Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/100

 66 before, for once had to fall back upon themselves, instead of on a host of jabbering friends. Our keen-witted Caucasian servant was more than a match for them, and a trial of strength in the gentle art of Oriental blackmail, accompanied by torrents of unintelligible sentences, gradually ended in victory for the Caucasian. It was indeed almost impossible to keep one's face and avoid giving the show away while the farce went on. Here was our hired Caucasian blackmailer, a member of a subject race, outmanœuvring the dull-witted Slav in his own country. This was my first real introduction to business in the East. Eventually we got our horses at the reasonable average figure of £3 per head.

During the course of our stay in Minusinsk we had on more than one occasion to visit the local branch of the Siberian bank. The only bank in a town like Minusinsk is naturally the place to feel the pulse of local commerce. Thither repair the retail buyers of live stock or grain in the autumn to discount their bills on the wholesale firms at Krasnoyarsk or other big towns on the railway; and in the spring traders bound for Mongolia come to borrow lump silver which they hope to exchange for skins and wool across the frontier. A low, dingy wooden building with a signboard over the door was the best that Minusinsk could do in banks. At the entrance there stood a dirty, slovenly policeman with a loaded revolver and a fixed bayonet, a precaution which every bank in Russia still takes in case of conflict with certain members of society who have peculiar ideas about private property. This arm of the law, however, was not a very inspiring per-