SUSPICIOUS PEASANTS. 167 



unerring blows, born of long practice. Wild ducks 

 were offered us at seven kopecks apiece ; but it was 

 useless to attempt to get one cooked. By this time I 

 was well-nigh beginning to believe that the real secret 

 of why the lower orders of Russia live on rye bread, 

 salted cucumbers, and stewed buckwheat, is because 

 they are too abominably lazy and shiftless to cook 

 anything else. 



All through this region of drouth, rye bread seemed 

 to be abundant and cheap, while oats or horse-feed of 

 any kind was difficult to obtain. It was the famous 

 " black earth zone," where wheat and rye seemed to 

 have driven out oats. At first Texas turned up his 

 snip nose disdainfully at rye bread, and looked around 

 with an almost human look of inquiry for oats, but he 

 eventually came down to it, merely stipulating that 

 the first couple of feeds be lightly sprinkled with 

 salt. 



At one of the postayali dvors we found the proprietor 

 a comparatively rich land-owner, a young man whose 

 father had left him 500 dessiatines of land. He and 

 his better half were about the worthiest couple we had 

 happened across on the road, for traktir-keepers. Our 

 bed this night was in the hay-loft, and an hour or so 

 after I had returned, Sascha made his appearance in 

 such a jovial frame of mind that I decided he and the 

 host must have been drinking one another's health 

 with something more of ardor than discretion. Inquir- 

 ing the cause of his hilarity, however, I learned to my 

 astonishment that it was all because our genial host 

 had rewarded him for the yarns he had been spinning 

 about our experiences on the ride, by using the en- 



