g.

A friend of mine, born in Petrograd, tells us of an old travelling
carriage of his father's, in which he and his brothers and sisters, when
children, used to play.

"It was raised very high from the ground," he says, "only to be reached
by a small ladder, so as to be out of the reach of wolves."

Just the same stories are told after every winter as those of which we
have so often read in prose and verse; and, out of the many told me as
happening quite recently, I select the following:--

Three winters ago a wedding party went from their village, in the Altai,
where the ceremony had taken place in the morning at the home of the
bride, to the village where the bridegroom lived, and to which he was
now taking back his newly-wedded wife. They were a hundred and twenty in
number, and made a large party, with their horses and sledges, and were
not afraid; but an unusually large pack of wolves was out that
afternoon, and, soon scenting them, gave chase. Party after party were
overtaken, pulled down, and, with horses as well, devoured. The bride
and bridegroom and best man were in the front sledge with good horses,
and kept ahead till they were quite close to the village, when they too
were overtaken by a few of the strongest and swiftest of their pursuers.
To save themselves the bridegroom and best man threw out the bride, and
thus stopped the pursuit for a time sufficiently for them to gain the
village. It was a shocking thing to do, but when the villagers began to
question and help them out the awful explanation was forthcoming! The
two men had gone mad with fright, and had not known what they were
really doing. In that terrible hunting down, with the shrieks and
despairing cries of their friends, as they were overtaken, ever ringing
in their ears as they urged their own terror-stricken horses forward, it
is little wonder that their minds gave way.

Let there be no mistake, therefore, about the steppes. The reader may
keep the new impression (if it is new) that I have endeavoured to give
of a most beautiful, rich, and fertile country; and which I am hoping to
be visiting again while this book is being read, finding, I hope, this
country of the wolves story rejoicing in all the glow and beauty of
summer. But still, for nearly seven months of the year, that Siberia is
the old Siberia still, fast bound in the grip of an appalling frost,
waging, in its storms, a never-ceasing battle against human enterprise
and effort;