Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/75

 Rh some men to drag our baggage over to the other side. When it was all over a violent altercation arose. Our Caucasian servant had struck a bargain with one of the Siberians who had agreed to do the work. When the operation was completed each side seemed to interpret the agreement in a different light. As is usual in Asiatic or semi-Asiatic society, a verbal war, which lasted some time, broke out between our servant and half-a-dozen Siberian peasants. These skirmishes generally end in smoke, or at the most a few feeble pushes or attempts at blows between the belligerents, but in this case the fiery Caucasian seemed to think his honour at stake, and a loaded revolver was produced as an armament policy to back up diplomacy. This necessitated the intervention of a third person in the shape of one of my companions, who, by a simple financial operation, relieved the tension between the two parties. A few minutes later we were on our way southward, while half-a-dozen Siberian peasants might have been seen settling down on the banks of the Chulim River to get drunk on vodka. Such blackmail a traveller in the East has to endure sometimes.

All that day we trekked southward, and succeeded in accomplishing thirty miles, although the tracks were full of mud and half-melted snow, and the side streams swollen with flood water.

The route lay over undulating country, the forest having been here largely cut away by peasant colonies of old standing. Most of the land was growing steppe grass, and barely one-fourth was under cultivation. Patches could be seen here and there where land had been cultivated for some years and had then been left to grow wild; here birch and