Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/79

 Rh per man. The peasants themselves lived on eggs, brown and grey bread, made from rye and wheat, and "shchee" or soup made of salt cabbage and mutton. This is their daily food; and every household seemed to have it. I doubt if any English peasants have better fare than that, if as good. Furthermore, the healthiness of the peasants was remarkable, judging from their robust colour and sturdy frames.

Next day the country underwent a great change. The forests were gone, and so was the snow. Dry steppe-like vegetation began to appear, and the melancholy groups of birches began to dwindle. Agriculture continued in patches along the hollows, but the tops of the rolling downs were utilized for grazing only. Soon we reached the Chulim River, which we crossed at the village Korelskaya. Beyond here lay what was unmistakably the steppe. What a change from the forests and snowdrifts of the previous day to dry grassy steppes, where the snow had melted weeks ago, and the grass was being burnt with fires in order to hasten the growth of the spring vegetation!

This was part of the Abakansk and Minusinsk steppes, a large area of dry country with a low summer rainfall, lying to the north of Sayansk Mountains and to the east of the Kuznetsk Ala Tan in the Altai system. Shut in by high catchment areas on all sides except the north, these steppes form one of those dry evaporating basins which are met with in Southern Siberia in these latitudes. The outside edges of such areas adjoining the forest country, similar to what we had just passed through, are suitable for Russian agricultural colonists. The