Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/68

 38 forests are inferior in numbers to the Russians, and, thanks to the adaptability of the Russian colonists, it is not unlikely that many of them will become socially absorbed and mingle completely with the Russians. The Mussulman Tartars of Kazan and Tobolsk, the relics of the old Siberian Khanate, have long ago been politically absorbed and only remain distinct in religion; and here the utmost tolerance is shown. The whole field of Western and Central Siberia has been laid open to colonization by Slavonic civilization with all its peculiar semi-European characteristics, as they have grown there in the course of five centuries. Siberia only differs from old Russia as any young and new country would differ from an older and more established one, or just as society in England differs from that in Canada or Western America.

A tourist then in a Western or Central Siberian town finds much material for meditation on the earlier stages of the evolution and the development of society. He may be adversely struck with the crudity of the human kind in a Siberian commercial town, and with the scum which tends to collect there. But one does not look for beauty or romance or anything which appeals to the higher nature of mankind in such places as these. One finds, however, a society in one of its most interesting stages of development and one which will thoroughly repay study and sympathy. After all, we know that in Western Europe we must have passed through a similar phase ourselves, and that even the outlying parts of the British self-governing colonies are passing through such a phase to-day. But whether the evolution will be exactly on Western European lines, or