150 TAMBOF AND KIRSANOF 



" playing up." When a horse has been broken to the saddle 

 in this way, he has instilled into his mind a most wholesome 

 idea of his inability to resist the orders of the man who gets 

 into the pigskin. 



The brigade is close to the town of Tambof, which is an 

 ancient place that has been but little affected by European 

 civilisation. 



A short railway journey to the east took me to Kirsanof, 

 which is a poor backward town of about ten thousand 

 inhabitants. On the evening I arrived, I was met at the 

 station by the A. D.C., Stab Rotmistr Molchanof, who 

 gave my luggage to one of the men he had brought with 

 him, and took me off for supper to the house of the General 

 who lives in the town ; the brigade beino- about a mile and a 



o o 



half distant from it. I found General Veljaminof- Zernof 

 (Fig. 36) to be a charming man, and kind and hospitable 

 to the utmost degree. I had a rare good supper, a still 

 pleasanter talk and many a hearty laugh with my witty 

 entertainer, and then an adventurous drive in a sledge across 

 the steppe to the barracks and the officers' club, where I was 

 most comfortably put up. 



The barracks are on high ground and are exposed to 

 bitterly cold east winds, which blow from the Ural mountains 

 across the Volga often at a temperature of 30 F. and some- 

 times even at 35 F. Some of the officers averred that 

 the mercury not unfrequently reached 40 R. ( 58 F.). 

 The thermometer that made such a record was of an 

 unusually retiring disposition ; because mercury freezes at 

 31.6 R. ( 39 F.). All were unanimous in declaring that 

 Kirsanof is a much colder place than Siberia, which I believe 

 is singularly free from high winds during winter. The fact 

 that people in England are as a rule absolutely ignorant of 

 the working of thermometers, shows how little they suffer 

 from extremes of temperature. Russians and Anglo-Indians 



