416 



FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



tune, though not without hindrance, we crossed the Ural, in a com- 

 fortable steamer we glided swiftly down the Kama, more slowly 

 we ascended the Volga. In Nijni- Novgorod, in Moscow, in St. 

 Petersburg, we were hospitably received, as before, and were joy- 

 ously welcomed at home. Our "elders" seem to have been well 

 pleased with our report, but to the tundra I at least shall never 

 return. 



THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS. 



The struggle for existence which man has to maintain in 

 Siberia is easy and toilless now, and will probably remain so for 

 centuries to come — easy and toilless especially among the lavishly 

 endowed lands in the south of the country, and not too hard or 

 laborious even in those regions which we are wont to picture as an 

 icy waste, an inhospitable desert, which we still regard in this 

 light if we only travel hastily and unwillingly through them. In 

 the far north of West Siberia the climate is harsh and severe; the 

 earth which, a little below the surface, is frozen and stiffened for 

 ever, refuses to bring forth fruit; the sun will not ripen the bread- 

 yielding grain; . but even here Nature has bountifully shaken her 

 horn of plenty, for what the land denies, is yielded by the water. 

 The people who have dwelt for centuries in these latitudes, which 

 we so carefully avoid, may appear poor and miserable in our eyes; 

 in reality they are neither. They are able to procure all they 

 need; they can even secure many luxuries, for their country yields 

 them much more than is enough merely to sustain life. They do 

 of course struggle, more or less consciously, for "an existence 

 worthy of man ", but not with any grudge, outspoken or suppressed, 

 against those whose lot is happier. Indeed they are happier than 

 we think, for they are more modest, more easily satisfied than we 

 are; they are utterly ignorant of what we call passion in the 

 stricter sense; they accept the pleasures within their reach with a 

 childlike joy, and the sorrows which visit them, with that deeply 

 felt but quickly forgotten grief which is characteristic of childhood. 



