Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/141

Rh It is interesting to note what passes through the peasant's mind when he is asked to describe the wild country beyond his frontier. He always thinks of it in terms of bread and vodka. His estimation of the country is in inverse ratio to the prices of bread there, and in direct ratio to its facilities for obtaining vodka! The gold attraction plays a certain but, I think, a secondary part in his estimation. In fact, he is like a child who thinks of his immediate bodily comforts before all else. At the time I almost relished the idea of rough fare, without bread and vodka, but had I been six months older I should probably have thought more wisely, and my ardour for wandering in trackless forests on the off-chance of seeing primitive Finnish tribes would have been severely cooled.

I then asked the old men what they thought of the native Finns and Mongols across the frontier. "Oh! neechevo, all right, they can live on very little food, but they have good skins and wool to sell." "How do you get on with the Chinese over there?" "We don't see much of them, but we hear they will be coming there in large numbers before long to overrun our country and our land." And then I was asked again if I knew when there would be war between Russia and China. I replied that I thought their fears were quite unfounded, and that the quiet Chinaman was rather afraid of being disturbed by Muscovite bayonets than thinking of disturbing his neighbours. Then a middle-aged peasant told me that he had been out in the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria, and had seen the yellow people. He was much afraid of them, he said, and hoped they would not attack Russia again. "We do not want