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Leaning back with his head on the cushion and his arms crossed on his breast, Lavretsky watched the furrowed fields unfolding like a fan before him, the willow bushes as they slowly came into sight, and the dull ravens and rooks, who looked sidelong with stupid suspicion at the approaching carriage, the long ditches, overgrown with mugwort, wormwood, and mountain ash; and as he watched the fresh fertile wilderness and solitude of this steppe country, the greenness, the long slopes, and valleys with stunted oak bushes, the grey villages, and scant birch trees, the whole Russian landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of pleasant oppression.
With down-bent necks, their faces unconsciously lighted up by strangely happy smiles, a prostitute and a miserable drunkard look at the child. This little life, "weak as a fire in the steppe," calls to them vaguely, and it seems to promise them something beautiful, clear, and immortal.
And when his eyes fell upon the letter bearing upon it the authority of the imperial seal the letter which, no doubt, contained the remedy for so many evils, the safety of all this war-ravaged country Michael Strogoff felt within himself a fierce desire to dash on across the steppe, to accomplish the distance which separated him from Irkutsk as the crow would fly it, to be an eagle that he might overtop all obstacles, to be a hurricane that he might sweep through the air at a hundred versts an hour, and to be at last face to face with the Grand Duke, and to exclaim: "Your highness, from his Majesty the Czar!"
Severe fugitive laws were issued against those who attempted to change their domicile and against the proprietors who should harbour the runaways. Unless the peasant chose to face the difficulties of "squatting" in the inhospitable northern forests, or resolved to brave the dangers of the steppe, he could nowhere escape the heavy hand of Moscow.*
I am going to write about its horrors to the Novoye Vremya, and so won't talk about it now. The last three stations have been splendid; as one comes down to Krasnoyarsk one seems to be getting into a different world. You come out of the forest into a plain which is like our Donets steppe, but here the mountain ridges are grander.
In a few huts Nadia again found a little mutton; but, contrary to Michael's hopes, there was not a single beast of burden in the country; horses, camels all had been either killed or carried off. They must still continue to plod on across this weary steppe on foot. The third Tartar column, on its way to Irkutsk, had left plain traces: here a dead horse, there an abandoned cart.
"... At times the steppe stretched forth like an oscillating giant ... the vast stretch of blue and cloudless sky poured light down upon us, and seemed like an immense cupola of sombre color."
If we take the village communities of the Mongol Buryates, especially those of the Kudinsk Steppe on the upper Lena which have better escaped Russian influence, we have fair representatives of barbarians in a transitional state, between cattle-breeding and agriculture.
The fertility of the soil cannot be turned to great account, as there is no general market. Men and horses engaged in the transportation and postal service create a limited demand, but there is little sale beyond this. With so small a market there are very few rich inhabitants on the steppe; and with edibles at a cheap rate, there are few cases of extreme poverty.
Rapid Growth of Russia Expansive Tendency of Agricultural Peoples The Russo-Slavonians The Northern Forest and the Steppe Colonisation The Part of the Government in the Process of Expansion Expansion towards the West Growth of the Empire Represented in a Tabular Form Commercial Motive for Expansion The Expansive Force in the Future Possibilities of Expansion in Europe Persia, Afghanistan, and India Trans-Siberian Railway and Weltpolitik A Grandiose Scheme Determined Opposition of Japan Negotiations and War Russia's Imprudence Explained Conclusion.
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