had moved their flocks during the summer to the higher parts of the steppes, where pasture was better. But the poorest, who possessed the smallest flocks, and who were unable to undertake long and tedious treks, continued all the year to hang around these cosmopolitan trading centres, where they could make precarious livelihoods by partial dependence on the Russian and Chinese traders.
Besides the natives of this frontier country, there were some Abakansk Tartars, another Turko-Finnish people who had come in from Siberia. They, too, were either dealing in wool or serving the Russian trader. They are a people well worthy of note, for here they seemed undoubtedly in a stage of partial Russification. They had evidently abandoned the nomad life on the steppes and had taken to sedentary habits, engaging in commercial pursuits along with the Russians. Their houses were built of logs in a hexagonal shape, showing thereby traces of both Russian and Tartar influence. I went inside one of these Tartar houses and saw a family at a meal. They were dressed in Russian clothes, and were sitting on low benches round a table in the middle of the room. Their food, consisting of bread, soup and tea, was just like that of the Russians and quite unlike the ordinary fare of the nomad Tartar. When they finished their meal they crossed themselves, showing clearly the influences of Russification upon them. But in the shape of their houses, and the scarcity of furniture, they still showed traces of the old Tartar habits. As I looked on their dark Tartar faces, their Russian clothes, and their short-cut hair, I was forcibly reminded of a Europeanized Japanese.
The representative of the European in this place
