peak French?" or "Does
any one here speak German?" some one ready to help and be friendly will
invariably come forward.

In my first Siberian Mission, however, I found myself in a real
difficulty. I had to drive across the Kirghiz Steppes from the railway
at Petropavlosk, about four days and nights east of Moscow, to the
Spassky Copper Mine, and the management had sent down a very reliable
Kirghiz servant of theirs to be my interpreter; but I found that his
only qualification for the work of interpreting was that, in addition to
his own Kirghiz tongue, he could speak Russian!

For the inside of a week, travelling day and night, we had to get on as
best we could together, and arrange all the business of changing horses,
getting food, and paying expenses, largely by signs. Once only, and then
in the dead of night when changing horses, did we encounter a
German-speaking farmer from Courland or Lettland on the Baltic, and a
great joy it was to him to meet some one who knew those fair parts of
the Russian Empire where agricultural work brings much more encouraging
results for the toil bestowed upon it than Siberia, with its terrible
winter season.

[Illustration: _Russia's Great Spaces--Summer._]

But though to acquire a knowledge of Russian for literary purposes, so
as to write and compose correctly, must be most difficult, owing to
the number of letters in the alphabet--forty-six as compared with our
twenty-six--and the entirely different way from our own in which they
are written, I do not think it is difficult to acquire a fair knowledge
of the language in a comparatively short time so as to make one's self
understood and get along. I find young Englishmen, going to work in
Russia and beyond the Urals, very quickly come to understand what is
being said, and to make known their own wishes and requirements; and in
a couple of years, or sometimes less, they speak quite fluently.

It always seems to me that the Russians pronounce their words with more
syllabic distinctness than either the French or Germans. And that
natural kindness and friendliness of the whole people, of which I have
already written, makes them wish to be understood and to help those with
whom they are speaking to grasp their meaning. This, of course, makes
all the difference!

When the question of the great difficulty of the language is raised
another remark nearly always follows:

"But then the Russians are such great linguists that they easily