9© THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



Some of my readers, though not all, will be surprised 

 to learn that each of these villages is a tiny republic, 

 and that the real Russia, the Russia that I am endeav- 

 oring to investigate and explain, consists of hundreds 

 of thousands of these miniature peasant republics, to 

 the members of which St. Petersburg is as remote as 

 the heavens, and the Czar a demi-god, as infallible as 

 Jove. These village communities are known as mirs 

 (meers), and their number in all Russia is somewhere 

 near a half million. 



A mir consists of a cluster of peasant families, and 

 the land allotted by the government for their support. 

 In Russia are no separate farmsteads, as the term is 

 understood in America. Sometimes, on the outskirts 

 of a village, in the most picturesque situation round 

 about, we saw pretty villas, as superior to the dwellings 

 of the moujiks as heaven is superior to the earth. 

 They were not the dwellings of peasants, however, but 

 the "datschas," or country residences, of rich city 

 merchants, or the owners of large estates. The mou- 

 jik never isolates his house after the manner of the 

 United States farmer. The inhabitants of the mirs are 

 all clustered together in villages. Usually a dwelling 

 consists of a four-square building, inclosing a court- 

 yard. One side of the square is the house and the 

 other three sheds. 



In 1861, when the serfs were emancipated by Alex- 

 ander II., three and a half dessiatines, in certain dis- 

 tricts more in others less (two and a half acres to a 

 dessiatine), of land were allotted to each liberated 

 "soul," or head of a family. At the entrance to a 

 village may be seen a sign-post, stating the number 



