A Northern Highway Of The Tsar PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII AFTER BACK in England, and Arctic Russia a thing of the past. Removed from the petty worries of a difficult journey, it is easy now to retrace the larger and more general points of the impressions of that time. Although at first sight it might seem impossible in so short a time as the space of a few months to form anything like a fair view of people and things, yet, when it is remembered that the solitary circumstances of my travel threw me into unusual intimacy with the life of the northern peasantry, the attempt may perhaps be excused. And it is only of the northern peasantry, of the small traders, farmers and villagers generally, that I could make any claim to speak. Of the aristocracy of Russia, of the educated life, or, indeed, of Russian life at all, except in the half-settled north, I have only seen as much as many another Englishman. For the rest I believe the following to be a fair estimate. To attempt a comparison of this northern life even with that of the peasantry in our remotest country districts would be labour lost. It would mean a consideration of influences and of traditions, the result of long and close contact with the idea of security in moral forces, which may grow in Russia, but are not theirs yet. In Arctic Russia, on the other hand, the native has always an object lesson in the Samoyed. To rise may not mean more than the acquisition of money, but to sink means to fall into line with the Samoyed. The Samoyeds he regards as his natural servants, and the fact that he is inseparably removed from them in class gives him position and a sense of superiority. The majority of the Arctic Russians are able to read and write. Some cannot, and some Samoyeds can. But whether or no, the Russian by greater force of...