Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/37

 Rh But he can soon become accustomed to them, if he is willing, after he has been in Russia for a short time.

European commercial travellers are generally to be found on the train, usually German, but sometimes a few English business men. The German shows considerably more adaptability to his Russian surroundings than the Englishman, who gives one the impression that he is wishing to be back in England again. But the German is much more at home. He rarely is seen in Russia unless he knows the Russian language more or less thoroughly: he never stands aloof in discussions with Russian fellow-travellers, or dines at a lonely table as if half in fear of contact with them. The Englishman seems to keep himself in the background as much as possible, a failing which is reflected in his order-book.

The Russian commercial men are generally of a free and easy character, altogether more talkative, and, I should think, rather less shrewd than the German type. They are usually the representatives of Moscow or St Petersburg business houses dealing in tea, cotton, goods, wool, hides, etc., visiting their Siberian branch offices or agents at the different trading centres along the railway. I remember talking to one who was travelling for a firm at Irkutsk. He was over middle age and told me that he had done the journey from Irkutsk to Moscow twenty times in his youth, travelling by sledge in winter and cart in summer. In those days the great post road along which everyone travelled followed the line of the present railway. All eastward-bound traffic except the mails went by the river system from Tiumen and Tobol to Tomsk and even up to the Altai by water route alone.