Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/164

118 willow copse. "And you," he said, "from whence are you?" "I come from Europe and am going to Mongolia," I replied. And then came a remarkable question. "Where is Europe?" I then discovered that his knowledge of geography did not extend beyond the southern parts of the Yenisei Government of Siberia. It sounds almost incredible, but is nevertheless true, that I, a foreigner, sat for some minutes with this old Siberian peasant, explaining to him that there was such a place as old Russia which along with other countries was called Europe. I found that he had vaguely heard of England, Germany and France, but they meant nothing to him. He had heard of the growing power of Japan, and was obsessed by a vague fear of the Chinese peril. This was the boundary of his political horizon, but how could it be otherwise in this vast country, in a corner of which he had lived for all his life. Then he plied me with many questions about Europe. "What sort of land is it there, and how much bread does it grow?" In reply to these puzzling questions I made a few hopeless attempts to enlighten him, and then proceeded to try and find out more about him and the system under which he lived. "Yes," he said, "I and my brothers work this land together, and divide the bread amongst ourselves." "But do you all do like that?" I asked. "Many of our comrades have their own plots for themselves, but my brothers and I keep this land together as we did when we were children. And we have not changed since then." "And what do your sons do?" I asked. "They have gone away. One is serving as a soldier and the other has got his portion of fifteen desyatines, which he claimed from the com-