sympathies less conservative, and puts forth
the Bachkirs as types worthy of emulation:
indeed as types to which he would gladly see
our own artisan population assimilate itself.
The Bachkirs gain only about twenty-five
pounds a-year, including the relative value
of the game, fish, wild fruits, and
mushrooms found in the forests and rivers. They
pay nearly sixteen francs, in various
contributions, to their priests, under whose
control and guidance they live with implicit
confidence. They buy as many wives as
they can afford, and drink fermented mare's
milk, or khoumouis; spending their lives
in the soft, lazy, pleasant dreams and
perpetual sleepiness which this khoumouis produces.

The wheelwrights of the Oremburg Steppes,
and the agricultural peasants of the same
district, live, for the most part, under the
abrok. The abrok is a kind of tax or
redemption-money, by which the peasant
buys his time from the seigneur, and is thus
enabled to work for himself. Russian serfs
owe two-thirds of their time to their master;
by paying a certain yearly sum, called abrok,
they redeem this time, and many of them
become exceedingly rich. Sometimes a whole
community buys itself off, and then portions
out certain lots of the common lands—or rather
in community—which they work on without
any intervention of the seigneurs. This
group is of the Russo-Greek religion, and
under the patriarchal system. Parental
authority is here likewise absolute, seniority
also absolute, and no younger man, would
presume to even detail a fact, or give an opinion,
before an elder one,—"Inquire of him,
he knows better than I, for he is my senior,"
he would say, even if asked the direction of a
village, or the depth of a well. The peasants
and the dvarovie, or servants and workmen
of all kinds, do not marry with each other.
The dvarovie are idle and dissolute, and do
not make good fathers of families. Men
marry when quite boys; they and their wife
remaining as usual under the father's roof
according to the traditions and usages of the
patriarchal system. They have days called
pomotch—with the Bachkirs heummim—
which, like the grandes journées of Béarn,
and the dévès-bras of Lower Brittany, unite
the whole community in labour for the chief.
Every available arm in these days of pomotch
is pressed into the service of some householder
or chief, who gets his mowing or reaping or
building or clearing or felling of timber done
with inconceivable rapidity. There is always
a grand supper after the day's work is over,
to which the women come, bringing milk, &c.,
and the pomotch count among the principal
pleasures of the population of the Oremburg
Steppes. The artèles are curious institutions.
These are associations of emigrant workmen,
more especially of the boatmen and porters of
St. Petersburg, who come from the valley of
the Oka. The artèles are associations under
the following conditions:—From April to
November a number of men, say from sixty
to seventy, agree to form an artele together.
They place themselves under the management
of an artelchick, whose business it is to
find work for the members of the association,
and regulate its price. The cloutchnik, or
treasurer, keeps the cash and accounts, and two
starchi (men of weight and experience) control
the artelchick and the cloutchnik. These men
load and unload boats, saw and deliver
firewood, shape and drive in the stakes
for the foundations of buildings, dig and
form gardens in the city of St. Petersburg
and the suburbs. But such employments
are accepted only when nothing better can
be had, as they are but poorly paid. All
kinds of iron work yielding at the rate
of two francs a-day wages, are the most
eagerly sought after. The particular artèle of
which M. le Play writes was lodged
gratuitously by an iron merchant from the banks
of the river Neva, who employed them in his
trade. Their food was taken in brigades of
from thirty to thirty-five; the expenses were
borne by the common fund, and cost about
fourteen francs each a month. The cooking
is sometimes done by a woman paid by the
artèle; and, in this case, the cloutchnik buys
the provisions. But, in general, they treat
with a purveyor who supplies them with
all they want at so much a head. Their
clothes and private luxuries, such as tea,
brandy, &c., are individual expenses. Sixteen
days are given to each workman during the
campaign for extra tasks, which are paid
extra; and an equal division of the funded
property is made at the end of the campaign.
The strong men work by the piece, the weak
ones by the day; the starchi watching over
the interests of all, and regulate the laws
apportioning the labour. The sum gained
for the month of twenty-three days is thirty-
six francs eighty centimes, or one franc sixty
centimes a-day. Fifteen generally start from
the same village together, first borrowing
two hundred and forty francs, from a
peasant in good circumstances, who indemnifies
himself for not taking interest by selling them
a horse at one hundred and fifteen francs,
which is worth about ninety francs. Each
takes a certain quantity of bread and coarse
meal, and they go from about twenty-five or
twenty-eight miles a-day. The horse is kept
at their common expense for a week after
their arrival at St. Petersburg, and then
sold for thirty-five francs. During this
time, the wife remains with the husband's
father, or his elder brother, if the father be
dead. Often when these Oremburg labourers
have saved any money, they bury it in the
woods, and not unfrequently, lose it
altogether; but safe investments are rather
difficult to people living in the bleak Oremburg
Steppes, and under the parental government
of absolute seigneurs.

The workmen in the iron manufactories of