Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/112

 78 a year and lives in a four-roomed house with varnished tables and cheap furniture; there is the Kazan Tartar, who deals in horses and imitates the social habits of his Russian neighbour; there is the Russian watchmaker or the Polish hairdresser, who has left his home, perhaps for political reasons, and finds that in Siberia he can easily earn 450 roubles (£50) a year, while his food and general living cost him only half of what they do in old Russia. Just as the Englishman, if he has enterprise and a little capital to start with, improves his position by crossing the Atlantic to Canada, so can the Russian from the old country, if he is ready to endure the rough and free life, find a more open field for his enterprise and a more remunerative return for his labour when he crosses to the east of the Urals.

There is, as in every town in Russia, a boulevard or square space in the middle of the town where some stunted trees try to grow. When I was in Minusinsk, just after the winter snow had melted, the boulevard was like a ploughed field, while during the summer the heat and dust render the spot equally unfavourable for an urban pleasure-ground. A few rickety old seats are scattered about, and occasionally the colonel of the regiment stationed in the town allows the band to make discordant sounds on a Sunday afternoon. To this Garden of Eden every summer evening repair the fashion of Minusinsk. Well-to-do traders are to be seen with wife and family dressed in the latest costume, which was probably the fashion in Western Europe ten years ago. Children play games and roll in the dirt, while parents sit on benches and gossip. Smart young officers strut about in