to come in or out
of our house except Tocsan, and him the Russians
were afraid to touch. Though they did not under
stand the Kirghiz and they ignorantly treated
them with insolent contempt, yet their instinct
prompted them to leave Tocsan undisturbed. The

70 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
idea of such an insignificant Kirghiz being able to
disturb their carefully concerted plans was too
foolish to contemplate. From the beginning I had
realized that the Kirghiz alliance was the weak
spot in the Russian war plan, and, after the failure
of my frontal attack on the Russians themselves,
I felt that my only chance of success lay in turning
their Kirghiz flanks. Tocsan was silent and in
scrutable, he played his r61e like a true Oriental.
Through our interpreter Kusain I touched every
string that seemed to give the promise of a har
monious note. I pointed out how the Russians
were aiming at the looting and destruction of the
property and how their success would mean the
ruin of the Kirghiz : that the condition of the Kir
ghiz had been improved by the company and was
constantly being improved, and that we would all
rather die where we stood than yield an inch to
such demands. Kusain assured me that Tocsan
was working hard for us, and I, too, believed he
was; but I could see no progress.
The third day dawned on a most depressing sit
uation. The temper of the men was growing
worse and more aggressive; loud threats were to
be heard that the cursed foreigners should be
thrown down the shaft ; the Russian flag was torn
down and a large red flag was run up in its place
and flew all day to remind us that the old order
was abolished. Messengers left every few hours
for the telegraph station at Akmolinsk with tel-

THE UNION OF UNIONS 71
egrams to the Union of Unions reporting the
progress of the strike. The Kirghiz were driven
away from the pumps; the engine was silent.
Tocsan seemed to be making no progress. Our
stove had gone out. We filled our samovar with
the last remaining drop of water that night and
drank our tea in silence. The Doctor considered
that Social Democracy had triumphed and recom
mended surrender. I talked long and earnestly
with Kusain and when he left I knew that he
would work hard that night. Tocsan was as in
scrutable as ever.
The outlook next morning was extremely dreary.
The stove was cold, the house was cold, there was
no water for tea and there is very little comfort
on a cold morning in a cold crust of bread. Snow
was falling outside and the red flag was fluttering
insolently. Kusain came in for a minute and re
ported that Topornin had spent the night issuing
new wage books to the men, giving them double
pay and starting off each man's book with a credit
of twenty roubles ; that he had done the same with
the Kirghiz, and that he was going to open the
store and distribute to each man goods to this
value. This was his bribe, but Kusain continued :
"I doubt if the Kirghiz will take it; they see
the mine filling with water, they realize that their
means of livelihood are slipping away; be content,
Tocsan is not working in vain."
In the street a great crowd was assembling

72 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
round the store and there was much noise and con
fusion; I noticed that the Russians were pressing
round the door but that the Kirghiz were standing
in an outer circle, quite silent. Topornin came to
the store and unlocked the door and began handing
out tea and sugar and flour, and fur caps and coats.
At first a semblance of order prevailed, but, with
whetted appetite, the crowd grew larger and more
aggressive, and some bolder spirits began to help
themselves to what pleased them most. And To
pornin stood on the steps and shouted to the Kir
ghiz to come and take the flour and tallow, the
things they loved so well; but to their everlasting
credit be it said, they stood in a circle outside the
raging mob of Russians which was besieging the
door, and never moved. There they stood, poor
things, hungry and cold, braving the storm in their
miserable cotton-batting clothes and watched all
the good fur coats and the good food going begging
for the taking.
I knew then that the Russians had lost their
senses and the game, and that this brief triumph
would be their last. The crowd was gathering;
the Russians were still looting the store, but our
Kirghiz workmen were pouring into the street from
all sides; their meekness had disappeared, they
were growing angry. Kusain rushed in and told
me they were taking possession of the mine, the
shafts and pumps and were placing fire guards at
the principal points. The street was now packed

THE UNION OF UNIONS 73
with a surging mass, swaying to and fro and
shouting: "Kaida Bai, Bai Kaida!" (where is the master).
And they surged toward the door of the house, and
in an instant it was filled with a roaring, struggling
mass of snow-covered, yelling cotton batting,
which lifted me on its shoulders, with yells of
"Djacksi Bai!" (good master). It was a dramatic
moment. Tocsan had not failed us.
In a few minutes a note arrived from Topornin :
To the Director:
The strike is off. Please afford us protection; we are in
danger of our lives. Andrei Topornin.
The next day Topornin slunk out of the Assump
tion Copper Mines and was arrested before he
reached home.

FATHER AND SON.
THE gloom in Russia had reached its deepest
point in 1906. The Government was irreso
lute and vacillating. At one moment liberal de
crees were promulgated, at the next the Duma
was suddenly dissolved. At times it appeared as
if the Bureaus were actually encouraging disorders,
in order that the Government might have the
opportunity of intervening, and, so, appearing in
the r61e of the protectress of its children. In all
the large towns horrible riots had broken out, the
worst of all being at Tomsk, where the rioters
set fire to the huge Government building and shot
down the employees as they fled from its burning
doors. Murder and brutality were everywhere
firmly seated in their bloody saddles.
Fortified by the remoteness of our location in
the Steppes, we did not fear any trouble with our
own regular men, most of whom had worked for
years with us and were extremely friendly. But
when we were told by the London office that our
plans for the new smelting works had been ac
cepted, we knew that we should be obliged to
increase our force tenfold, and that, from what
ever quarter they came, they would be strangers
74

FATHER AND SON 75
to us; and the recent strike at the Assumption
Copper Mine was fresh enough in our minds to
make us a little nervous about strangers. But
we had to hire at least a thousand men to accom
plish the work we had planned within a reason
able time. For in Russia or at any rate in our
part of Russia, everything is done by hand. First
you smelt your iron, then you make your tool,
then you cut your tree, then you make the wheels
for your cart, then you haul the log and saw it,
then you take your axe and cut the tongue on
one board and the groove in the other, and so
you lay your floor. And the masons follow the
same plan, and the lime-burners the same, and a
very good piece of work it all is when it is finished.
The resourcefulness of such men is simply mar
vellous; did we need a new boiler, our blacksmith
asked for boiler-plate and made one; were we
planning a converter, our mechanic made it; in
our part of the world, "ex nihilo nihil fit" is not
true. You start with nothing and end up with a
concertina or a converter, according to taste.
One day I saw a man slaughtering a sheep and I
jauntily said to him:
"Aha; you will have a good supper tonight."
"Nonsense," he said, "I am making a pair of
boots." "Of course," said I, "how stupid of me, the skin
will make good boots."
"That is not the way to make boots," and he

76 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
looked at me in surprise and pity. "You must
take the entrails of the sheep and draw it into fine
strings like dombra strings, and with these you can
card the wool and then make felt shoes like these.
I made these myself," he said, pointing to the pair
of felt overshoes on his feet.
In the same manner the Kirghiz are extraordi
narily clever along their own line of workmanship.
The community starts with the camel, the sheep,
the ox and the horse, and from these, as they and
their families wander over the Steppes, they
evolve their tents, their clothes, their embroid
eries. Truly it seemed wonderful to us, with our
machine-made, ready-to-use and ready-to-wear
ideas, to watch how the same results could be ac
complished by skilful fingers without machines,
and what an extraordinarily high standard of
comfort and achievement could be attained with
an astonishingly modest standard of cost. After
we had contemptuously torn out the old horse
whims at the mine and installed our beautiful,
smooth-running cages, we never succeeded in
lowering our costs to what they had been before
the change. Some day the railway will be built in
to our old hand-made country, but I doubt if the
railway will cheapen our standard cost of transpor
tation; eight to nine dollars per long ton for all
classes of goods over a haul of four hundred and
eighty miles. The Russians have an old chantey
song which they sing when they are working in

FATHER AND SON 77
unison. It is called the Pile Drivers, and runs as
follows: Oh! The Englishman's clever, to lighten his toil
He invents first one means, then another,
But when his work's heavy, our son of the soil
Pulls the oak tree of Russia, his Mother.
Chorus
Hey, you faithful oak tree! Heyho!
Hey, you leafy one! She's going now!
She's going now!
So pull all! Oh, pull all! and Heyho!
It was an inspiration to hear the Russians sing
this song and they love so to sing it. It always
seemed to me when I heard them, that they
were expressing the inevitable destiny of the toil
of humanity; when one pile is driven home, the
next must be driven and the work is eternal,
without end. The musical harmonies of the song
are luminous in their depths, wrapped in the
beauty and sadness of the minor tone. Work,
poetry and music; of these is the Russian made.
Whether he is singing Gospode Pomilui (Lord
have mercy on me) in his church, or singing to
his fellow workmen to drive the pile, or calling
to his horse to carry him quickly over the long
road, the music is the same, the man is the same.
Very pleasant it is, this life of infinite toil,
interwoven with the bright threads of music and
poetry and dancing, and with a childlike faith in

78 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
God. There are many lands where conditions
are simple and crude, but there is no country like
Russia, where the simplicity of the child lies in the
soul and the body of a man. If you wish to under
stand them you must abandon the cast-iron
moulds in which your western thoughts have been
bound. If you will take the trouble you will find
it well worth while. You will find that the great
bearded man, of immense physical endurance,
is like a child in his lack of consciousness of self,
absence of conventionalities, obedience to im
pulse, clear directness of thought, love of the
primary expressions of nature. Pathetic he is,
as a child is pathetic; happy, because he cannot
help being happy, but vaguely conscious of the
insoluble mystery of life and the Promethean
tragedy of human endeavour. But, like a child,
in spite of the dignity and purity of his vision,
perhaps on account of it, he can be easily led.
There is no more tragic picture conceivable than
a Russian crowd, swayed first by one leader and
then another, following blindly where it is led.
Hence most votes in the Duma are unanimous.
But this is not an essay on the Russian people
and I must return to the story.
We were, therefore, confronted with the ne
cessity of importing an enormous amount of tech
nical labour, if we expected to complete our smel
ter plant within a reasonable time; and we felt
that the difficulty of importing so much untried

FATHER AND SON 79
labour and of housing and feeding and, generally
speaking, caring for them and their families,
would prove the most difficult part of our pro
gramme. We chose the best men available for recruiting
agents and assigned them to different districts
along the railway; each man had his instructions
to furnish his quota of men of the class required.
The arrangements made, I left for London and
did not return until June. On leaving the train
at Petropavlovsk, it was easy to see that the
staff in our office there was uneasy. Our agent
was very anxious that I should not linger; he had
made all necessary posting arrangements, the
troika was waiting at the door, my trusted Kirghiz
servant was on the box.
"Why such haste?" I asked. "Cannot I eat
some of your fine crawfish and a little meat, and
look over your accounts and your copper stocks?"
"Yes, your Honour, you can," said Porfiri
Vassilievitch the agent, "but I recommend that
you start at once. I hear disquieting rumours
from the works. The new workmen are not like
the old ; they have been fed with vicious doctrines
by agitators; their heads are turned; they are
told they can have what they want by taking it;
I fear the Tomsk Artyel (association) especially:
this is composed of a set of desperate men from
Tomsk, the same men who attacked the Govern
ment building and made that city a place of terror

80 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
for weeks. These men should never have been
engaged for the new works; they are not seeking
work but robbery, and will not stop at bloodshed
to get what they want. The rumours which reach
me from the works make me uneasy; I recom
mend, your Honour, that you leave without de
lay." We took our places in the carriage at once.
"Aida!" (get up) yelled the driver, and off we
started at the conventional gallop. We crossed
the railway and sped southward. We decided to
stop only at alternate stations to avoid the delay
of changing horses. Where we did stop, it was
only for the bare time necessary to change them.
If the samovar was ready we drank a little tea,
if it was not, we pushed on without it. The
weather was fine, the roads were in good condi
tion, everything was perfect for a quick run.
There was no delay at the Post stations, for we
were using private post horses and we were well
known on the road. One measured post of twenty-
six and three-quarter miles we covered in two
hours. All night and all the next day we bowled
along, and the second day at dawn we stopped
at the river Noura and bathed, and reached the
works at ten A.M. Four hundred and eighty
miles in forty-four hours lapsed time; this, so far
as I know, is the record for this trip, except a
mythical trip of the Governor General which
is treasured in the memories of the local postmen.

KIRGHIZ HORSEMEN

A RUSSIAN POST HOUSE

FATHER AND SON 81
Conditions at the works were truly unsatisfac
tory. The new workmen were daily becoming
more insolent; they had terrorized the old work
men and either frightened or cajoled them into
submission. They were cleverly taking advantage
of all the weak spots in their agreements, some of
which had been loosely drawn by our agents when
the men were engaged; they had hypnotized the
local authorities into a condition of nerveless in
action, and it was evident that the law officers in
our district were ready to give away every dollar
the company possessed, rather than run the risk of
any conflict with such notorious opponents. Even
some of our own friends, men who should have
been outspoken on our side, were either wavering
or had cast their vote on the side of the insurgents.
Our old friend the doctor, who had proclaimed
the victory of Social Democratic principles at the
time of the strike at the copper mine, was openly
in accord with them, and the new priest was a
serious storm centre, preaching that Christ was
the first Socialist. In short, it may be said that
they had taken possession of the works and au
thority had abdicated. The most effective weapon
in their large arsenal and one which they were
using with deadly effect, was the clause in their
agreement which provided for an eight-hour day
and double pay for overtime. They had obtained
such control of the system that they loafed
through eight hours from six till two, and then

82 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
loafed through another four hours, and obtained
an allowance of two days' pay for one very poor
day of work. They were also using other weapons
which they found in the badly drawn agreements,
and, as the appetite grows with eating, the situa
tion was becoming intolerable.
I went to the new works where they were build
ing a huge retaining wall, and they certainly were
a tough-looking lot. We learned afterwards that
our agents had been deceived by the officials at
Tomsk. The town authorities had found out that
our agents were there looking for workmen, and
had conceived the brilliant idea of getting rid of
their undesirables by unloading them on us, and
our humble agents, overcome by the solicitude and
attention of the high dignitaries, had fallen easy
victims to their wiles.
The situation was as bad as bad could be and the
road looked very dark ahead of us, but it was ob
vious that the first thing to be done at all costs,
was for us to seize the reins and drive the coach
ourselves, and hope for luck to help us through.
So, after work hours, I posted notices that in fu
ture no overtime would be allowed except in cases
of absolute necessity. When they read the notices
the next morning, a deputation came and said :
"We see notices that there will be no more over
time, but we notify you that we intend to work
every day four hours overtime."
"There will be no more overtime," I said.

FATHER AND SON 83
"But," they said, "Pavel Dmitrievitch, the
manager, with Power of Attorney, says we may
work overtime."
"Then let him pay you for it. I will not."
"When our Artyel learns to-night that you have
refused to pay us overtime, they will come and
force you to pay it."
"That is not in their power," I replied.
"You will see."
In a few minutes the Russian manager arrives
and implores me not to take such an unfortunate
step. He urges that the men are now working
well, that their agreements call for overtime, that
we can do nothing against such numbers and such
men, and that we shall all be killed and so on.
And the Pristav or Police Agent comes and
recommends submission; he assumes that, accord
ing to their agreements, they have right on their
side, that times are very difficult, that we must
avoid all cause for scandal, that the consequences
may be very serious.
On counting up our forces, I found that I had
the support of our three Englishmen and one
Russian, a minor official but a faithful friend,
Peter Sergeivitch. The Russian manager was a
gelatinous mass, a very wobbly support. He would
have come out openly on the men's side, but knew
such action would mean his prompt dismissal.
Our house stood on a level terrace, and, by day
break the next morning, I could hear the scuffle of

84 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
footsteps outside. The men were gathering; first
in little groups, then in larger ones; their talk was
not nice and their voices were not nice.
Peter Sergeivitch came in.
"You had better get ready to see the men. I
will stay with you, you will need all the support
you can get."
"Thank you, Peter; call Duncan and Herbert,
make haste, there is no time to lose."
There was a large empty room in our house and
we waited there for the storm to break. By six
o'clock the terrace was packed with a noisy crowd
and a dozen men burst into the room where we
were waiting, followed by all who could force their
way in. The crowd was so strong that we were
forced into a corner of the room. There was not
a pleasant expression in the whole gang. I de
manded immediately why they were not at work.
"Give us our overtime," they cried.
"No, no more overtime," I said.
At this the whole room yelled and it was difficult
to hear exactly what they were saying; but the
drift of it all was, that we had broken our agree
ment with the men, and that, thereby, we must at
once pay them in full for their whole season's work,
and provide them with transportation to their
homes, and free subsistence till they were ready to
start. We were standing in a little group in a corner of
the room with our backs to the wall, the crowd was

FATHER AND SON 85
confronting us in a small circle drawn around us.
At first I attempted to reason with them, but
this was a useless effort; they just yelled me down.
From time to time excited men forced their way
through the crowd, shook their fists at us, de
manded money and shouted, till others forced
them back so that they could shout themselves.
I abandoned all effort to reason with them; it is
useless to reason with a maniac. The noise quieted
down at dinner time, and the Pristav and the
Russian manager came up and implored us to give
way. But apart from questions of policy, we were
growing obstinate ; you cannot stand before a yell
ing, hooting crowd for six hours, with its fist thrust
into your face, without becoming "something,"
and it took the form of obstinacy with us. After
dinner they came on in greater force and with
greater vehemence than ever; during a brief lull
I told them what our decision was: first, that they
were all discharged, second, that we would send
them home on certain terms, not necessary to relate.
I knew what a storm the proposals would raise,
but the lines had to be drawn and the fight must
be fought, so the sooner the better. For some
hours, all through the long, weary afternoon, we
stood with our backs to the corner, looking into the
eyes of the angry mob, while the terrace was
packed to overflowing. A moment's weakening
would have invited disaster, but the merciful dark
ness came at last, and hunger scattered the crowd.

86 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
All night long the crowd roamed the streets with
such cries as: "We filled the streets of Tomsk
with blood, and who is there who will prevent us
here?" "Cut the accursed foreigners into sau
sages," and so on. Our own friendly workmen
were in a hopeless minority, and we had closed the
works so as not to expose them to unnecessary in
sult, but we did what we could to post guards, and
the night passed without incident.
The next day the storm broke again as the sun
came up, and again our little corner of the recep
tion room was the storm centre. But we felt safe
now; we had taken their measure and they knew
that they were beaten. As the afternoon wore on
they began to talk reason, and by evening we had
arranged the terms of the truce. The next day we
began hiring wagons for their removal, and day
by day the agitators were removed from the works,
a hundred one day, two hundred the next day, and
so on.
After the worst men were safely off the premises
the works resumed operations, but we did not take
on again our old men who had joined the strikers,
and they were becoming uneasy. It began to dawn
upon their minds that they had made a mistake.
So a group of them came to me one day:
"Barin," said Dmitrii the carpenter, "the new
works are progressing very slowly."
"Yes," I said, "you all refused to work and, of
course, we are all suffering from your foolishness."

FATHER AND SON 87
"Yes, Barin, we were very foolish; but Ivan
Konstantinovitch of the Tomsk Artyel, told us
we could get two days' pay for one day's work
and we believed him."
"And now you see how foolish you were."
"Yes, we see it all plainly now. But you,
Barin, will not refuse to employ us when you need
the work so badly."
"Yes, you are discharged; you have brought
all this worry on the works and yOu must now go
back to Little Russia."
"Very well, if the Barin says so, we must go,
but we will be back early next spring."
"No you will not: you will none of you work
here ever again."
"Oh, Barin, do not talk so unkindly; we like
you very much, and we are sorry we listened to
those Tomsk scoundrels, and we shall all be back
next year."
"No, you will not, you will never work here
again." "Oh, Barin, we shall all come back in the
spring with our wives and our families, and when
you see us all here with nothing to eat and no
place for our families to sleep, you will give us
work, we know you will."
"No, you won't, you won't, you won't!"
"Oh yes, Barin, we will all come back next
year, and we like you very much and will always
work for you. But now we must say farewell,

88 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
for the carpenters have finished the repairs to the
wagons. Barin, will you please give us an order
to the hay yard that we may have plenty of hay
to put in our wagons, so that the women and chil
dren may be comfortable? I am afraid that the
horses which the Barin has hired for us from that
rascal Tokpai, are very thin, and it will be many
weeks before we reach the railway; we men can
walk, but it is hard for the women, especially
those whose babes are very young."
"Can the women and young children endure so
long a journey?" I asked.
"We live in the sight of God and our lives are
in his hands; if he so wills it, they will be able to
endure. Farewell, Barin; when the wagons pass
by, you will come to the corner and say ' Farewell'
to us."
Toward the close of the day a long stream of
wagons filed by. Little wooden things, held to
gether with wooden pegs, each drawn by a little
horse buried under a huge douga or yoke. Each
horse follows immediately the wagon ahead of
him: when one stops, they all stop; when one
moves, they all move. The women and children
were crowded in the wagons, the men were walking
by the side.
"Farewell, Barin, till we meet again."
"Goodbye, Dmitrii Iliitch, may your road be
spread before you like a table cloth!"
What pathetic figures they were, wandering

FATHER AND SON 89
out into the setting sun, sorrow and resignation
on their faces! And we needed the men so badly
for our construction programme. It all seemed
so unnecessary, and yet it had to be; and the
divine light of intelligence was in those rough
faces as they disappeared over the hill and waved
a last "Prostchai, (Farewell)!"
At any rate it was a relief to have it all over,
and the works once more settled down to the
routine which had been so rudely interrupted.
Two or three days after Dmitrii's party had
left, I was surprised to see his brother Konstantin
and his two sons and two or three other workmen,
standing one morning in the hallway of my house.
"Good heavens, Konstantin, has there been an
accident? Where is Dmitrii?"
"The Barin does not understand; our party
did not leave with Dmitrii."
"And pray, why not?"
"Partly because our wagons were not ready,
partly because Stepan had cut his leg so badly
with an axe that he could not travel."
"Konstantin, I want you to understand that
I cannot have you and your families hanging round
the works, eating meat and flour, while you earn
no money; you must leave at once, do you
hear?" "Yes, I hear, but we cannot leave till evening,
because our wagons will not be ready till then.
Barin, it is very dull staying here; there is nothing

go RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
for us to do while the carpenters are busy on the
wagons." "Well, if you find it so dull, why do you not go
away?" I said.
"You know, Barin, that a father cannot leave
his son when his son is hurt and cannot walk;
besides, the wagons are not ready. Yes, it is very
dull, but if the Barin were to give us a bottle of
vodka, it would help us to pass the time," said
Konstantin. "Nonsense! You know I do not keep vodka
in the house except on holidays."
"Still, the Barin probably has at least one bottle
saved in the cupboard under the floor."
And more to get rid of him than anything else,
I groped in the cupboard and found one of the
large bottles of vodka known as tchetverts. Old
Konstantin's eyes glistened when he saw the size
of the bottle, but I said to him:
"I can only give you half the bottle, the rest I
must keep for myself; perhaps I shall find things
dull, too."
So I poured out half of the bottle and they took
it and walked away.
Toward evening Konstantin again appeared at
my house.
"Good Heavens," I said, "not gone yet?"
"Not yet, Barin, but everything is now ready:
the wagons are here, all ready to start. Stepan
asks you to come and wish him goodbye."

FATHER AND SON 91
So I walk to where the wagons are standing,
and the little group of men hold out their hands
and say farewell, and make me shake hands with
the children, and finally I see Stepan who sits
in one of the wagons, with his leg bound with a
blood-stained bandage.
"Goodbye, Stepan; I am sorry your leg is hurt
so badly."
"It is nothing, Barin," said Stepan, "but I
cannot walk. Farewell, we will all be back in the
spring!" I had not the heart to argue the point with him
then and simply said :
"Farewell, Stepan; God be with you and your
families." The whips cracked, the wagons creaked, the
little cavalcade slowly moved off and disappeared
over the hill. I hurried away and walked back to
the house. I was sorry to see so many good men
leave us, we needed them so badly; but it had to
be done and it was a relief to have it all over.
I sat down and began turning over the plans of
the new works, and was soon absorbed in other
thoughts. I heard some steps outside.
"Barin," a voice called from the outside.
"I wish to goodness I could ever have five
minutes undisturbed!"
I went to the door, and to my amazement and
annoyance there was Konstantin standing, hat in
hand.

92 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
"Konstantin," I cried, "what the devil are you
doing here? Be off at once!"
"Barin, do not be angry; you know I told you
how a father should never be separated from his
son; in the same way, Barin, one half of a bottle
of vodka should never be divided from the other.
Will you not give us the other half of that bottle
which you gave us this morning?"
I accepted the inevitable and drew out the re
mains of the bottle from the cupboard.
"Now, Konstantin," I said, "take it; and if I
see your face again I will call the Pristav and have
you arrested."
"Goodbye, Barin!" The old man shuffled off
and disappeared over the hill, in the direction of
the creaking wagons.
"Goodbye father and goodbye son," I said to
myself, and turning to the plans, resumed my
work. Next spring, as they had foretold, they all
came back.

EASTER DAY.
KIRIL IVANOVITCH FALALEI was the
name of our village priest.
It is inherently impossible, in a few written
words, to define the soul of a people. The most
that can be done is to throw some rays of light on
certain paths along which it travels, and possibly
to indicate some of the motives which urge it this
way or that. The reader may then, if he wishes,
attempt to gather up this information and mould
it into a formula in his mind. He will be wiser if
he leaves it alone, and remains satisfied to breathe
the perfume of the flowers, which line the path of
his enquiry, without insisting on»a strict definition
of its bewildering angles. For, if he is determined
on a strict survey, what instrument has ever been
made, which, in the hands of different observers,
will guide them to the same goal, when they are
attempting to follow the path of the soul, in the
labyrinth of human desires and dreams? Each
one tilts the instrument with the bias of his own
character; to one, a path leads to the Divine
Presence; to another, to destruction; to the large
majority it loses itself in clouds of mystery.
Nevertheless, no one can mix with the Russian
7 93

94 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
people without being profoundly impressed by the
strength of the tie which binds them to their relig
ion and their Church. Whether this is due to the
mystic quality inherent in the Russian mind, or to
the paternal care of the Government, which is
cause, and which is effect,- these questions will
probably be answered by each one, according to
the angle at which he holds his instrument.
But, undoubtedly, all observers will agree on
these two points: first, the Russian's childlike
faith in God; second, the minute paternalism with
which every act of the individual is surrounded.
To the writer, it seems that the Russian form of
paternalism derives its force from below and not
from above. It comes less from the desire of those
in high authority to control the action of the
masses, than from the desire of the latter to impose
on other shoulders than their own, the responsi
bility of their actions. On the spiritual side, they
rest their faith in God ; on the practical side, they
rely, for guidance, on someone in higher authority
than themselves. The logical conclusion is: the
authority of God in all things spiritual, and the
authority of the "Gosudar" (Czar) in all things
temporal. Furthermore, this distinction, between the spir
itual and the physical needs of man, is an expres
sion drawn from our Western attitude of mind.
With the Russian, the spiritual is not far removed
from the physical, and it must be added that the

EASTER DAY 95
physical is not very far removed from the spiritual.
The presence of God is an ever-living idea in his
mind and the ministrations of His church are as
natural to him as any other physical function.
God is not for him a remote being, to whom he
may appeal in an emergency, who may be pleased
or angry, who interrupts or forwards his personal
affairs. He is the Primal Force who makes all
things move, the Power which makes the grain
sprout, and the sun rise, and which will, in due
course, lay him under the earth. God is the Cosmic
Power, and he bows his head to it and worships.
He recognizes the Power in every simple act of life ;
if he is on his way to his work, he passes through
the church and bows to the Divinity; if he takes
food, he first bows before His image; if he comes
into your house, he must first cross himself beneath
the Ikon in your room, before he salutes you. He
considers the Church as the symbol of His power,
and the priest as the medium between himself and
God. There is no personal relation between the
priest and layman; in himself the priest is unim
portant, a mere instrument of Divine Power. He
may be reeling with vodka when he holds aloft
the Cross, but this is nothing to the congregation,
which sees, not the priest, but only the mystery of
which he is the messenger. Although Mercury
was a thief, he, nevertheless, carried the messages
of Jupiter.
The former owners of our mines were of the old

96 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
school of mine operators of Yekaterinburg in the
Ural Mountains, persons of great piety, and they
had built a church many years before our arrival.
It was a pretty little church, very nicely decorated
inside, standing conspicuously on the highest
ground in the neighbourhood. When the Governor
General or other dignitaries arrived at the works,
they always first drove to the church and paid
their devotions to God, before driving to the vil
lage where we were waiting for them, holding the
traditional bread and salt, which symbolized the
hospitable welcome of the villagers. When we
took charge of the property, we followed in the
footsteps of our predecessors, and helped toward
the support of the church in every way possible.
Kiril Ivanovitch Falalei was a man of remarkable
appearance; the image of Christ as the Tyrolean
peasant actors attempt to show him to us on the
stage of the Passion Plays. His features were ex
traordinarily fine, his hair fell in sweeping waves
of Titian red over his shoulders, and his large
blue eyes had a deep and dreamy look. Inciden
tally, he was a Cossack, a wonderful horseman and
athlete and a considerable, very considerable,
drinker. His home life was not a model; but, as
I said above, a Russian priest's personality has
nothing to do with his priesthood. After he left
us, we had two priests in quick succession; one
the socialist Protopopoff, and the other Timofei, a
man of quiet parts and some education; but I

EASTER DAY 97
doubt if either of them were as successful as priests
as the wild Cossack, Falalei, who to his other ac
complishments added that of music; being a fine
singer and a lover of music, especially the music
of the Russian church. It was a revelation to
hear him sing the "Little Mother Volga." Like
all Russians he loved the minor key, and the
melodious harmonies of Beethoven were not at all
to his taste. I remember one night, while some of
the Pastoral Symphony was being played, seeing
him rise in great agitation and implore the player
to stop playing in the major key, for such music
drove him mad.
He was one of the leading voices amongst those
who usually came to our house on Saturday eve
ning. They would drop in to supper, half a dozen
or a dozen of them, and, after the meal was over,
first one began to sing, then another joined in,
then all ; and the singing rose and fell until the old
day was exchanged for a young one. I do not
recall, in all my life, a more impressive moment
than when Theodor Iliich, the Cantor, would sing
Pushkin's wonderful words: "At the last moment
of my life." Theodor was a huge peasant, whose
devotion to religion was inextricably interwoven
with his love of music. As he stood up in his high
boots, his blue cotton shirt gathered at the waist
with a cord, he appeared the very ideal of uncon
scious childlike faith, while his grand voice sang
the poignant words of his favourite song. He might

98 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
have been the original of the lay brother who plied
the ferry for the monks in Tchekov's story, "The
Night before Easter."
Lent was near and we all determined to have a
wonderful service on the night before Easter. The
Russian Lent is something very real, a real season
of self-denial. Husbands may not kiss their wives;
no meat is touched; no milk or butter or eggs are
used; of course vodka is forbidden. As the time
draws near the Passion week, the rules are more
tightly drawn; the careful ones grow stricter and
the careless ones observe a certain measure of re
straint ; and, during the Holy Week itself, the self-
restraint becomes almost austere. They impose
unusual tasks of work upon themselves; the
women clean the inside of the house and the men
the outside, and work on the preparation of the
Easter feast goes on late into the night. For the
"feast," which has survived for us only as a word,
is a real feast for them. Such cooking and prepa
ration ! The wonderfully cooked fishes and meats
and Easter cakes two feet high begin to accumu
late on the shelves, and look very tempting to their
abstemious mouths. And every night the choir
meets and practises its music for the service of the
year. While the orthodox Russian was preparing him
self by abstinence, in a spirit of mystical devotion,
for his Easter festival, we could see the Mahom-
medan Kirghiz preparing themselves in their cold

EASTER DAY 99
literal fashion, for their great feast. Like the
Christian, but in a spirit of utilitarianism and not
of idealism, the Mahommedan has adopted the
excellent rule of a periodic fast; we usually hear
of it as the month of Ramadan, but the Kirghiz
called it Oorazah. The period of the fast is a
movable one, occurring every year later than in
the preceding year. During the period of one
moon, the Kirghiz are not allowed to touch food
or drink from sunrise to sundown. When the
fast occurs in the short winter days, the period of
abstinence between sunrise and sunset is not very
long; but, in the long hot summer days, the
Kirghiz working around the furnaces, endured
little less than torture as, for four weeks, they
toiled through the long day without food and
without water. As the dromedary's humps be
come limp and flabby after a long period of work
without food, so the poor Kirghiz, toiling round
the scorching furnaces, became weaker and flab
bier as the fast progressed. Probably Mahommed
never contemplated such work as this, when he
prescribed such a rigorous ordinance. It is one
thing to sit at your tent door and watch the sun
travel across the sky and quite another thing to
tap the blistering copper from a white-hot furnace.
The Kirghiz fast has not any fixed date of end
ing. When the new moon shows itself in the
western sky their fast is over, but not till then.
If the sky be cloudy and the moon obscured,

ioo RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
they must prolong their fast from day to day,
until they see the crescent in the evening and
obtain their release. As their system of the
dissemination of knowledge is very imperfect,
and as Marcus Ward publishes no Kirghiz cal
endars, their ignorance of the exact time when the
moon should appear, is pathetic. There was a
natural terrace facing the west, near the smelter,
and here, two or three days before it was due, the
Kirghiz would gather toward sundown, looking
in vain for the hoped-for sign of their deliverance.
As the sky grew dark and no moon appeared they
would turn wearily away and walk down the hill.
On Good Friday the service in the Russian
church begins and is practically continuous till
the hour of the Resurrection. The story of the
Cross is partly acted, and partly told and sung.
All of Saturday the body of Christ lies on a bier
in front of the altar and devout worshippers pa£s
round it, kissing the forehead of their Saviour
crucified, as they pass. Toward the evening of
Saturday the crowd begins to gather, and we
move with it toward the little church on the
hill facing the east. As we go, we pass the ter
race where the Kirghiz are wont to gather to
silently watch for their longed-for sign. How
close together in this far-off desert are these two
hills, and by what an impassable gulf are they
separated! On the one are the Mahommedans,
straining their eyes to the west to see the pale

THE LITTLE CHURCH ON THE HILL
Camel train leaving the works for Petropavlovsk

EASTER DAY 101
light of their crescent shine, and on the other are
the Christians watching the east to see their star
arise. The line is sharply drawn which separates
them, and, yet, what a strong tie binds them, if
they only knew it!
We enter the church and buy our candles:
large ones to place in the holders before the im
ages of the saints, small tapers to hold in our hands.
The service proceeds.
For hours we stand while new crowds keep
coming in, till the church is packed to suffocation.
Each one lights his taper and the crush is so great
that he must hold it above his head, lest he burn
his neighbour. The singing of the choir rises
and falls, the deep voice of the Cantor rolls through
the building and the constantly repeated "Gos-
pode pomilui," (Lord have mercy upon us), be
comes fascinating in its constant reiteration. The
music is like nothing but itself. Those who have
heard it know its power and its pathos. Toward
midnight the singing ceases, a deep hush prevails
while the Body of the Saviour is carried behind
the altar. The silence is intense. The little tapers
glow like stars in a golden wave which fills the
church. There is absolute stillness.
Christos voskress! Christ has risen! The bells
crash out, cannon outside the church are fired;
from behind the altar comes a procession with the
priest in his gorgeous cassock of white and gold,
bearing the empty coffin. Down the church it

loz RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
marches and out into the starry night, while the
bells clash for joy, and round after round is fired
from the cannon.
Christos voskress! Yes, undoubtedly Christ
has risen!
When the priest comes back from his triumphal
march he finds the people grouped in a circle, all
kneeling on the floor. The women are in front,
dressed in bright reds and blues, with embroidered
kerchiefs round their heads. They are holding
before them the bread and cake which they have
been preparing and waiting for so long, that God
may bless it and that they and their families may
be blessed of Him. Behind them stand the men,
full-bearded, erect, serious of mien; in the centre
the Priest and the Cantor. Hundreds of wax
tapers illuminate the scene with a soft mysterious
glow. The priest passes round the circle, sprinkling
the food with holy water. And, because the church
is small and there is not room for many inside,
the others are gathered around the church, each
one kneeling — waiting for the blessing of God
upon his bread. Then they all go to their own
houses and each man breaks the bread, which
has been blessed, with his own family, and every
one is then ready for the visiting and gay feasting
which follow.
Our own house is filled to overflowing with the
mountains of food which have been cooked dur-

EASTER DAY 103
ing the last week, and bottles with liquors of every
hue are filled and refilled and filled again. Alike
between master and man, workman and boss,
Christos voskress is the universal greeting. It
is very democratic and a pretty sight, before too
many get too drunk. But drink, alas, does not even
respect the resurrection of Christ. Certainly re
straint and the minor key are more beautiful to
look upon than intemperance played in the major.
Similarly the Mahommedans will celebrate the
end of their fast in an orgy of sodden meat and
sour milk. This also is not a lovely spectacle and
the smell is overpowering.

SIMPLE ADDITION.
IF you have been trained in the western world
you will probably regard the addition of num
bers as the simplest of all arithmetical processes,
a mere matter of arranging your figures in an
orderly column and then adding them up. But
directly you cross the Russian frontier you will
at once notice that everyone who has to do with
figures has, at his side, a little wooden frame
across which are strung thirteen wires. On each
wire are strung little wooden balls which move
freely on the wires. The balls on the ten top
wires are white and on the two bottom wires are
black. The thirteenth wire between the white
and black balls is merely used to define the sep
aration between the two colours. In Russia, the
white balls represent the roubles, the black rep
resent the kopeks. Such counting-boards are
universal. If you make a few purchases at a
shop, the assistant clicks the balls back and forth
and reads off the total from the board. The
trained office man never says two and two make
four. He takes his board and throws off two
balls to the right, then again two, then observes
that he has four balls, and so announces the total,
104

SIMPLE ADDITION 105
In a large counting-house or bank the rattle of the
clicking balls is a characteristic sound, just as the
presence of an attendant, constantly walking be
tween the rows of clerks, distributing glasses of tea
among them, is a characteristic sight.
The counting-board is a Chinese device, adopted
before figures were known and afterwards per
sisted in with the conservatism of the East. The
Russians have adopted it, as they have adopted
so many eastern customs and thoughts.
It is astonishing how quickly and accurately a
practised man can manipulate the noisy, nimble
balls, but this applies to all processes where the
human brain and fingers are employed. A skilful
English bank clerk can add up the three columns
of pounds, shillings and pence, simultaneously.
The counting-board has one obvious advantage;
if a clerk is interrupted in adding a series of figures,
the total is preserved on the counting-board until
he is ready to resume. But on the whole, it is
probable that properly equipped men would do
better to throw it away and take up the pencil,
while possibly, incompetent men can do better
work with it than without it. In any case, its use
produces a deplorably careless and untidy habit
of bookkeeping, which in itself is a bad result.
In our office, it was a source of much good-
natured jesting between our English accountant,
who was a marvel with figures, and the Russian
bookkeepers. His delight, therefore, at the help-

io6 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
lessness of the Russian cashier, which is developed
at the close of this story, was unbounded.
The foundation of this story is as follows:
Our works were the owners of a certain safe, and
on the morning of September the fifteenth, 1905,
the cashier, a bonded official of the Guild of Ac
countants in Petersburg, announced that during
the previous night, the safe had been bodily stolen
from the office.
"Last night," he said, "I checked up my cash
and, after counting it, I found I had upwards of
fourteen thousand roubles. I locked the safe as
usual. This morning the safe is not in its usual
place; it has entirely disappeared. You must
come quickly; the safe weighs nearly a ton; it is
impossible that the robbers should have carried
it far." We ran to the office and already the usual crowd
of loafers was gathered round the door. The cash
ier had spoken truly; the safe had vanished. The
night had been stormy; if the robbers had left any
tracks, they had been utterly obliterated by the
rain and sleet. In a few minutes the police officer
was on the spot and immediately began to write
his protocol. Now the protocol in Russia is a won
derful piece of machinery; it is the one officially
recognized panacea for all human woes. If you lose
your money, the officer establishes a protocol; if
a mad dog bites you, another protocol; if your
neighbour trespasses on your land, another; if

SIMPLE ADDITION 107
your boiler explodes, another; always and every
where, a protocol; if you derive no comfort from
these protocols, the fault must be yours, for they
are always accepted by everyone else as the final
solution of all difficulties; the ultimate expression
of the genius of man, who tries, through them, to
shift the responsibility for unpleasant events from
his own shoulders to those of another. For our
part, we had absolutely no faith in protocols; but
custom and respect for authority compelled us to
wait for the completion of this one, with as much
patience as possible. At one time, it seemed as if
the whole protocol machinery would break down,
because the cashier could not remember the exact
amount of the cash which he had counted the
night before. Some one suggested that his books
would show how much money he had on the eve
ning before the robbery; but the police officer was
not to be hurried into foolish conclusions of this
kind, and said :
"Your books may show what you should have
had; the question is what money you actually
did have."
This idea was greeted with great applause, and
actually turned the suspicion of the loafers toward
the cashier; the policeman saw that he had made
a point and was delighted to give such a quick
proof of his wonderful astuteness.
The cashier became confused and retired to his
counting-board.

108 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
After much delay the protocol was finished and
the officer left. He felt his day's work was well
done and left us to our thoughts and to such action
as we could devise.
It was a most disagreeable situation; the only
really disagreeable event which occurred during
the five years of my stay at the works. A self-
contained community, living in a remote corner of
the earth, with practically no communication with
the outside world, acquires the attributes of a
completely self-sufficient organism; the identity of
its various members becomes indistinct; it moves
and feels as a whole, and when one member be
comes deficient, the whole organism is thrown out
of working order. The robbery had changed our
organism suddenly from an animate whole into
numerous inanimate parts. Each one suspected
his neighbour and everyone agreed in suspecting
the cashier. They were all exceedingly blue, for
they knew that the money was gone which was to
have provided for the payroll on the following day.
The life seemed to have gone out of the whole
play, the clerks turned drearily to their counting-
boards, and we began to take steps to find the safe.
Toward evening it was found hidden in some
bushes at the bottom of the hill, with the door open,
the lock intact, and quite empty. A few copper
coins lay scattered on the ground around it. As
the lock was in perfect working order, it was evi
dent that it must have been opened with a key;

SIMPLE ADDITION 109
the cashier always carried round his neck the only '
key known to be in existence. It was absurd,
however, to suppose that the cashier had robbed
the safe, for he was fully bonded by his Guild, and
the Guild watched its bonded members like a
hawk. He then stated that on the occasion of his
last trip to Akmolinsk for cash, he had entrusted
his key to a certain clerk whom we will designate
by the name of Ivan, and that this Ivan had a
brother in the machine shop: "was it not possible
that the machinist brother had manufactured a
duplicate key while the cashier was in Akmo
linsk?" It certainly was extremely possible and,
on the whole, extremely likely. So suspicion fell
heavily upon Ivan and all his kin, and Ivan's be
haviour did not lessen it. His women all began to
appear in new hats and in clothes fashioned after
the latest modes of Pavlodar. Rumours began to
circulate that Ivan's uncle had died and that he
and his family would shortly return to their
homes, and live on the fruitful memory of their
kinsman. By bad luck, he was connected by mar
riage with our police officer, and it seemed impos
sible for us to induce the officer to take any effect
ive initiative toward the recovery of the money.
If he did take any step it was only after a pro
tracted argument extended over several days, dur
ing which time Ivan was given every opportunity
to successfully meet our move.
We had very good means of knowing who came

no RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
into and who went out of the works, and we were
quite confident that the money was not far away,
and we ought to be able to find it, if we could only
spur the police officer to cooperate with us in some
intelligent action. After much argument we in
duced him to let us search Ivan's house; and we
marched down in state for the performance; a
very silly performance it was, carried out amidst
the abuse and jeers of his family. Of course we
found nothing, though we tore up the floor and
examined every crack and cranny ; even the police
officer was laughing at us and we retired in con
fusion. Later we heard that a monstrous baking
of large loaves of bread was proceeding at Maria's,
the baker's shop, and with our police officers, after
giving the usual three days' notice, we marched
down in strong force and cut open all the poor
woman's bread. Another dreary farce. And so
days and weeks passed, and, while we still felt sure
the money had not left the works, we were no
nearer to it than on the day of the robbery. De
cember was drawing near, and we loudly pro
claimed that the Christmas holidays would not be
worth calling holidays if the money were not
found ; there would be no festivities, not even any
vodka. And at this, all faces grew very long and
everyone suddenly acquired a personal interest
in the money, and the suggestion was made that
we send for the mirovoi soodya or judge of the
district criminal court.

SIMPLE ADDITION in
He arrived in due course, a dapper little gentle
man from Poland; he had travelled abroad and
was different from the large, bearded men we usu
ally saw. I think his mother had been French, and
he himself spoke a little French, which he was very
fond of injecting into his talk, gesticulating with
nervous energy all the time. We christened him
"A la fin des fins," as he used this peculiar phrase
between every sentence, as some people say, "you
know." He told us that he was thirty-five years old, had
been a noisy revolutionary, and had been exiled to
Siberia ten years ago; that he was thankful for
this and that he had no wish to go back to Russia.
He had served two years in the jail at Omsk.
"But," I said, "how can you occupy the posi
tion of judge, if you were in jail for two years?"
"I don't understand your point; am I not a
lawyer, a la fin des fins ?"
" Yes," I said, "but you served two years in
jail." "Quite true," he replied, "and for two years
after that I could not leave Omsk, then for two
years I could not leave the province and, a la fin
des fins, now I am quite free."
"Was it not terrible," I asked, "for you to be
in jail?"
"Not at all," he said. "I was allowed to con
tinue practising law. On rule days I used to come
out and enter the pleas of my clients, and try my

ii2 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
cases. At any time when necessary, for instance
if my client had some notes which required pro
testing, I used to leave the jail and, a la fin des fins,
when my business was over, I returned. I en
joyed my stay in jail very much, everyone was very
kind to me. But my dear sir, you seem surprised.
Pray tell me why you are surprised?"
"I will freely confess to you, my dear judge,
that, in our country, a two-year jail sentence is
not usually considered a qualification for the
bench." "A la fin des fins, that is because your treat
ment of prisoners is so illogical. You consider
that a man who has served a term in jail is dis
graced for life; we consider that he has expiated
his offense. It causes us much surprise that your
nation, which is so civilized, should treat its
prisoners so cruelly."
"We treat our prisoners cruelly!" I exclaimed.
"They are treated with great care, have good
lodging and good food and have good medical
attention." "Yes, my friend, their bodies may be well
cared for, but their souls are oppressed with
humiliation, and their minds are tortured; your
prisoners are not even allowed to speak to one
another ; when they enter jail they are considered
to have lost their humanity. I believe it is true
that in certain cases they are shut up alone and
never allowed to see another human being. A la

SIMPLE ADDITION 113
fin des fins, we could not be so cruel as that.
And now, whenever you please, I am ready to
question the accused."
And somewhat in the form of a French Juge
d'lnstruction, he examined the accused, examined
the witnesses, heard our story, talked long with
the police officer, and finally told us that he could
see no cause for confining the accused, but that
he would command them to appear at the next
term of court and stand their trial.
So we were no nearer our money than before.
As the days passed we became more and more
convinced that our suspicions were correct; that
the money had never left the works; that Ivan
was the principal mover in the plot and the police
officer knew every move that was being made.
But we had drawn our lines pretty tightly round
the village and it was growing more and more
difficult for the culprits to dispose of the money.
Public opinon, too, was asserting itself. All joy
had left the works, and it was quite plain that
there were to be no Christmas festivities unless
the money were found. The thought of a vodka-
less Christmas was becoming intolerable : the
pressure on the police officer was growing strong.
Probably, also, both they and the officer were
growing nervous. In the beginning, no doubt, it
had seemed to them that the only difficult thing
was to gain possession of the money; the diffi
culty of disposing of it had not occurred to them.

ii4 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Now they saw how valueless money was in itself,
and that the risks of holding it were daily growing
greater. The police officer became more and
more confidential, almost mysterious; he began
to drop hints that all would come right in the end;
that he had been hot on the trail for several weeks
and that he was sure of success. We began to
draw glowing pictures of the honour he would
achieve in his career if success crowned his efforts,
and we also emphasized the possible financial
rewards which would follow the discovery of the
money. One day, assuming his most professional manner,
he drew from his pocket a crudely drawn sketch,
which he said he had found in the corridor of the
hospital. This purported to be a plan of an out
lying portion of the works, showing with a black
dot the spot where the money should be. We spent
the afternoon of a bitterly cold day looking over
the ground, and came back chilled to the bone
and convinced that the policeman was making
fun of us.
On the twelfth of December, about four in the
afternoon, the policeman told us that he had
located the money within a certain area, and that
we must all go and look for it, for he was sure
we should find it. And he led us out in the
gathering dusk for about a mile, and waving his
hand, said: "It lies somewhere within this circle;
see that nobody comes in or out; it is hidden

SIMPLE ADDITION 115
somewhere here." It was bitterly cold, with a
fierce wind blowing, and we wandered back and
forth hunting for the treasure. The colder we
grew, the more angry we became with the police
man, and we finally decided that we were being
fooled by him and came back home, utterly dis
gusted and worn out. We were sitting discon
solately in a circle round the table, when there
arose a most terrible hubbub outside, the doors
burst open, and in rushed the Kirghiz, Bai Ma
homet, in a frenzy of excitement, who cried out
"Nashol, nashol," (it is found!) and sank breath
less on the floor. A great crowd was fighting
for entry, and the policeman pushed his way in
and emptied a sackful of notes in disorder on the
table. Everybody's face was wreathed with smiles.
"Barin, we will have a good holiday now!"
"Barin, a tchetvert of vodka for me!" "Barin,
two bottles for me and three bottles of zapikanka,
don't forget!"
Then the counting of the notes began; each
person at the table received an armful, and had to
sort them and count them. When all were ready,
the cashier, being designed by nature for such
work, wrote down the figures as each person read
out his list. "Now please, Mr. Cashier, will you
kindly add it up?"
"Where is your counting -board?" said the
cashier. I had to guiltily own that I had none.

n6 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
"No counting -board," he continued sharply.
"How can I add up this list of figures without
one?" I looked over his shoulder at the long list of
figures sprawling confusedly over the paper. He
was quite right, no one could add figures in that
shape. I suggested that our English auditor
should rewrite the figures in proper form and add
them up; but that seemed to hurt the feelings of
our expert cashier, bonded by the Guild of Ac
countants at Petersburg, to such an extent that I
hastily withdrew the suggestion.
"Still," I said, "it would be interesting to know
how much money there is. " The cashier was much
put out; it was obviously his business to tell us,
but without his counting-board he was utterly at
sea. "I never saw a respectable house before, with
out a counting-board," said he. "It is ridiculous
for us to be sitting here with the money before us
and not know how much there is."
"There does seem to be some humour in the sit
uation," I said, but the remark was frowned upon;
it seemed to cast a chill upon them all. The Rus
sian does not care for humour; in fact, in the sense
of humour he is almost lacking.
I left the situation for the cashier to solve.
"I have not the key of the office with me," the
cashier said. "Who lives near here who has a
counting-board ? ' '

SIMPLE ADDITION 117
Finally he rose, put on his coat and said he
would go to the house of Ivan Konstantinovitch
and fetch his, and left us.
A dead silence fell on us all; we sat staring at
the money.
"The science of arithmetic presents many prob
lems," I said.
This remark was also received in cold silence.
The minutes passed; a quarter of an hour passed,
then half an hour.
" Is it likely that the cashier will return to-day? "
I queried, but received no answer. They were ex
asperated to see their much-beloved counting
system breaking down.
Finally the cashier came in, waving his board in
triumph. He sat down and as the numbers were
called off, his fingers rapidly clicked the balls to
and fro on the wires. He gaily called off the total.
The counting-board had been vindicated.
The money was nearly, but not all, recovered;
sufficiently nearly so, to let the employees feel
that all suspicion was once more at rest, and that
they were all justified in ordering double the usual
quantity of vodka for Christmas.

A COPPER KETTLE.
ONE day, the smelter naryadtchik, or fore
man, walked into our office and said that he
noticed signs of restlessness amongst the Kirghiz
furnace-men and that he believed they were pre
paring for a strike.
"You are silly," I said, "the idea is absurd; in
the first place, the Kirghiz do not want anything
which they have not already, and, secondly, they
are quite incapable of organizing for any con
certed action."
"That sounds all right," said the foreman, "and
would be all right in ordinary times, but they
have been very much upset by the example of the
Russians during the last year, and I think they
feel they ought to be in the fashion, and call a
strike themselves. Bad example is very con
tagious." The Kirghiz were employed around the smelter
for the rough unskilled work. The word "un
skilled" is the word usually employed for this
class of work, but in reality no work is "unskilled,"
strictly speaking. Some work requires less judg
ment than others; but in any work, no matter
118

A COPPER KETTLE 119
how rough, the difference between practised
labourers and raw hands makes the whole dif
ference between success and failure, no matter
how watchful the foreman may be.
The presence of the Kirghiz at the works at
all was an anomaly in the Kirghiz regime, for,
by nature, the Kirghiz hate manual work, hate to
dirty their hands, hate regular hours, hate dis
cipline, will have nothing to do with it. But the
works had been in operation for fifty years and
more, and there had grown up with it and in it,
a body of Kirghiz who had adopted the life and to
whom it seemed a natural mode of existence. At
the start, they were no doubt very poor, prob
ably considered undesirables by their own kin,
and life was very hard for them. I suppose that
the idea of a regular supply of tallow and brick
tea appeared very attractive, and they succumbed
to the temptation and put their names on the
payroll. With their brother Kirghiz they lost
caste; but, as the works grew in age and size, they
became used to it and their children grew up in it
and gradually more and more of them joined the
ranks, until, with furnace-men, copper-miners,
coal-miners, lime-burners, brick-makers and car
riers, there were over five thousand of them work
ing for us. Especially since our arrival and the
development of the works on a much enlarged
scale, the working Kirghiz had grown in number
and power and in respect for the dignity of work

i2o RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
for work's sake. They were actually beginning to
take a pride in their technical responsibilities and
in some respects their fidelity was extraordinary.
The fidelity of the carriers was especially re
markable. Once a Kirghiz (unable of course to
read or write) has touched the pen with which you
sign his name at the bottom of a bill of lading, the
goods you have entrusted to him are as safe as
if they were in the vault of a modern bank build
ing. Poor ragged bundle of cotton batting, he
stands outside the office door waiting for his
precious bill of lading, he and his party of five or
six ragged bundles like himself, with a string of
forty or fifty camels. Each camel is tied to a light
wooden sled pinned together with wooden pins.
They have just come up from the copper room,
where each sled has been loaded with bar copper
wrapped in fibre matting, and made fast with
rope or rawhide. The animals are huge and un
wieldy, desperately hard to control; no one but a
Kirghiz can do anything with them at all. But
one virtue they have, they can look a blizzard in
the face without bhnking an eye ; and this is very-
useful in a country where the winter is seven or
eight months long. In fact, but for the camel, the
Kirghiz would be helpless in the winter; horses
must be fed and they have no oats; cattle are
quite useless, and the camel saves the situation;
he yells horribly and spits frequently while the
shafts are being fastened to his shoulders; but he

yj^jjVI ¦*

I

i«v,j3BK»*p

A LARGE ZIMOFKA IN EARLY WINTER

KIRGHIZ BLAST-FURNACE MEN
(Two Russian foremen are in the centre)

A COPPER KETTLE 121
finally moves off and faces the storm, and with a
few wisps of hay and a few pints of water he will
reach the railway in the end.
The bill of lading is now ready and you call
the carrier into your office. The bill calls for the
delivery of twelve hundred bars of copper to the
agent at Petropavlovsk within thirty days — a
distance of nearly five hundred miles. You pay
him the stipulated advance, he touches the pen
while you sign for him, he folds the document,
places it in his wallet, tucks the wallet into one
of the many folds of wadded clothing which cover
him, puts on his malachai (huge fur bonnet),
which entirely covers his head and neck and as
much of his face as possible, still leaving the eyes
free, looks round, says: "Kosh, Bai," (goodbye,
master), and joins his companions outside. They
are waiting for him unconcernedly in the driving
snow which cuts into you like glass, and slowly
the cavalcade moves off. It is growing dark and
you are almost afraid to try and find your way
in the storm to your house, which is not more than
two hundred yards down the road, but these men
drift away in the gathering dusk, into the desert
where every track is swept away by the storm,
straight into the eye of the wind, with their five-
hundred-mile walk before them. But they will
reach the end somehow — their faces scarred by the
cruel wind it is true — they will arrive within the
allotted time, and they will deliver their precious

122 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
tale of bars to the agent, and the number will be
found correct. Of the hundred thousand bars
which we despatched we only lost two, and, for
these two, the carriers paid in full in cash. This
is a loss of two thousandths of one per cent and the
loss was immediately made good. If any of our
western transportation systems are able to show
a record of this kind, it has not been my good for
tune to discover it.
Our case was not exceptional; through the
whole vast expanse of Siberia, similar caravans
are crawling across the interminable spaces. The
railway has only recently been built, and even
now there is only one. If you have not a large
business of your own, you can employ one of the
forwarding companies ; they will accept your
goods anywhere and forward them anywhere;
if there is any loss or damage, it will occur when
your goods are on the western railway, but not
when they are in the hands of these extraordinary
carriers. The quality of fidelity is curiously exhibited
in the system of watchmen. If you have any
property lying loose anywhere: an unoccupied
house or any unprotected property, everything
will quickly disappear; but if you put a man at
four dollars a month to watch it, everything will
be perfectly safe, even from the watchman him
self. The result is that everyone has at least one
Kirghiz watchman outside his house at night.

A COPPER KETTLE 123
Our old watchman was a decrepit old man, with a
pleasant smile. He was provided with a rattle which
he rattled vigorously if you appeared at night.
"Smeet nieto" (I do not sleep), he used to say,
as we passed, the only two words of Russian he
knew. Most of us used to give him little presents
from time to time, so small as to be almost micro
scopic; sometimes a stranger might be with us,
who did not know our custom, and so passed him
by ; then the little smiling "Smeet nieto" would
murmur rapidly: "There goes a rich man, but he
does not give me anything"; but he said it in
Kirghiz, and of course our friend did not under
stand a word of it and the watchman went back
to his seat, grunting and mumbling.
The actual pay of the Kirghiz furnace-men was
twenty-five cents a day with free quarters, coal
and water. They worked in two shifts of twelve
hours each, and our furnaces were of such a form
that the work was very real. There were no me
chanical labour-saving devices ; what we suc
ceeded in doing, we accomplished, as our foreman
used to say, "by main strength and awkwardness."
The Kirghiz supplied the main strength and we
supplied the awkwardness. Perhaps they were
growing tired of this division of labour; more
probably, they were simply demoralized by the
unsettling times through which we had lately
passed. When the spirit of anarchy is in the air,
a certain section of humanity abandons logic

124 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
and reason, and becomes a prey to any impulse
which may catch its fancy. The impulse at this
moment was to pommel somebody and we half
a dozen foreigners seemed to be the nearest vul
nerable target.
One very cold morning no one appeared at the
furnaces. The foremen went to the men's quarters ;
they refused to move; the strike was on. They
then sent up a demand for an increase of their
present pay of twenty-five cents per diem to one
dollar. This demand was as good as any other
to make, and as good as any other to refuse. As
strikers, it was impossible to take the Kirghiz
seriously, and yet the situation was serious, for
the furnaces would soon freeze if not attended to.
With two or three others I walked down to their
quarters. As soon as we arrived, I saw we had
misjudged the situation and had made a mistake.
We were instantly surrounded by a yelling mob
of impervious, very animated, cotton batting.
The Kirghiz dresses himself in the winter with
layer after layer of quilted cotton, with heavy
felt boots up to his thighs, which are further en
cased in leather boots; his head and neck and
most of his face are enveloped in his malachai.
In such armour, nothing short of an axe can make
any impression on him. He is further protected
by a prodigious smell of tallow and wet wool,
which is pleasant to his senses, as is the smell of
violets to ours. You feel very helpless when a

KIRGHIZ CARRIERS
The goods entrusted to these men are as safe as in the vault of a modern bank

A COPPER KETTLE 125
quarter of an acre of such odoriferous tallow per
fume hems you in. Especially the mob-particles
nearest to you seem to be irritated by your pres
ence; they begin to pull and push and hustle you;
they have lost all their attributes of human beings ;
if you were to stumble and fall they would pass
over you and not know that you were under their
feet; if you were to meet any individual of these
wriggling units alone on the Steppe, it would go
through fire and water to help you; but, as part
of the mob, it shews no more sign of intelligence
than the units of the armies of locusts which some
times invade our western plains. Step by step,
we managed to steer the mob toward the works,
from which poured a little army of men armed
with axes, and the mob fled.
When we were back in our own quarters, the
head men of the furnaces came in a deputation to
see us.
"Why did you stop work this morning?" I said;
"don't you know that the furnaces are growing
cold?" "We want one dollar a day instead of twenty-
five cents," they said.
"Well, go back to work first and then come
and tell us what you want; if you don't go back
very soon there will be no work for you to go
back to."
"The Bai forgets that we are on strike; you
cannot go back to work if you are striking; but
9

126 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
we want the Bai to give an order that we shall
have some credit on our wage-books, so that we
can buy some tallow and tea; we don't want
much credit, just enough to last us while we are
on strike."
"You know you are talking nonsense; go back to
your people and tell them to go to work."
"The Bai knows best, but our people will be
very disappointed when they hear the Bai will
neither raise our pay nor give us credit at the
store." They left; but it was not very long before they
appeared again.
"Bai," they said, "perhaps we asked for too
much when we asked for one dollar a day. We
will be satisfied with fifty cents a day."
"You are now receiving double the wages you
used to get before we came to the works, and we
cannot pay any more than we are paying; be
sides, I do not want to talk to you until you have
gone back to work."
They came back again later.
"Bai," they said, "it is very unfortunate and
very awkward that during a strike we can get
nothing to eat."
"It is your own fault," I said. "Go back to
work and you will again receive credits on your
books." "But the coal is so bad which the coal-carriers
leave for us; there is very little of it, and it is

READY TO HAUL COPPER TO MARKET
With a few wisps of hay they will reach the railway in the end

jfa.

TEAMSTERS AND CAMELS AT THE WEIGH SCALES

A COPPER KETTLE 127
full of slate ; we are cold and we cannot cook our
fat." Our ears were deaf to this appeal also, and the
next morning they appeared again in a melancholy
mood. "Bai," they said, "you see the furnaces are
working very badly; Izkak cannot even keep his
settler clean of slag. Why don't you give us what
we want?"
"I have told you again and again that I will
give you nothing until you all go back to work."
"At least the Bai will promise to put in a floor
in our quarters, so that we do not have to lie on
the cold ground."
"I will do nothing until you have all gone back
to work."
They were quite dejected when they left and
quickly returned.
"At least the Bai," they said, "will grant us
this request ; our copper kettle is quite worn
out ; will the Bai give us an order for a new kettle?"
It is impossible to maintain a consistent and
stern attitude toward such helpless and amiable
people. The hustling, pushing mob is forgotten,
the frozen furnaces are forgotten, the long-planned
strike has come down to a request for a copper
kettle. The order was signed and they quickly went and
bought their kettle and came and showed it to me
in triumph.

128 RUSSIAN aND NOMAD
"You have won your strike, have you not?" I
said. "Yes, Bai, we are how going back to work."
"Well, next time you all want a day off, tell me
beforehand and you will not have to go through
the trouble of a strike to get it."
" Tairjilgassin, Djaksi Bai, Kosh."
(Thank you, thank you; the master is very
good,' goodbye.)

THE PAVLODAR CLUB.
WE, Rucker and I and two assistants, had come
to Omsk on sundry matters of business, but
especially, to consult with the arbiter of our des^
tinies, the Okroojnyi Injenier: that is the Govern
ment mining engineer, who had jurisdiction of
the district in which our mines were operating.
He was a pleasant enough man, but nervous
and irritable, being overweighted with the load of
responsibility, which he thought was balanced on
his shoulders. In a sense, it was a load which
would and should have crushed any fifty men;
but, if his sense of humour had been more acute
(and it is a noteworthy fact that Russians are de
ficient in that sense), he would have carried his
load more lightly; for he would have observed
that he immediately passed forward ninety-nine
per cent of it, to the shoulders of the head mining
officer of the division, who lived in Tomsk; and
this urbane gentleman, receiving similar loads of
responsibility from the shoulders of other district
engineers, when he observed that the documents
had accumulated to such an extent, that his cellars
were full to overflowing, engaged a freight car and
129

130 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
shipped ninety-nine and a half per cent of them to
the Ministry of Imperial Domains in Petersburg,
where there are especially prepared foundations,
capable of sustaining the weight of similar con
signments for centuries, without distracting the
attention of the high officials above ground.
Now there are two ways of carrying on the
practical business of organized society; one is, to
assume that each individual is, in the nature of
things, better suited than anybody else to take
care of himself; and the other is, to assume that
there is, in the State, somewhere far away in the
distance, some personage, be he emperor or king
or president, who is better able to take care of the
individual than the individual himself.
In Russia, it was long ago decided by Ivan the
Terrible or by Peter the Great or by some other
personage of forceful character, that the individual
knows nothing at all of the way in which his
business should be conducted. It was then set
tled (without trial by jury) that, not only the weak
and poor, but also the rich and strong must be
surrounded by fatherly care and protection. With
out entering upon any consideration of the ad
vantages or disadvantages of the system, and
without any profound training or highly developed
powers of observation, it is easy to see that the
parental plan of devolved responsibility involves
the consumption of a vast tonnage of paper and
ink and the creation of an army of officials, which

THE PAVLODAR CLUB 131
hovers over society like a cloud of mosquitoes.
It tends also to create, in the minds of technically
trained men, a high appreciation of the value of
carefully tabulated records, regardless of whether
the tables record any facts of practical interest or
not. We were at one time engaged in examining a
large number of mining prospects, scattered over
a wide territory. We divided the prospects into
districts, and to each district we assigned a duly
certificated mining engineer, each properly equipped
with tools and workmen to carry out the explora
tions. They left in the spring and were to return
at the close of summer. Their instructions were
to examine the prospects, do such work as they
might think desirable, note the result and make a
sketch of the location. "Your work is very im
portant," I said, "for on the results which you
report will depend our selection of the prospects
which are to be developed next year."
When the snow began to fall, they all came in,
and my conversation with Peter Konstantino-
vitch, graduate of Petersburg, is typical of my
conversation with them all.
"Peter Konstantinovitch," I said, "I am glad
to see you back. Is your health good?"
"My health is excellent, thank you, Nelson
Alfredovitch." "Did you examine all the prospects in your dis
trict?" I asked.

132 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
"I examined them all."
"Did you find any of them interesting?" I
asked. " I worked very hard at my map ; I have brought
it with me; it shows the location of all the pros
pects." "That is very nice. I am very glad. I will look
at the map later. But for the present tell me your
opinion of the prospects; do you think any of
them appear promising? Which is, in your opin
ion, the best?"
"How can I tell? I was busy making my map.
I think you will be pleased with the map," said
Peter. "But, Peter Konstantinovitch, the mines are
what we want to know about; the map is useless
to us unless the mines are worth something."
"Well, I cannot tell you anything about the
mines, because I was too busy preparing my map
to notice them. Is it not unreasonable of you to
ask me questions about the mines, when you see
the fine map which I have made?"
That was all the information I could ever ob
tain from him and the beautiful map is the only
return we ever received from the labour of him
and his fellow workers.
But to return to our district engineer; he was
fully impressed with the idea that he was carrying
the whole district on his shoulders and much of
the rest of the world besides. He worked pain-

THE PAVLODAR CLUB 133
fully at his desk all day, and drank coffee all
night, to keep himself awake, while he continued
to work at his hopeless task. Poor man ! He felt
that we all depended upon him, and that he, of
all men, must not give way. How horrified would
he have been if he had thought it possible that
any man could suggest any comparison between
him and a mosquito. Pathetic, too, it was to
hear him wonder if his health would permit him
to remain at work just two years more, so that
his "Tchin" would be raised to that of a "Gen
eral." Mysterious Tchin! Like an idol it sits in"
the house of every Tchinovnik and shares with the
ikon the prayers and devotion of him and of his
family. He conscientiously plodded through the papers
in our case, examined the plans of each workman's
house, approved the printed agreements which
were printed in Russian and Arabic on the first
pages of our workmen's time-books, and finally,
all details finished, we wished him goodbye.
The sun was setting, the ground was covered
with fresh snow, the thermometer was registering
about twenty-five degrees below zero; the wind
was strong, whirling the snow in cutting eddies
round your ears. We packed, ourselves into our
sleighs and started in the dusk for Pavlodar, a
town three hundred and ninety-eight versts (two
hundred and sixty-five miles) higher up the Irtish
River. We had nothing but little open sleighs,

134 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
mere baskets set on runners, but our peemies (felt
boots) were nearly an inch thick and our shubas
(large fur overcoats) were huge, and we determined
to push on.
The road follows the right bank of the river
Irtish, now of course frozen solid, but in sum
mer a large navigable stream. It runs through
a rich agricultural country, settled, and quite
thickly settled, for many years. The land is pro
ductive and easily worked. Every few miles is a
village, with a look dreary and forlorn beyond
words. Happy are you if you pass through it
in winter when the snow throws a merciful blanket
over its nakedness. Whether it is in Russia or
in Siberia, the village of the Krestyanin (peasant)
is a hopless, dreary institution. The utmost it
seems able to do is to keep its inmates alive; it
gives them none of the comforts or amenities or
pleasures of life, and it offers them no hope of
change or improvement. And yet it is the Kresty
anin who is carrying the vast burden of the Empire
on his shoulders. He it is who should be drinking
coffee to keep himself awake during the night,
while he solves the problem of the huge nation
which he carries in his arms. It is not you, my
friend the District Engineer, nursing your Tchin,
piling up your interminable reports and tables
which never see the light of day, who are carrying
this burden; not you, but this patient, toiling,
suffering creature; to whom all things are denied,

THE PAVLODAR CLUB 135
except the right to follow the plough and sow the
wheat, till he drops in the furrow which he has
made, forgotten by you and me and all of us.
The man without hope! He lives in a stratum
separated from the rest of humanity by a film
of law and custom which is impermeable and im
penetrable, so that those, who would see, are pre
vented, and those, who would rather not do so,
need not strain their eyes to look. Fortunately
for Russia, the Krestyanin stratum is broad and
solid. Godfearing, kindly, enduring, he will brave
ly bear his load until the world will see his worth.
He is easily the most interesting thing, most full of
possibilities, before the eyes of the world today.
At any rate, there is no danger that he will be
rendered soft or effete by any Capuan luxury of
surroundings. During the short summer, he toils
in the fields from dawn till dark and, during the
winter, he has nothing to do except things which
had better be left undone. The only spark which
illumines his life is the church, which sheds its
light upon the village, from the hill on which it is
always built.
Our road lay through a succession of these
villages, only distinguishable, one from the other,
by the lay of the ground around them. The houses
are small, built of logs, with roofs of thatch whose
edges are left untrimmed, which dwarf the houses
and give a drab-coloured, untidy appearance ' to
the whole village. The interior is simple enough;

136 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
a large brick stove which keeps the house effec
tively warm, a table, a bench or two, a little
crockery and some earthen jars for cooking pur
poses. There are very few iron pots or pans;
nearly everything is cooked in earthenware in the
oven and the water is boiled in the universal
samovar. The demands on the cook are not very
great ; their diet is principally whole-wheat bread,
kasha or porridge of buckwheat, sweet milk, tea,
vegetable soups such as bortsch (made of beets)
and schtchi (made of sour cabbage) and sometimes
fish. The housewives are clever at preserving for
winter use the summer vegetables, such as pickled
cucumbers, sour cabbage, dried mushrooms. A de
licious drink called kvas is made by a long process
of digesting burnt bread in water. The process is
a long one, but is easy where the oven is kept hot,
night and day, in that greatest of all blessings, the
stove which never fails. Considering that the
houses are of the most inflammable material, fires
are very rare; an immunity derived from the form
of the brick stoves, which practically rob the smoke
of all heat, before allowing it to escape from the
chimney. At some of the villages we stopped and drank
hot tea while the horses were being changed, but
the night was bitterly cold, and, driving hour after
hour, the cold grips you in spite of your warm
clothes. After a long night of such driving, you
are thoroughly chilled and your hands and feet

FERRY ACROSS THE RIVER IRTISH AT PAVLODAR

THE PAVLODAR CLUB 137
become instruments of torture. The only varia
tion to the monotony is your arrival at, or departure
from, a village. The driver sights the windmills
from afar and gathers up his reins and lashes the
horses to a wild gallop. The driver of the other
sleigh does the same and there is a mad race for
the rest-house. The bells jangle, the drivers yell
and you swerve into the stable-yard as if every
second were worth millions, and you were the
most important man on earth. When the horses
are changed, you pack yourselves once again into
the basket, the whips pop, bells jangle and the
same mad race begins again; when the village is
out of sight, you settle down again to the cold,
and the dull grind, till you hear the next whoop
ing and yelling and you know you are near an
other village.
On such a trip, it was always my inclination to
push on and endure the cold and hunger and be
done with it. It was impossible to reconcile
Rucker to this plan, but we kept him in line, by
holding out to him the joy of a speedy arrival at
Pavlodar, and the delights of a good dinner at
the new club. We had all been to Pavlodar be
fore and we knew that, of hotels, such as we call
hotels, there were none. But we had also heard
from our agent Koshleff, the principal merchant
of the town, that there had lately been organized
a club with a fine restaurant, and a marvel of a
cook and good wines. So we entertained Rucker

138 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
with imaginary menus of every possible delicacy,
washed down with vodka and port wine; and this
potent virus of anticipation acquired such an in-
influence over him, that he forgot his present
troubles, in the thoughts of the joys to come.
At the last station before Pavlodar, he too was
impatient to be off. "Why waste our time here,"
he said, "when we shall be in a warm room, sitting
at a clean table in the club, waiting for our roast
partridges? And the vodka with the zakooska!
What joy there is in a hot dinner, after a forty-
eight-hour fast, in an open sleigh."
We dashed into the town at full speed and, after
some enquiring, found the club, a neat building,
full of new furniture. The dining-room was in the
rear, overlooking the garden, which looked dreary
enough in its cloak of ice and snow. We told the
porter who opened the door for us, to summon the
head waiter or steward, as we wanted to order
dinner. "Yes, your Honour," said he, "I will fetch him
at once." And the porter began to put on his over
shoes and fur coat.
"You need not put those things on," I said,
"we don't want the gardener; we want the steward
or head waiter."
"Yes, your Honour, I understand; I will fetch
him at once; he lives only two blocks from here,
he will not be long."
This seemed rather unbusiness-like, but the por-

THE PAVLODAR CLUB 139
ter ran off and we sat down in a huge empty room,
with small bentwood, cane-bottom chairs around
the walls.
" They say," said Rucker, in a half-dream,
"that a partridge should be cooked with dressing;
let us have plenty of dressing."
"I hope they have some sterlitz," I murmured,
"they say that the sterlitz from the Irtish is as
good as that from the Volga."
In due course the steward appeared:
"What are your orders?" he asked.
"We want to order a dinner; a dinner of four
covers; we have come from Omsk in an open
sleigh, and we are as hungry as wolves. We un
derstand that your cook is a good cook."
"Oh! he is a wonder! a marvel of a cook!
What will you wish to order for dinner?"
"Well — first we want some good zakooska,
something to lead us up gradually to the good
things to follow."
"Quite so. Would you like some sardines, some
smoked salmon, some radishes, some caviar?"
"Yes, yes," we cried, "and the vodka with the
white seal."
"Of course, of course," said he, "then would
you like some bortsch, with smyetana and pir-
oshkas?" After we had explained to Rucker that bortsch
was the soup he was so fond of and that it was
always served with whipped sour cream and small

THE PAVLODAR CLUB 141
you not see how unreasonable you are? The cook
lives on his farm three miles from here. You know
that to make good bortsch, at least twelve hours
are necessary. I must go and buy the goose and
dress it and the partridges. The pastry must be
made. I must find the plates and dishes, which
were lent last week to the Zaizoffs when their
daughter was married. You see how impossible
it is to talk of preparing a dinner in three hours.
At the present moment there is nothing in the
house, not even a loaf of bread. But tomorrow,
at three, all will be ready; and our cook is a won
der, a marvel."
"Yes, steward. I see now how utterly unreason
able we were," I groaned. " I suppose we were over
come by the cold, or by our excitement. We fear
we cannot hope to taste the handiwork of your
cook, who is a marvel. Tonight we shall be on
the road to Bayan Aool. May the memory of
your description of the good things we should find
tomorrow, sustain us through the night. Fare
well." Rucker' s language at this point cannot be re
corded. I doubt if Rucker will ever thoroughly
enjoy foreign travel.
10

THE POMINKA.
ON the tenth of November, 1907, we struggled
in the face of a furious bouran (blizzard)
across the open space which separated our house
from the office. The air was full of icy particles,
which cut your face, and made you wonder wheth
er you would succeed in reaching your goal or
not. When we reached the office, Rucker did
not allow us time to take off our coats, but
burst out with the question:
"Have you heard that Sultan Hacen Akaev is
dead?" "No! When did he die?"
"Yesterday, in his winter quarters on the Topor,
about forty miles from here."
"How did you hear?"
"By Kirghiz telegraph."
The dissemination of news by natives, who
possess no mechanical appliances, is a phenomenon
noted by all travellers in remote regions. Whether
in Africa, where travel is on foot, or in Asia, where
it is on horseback, the news of every event is
passed from mouth to mouth and from village to
village, with a rapidity and certainty, which is
142

THE POMINKA 143
little short of marvellous. Within twenty-four
hours of the Sultan's death, it is probable that
every living person within a circle of two hundred
miles had heard of it.
The death of so rich a man as Sultan Hacen
Akaev was an event of considerable importance in
Kirghiz life. In addition to the important ques
tion of the distribution of his vast flocks and herds,
and the readjustment of the social organization
of his Aool or village, there was the pominka
that would follow his death.
As in Ireland a funeral is made the occasion of
elaborate ceremonies and feasting, so, in Kirghiz
land, the custom is that a notable man, before he
dies, makes all necessary dispositions for a great
festival, to be held six months or a year after his
death, to which all his friends and the whole coun
tryside shall be invited. In this way, not only
does the dying man provide in a worthy manner
for the dignity and honour of his family, but he also
carries with him, beyond the grave, the tradition
and law of Kirghiz hospitality. It is, indeed, a
wonderful law; chiefly wonderful, because it is
universally obeyed. To the guest within the
Aool, nothing can be denied, no matter what the
previous relations between guest and host may
have been. The duty of hospitality prevails over
all other sentiments. Most laws and customs are
sometimes broken, but this law is never violated,
not even in death.

144 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
As is natural, the greater the wealth of the de
ceased, the greater is the extent of the festivities.
The pominka of Sultan Hacen Akaev would be,
no doubt, on an unusually large scale.
The week commencing May the first was the
time set for the festival; and for months before
hand but little else was talked of amongst the
Kirghiz. We, also, were planning to attend in
state, and Rucker was especially interested in the
preparations; for his particular work threw him
into closer relations, than the rest of us, with the
Kirghiz. He had quite a large vocabulary of their
language at the tip of his tongue, and, when he
visited them, could dispense fairly well with the
services of an interpreter.
He used frequently to visit his particular friend
Ospan, the Volostnoi Oopravitel of the Noura
district, who was continually begging him to join
the Aool and become one of them. "Why do you
work so hard?" Ospan would say. "Buy some fat-
tail sheep and come and live with us; my men will
look after your animals for you; you will not have
to do anything; you will have all the koomiss
you want, and plenty of mutton tallow; you
will grow fat; what more can a man want?" How
he resisted such seductive appeals, I do not know.
Our preparations were on an extensive scale,
for, in the East, appearances count for a great
deal. We sent forward large new yurtas, our best
rugs, silk hangings and cushions, and groomed

OSPAN WITH HIS CHILDREN

THE POMINKA 145
our horses to the last point. Also we took a small
private store of provisions; for, at times, the
menu of the East becomes unendurable to the
palate of the West.
On the day appointed, we started on horseback,
with a cavalcade of friends, servants and Russo-
Kirghiz interpreters. We were decked out in
everything Kirghiz we could muster; our horses
were weighted down with heavy silver-mounted
bridles of native workmanship; those of us who
could endure them, suffered tortures on Kirghiz
saddles. Mine was a Cossack affair, something
like a Texas saddle, but with a thick leather
cushion strapped across the seat. It is strange
how many ways there are of accomplishing the
same thing and how wedded each of us is to his
own. I considered these Cossack saddles the most
awkward things in the world, whereas the Cossacks
regarded my beautiful Whippy with the utmost
contempt. Rucker was in great glory. On his feet were
huge felt linings encased in Kirghiz-made leather
boots with silver mountings. On his legs were
sheepskin trousers, untanned, having the wool
inside, and these were tucked into his boots.
Above, he wore a khalat, a loose wadded coat of
gorgeous silk, with a silver-mounted belt around
his waist, from which hung several pouches of
fancy leather, heavily silver-mounted. On his
head was a pink silk malachai, lined with the fur

146 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
of the red fox. We were very proud of him, and
we hoisted him into the saddle, as his costume
deprived him of the natural power of movement.
" Kusain," he shouted, "fasten my koomiss
skins on to my saddle."
Kusain hung two skins of koomiss, one on each
side of the saddle, each holding about two gallons ;
and with this his outfit was complete.
We were a gay party and galloped over the
Steppes enjoying the bright air of Spring. We
naturally grouped ourselves round Rucker and
we were making merry over the bags of koomiss
which were bounding at his side; when, suddenly,
there was a loud explosion, and Rucker, and all of
us, were covered with a shower of the powerfully
smelling fluid. Koomiss ferments with great vio
lence, and the heat of the sun had distended the
skin bottles to the danger-point. Probably Ruck-
er's horse was jostled by his neighbour's and the
blow was sufficient to start the charge. Everyone
within fifty feet received his share, but Rucker
himself was a sad sight. The evil stuff dripped over
his pink malachai and his crimson and green
khalat. Stains of various hues spread in channels
all over him. Worse than all was the peculiarly
pungent perfume which he exhaled. For days
he was a burden to himself and to us, but, to his
particular Kirghiz friends, he was a source of great
delight. Several miles from the Aool, and long before

THE POMINKA 147
we could see it, we saw a large party of gaily-
dressed riders, dashing toward us; they had rid
den out to meet us and escort us in honour to our
tent. ' ' Salaam Allaikum ! Aman ! Aman !' '
It all seemed very gay and very simple and
natural. They turned and rode with us to the en
campment. When we arrived at the Aool, it was the scene
of the most animated life conceivable. Hundreds,
perhaps thousands, had come in to enjoy the sport,
for such a pominka might never occur again, dur
ing their lifetime. A hundred piebald two-year-
old horses, a number hitherto unheard of, had
been allotted for slaughter to feed the multitude;
and as for the sheep, no one thought of counting
them. All day and night the feasting went on;
from tent to tent, great steaming platters of boiled
meat and skins of koomiss were carried. Every
one ate and drank for three days to his utmost
capacity. When our arrival was known, the head men of
the Aool called at our tent to welcome us. Our
samovar was set on the usual round table, about
six inches high, and, round it, we all squatted
on rugs on the ground. The tea was dispensed
by our servant. It is served in small cups and
saucers, boiling hot, of course. As soon as the
Kirghiz receives his cup, he immediately pours
half of it into his saucer, nibbles off a small piece

148 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
of sugar which he holds between his teeth, and
sups the tea with an appreciative gurgle. As he
drinks he obtains the sensation of sweetness, with
an extraordinarily small consumption of sugar.
Immediately his cup is empty, the attendant re
plenishes it without asking any question. When
he has had enough, he turns his cup, bottom side
up, on his saucer.
After tea, the bard began to sing, and the usual
compliments were exchanged.
"The Oolkum Bai is a great lord of mighty
wealth," said the head man, "we know he has
much money, for he spends thousands of roubles
every day. He places bread in the mouths of
many Kirghiz, and we are grateful to him. The
name of Peel" (the nearest approach they could
ever make to my name) "will endure like a
rock in our memories forever. But the Bai is
as thin as the poorest Kirghiz on the Steppes.
If the Bai will look round, he will see that all rich
men are fat. We cannot understand why the
Bai is not also fat."
This was the moment for which I had been pre
paring with some care. It was our custom to
converse with the Kirghiz through a Russo-
Kirghiz interpreter. We spoke in Russian and
the interpreter was supposed to reproduce our
words in Kirghiz. The interpreter was usually a
Kirghiz of no especial education or attainments.
In my interviews with the native head men, I

A YURTA IN THE MAKING

A FINISHED YURTA

THE POMINKA 149
had always felt at a disadvantage because, when
I wanted to indulge in a discourse on a high plane
of thought, I must first put it into Russian and
then trust to the mercy of the Russo-Kirghiz in
terpreter. To my great annoyance, my most ele
vated and elevating periods were reproduced with
a few guttural gurgles and tongue rattles, and of
course the whole effect was lost. Before the
pominka, I had especially coached my own inter
preter Noorman. "You must try hard to repro
duce my words; it is I who am talking, not you;
you babble all day for your own pleasure, this
time I want you to use my phrases exactly; it
is perhaps a virtue to be brief; but I want to
set up my own standard for myself; and, when I
proclaim a full yard of magnificent sentiment, I
do not want you to cut it down to half an inch."
This, then, was the crucial moment when Noor-
man's training was to be put to the test. I
glanced at him with a severe look, and, assuming
my most impressive manner, I turned to the head
man and replied as follows:
"In our own country, we do not consider wealth
merely as a means to satisfy our own desires, but
rather as a responsibility for the development of
the happiness of those around us."
We all looked toward Noorman; there was a
gurgle in his throat, a slight movement of his lips,
then silence. He had finished. It was very de
pressing.

iSo RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
The chief broke the awkward pause and re
sumed on the same line of thought. ' 'We know the
Bai is rich, but we do not understand why the
Bai works so hard. Why does he not sit down and
enjoy his wealth?"
This was a splendid opening and I replied:
"The wise men of our country consider that
wealth is a measure of success rather than an ob
ject and an aim in itself. Wealth does not pro
duce happiness. Only the mind conscious of work
well done can be considered truly happy."
"B-r-r-r; G-g-g-g; B-r, G-g," mumbled Noor
man and closed his mouth with a click.
All my training and coaching had been in vain ;
it was useless to pursue such lines of thought. I
think the head man understood it also, for he
changed the subject abruptly and said:
"Where do you live?"
"In New York," I replied.
"I don't know where that is," he said, "I have
heard of Akmolinsk and Pavlodar, but I have
not heard of New York. If you wish to go to New
York, in which direction should you travel?"
I confess to a feeling of malice, for I walked to
the door of the tent, and, facing North, I stretched
out one arm to the East and the other to the
West. I waved first one arm, then the other.
"You can go to my country either by travelling
in this direction or in that."
"Why do you say that you can reach one place

KIRGHIZ WOMEN WRESTLING

GATHERING FOR THE START OF THE RACE

THE POMINKA 151
by travelling in two directions which are directly
contrary to each other?"
"The earth on which we stand is round like the
apples which you see on the table," I replied.
"You arrive on the opposite side of the ball,
whether you travel this way or that."
"Why do you say that the earth is round," the
chief asked, "when we see that it is flat?" And he
waved his arm over the plain which certainly
seemed to support his idea.
Why, indeed, had I said it? It is much safer to
stick to tallow and koomiss and horses. I gave
the conversation a hard wrench, and, with a
great effort of memory, using their own language,
I said: "Ak Burat bar?" (have you any thoroughbred
horses). The effect was magical; everyone for
got about apples and round worlds and the duties
of wealth; they all began to chatter at once;
harmony and peace were restored.
For three days the pominka lasted, a continuous
feast, day and night, with sports thrown in.
Wrestling is very popular, even the women en
gage in hard-fought bouts; but especially popular
are the sports and games with which horses are
concerned. The sheepskin contest always draws
a large crowd. The skin of a freshly slaughtered
sheep is seized by a mounted rider who gallops
off; hundreds dash after him and try to wrest
it from him; the man who succeeds dashes off

152 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
with it himself and so it changes hands. It is a
rough sport and so is the wrestling on horseback;
but everyone is so good-natured and good-
humoured, that it is rare that anyone is hurt.
One form of sport (?) they have which is not
inspiring ; it is, in fact, disgusting. Every Aool of
consequence has its eating champion, and, on
festal occasions, the champions of different Aools
are pitted against each other. The two champions
sit down facing one another, and platter after
platter of boiled meat (always without salt) is
put in front of each man, who crams the meat
into his mouth with his hands and gulps it down
like a wolf. Bowl after bowl of koomiss, and
samovar after samovar of tea disappear in like
manner. The quantity which these gastronom-
ical giants are able to consume is astonishing.
An ordinary accomplishment for one hero at a
sitting is: One entire sheep.
Eight gallons of koomiss.
Two gallons of tea.
Wonderful, but horrible.
The pominka usually closes with the most
popular event of all, the horse-race. It is a cross
country race and starts from a point about twelve
or fifteen miles away. Tiny little boys are put
up as jockeys, their little legs too small to grip
the saddle. The crowd gathers near the finish

*» TWO KIRGHIZ
They are engaged in the most important business of their lives

THE POMINKA 153
and waits patiently for an hour or two. Little
specks appear on the horizon, and a number of
horsemen gather to meet them. As they come
nearer, the partisans of each horse close in round
it, and gallop by its side, urging it forward with
whip and shouts. They grow more and more ex
cited as they draw near the goal ; one rider whips
out a rope and, fastening one end to the saddle
of the racing horse, ties the other to his own and
drags him along. Another does the same on the
other side, another catches the bridle, and so on,
till there may be a dozen fresh horses dragging
the tired race-horse along with terrific yells and
shouts. It is a scene of the greatest possible
animation; the crowd is immense, all well mounted,
racing hither and thither. There is no defined
finish, no judge, but there never seems to be any
difficulty in deciding which horse is the winner.
The honour is much prized both for the horse and
the rider. It is indeed wonderful to see how the
little fellows of six and eight years of age can en
dure such a ride. The prize may be of money,
of cloth or anything else. But, whatever it is, it
is immediately distributed by the winner amongst
his friends. He likes the honour of winning, but
the prize itself has no attractions for him. I have
never observed this habit on our Western race
courses. The odd thing is that it is all done so
naturally, so good-humouredly, without any def
inition of rules, or without intervention of stewards

1 54 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
or judges or police; they play the game like real
sportsmen. We left in the dust of the finish, but we were
careful to see that Rucker had no koomiss bags
concealed about his person.

THE TURQUOISE LAKE.
SHROUDED in mystery by the Hungry
Steppe that lay between the smelting-works
and its shores, tempting us with rumours of its
beauty and varied animal life, Balkhash, the second
largest lake in Asia, had been the goal of all our
winter dreams. So, when our turbulent rivers had
found their banks again, after the spring floods,
and the Steppes had put on their flowery mantle
once more, we started our forerunners out across
the lonely waste: two trusty Kirghiz servants,
old Tundus Bek and Zakir Bek the driver, with
two wagons, one containing a boat and the other
a felt tent with its wooden frame neatly folded
and packed.
One morning in early May the wooden axles of
the wagons set up their usual vociferous complaint
and the two shaggy ponies threw their weight into
the collars for the two-hundred-mile pull to the
lake. The two crawling specks dipped over the
horizon and we at once set about our own prepara
tions for a month's exile from civilization.
The Mine of the Assumption was man's last
outpost on the Steppes; beyond that lay sage-
15

156 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
brush barrens, unroamed over even by the Kir
ghiz; then the great lake; then the fastnesses of
the mountain chains bordering on the Gobi desert.
A slender track, invisible almost as a cobweb,
connected us with Vernii, a rich city on the
Semipalatinsk-Tashkend post-road, with fabled
gardens of flowers and luscious fruits, whose magic
we only knew through the wagon-loads of ooriook
(dried plums) and cherries and unbelievably large
pink apples, which came to us across the desert
along the cobweb track. Sarts from Turkestan,
Tibetans with their yaks bound for the fair at
Kooyandy, Kirghiz who wintered their flocks in the
South: these were the only travellers on this road.
We gave our wagons two weeks' start and then,
on May 15th, our two plunging piebald troikas
and our troika of racing chestnuts galloped off
through the works, amidst a cloud of horsemen,
dragging our bounding carriages behind them.
"Aida, my children!" shouted Adam the lead
ing driver, giving his famous chestnuts the rein.
Plunging in their collars, they swerved round the
hill on which the church stood. Ahead, lay a
deep gully spanned by a narrow bridge. The
second troika, driven by Noorman, was close be
hind. The six eager horses were quite out of hand,
racing for the bridge; a collision was inevitable.
"The young ladies have fallen put!" cried Adam
to his master as the chestnut hoofs thundered on
the bridge. Noorman had pulled his racing pie-

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 157
balds up the hill; two wheels of the carriage spun
in the air and it fell on its side with a crash, hurling
all its contents, three travellers, two balalaikas,
books, sketching materials, bags of flour, rugs and
pillows, pellmell down the hill. Noorman was
adroit enough to retain his hold of the reins, and,
encumbered with the dragging carriage, the horses
were pulled to a standstill on the brink of the
gully. "Ai, Ai, Ai, the horses are very fresh after their
winter's rest!" murmured Adam. "It is a good
thing the korobok upset, or they would certainly
have plunged into the river." A few minutes
spent in collecting the scattered baggage, and a
little sticking-plaster, were all that were needed
to start us on our way again.
We camped for noon on the river Sara Soo, a
tributary of the Syr Daria (the ancient Oxus)
and, that evening, our troikas trotted into the vil
lage at the Mine of the Assumption, a good deal
subdued after their first stage of seventy miles.
At dawn next day, our friends at the mine saw
our five travellers, five Kirghiz servants, three
troikas, five saddle-horses, and three led horses
file away southward across the rolling plain,
and dip downward over the last hills into the
blue mystery of the Hungry Steppe. That night
we camped in a lush green valley, at the foot of
Kisil Tav, or Red Mountain, a bold escarpment,
the sentinel which guards the desert. A spring
11

158 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
of cold water gushed out at the roadside, the last
sweet water which we were to taste until we
reached the lake. That night wolves were howling
on the hillside above us, and our horses, clanking
through the grass in their chain hobbles, neighed
uneasily. The air was chill, with warm gusts from
the desert. We broke camp next morning by the
light of the stars and one candle burning steadily
in the still morning air, and the patient ponies
were soon jogging along once more. We welcomed
the sun with shouts as it rose out of the gray
barrens, for we were very cold.
Noon found us "out of sight of land." The last
hills had faded away, not even a Karagand
bush broke the level line of the horizon. The sun
beat fiercely down on a parched flat of gray clay,
withering the sagebrush upon it, scarring it with
cracks and wrinkles. The air quivered with the
heat. The wet flanks of the horses heaved, for
they were fat and soft with Spring grass. Our
Kirghiz drew their wadded coats more closely
about them and pulled their malachais about
their ears to keep out the heat. We discarded
coats and hats and panted for the next well of
brackish water, which we hoped to reach by
evening. The three troikas filed along the road at a slow
jog, their twin-yoke bells chiming out a monoto
nous sequence of notes, which seemed a part of the
quivering air and the scent of the sagebrush.

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 159
Those of us who were on horseback roamed far
ther afield, in search of the solitary moghilas of the
Kirghiz, who have died on their slow migrations
along this road. They were all we could hope to
find to break the universal monotony. Once or
twice we were beckoned aside by shimmering
lakes and hills, but we soon learned that these
were either vast fields of alkali, or else mirages
produced by the heat and distance. The only
signs of life were the little bounding "kusayaks"
or jerboas, tiny rodents like kangaroos, with
long, flickering white tails, and an occasional
"saiga" or antelope, fleeing before us. Even
these we gradually left behind.
On the third morning, we filled our water-
bottles, for we knew that we should reach
no well that night. We travelled until long
after dark and made only a short halt. A hot
gale was blowing and our horses were suffering
terribly from hunger and thirst. Next morning
saw our dusty little caravan crawl away on the
longest stage of the journey. At noon we reached
a brackish well, where the horses quenched their
thirst, but we preferred the warm contents of our
water-bottles. We were surprised at the absence
of travel on the Vernii-Akmolinsk trail; but our
men explained that the Kirghiz had already come
North, that the season was too far advanced,
water too scarce and the scant grass too withered,
for herds and flocks to cross the desert. Sixty

160 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
miles of baked clay we covered that day, and a
very long day it seemed.
But the last rays of the setting sun shone for
us, that evening, on the dome of a large moghila,
Sarum Sakti, the Yellow Reeds. The very name
implied water and the end of the desert. A rich
Kirghiz had died here and his friends had raised
this tomb of mud and water to his memory,
moulding it out of yellow clay, building it among
the golden reeds at the edge of a little pond.
Beyond it, lay a range of low, red hills, and, be
yond them, the lake.
The horses were pitiful, bony wrecks by now,
exhausted by the heat and nearly two hundred
miles of slow jogging and lack of food and water.
One of them was completely worn out, and we
were forced to leave him behind, sending a wagon
for him after we had reached the lake. We would
gladly have pushed on early next morning but
took pity on our horses. Our shadows were reach
ing far ahead of us when we approached the last
hills dividing us from the lake. Not a tree, not a
bush, not a blade of grass was in sight; the crim
son sandstone hills glowed blood-red in the light
of the setting sun. A flag and two little figures
were silhouetted against the sky on the highest
summit. At sight of us, the two figures bundled
down as fast as their clumsy high boots and
voluminous clothing would allow. No wonder
Tundus Bek and Zakir Bek were glad to see us!

$w

'' ••;.'-//*...

LARGE MOGHILAS ON THE ARID STEPPES

MOGHILAS NEAR LAKE BALKHASH

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 161
They had been prodigal of their provisions at the
start, and we had been delayed longer than they
expected ; their food supply had become exhausted
a week ago, and they had been living on wild
onions and lake water. Adam, Noorman and
Abdrachman whipped their horses into a semblance
of a canter; the string of led horses jerked and
pulled and, at last, stirred their thin, weary legs
a little faster; we ascended a low divide and, be
hold, a picture even more rich and brilliant than
all our winter dreams had painted! There lay a
circlet of jewels fit to crown the brow of magical
Mongolia, the land of Yenghis Khan and the
Golden Horde; turquoise, emerald, sapphire and
ruby, all in a frame of brightest golden and copper
hills, burnished by the red sunset. With a rush,
we plunged down to the lake; a sheet of water,
whose colour can only be compared to the milky
blue of a turquoise, shot with clear-green chryso-
phrase. It was boundless as the ocean. There
had been a heavy storm the day before and huge
breakers were still rolling up the beach. On the
emerald grass beyond the line of the surf, our
white felt yurta had been pitched; our boat was
lying in the lagoon, which was divided from the
lake by a strip of ruddy sand. Curiously enough,
the water of this lagoon, a mile or more wide and
stretching along the shore as far as the eye could
see, was dark sapphire blue and as clear as crystal,
whereas the lake was softly opalescent. In some

162 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
places only three feet of sand divided the two
waters. Embracing the whole scene, except where
the rocky hills approached the shore, and shooting
long tongues into the water of the lagoon, lay vast
fields of yellow cane, its feathery tops waving
ten feet or more above the water. White swans
in flocks and pairs were sailing peacefully about
the lagoon and in and out among the islands of
cane. The water of the lake proved to be sweet
and cold; but we were told that in some parts of
Lake Balkhash the water is brackish.
Tundus Bek said they had not seen anyone
since leaving the works but that wild pigs and
fish were plentiful. Even their hunger had not
overcome their good Mohammedan loathing of
pork, but as soon as we produced some fishing
tackle, a good supper of fresh fish and fried wild
onions was sizzling on the open fire. This and
bursaks and tea remained our staple diet while
we were at the lake. Zakir Bek told us that, when
they arrived, the hills had been carpeted with
wild yellow tulips, and wild rhubarb was still
plentiful. "And now, Tundus Bek," we cried next morning,
"show us those pigs."
"Heaven forbid, Bai, it is a great sin to touch,
even to chase a pig; but I will follow you if you
wish to go."
Old Tundus Bek had been a notorious horse-
thief in his young days, for, to purchase a good

mm- z.

HnfflBfev^

TUNDUS BEK DRINKING TEA WITH HIS COMPANIONS
Old Tundus Bek had been a notorious horse thief

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 163
wife, a Kirghiz must pay many horses, and to
steal them is the easiest way. Such horse-thieves
dress all in white (as an emblem of the shining
innocence of their character, we say, but the
Kirghiz say, because the white colour escapes
notice on the shimmering Steppe), and many an
eye is closed to the escapades-.of these white-clad,
would-be bridegrooms; for the world long ago
decided to forgive many sins to the lover.
So Tundus Bek buckled on the ancient sword,
which he always wore, when guarding our horses,
and we trotted away, along the edge of the cane-
brakes, in search of pigs. The old man's eyes glis
tened with a sportsman's ardour at every rustle
in the cane. White gulls were screaming overhead,
and invisible birds, frogs, bullfrogs and insects
without number were sending up a chorus of whis
tling, croaking, singing and booming cries from the
heart of the canebrake; but, suddenly, our ears
caught the sound of squeaks and grunts and, as
we rounded a hill, we saw a dozen big black pigs
making for the reeds as fast as their twinkling
trotters could carry them. We belaboured our
ponies' sides with our heels and madly flapped
our arms, in true Kirghiz fashion, as we started
the pursuit. Tundus Bek followed us against his
conscience, but much according to his sports
man's heart, and we thundered after the herd
until it vanished into cover. One sow and a lit
ter of half -grown young ones were left behind.

i64 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
As the last one of her brood was darting into the
cane, one of us stooped down and caught it up
on to his saddle bow by the hind leg. This was
the signal for a general stampede of the horses,
and we raced into camp, with Tundus Bek waving
his sword above his head.
Alas! for the old man! As we reached camp,
the lively youngster leaped clear of the saddle,
the horses gave a final plunge, the rider lost his
grip on that convulsive hind leg, and away went
the squealing pig on a straight dash for the cane.
This was too much for Tundus Bek. He flourished
his sword, flapped his arms and tore after the fugi
tive. As he overtook the accursed pork-to-be,
he plunged that sacred sword-blade into its very
heart, amidst the derisive jeers of his young com
panions. Poor pious Tundus Bek! How crest
fallen the old man was when he realized the enor
mity of his sin! It was days before the jest died
out and the old man regained his self-respect.
We could often see him spread his coat upon the
lake shore and pray and prostrate himself again
and again. May Allah have heard your prayers,
good, gentle Tundus Bek!
One morning, we were awakened by a distant
muffled shuffling, preceded by the patter of a
thousand tiny hoofs. We looked along the road
and saw a dappled herd of cattle approaching, pre
ceded by a black-and-white checkered flock of
sheep and goats. Heading the herd, plodded six

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 165
black yaks, and alongside and around it, rode half
a dozen horsemen, sitting high in silver-mounted
saddles, wearing black sheepskin hats upon their
heads. Our men 'rushed to greet them.
' ' Salaam Allaikum ! Kaida bourassin ? ' ' (Where
are you going?)
"To Akmoli we are going."
"Whence have you come?"
"We are Sarts from Tashkend."
"Maljan aman bar?" (Are your families well?)
"Aman, aman." (They are well.)
"Was the grazing good on the way?"
"Very bad."
"Did you see any tigers?"
"Yes; one sprang at our herd at the south end
of the lake."
"Will you sell us a sheep?"
"Yes, and a yak too. They are dying from the
heat." We were glad of the chance to vary our diet of
fish with a little boiled mutton, but we declined
the yak. We felt very sorry for the beautiful
shaggy creatures plodding so patiently over the
burning plain and pining for their snowy moun
tains, but we did not fancy them as food.
Yet, though we bought the sheep (for an ex
orbitant price, O crafty Oriental!) our plans for
a meal of mutton were foiled by the sudden, pas
sionate attachment which our prospective supper
conceived for Tundus Bek. It pattered after him

166 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
wherever he went, into the yurta, among the wagons
and horses; it stayed by his side as he rode off
and watched our horses; it betrayed the most
piteous alarm, if it lost sight of him for a moment,
as if it realized that only the old man stood be
tween its life and the cooking-cauldron. The
affection of the sheep was so touching, that it was
not until the third day that our hunger overcame
our sentiment. A pack of hungry wolves sang the
funeral chant of the unhappy creature that night.
One morning, apparently from nowhere, as Kir
ghiz come, an old, very old, solitary horseman
ambled up on a broken-down white pony. By
his turban and his white clothes we recognized
him as a Mullah. He was bent with age, and a
long white beard hid a goodly portion of his rags.
He was evidently a son of the Hungry Steppe for
his face and hands were emaciated and dry. He
had never seen Europeans before. We never
found out where he came from, nor how he lived.
He was eager for our bursaks and consented to
slide down from his horse and totter into our
yurta. His legs were so bent with a lifetime in
the saddle, that his feet turned inward, almost
at right angles.
"Aman! Kaida bourassin?" he asked us.
"Aoolga bouramin." (We are going to our
home.) It is always the easiest answer. A grunt,
and then another question followed:
" Bilmamen," (We do not understand) we replied.

ON THE SHORES OF LAKE BALKHASH
By his turban we recognized him as a mullah

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 167
He politely repeated his question.
" Bilmamen," we said again. "Noorman, tell the
old gentleman that we do not understand him."
The old Mullah's eyes would have grown as
round as saucers, had his cheeks not been shrivelled
by eighty years of sun and wind and cold.
"How do you mean, you do not understand?
Of course you understand ! Am I not speaking to
you in plain Kirghiz?"
Noorman explained to him that we were mad
foreigners from a country where Kirghiz is not
spoken. The old man understood nothing of all
this, but rose up, thoroughly disgusted, and started
out of the yurta.
"Noorman! Tell him to stop. We will give
him tea. Aksha boolada," (there will be money).
Oh, magic words! The Mullah folded his dis
jointed legs under him, and sat down on the rug
of our yurta. Noorman soon brought in the samo
var, and, as the old man sucked his tea from his
saucer, one of our party produced a box of paints
and a sketch-book. In ten minutes, the Mullah's
likeness was transferred, so it seemed, from the
paint-box to the paper.
"Oi! Boi! Oi! Shaitan bar!" (the devil is
in it) murmured our young drivers, watching the
process over the artistic shoulder. They touched
the paint-box gingerly with the tips of their
fingers, no doubt expecting to see Shaitan, the
Devil, leap out of the box.

168 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
The old man's interest was awakened, he asked
to see the picture. The result was instantaneous
and unfortunate. He pulled his wobbly limbs to
gether and tottered out of the yurta with every
expression of anger and fear on his face, praying
frantically, as we could tell, for every other word
which he uttered was "Allah."
Noorman smiled indulgently. ' ' He is a Mullah, ' '
he explained, "a very wild man. He has never
seen foreigners or even Russians before. It is a
great sin, with us, to draw the form or features
of a man, but we know you and have learned not
to care."
Nothing we could do would appease the old
man. He climbed on to his pony's back and urged
it to a walk.
"Trata," we cried, "Wait! Here is something
for you! Aksha bar!" and we handed him a
three-rouble bill.
The Mullah took the bit of paper, looked at it,
and dropped it on the ground.
"Tell him it is money, Noorman," we cried, in
despair at being so misunderstood. This was the
last straw. Money indeed! As if the old man
did not know what money looked like! This was
paper! He rode away, and Noorman smiled again.
He was our last visitor at Lake Balkhash.
Our three weeks were nearly over. Our pro
visions were exhausted; our duties were calling
us. One morning we sadly prepared for depar-

THE TURQUOISE LAKE 169
ture. Our yurta was folded, our boat was drawn
up out of the water, our horses were caught and
harnessed. Once more the three vociferous wagons
started on their journey across the silent Steppe.
We mounted our horses, fat and strong after the
good pastures of the lake shore. The chestnuts
ran away, the piebalds ran away, the harness
broke as usual in several places, the bells clashed.
The turquoise lake was left to the swans and gulls
once more, the red hills faded into the distance,
and before noon we had settled down to our five-
days jog home. The June sun baked us as if we
had been flies upon the clay ; the very bells sounded
thirsty and hoarse and stopped their clamour
every minute, to choke down a note, as a hot dog
stops his panting to swallow.
In our thoughts, we were still on the shores of
the lake which we were leaving forever; fishing
off red crags with the surf at our feet, stalking
swans across the lagoon in our boat for a nearer
sight of their stately beauty, racing after wild
boars along the edge of the canebrake, hearing
the seagulls laugh at us, as they circled overhead,
jeering because they could sail forever over that
jewel of the Steppe, while we should never see it
again. We felt as if each second were putting
a wider and wider barrier between us and our
glimpse of that beautiful unknown water, but we
were wrong; the memory of Balkhash is still as
bright in our hearts as the colours of the lake itself.

THE MANNIKIN.
ON the evening of the fifteenth of January,
1905, Harter, our chief mining engineer, and
I were sitting on a small dump of low-grade ore,
near the top of the Sacred Hill, a rocky eminence
which was one of the outcrops of the great vein
of the Assumption Mine. We were gloomy, al
most sulky, ready to curse Fate and each other.
Every man who has worked in lonely isolation in
foreign lands knows how hateful life seems to
him at times. Its beauty and interest alike fail
to charm, and he seems to his own disordered
fancy to have been singled out amongst men to
endure a life of unchanging solitude and unceasing
hardships. However strong his heart may be,
there are times when homesickeness conquers his
soul and his pride of life, and he longs for nothing
except an end to it all. I suppose that we were
suffering from an acute attack of the disease, for
we were feeling very lonely.
There was, indeed, nothing in our surroundings
to induce gaiety. The sky was overcast with
clouds, lustreless, formless, heavy with impending
snow. The landscape was caught fast in the grip
170

^THE MANNIKIN 171
of winter. The ground had been covered with
snow for three or four months and the tireless
winds had swept all the beauty out of it ; the rocks
were bare, and it lay in glazed sheets wherever a
little protection gave it a resting-place, and in
unsightly piles against the buildings around the
mine, covered with soot and cinders from the
blacksmith's shop. The smoke of the boiler-house
was pouring horizontally from the stack and was
hastily hurrying southward in a long dark streak
to the mountains of Kisil Tav. It seemed glad to
escape from the chilly atmosphere of the mine,
and I think that, in our hearts, we were wishing
that we, too, could escape from such a cheerless
scene. Our moods were in tune with the weather,
for we had had a depressing day. We had been
examining the records of the drilling which we
had been carrying out under the Sacred Hill.
To the native Kirghiz this was a hill of peculiar
sanctity. All hills are surrounded with a halo of
sanctity in the Mahommedan scheme of thought;
but this particular hill was not like other hills;
here was the outcrop of the mysterious vein, and
over it mysterious pale fires glowed at night, ac
cording to the Kirghiz legend. It was curious to
meet this idea in this far-away land, amongst a
people who were not by instinct miners. It is a
well-known belief of the "cousin Jacks" in Corn
wall that Will-o'-the-wisp lights play over the
outcrops of mineral veins. Perhaps the same

172 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Phoenicians who used to come to Cornwall to
mine tin had also travelled eastward and carried the
same wonder-stories to the Steppes. Anyhow the
diamond drills had failed to justify the hopes which
the Sacred Hill and its Will-o'-the-wisp legends
had raised in our hearts.
Harter was the first to speak: "I am sick of
these barren hills and of the wind which never
stops, and of the winter which grips you and never
lets go. I am sick of boiled mutton and the smell
of tallow and of weak tea and of grit in my bread.
I am sick of pulling my furs on and off twenty
times a day and of feeling that it is my duty to be
cheerful when there is nothing to be cheerful
about. I am sick of drilling in barren rock and
never finding anything."
"The fact is, Harter," I said, "you pointed
that last hole wrong."
"I may have pointed the hole wrong, but, if I
had not, this wind would still be freezing me to the
bone. Let us go to the house; I am stiff with
cold." Darkness was falling as we left the protection
of the Sacred Hill. We picked our path around
the slippery edge of the open cut, a huge excava
tion made in the dim past by unknown hands, in
their search for the rich nodules of the precious
copper, when copper was to them what iron is
to us, their visible sign of progress on the scale of
human endeavour. It was quite dark when we

THE MANNIKIN 173
reached the street, which was lined with work
men's houses. The windows were glowing with
cheerful light and behind them we could see fami
lies gathered around the samovar, happy and con
tented. They had made the weary trip, fifteen
hundred miles long, from Little Russia, by train
where they could and when they had money to
pay for the ride, and by wagon and on foot when
they had not. Here, in this lonely corner of the
earth, they had found the haven of their desires
and were perfectly happy. Poor souls, it seemed
a paradise to them! They asked so little of life!
Bread and a little tea and sugar, a warm house and
an occasional spree on holidays. As the mine
apothecary said to me one day, "Here we have
found everything we want; we are perfectly
happy." He was receiving seventeen dollars a
month. Reaching home we, too, were glad of the
warmth and the hot tea, though I am afraid that
our consumption of sugar would have shocked the
frugal soul of the apothecary. He takes a lump
of sugar from his pocket, nibbles off a small morsel,
which he holds between his teeth, and sips his tea
through it. In this way his palate is slightly
tickled from time to time with the taste of sweet
ness and he is happy. After nibbling off as many
fragments as he drinks cups of tea, he returns the
lump to his pocket, where it is ready for the next
time. The reader, who may be gentle, but is
12-

174 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
certainly extravagant, will hardly believe how long
a pound of sugar will last under such treatment.
I suggested to Harter that we should go to the
smelting works the next day, a drive of seventy
miles. We had four relays of horses at the relay
stations and, although I knew that the weather
was bad, I thought that we could make the trip.
The starosta was more doubtful. " Tomorrow,
Your Honour, the bouran will be blowing, and
men lose their way and their lives, too, at such
times." "Well, starosta," I said, "we will try it; we
live in the hands of God (pree Bogom jiviom);
we have four good men and fifteen good horses
and I think that we can do it."
"Well, I will see that everything is ready by
daylight," said the starosta; and he vanished
through the heavy felt-lined doors into the dark
ness. Next morning, the outlook was not inviting.
The wind was blowing fiercely and had veered
into the northwest, the home and origin of the
bouran. The village street had been swept bare
of snow which lay banked up against our windows.
The air was full of swirling icy particles which
obliterated all outlines and produced the impres
sion that you were part of the storm and were
being swept through space on a storm cloud.
The felt doors flew open and Djumabek, our
driver, blew in in a gust of snow. He was a strange-

THE MANNIKIN 175
looking sight. He was so wrapped in furs and
belted and buckled that he had almost lost the
power of motion; the long sleeves of his wadded
coat dangled to his knees; his head was encased
in his malachai, so that only his shining red nose
and black eyebrows and mustache were visible,1
and these were encrusted with icicles; he wore
three pair of boots, which made his legs so stiff
that he could scarcely waddle.
"Djerman," he said, "bouran djerman." We
only had to look outside to see that the storm was
bad, but we had such implicit confidence in Djuma
bek, Abdrachman, Tocsan and Ecubas that I, for
my part, would have cheerfully followed them,
if they had said that they were going to the North
Pole. We began to dress ourselves. We drew on our
shoes, three pair of them; first a loose pair of
thin embroidered leather boots (with moccasin
soles), then felt boots (peemies) of solid wool
about one inch thick, and then stout leather boots,
all coming well over the knee ; next, a short over
coat to the knee, lined with curly- wool sheepskin;
then the dacha, a huge overcoat of horse-skin out
side and fox-skin inside, coming to the ground,
with a collar which, when turned up, reached to
the top of one's head and so voluminous that it
could be wrapped nearly twice round one's body.
Then with a huge wolf -skin rug, we were ready.
Outside was the sleigh, full of snow, with Ab-

176 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
drachman sitting on the box, and Tocsan and
Ecubas each riding one of the chestnuts with one
of them leading the third. Harnessed to the sleighs
were our three beautiful "pyegankas" or pie
balds, probably the best and certainly the prettiest
troika within five hundred miles. The men were
keeping up a continuous stream of chatter, as
Kirghiz do, amongst themselves, but there was no
sign that they were about to start on a seventy-
mile ride across the trackless Steppe in the midst
of a furious blizzard. One of them said "Djer
man," but that was all; you might have thought
that we were commuters taking the 8.03 A. M.
train from Black Harbor to New York. It might
seem to be an adventure to us, but to them, it all
seemed to be the natural and obvious thing to do.
The wind was very strong and until you are used
to it it strangles you and makes you gasp. A
few friends and Kirghiz stable-boys had gathered
to watch us start; they were standing idly, ap
parently indifferent to the storm and, while they
seemed to be personally concerned to see us leave
them, they showed no sign of concern about our
safety, nor did they seem to look upon us as
heroes in the least. It is always a little disappoint
ing when you find that your heroism is only plain
to your own vision. If the situation had been
changed to the top of the stairs leading to the
train platforms at the 42nd Street Subway station
at New York, and these amiable nomads had been

THE MANNIKIN 177
saying goodbye to us, in anticipation of their
struggle to reach Wall Street at nine o'clock in the
morning, it is probable that they would have felt
the glow of heroism in their hearts, while we would
have remained calmly indifferent. It is seldom
possible that we can be heroes to our companions.
We immediately saw that our sensation of hero
ism was quite misplaced and, swallowing our dis
appointment and the wind which seemed to choke
us, we, too, assumed, as well as we could, an air
of indifference. "How nice and comfortable your
sleigh is," said the apothecary; "you will be as
warm as toast in here." The sleigh consisted of
the usual large basket about six feet long and four
wide, covered on the outside with heavy leather.
At the back is a leather hood, at the front end a
board is placed across the basket, which covers
your feet and affords a seat for the driver and,
possibly, for an extra man. A heavy leather apron
stretches from the seat to the top of the hood so
that the traveller can enclose his portion of the
sleigh, if he wish. The drivers have no protec
tion whatever, nor do they seem to expect it nor
notice its absence. They obey what is, apparent
ly, a law of nature, which is that some men are
always in front of the shield and some men are
always behind it. For my part, I found some diffi
culty, that day, in enduring life behind the shield,
and I do not think that I could have borne it for
an hour in front. But the hardy endurance of those

178 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Kirghiz is astonishing. On one occasion, this same
Abdrachman sat on this same wooden seat through
out a whole trip from the smelting works to Petro
pavlovsk in the dead of winter; one hundred and
twenty hours without rest. At the change of
horses, he was busy with the horses and helping
us with our food; when he ate, I do not know;
I think that he took very little of anything ex
cept an occasional glass of hot tea. For five days
and nights he sat upright on this bare board.
In spite of what the apothecary had said, the
sleigh had not the appearance of warmth to us,
when we looked inside; it was a confused mass of
hay and pillows and snow; but we said it had,
and everyone else thought it had, and our friends
tucked the wolf-skin around our feet, and, with
a final "prostchai," buckled the apron to the hood.
"Aida!" said the driver, and the horses leapt into
their collars. The sleigh gave a lurch which threw
Harter's massive form on top of me, from which
I was only relieved by another lurch which threw
me on top of him. The Russian sleigh is mounted
on two runners placed closely together under the
centre of the body; this invitation to upset is
counteracted by a species of outrigger on each side,
which receives the weight of the sleigh when it
tips too far to one side or the other. By this
contrivance, you have the constant excitement of
starting an upset without the inconvenience of
ever completing one. As you incline, perhaps

THE MANNIKIN 179
fifteen degrees on each side, before finding an out
rigger, you are exposed to a total roll of about
thirty degrees, which adds a pleasing and constant
ly repeated excitement to the drive. It becomes
annoying when you travel with a man like Harter,
for he was a much heavier man than I, and when
the sleigh rolled on to the outrigger on my side,
he gained six inches of space; but when the
sleigh rolled back to his side, I only recovered
three inches. Even old and tried friendships are
not made to endure tests of such a kind.
Like a ship at sea, you are not only exposed to
this sideways roll, but also to the fore-and-aft
pitching, in and out of the ookhabs or pits which
are worn in a much frequented snow road. Such
pits will be twenty or twenty-five feet apart, and
may succeed each other continuously for a short
distance or for a mile or more. Out of these two
forces, acting on each other at right angles, you
can enjoy an extraordinary and irritating variety
of plunging effects, none of which ever seems to
be identically repeated.
In the meantime, Djumabek and Abdrachman
are sitting outside on their narrow board, uncon
scious of outriggers or ookhabs, and Tocsan and
Ecubas are trotting alongside on the chestnuts,
also without any concern.
We were travelling fast, and the houses of the
village seemed to suddenly emerge from the
blinding mist and suddenly disappear. I partially

180 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
recognized the store and the powder-house and I
thought that I recognized the movement of the
sleigh as we rounded the foot of the Yuspenssky
hill and turned northward toward the smelting
works; but, after that, I saw nothing, felt nothing,
except the lurching swing of the sleigh. Sky and
earth were welded by the blinding snow into one.
The effect, after a time, is bewildering. The three
dimensions lose their identities and you seem to
be moving along all three simultaneously. If you
are travelling on a windless night, when the mist
is glowing like luminous vapour in the moonlight,
the landscape becomes crowded with fantastic
and bewildering illusions. You are no longer
gliding on the ground but are floating through the
air on the sound of the sleigh-bells, and you are
soothed with a series of fantastic visions which
are extraordinarily vivid and insistent ; mountains
appear and disappear; houses are sighted in the
far distance, they quickly come nearer and nearer
and suddenly change into small birch trees and
rush swiftly by; a huge, cliff rises at your side
and you are driving along a road cut into the side
of the rock, on the other side you are looking down
at a stream of water bubbling over the boulders
thirty feet below you; you rub your eyes, but the
vision persists and does not yield until it is re
placed by another equally fantastic. But, on a
windy day, when the snow is beating your face to
blood, you have no time for such pleasant illu-

WINTER TRAVEL ON THE STEPPES

WHEN THE ROAD IS BAD, HORSES MUST BE HARNESSED
TANDEM

THE MANNIKIN 181
sions, and are conscious only of the stern fight
which you are waging with nature. When the
veil is lifted for an instant, a bush suddenly starts
out of the ground in front of you, swells rapidly
to an enormous size, hits you in the face, throws
a handful of snow down your neck and immediately
shrinks again to nothing. The clouds strike you
with invisible hands and the icy spray spits
viciously in your face. You have no strength
left for any thoughts except for the battle with
the storm. How the drivers and riders kept to
the allotted track or anywhere near it, I do not
know. "Can you see the road?" I asked occasion
ally, and the reply always came, "We can." Oc
casionally I saw it too, or rather felt it — as the run
ners of the sleigh ground on its stony surface,
where it had been swept bare by the wind.
Our progress was slow, for the wind had swept
the snow into ridges into which the sleigh plunged
as into deep loose sand, and through which the
piebalds had to pull it by sheer force. It takes
good horses and good men for work of this kind.
I only once identified our location, when we slid
down the banks on to the black icy surface of the
river Sara-Su. It took about four hours to cover
the stage to Bulkuldak, a distance of twenty miles.
It was hardly possible to distinguish the house,
half buried in the side of the hill and wholly
buried in snow; but a little smoke and a strong
smell of burning dung proclaimed the life within.

182 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
The men were soon busy with the change of horses.
I asked them whether the storm was too heavy
for them and if they felt sure that they could
follow the road; they seemed to feel the question
as irrelevant and I said nothing more.
The second stage to the Daria was like the first,
except that each rider was now leading two
horses. The road lay parallel to and near the
foot of a high rocky ridge of mountains, but no
mountains were visible today. It was afternoon
when we reached the Daria. We had been in
the sleighs for about eight hours and were suf
fering from cold. It is a cruel form of torture.
When we arrived at the Daria, the delicious per
fume of the smoke was too entrancing and we
jumped out of the sleigh and all groped our way
down the snow passage to the outer room, and
stumbled in the darkness over the goats and sheep
and camels till we found the door of the living-
room. The atmosphere of the room contained
everything that an atmosphere ought not to have
and nothing that it should have ; but it was warm
and it all seemed like an enchanted palace to us.
We had sent forward Akin to this point on the day
before and he had prepared the samovar and we
drank the hot weak tea until our hands and feet
returned to life.
When we left the Daria the chestnuts were har
nessed to the sleigh, and three men with twelve
led horses were trotting alongside. The road was

THE MANNIKIN 183
exceedingly heavy and the light chestnut troika
had hard work to pull our sleigh through the fresh
snowdrifts. Happily the wind was moderating
and the cold was more endurable, or we thought
it was, for the effect of hot tea is magical for a few
hours. As we came within five miles of the Noura
station, the road wound around some hills and the
wind was partly cut off by them and was partly
behind us. The effect of the change was in
stantaneous ; we lowered the apron of our carriage,
the men began to chatter on the box and the riders
began to chatter too; the road was good now and
we slipped along the frozen trail at a twelve-mile
gallop. The three drivers were driving the twelve
loose horses ahead of them. They seemed to have
perfect control of them; it was a pretty sight.
I have seen horsemen North, South,. East and
West, but I have never seen men who have such
easy and complete control of horses as the Kir
ghiz. They are not showy riders nor graceful ones,
but they are one with the horse and they bring
up the horse from its babyhood to be one with
them. As we drew near the Noura station, they
all began to shout and laugh, the horses seemed
to catch the spirit of the moment and we all gal
loped up to the station in high spirits. Djumabek
said to me, "It is now quite dark and we fear that
we cannot find the road; we think that we must
stay here for the night." I knew this was his way
of saying that he wanted some boiled mutton,

184 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
but I agreed with him that it was dark and that
we had better remain where we were till day.
So we all plunged down the snow tunnel into
the house, we and our five men and sixteen horses,
helter-skelter, who could get there first. The out
side room was already full of horses and camels
and, of course, quite dark; but someone heard the
noise and, in the distance, a door creaked and
opened and a glimmer of light could be seen and
much smoke could be felt. "Aman, Aman, Bai,"
a man called as we stumbled over goats and sheep
and bumped our heads against the poles and twigs
of the low roof. We joined the circle of teamsters
inside who were sitting round the fire which was
furnishing both light and heat. We took off our
heavy clothes and our outer boots and joined the
circle. Karagand was heaped on the blaze and
the smoke and the smell of the animals in the
adjoining room was stifling. But everybody
seemed quite comfortable except ourselves and, at
least, we were sheltered from the cold outside.
After our men had attended to the animals, they
brought in our basket of provisions; they formed
a circle around Harter and me and watched us
eat our strange-looking food. They would have
none of it, but patiently chattered until we had
finished our unnatural and entirely inadequate
meal. Then we had tea; and, with the hot tea
and the stifling air, our brains began to swim and
I wished that we had insisted on pushing on to

THE MANNIKIN 185
the works. But everyone seemed so happy and
light-hearted that we made a great effort to con
trol our feelings and we agreed with our driver
Djumabek that a great occasion like this should
certainly be celebrated with boiled mutton. So
we handed five roubles to the keeper of the station,
and we all went into the next room and selected
a sheep which was, there and then, slaughtered
and brought into the living-room. An hour was
thus pleasantly spent in preparing the animal for
the pot. The head was handed to me in its nat
ural shape and a hole was made in the embers and
they showed me how to place the horrible dainty
morsel in the fire, so that it would be especially
nicely cooked for me; and the smell of the burn
ing wool filled the room with its pungent savour.
If I have said enough to enable the gentle but
extravagant reader to form a true picture of this
scene, I will not further describe its horrible de
tails. When all was ready, we sat around the
steaming platter; the head was given to me as a
great delicacy, and the cheerful chatter of the
Kirghiz was partly silenced for a while. The last
morsel was eaten, the last bone was cracked and
devoured and we sat around the mat, again drink
ing tea. Djumabek was whittling at some wooden
fragments and Abdrachman was doing some queer
things with some uneatable portions of the sheep
which are usually hidden from view. Finally,
these articles were all combined and turned them- J

1 86 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
selves into a mannikin, suspended by a string,
which Abdrachman had manufactured of the guts
of the animal, from an elastic pole on the roof.
The whole was so arranged that, when the pole
was gently agitated, the little mannikin danced
and played ridiculous antics on a low table which
was brought in and arranged as a stage for him.
For hours the little man danced, nor ever wearied,
and he was much applauded. These wild rough
men seemed to take him to their hearts for the
fun which he gave them. The harder he danced,
the more pleased were they all. It was all very
human and a little pathetic. I still have the
merry little mannikin, who lies tied up in his
original string of gut in a drawer in my desk; and,
whenever I see the stupid little toy, I think of
how he danced in the lonely snow hut in the
Steppes, and how a dozen men sat round in a
circle and watched his funny antics for hours with
delight, and forgot the cold of the day which was
past and of the day which was to come. In one
sense these men have solved the secret of life, for
they seek and know happiness only in the joy of
living; the struggle which they know is the eter
nal struggle with nature but not the unnatural
struggle with each other.
I collapsed with the heat and fatigue and went
to sleep while the mannikin was still dancing.
• Next morning the air was still and very cold,
and we drove home without incident. During the

THE MANNIKIN 187
next few days, the teamsters arrived at the works
with their noses and cheeks scarred with frost
bites. Two men were said to have lost their lives
in the blizzard. It is always hard to confirm such
rumours in the Steppes. Life, there, is so very
incidental.

A HUNT WITH EAGLES.
TO tell a hunting story, it is necessary to face
a doubting audience, for there is an undying
belief that the memory of a huntsman is defective ;
some say that all huntsmen are hars. For years
I have told the story of fox-hunting in Florida;
how, at the end of the chase, the weary fox climbs
a pine tree; how the huntsman climbs the tree
after him and how he grasps the fox behind the
neck and, so, brings him down to earth. I have
told this story very often in an experimental way,
vaguely wondering when I should find someone
who would accept it with cheerful acquiescence;
but I have never known it to be received with any
comment other than, "foxes do not climb pine
trees." Is it possible to hope for credence when
I tell how the Kirghiz catch wolves with eagles?
Although our relations with Adam Bai had been
strained by the unfortunate incident of the dis
appearance of the three-rouble bill up the sleeve
of the old gentleman, when we were borrowing
twenty thousand roubles from him, yet the old
man was such a good sport that he duly kept his
promise, made in happier days, to invite us to
188

A HUNT WITH EAGLES 189
join him in an eagle hunt, and on a certain chilly
morning in October two men rode up to our vil
lage and, with much ceremony, delivered a mes
sage to this effect: that Adam Bai hoped to take
the eagles for their first hunt of the season on the
following day, and that he begged us to share the
sport with him and to join him at his zimofka or
winter quarters on the Kisil Tav mountains
without delay.
Now, it is one thing to visit the Kirghiz in their
tents, with the glory of the summer sky above
them and the flower-strewn earth around them;
when the herds are fat and sleek, when the girls
are busy with the lambs and kids and the boys are
filled up every day with all the koomiss that they
can drink; but it is quite another thing to visit
them in their detestable winter zimofkas, when the
young men are out on the Steppes all night herd
ing their flocks and stock in the bitter wind, and
the women and children and old men are moping
and groping in the darkness and filth of the miser
able hut. But the prospect of an eagle hunt was
irresistible and we saddled our horses and followed
our guides.
Before the Russians absorbed their country, the
Kirghiz usually spent the winter as well as the
summer in their tents; but, having tested under
Russian example the warmth of wall and roof,
they gradually adopted them for their own use in
winter. As they are not artisans by instinct, they
13

i9o RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
made a very poor show when they attempted
to follow the Russian style; and their conserva
tism is ample proof against any desire for change.
They present an unruffled face to Fate, meet Life
as it is and seek neither to hasten nor retard
Death as it shall be. Rich and poor alike, each
man is absolutely contented with his lot. Out of
their passionate adoration of nature has been born
the spirit which keeps them in unison with it;
from it they learn to live and die like the flowers
and animals which they see around them; they
are strangers to all the restless desires and emo
tions, which the West considers to be the especial
attributes of humanity.
At any rate, there is no display of any restless
desires or emotions about their domestic archi
tecture. The form of the zimofka is always the
same. It is usually built where there is good
drainage. A hole is dug in the ground of the de
sired size to a depth of about four feet. This hole
is about fifty or sixty feet square. The walls are
built of sun-dried brick from the floor of the hole
to a height of about four feet above the ground.
A small corner of the enclosure is partitioned off
by a mud-brick wall, and this forms the one and
only room for the use of the very numerous human
beings who may occupy it for the winter. One
tiny window admits a pale light during the brief
hours of winter daylight. The rest of the enclosure
is devoted to the use of the domestic fauna, from

TAUK
Looking very pretty in her fur cap

A HUNT WITH EAGLES 191
which the family is inseparable. Over the whole,
as a roof, flat poles are laid, supported in forked
props; on the poles, karagand brush is scattered
and the top covering is of hay. Nature then com
pletes the work in due season by burying the- whole
under a heavy mantle of snow. Ingress is had
through a tunnel-like aperture, made of poles and
brush, to protect the main door from the snow.
This door opens into the animal-room, through
which you must pass to gain the living-room. The
interior has no finish of any kind; the mud walls
are left bare; the floor is the natural soil; the
furniture consists of an iron pan in which the
clothes are sometimes boiled, and a samovar.
Sometimes there is a pretence of a chimney,
sometimes none. Coverings of a kind are spread
on a portion of the mud floor, but, in the zimofka,
the women use their old rough carpets and do not
display the beautiful rugs and hangings with which
they decorate their summer tents. There is no
ventilation of any kind except during the rare
intervals when the door is opened into the animal-
room, and then the quality of air admitted is not
of the choicest. From the moment when they
occupy it on October 1st to the moment when
they leave it on May 1st not the slightest attempt
is made to clean it or to remove any refuse. Any
thing which is brought into a zimofka must either
walk out on its own legs, or be eaten, or stay there
until the following Spring.

1 92 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
When Spring comes, the inmates of the zimofka
are reminded of it by the snow and rain which
drip through the brushwood roof, and no discom
fort can be imagined worse than the discom
fort of a zimofka at such a time. When the
inmates finally move into their tents, their animals
eat the hay of the roofs, the karagand is burned
for fuel and the poles and the window are removed
and saved for next year in some secret place.
The house is thus left open to the sky and the four
winds, and the crows and buzzards take possession
and give it the only cleaning it ever receives.
In such conditions is the family and patriarchal
life maintained. Men and women pass seven-
twelfths of their lives in them; children are born;
old people die; in them are cherished gentle,
kindly thoughts which breed a race with a soul
like a child and from which has sprung a large
part, at least, of the great ideas which have swayed
the world. Surely, however, the ideas were born
in the tents under the stars and not within the
stifling walls of a zimofka, and it remains to be
seen how long the race can retain its character
under its changed conditions.
When we rode out of our village, the day was
cold and gray and a chilly wind was chasing the
first flying snowflakes across the frozen Steppe,
whirling them through the yellow grass blades and
the bare twigs of the karagand bushes. The Kisil
Tav mountains are rocky and barren and our

A HUNT WITH EAGLES 193
horses' feet rang sharply as we scrambled over the
rugged rocks. Adam Bai's zimofka had not yet
put on its winter coat and stood out in its ugly
nakedness. On the hay roof (which was being
rapidly scattered by the wind) were collected all
the family possessions not needed during the
winter, a ramshackle carriage, some harness, some
tents and other odds and ends. We led our horses
down the tunnel entry to the first or animal-room
and then groped our way to the living-room and
entered. There were about a dozen people inside. Old
Adam Bai himself, some young men, several girls
and the dowager wife, now relegated to an exclu
sive but somewhat dirty seat of honour. A small
kerosene lamp (for Adam Bai was a rich man) fur
nished more smoke than light, and we slightly
helped the situation by lighting two candles which
we had brought with us. Not the warmest ad
mirer of the Kirghiz can say that they are adapted
to life within four walls ; their natures and manners
shrivel under limitations which are unnatural to
them; they mope and pine until Spring opens their
cage, when they flit into the sunlight and become
themselves again.
In the corner of the room glowed the eyes of
two eagles, seated on their perches.
When the time arrived for sleep, the men lay
down at one end of the room and the women at
the other, a curtain being drawn between them,

194 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
Every few hours during the long night, Adam Bai
would rise to his knees and sing long prayers in a
loud voice, bowing his forehead to the ground at
every reference to the One and One Only God.
At intervals, some of the young men rose, drew
on their boots and heavy clothes and went out;
others came in, covered with snow and ice. These
were the stock guards who relieved each other in
watches. Their duty was to protect the sheep
from wolves and to keep the stock in sheltered
spots on stormy nights. It was not a light task,
and the worse the storm, the more carefully must
they keep their watch. The horses can take care
of themselves, but the cattle and sheep are helpless
animals and must be carefully guarded.
We awoke as the first dim rays of light filtered
through the solitary window and saw Adam Bai
sitting on a pile of cushions, gazing earnestly
through the brushwood smoke at his priceless bird.
It was sitting on its perch in the corner, ruffled and
fierce, motionless yet alert, its black eyes keenly
following every movement of the Kirghiz coming
and going in the room. During the warm weather
its blood has been running sluggishly, but now it
has felt the first touch of cold and it gives a restless
cry, to which warning note it would be well for
every living thing on the Steppe to give heed,
from the fluffy owl to the bucking bighorn ram.
The old man was gazing intently at his favourite
bird and his face was interesting to study. It

THE MOUNTAINS OF KISIL TAV, OR RED ROCK

A HUNT WITH EAGLES 195
would be easy to draw fantastic conclusions from
such a study; but the only conclusion which I
ever drew from a study of the Kirghiz mind, with
any confidence in its correctness, Was that neither
our formulae, nor our classifications, nor our lan
guage could be applied to it in any intelligent
manner. It is not possible that we, who are com
pelled to struggle desperately for the necessities of
life but do not value them at all unless they are
accompanied by an immensely long list of super
fluities, can have any conception of the minds of
men who acquire the necessities without difficulty
and who, having acquired these, ask for nothing
more. The attitude of repose, which naturally
follows such a conception of life, is entirely unin
telligible to us. It is, therefore, likely that I was
quite wrong in considering Adam Bai's face an
interesting study, for it is very possible that he
was thinking of nothing at all.
The door bursts open, "A fox! A fox!" cries a
herdsman, tumbling breathless into the room, whip
in hand, brown eyes alight under the furry brim
of his malachai. The sleepy household awakes to
instant life; first boots, then layer after layer of
wadded clothes are pulled on, fur malachais are
firmly tied around eager, smiling faces, and lastly,
each shapeless form is girthed around the middle
with a leather belt, from which dangle hunting-
knives, bags and horns for powder and shot and
all the paraphernalia of the primitive chase; all

196 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
seize their whips and rush out. Old Adam Bai re
mains serenely calm; he reaches for his ancient
muzzle-loader with its forked rest and slings it
across his back and then watches the huntsman to
be sure that the eagle is properly handled, a task
that is by no means a pastime for children. The
huntsman pulls on a pair of heavy rawhide gloves
and gently raises the eagle from its perch. The
royal captive convulsively grips the gloved wrist
and peers fiercely at the open door, but, when a
leathern hood is deftly slipped over its eyes, it
lapses into calm. One of Adam Bai's sons, Malik,
a boy of about sixteen, with black eyes and very
pink cheeks, has reached for the other, a young
bird, now commencing its training. A well-trained
eagle is worth the price of four horses on the
Steppes. He is not only valuable for the sport he
offers but for the money which he brings in to the
patriarchal chest. In a good season, he may secure
for his master two hundred roubles' worth of furs.
So a promising young eagle receives a very careful
education and the skill with which he is handled
affects his value very much.
The men outside are busy with the horses which
are always standing in plenty ready saddled about
the entrance to any zimofka. Each man mounts a
pony and belabours its shaggy sides with whip
and heel until the frost flies; away go a dozen
riders, each one eager to be the first at the scene
of the chase. The huntsman is more deliberate;

A HUNT WITH EAGLES 197
his bird is heavy to handle, and it must not be
excited lest it get out of hand; he mounts his pony
and lays his burdened arm in the wooden crotch
which is provided on the saddle bow to support it.
Malik, too, mounts his horse with his eagle, and
lastly comes Tauk, Adam Bai's fifteen-year-old
daughter, looking very pretty in her bright velvet
clothes and fur cap. When we are all mounted,
we jog along behind the huntsman across a little
meadow and mount at last, among rolling stones,
to a small hilltop, from which point the surround
ing country is visible down to the blue horizon.
While the ruck of riders goes circling across the
plain, hoping to beat up the longed-for fox, our
little group stands behind the huntsman with his
great eagle and Malik with his smaller one, gazing
eagerly over the endless expanse of karagand scrub
below, straining our eyes to catch sight- of the
least moving speck among the waving grasses. The
hoods are slipped from the eagles' eyes and the
great birds of prey are all alert, sleek and strong
and cruel, ready to fall upon the first living thing
that meets their gaze.
Suddenly the young bird peers forward, raises
its wings and sails away into the distance. For a
moment it hangs hovering in the teeth of the wind
and then — suddenly drops like a stone into the
grass, from which rise, next moment, piercing
screams and a whole cloud of creamy feathers.
Malik claps his heels to his pony's sides and rushes

198 RUSSIAN AND NOMAD
headlong down the hill, but reaches the eagle too
late to rescue a huge fluffy owl from its clutches.
The hapless bird of night is lying on its back in the
grass, helplessly snapping at its foe; the eagle
holds fast to its prey and glares resentfully at its
approaching master. All the Kirghiz ride up to
watch Malik extract his eagle's talons one by one
from its victim's flesh. When the conqueror is
once more hooded and placed on its perch on
Malik's wrist, they ride away, first plucking out a
handful or two of the downy feathers of the owl,
wherewith to decorate the caps of Tauk and her
friends. Once more the huntsmen wait upon the hilltop,
holding the unhooded eagles, while the beaters
scour the plain.
And behold! A moving speck among the kara
gand! This time it is the turn of the old eagle
which has seen it first. Already it has left its
perch and is hanging high in the sky, poised above
its prey. Whatever it is, it is crouching low among
the bushes, until the final downward sweep of the
death-dealing speck above it sends it scampering
for its life. An anxious cry breaks from the Kir
ghiz; the quarry is a wolf, a dangerous foe even
for an old and experienced eagle. Two miles from
the hilltop the eagle drops. Its talons sink deep
into the head of the flying wolf, and bird and beast
roll in the grass together. With whirling whips and
frantic kicks, the Kirghiz beat their ponies to the

TAUK AND HER BROTHER

YOUNG MALIK WITH HIS EAGLE

A HUNT WITH EAGLES 199
battlefield. When they arrive the wolf is almost
overpowered; the eagle's beak is deeply imbedded
in its brain, and, though minus a few feathers, the
gallant victor is as indomitable as ever. The ef
forts of three men scarcely suffice to extricate its
claws, so ruthlessly are they implanted in its
victim. An hour passes; the riders have dismounted
and are resting their panting ponies; some squat
ting among the rocks telling long tales of aquiline
exploits, others stripping the wolf of its precious
pelt. The eagles are resting sleepily upon their
perches; the sun has come out, the snow has begun
to thaw; their blood is running sluggishly again.
"It is too hot to hunt now," says Adam Bai.
"If Allah wills, we will catch that fox tomorrow;
but now, aoolga beramin (I am going home)."
Gaily the riders troop zimofka-ward. The eagles
have relapsed into torpor, but their masters chat
ter gaily as they hurry along, their mouths water
ing for the koomiss and boiled mutton, which they
know are awaiting them.

THE EAGLE'S SONG
As wakeful I crouch in the cold twilight
Of a draughty yurt on an autumn night,
I ruffle my wings and my heart beats strong
I sing to myself this hunting song
Oi! Oi! Boi Yoi!
The white hares fly:
High in the sky
Poised I hang.
Blow, blow, fierce wind!
Fiercer am I:
Shine, shine bright sun
In my bright eye.
I see my prey:
I turn! I stop!
I poise! I drop!
Beware Gray Wolf!
Ho! Ho!
While the children sprawl on the naked ground
By the brushwood blaze, and the men sit round
Watchful and sullen, I blink through the glare
Of the smoky light, in the reeking air:
And chained to my perch, in my heart I sing
The wild hunting song of the great free King.
Mount high! Soar high!
The foxes fly!
In the bright sky
Poised I hang.
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