was especially in my mind as I took the good priest's censer to
offer, just as he had done and from the same censer, "an oblation with
great gladness," feeling to the full "how good and joyful it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity." I should say of that service also
that it was quite worth while taking that long journey across the
steppes to have it.

The prevailing idea of Siberia in this country is, as we all know, that
it is a terrible waste of ice and snow, a land of mines and of convicts,
ravaged by packs of wolves; and this is not at all an incorrect
impression of the greater part of it and for the longest period of the
year. All that is wrong in the impression is that it leaves out the five
months of the year in which there is the glow and charm of the tropics,
with growth and upspringing life and beauty on every hand. The steppes
are a paradise of singing birds and blooming flowers and flowing
streams, where the air is joyous to breathe, invigorating, quickening,
and inspiriting beyond description. These are the Siberian Steppes I
have known and traversed and loved, and long and hope to see again.

But I am keenly alive to all the real and ever-present sense of peril
which the winter brings with it as soon as it comes, and which it keeps
steadily before the mind till it is over for all who have to meet it and
struggle against it. I have heard men speak of the terrible blizzards
and the appalling cold; of the deadly gloom, when the air is so full of
snow that they can hardly see a hand before their faces, and they wander
uncertainly for a whole day and night together until they give
themselves up for lost, to find after all, when the storm is over, that
they are only a few yards away from their own doors, or in the middle of
the street from which they had started.

They instantly drop their voices on the Kirghiz Steppes when they begin
to speak of winter, and on some faces there comes at once that beaten
look which, whenever it appears, is testimony that the man has measured
himself against the sterner forces of Nature or of human life, and has
failed.

[Illustration: _Inside a Kirghiz Uerta._]

Tolstoi's _Master and Man_ gives a very clear and convincing account of
what a snowstorm may mean for even experienced travellers. There the
scene is laid in Russia, and between one village and another in a
country often traversed; but the vast spaces of Siberia in that long,
gloomy winter must be specially f