arrangements for the meeting were completed, took a walk round the
market. A Russian market is a thing of joy and colour. There are no
buildings: just a huge space in the centre of the town where thousands
of shaggy, ice-covered horses stand each with an ice-covered sledge. The
peasants, men and women, in huge fur coats which reach to the
snow-covered ground, harmonise perfectly with the cattle they control.
Their fur coats form a study in colour--patchwork coats from calfskins
which combine every shade from white to rusty red; goatskins, from long
straight black to white; curly bearskins from black to brown and brown
to polar white; wealthy peasant women, with beautiful red fox furs
hiding neck and face, their eyes glistening through the apertures which
served the same purpose for the first and original tenant. The sledges
contain everything--wheat, oats, potatoes, onions, rough leaf tobacco,
jars of cream, frozen blocks of milk, scores of different types of
frozen fresh-water fish from sturgeon to bream, frozen meats of every
conceivable description, furs--in fact, the finest collection of human
necessities to be found in any one place in the world. Prices were very
high for home produce and simply absurd for foreign or distant
productions. Colonel Frank was in need of a small safety pin (six a
penny at home), and found that the price was seven roubles--14s. 3-1/2d.
old money, and 3s. 6d. at the rate at which the British Army are paid.
Everything else was in proportion.

A very fine meeting was held in the works, and much good done in
securing the confidence of the workmen in the efforts of the Supreme
Governor, Admiral Koltchak, to create order out of chaos.

We arrived at Omsk on the morning of the 28th, and on the 29th I gave a
lengthy report to Admiral Koltchak, who expressed his hearty thanks and
impressed upon me the necessity of continuing my journey to the Urals.
He had received from the official heads of departments reports stating
that the effect of my mission had been to improve the general attitude
of the workmen all round. And he was most anxious that this effort to
enlist the workmen's interest in an ordered State should be pushed
forward with vigour.

A further discussion upon general affairs, especially the policy of the
French command in Siberia, took us through tea. I have absolute
confidence in the character of the admiral, but the pigmies by whom he
is surrounded are so many drags on the wheels o