Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/85

 Rh whom in time the wild nomad life loses some of its attractions come into the Russian villages, settle down, and marry Russian girls, while Russian youths go off and pick up Tartar girls from the steppes.

Out on the steppes we saw little round tents of felt called "yurts," which gave an Asiatic character to the scene. Here were the Abakansk Tartars, true Asiatic nomads, living in their yurts with their flocks and moving from place to place. A little farther on we saw in the hollow of a stream by some poplars another curious erection. It was a log-hut, not like an ordinary Russian house, but octagonal, and imitating apparently the round felt yurt. It was a sort of mongrel house which some of the Tartars have adopted through contact with the Russians. Built of the same material as the Russian houses it imitated as far as possible the round shape of Tartar yurts or tents. I found that the Tartars use these round log-houses, built in sheltered corners, as a permanent winter abode, while in the summer they still use their portable felt tents and roam over the steppes, pitching them where the grass is suitable.

I had a talk with an old Russian peasant in one of the villages about the Abakansk Tartars, and I asked him how the Russian peasants got on with these Tartar neighbours. "All right," he said; "they are quite peaceable people. Sometimes a Tartar will steal your horses, but not so much now, and those who like to live with us in the village become one of us. After all, we are brothers." "And what sort of religion have they?" I asked. "Oh," he said, "they worship God." "Does that mean your God?" I asked. "Yes, sometimes," he said. "Then he has more than one god," I asked. "When some-