MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 229 



heads did I suppose them to be to believe that a 

 foreigner would ride on horseback through Russia 

 merely to see it ? To these poor wretches, born and 

 bred in an atmosphere of low, crafty suspicion ; nour- 

 ished on it ; educated to it in the school of daily 

 experience ; growing old in its baleful shadow ; and 

 by the time they reach middle age hardened in it to 

 a degree that disfigures their very faces, it seemed 

 altogether ridiculous that a foreigner should turn up 

 in this strange manner and not be engaged on some 

 sinister mission. 



I refused to truckle to their impertinent suspicions, 

 however, seeing no one among them who had any 

 police authority to demand one's passport, and was 

 about riding off, when they seized Texas by the bridle. 

 An individual then stepped forward and demanded in 

 a tone of authority to see my passport. There was 

 nothing of the policeman about his appearance, how- 

 ever, and I demanded to know if he was the uriadnik. 

 Fumbling under his moujik's coat, he then produced 

 the disk of numbered tin and the yellow cord that 

 proclaimed him an official of some peculiarly humble 

 degree, but nevertheless an official. 



Fit companions, indeed, to these suspicious villagers, 

 seemed another class of inhabitants that now began to 

 make themselves conspicuous on the steppe. These 

 were tremendous flocks of cheese, which were encoun- 

 tered feeding about the fields and grassland, miles 

 away from any human habitation, and as many miles 

 from water. They belonged to villages on the banks 

 of the Dneiper, and flew daily back and forth between 

 these distant foraging grounds and the river. 



