Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/98

64 districts of Siberia are still important institutions, much more so than in such places as Krasnoyarsk, where direct communication between buyers and sellers and wholesale and retail dealers is now fairly established.

On that morning we found a good assortment of native types from the countryside assembled in the market-square. There were Siberian peasants, Kazan Tartars, Abakansk Tartars and Cossacks. Some were buying horses, some selling produce which was being weighed upon the public scales, and some were bartering over cattle and live stock. We had only to pass the word that a horse was wanted, and instantly half the population in the bazaars swarmed round us. Dozens of animals were produced, but it soon became impracticable to do any business. Whenever we tried to get at the value of a likely-looking animal, a jabbering crowd all tried to explain at the same moment that the price which was being asked by the owner was the correct one, and that we ought not to give less. It was apparently just the same in Siberia as in other parts of the East. No individual seemed to be able to do business on his own initiative, but required a whole crowd of his friends to back him up and support him in a bargain, and whenever you try to introduce the elements of competition you are overwhelmed in a babel of voices all declaring that the seller is in the right. So, after making a few futile attempts to do business, we decided to tackle them in truly Western fashion. We gave out that all who wanted to sell horses should come to our house with those horses. The next morning half Minusinsk appeared in the streets before our house and the crowd was so thick that