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with the individual as with the régime which creates it.
I met with several Siberians who warned me of the
necessity of being on my guard against the stories about
Andrée which would be sure to shower upon me in Siberia,
a warning well borne out by subsequent experience.
A purer and nobler pleasure than that of listening to
“sailor-yarns” and chroniques scabreuses was afforded me
by looking out from the platform of the train over the
endless steppe with its fresh green of early spring, its
brilliant flowers, its groves of birches with their snowy
stems. Now and then were seen large herds of cattle,
horses, and sheep, watched by Kirgises on horseback, whose
silhouettes showed clear against the horizon on the ridge
of some hill, calling to mind the times when these free
sons of the steppe roamed undisturbed over the endless
plains of Siberia. Others would be seen on their speedy
horses, surrounded by whirling clouds of dust, coming
towards the train, with which they kept up a race for several
kilometres, until they finally had to give up the unequal
struggle with the iron horse, this invincible intruder which
ever more and more is driving away the natives and their
herds from their old haunts.
Slowly the train rolls on, jostling and shaking for one,
two, or even three hours on end, until a sharp whistling is
heard, and yonder, far away on the steppe, is seen a group
of low red-painted houses. These are the stations, which
are situated about twenty or thirty miles from one another,
and two or three perhaps from some village, which is
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