particular effects on our own persons. As I have said, we ate in town,
chiefly, after that breakfast of kumys-mare beefsteak and potatoes of
the size and consistency of bullets. During our food and shopping
excursions we found that Samara was a decidedly wide-awake and driving
town, though it seemed to possess no specialties in buildings,
curiosities, or manufactures, and the statue to Alexander II., which now
adorns one of its squares, was then swathed in canvas awaiting its
unveiling. It is merely a sort of grand junction, through which other
cities and provinces sift their products. In kumys alone does Samara
possess a characteristic unique throughout Russia. Consequently, it is
for kumys that multitudes of Russians flock thither every spring.

The soil of the steppe, on which grows the nutritious plume-grass
requisite for the food of the kumys mares, is very fertile, and immense
crops of rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and so forth are raised whenever
the rainfall is not too meagre. Unfortunately, the rainfall is
frequently insufficient, and the province of Samara often comes to the
attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891,
because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the
government. In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches,
there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without
peril. Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it,
and many peasants are attracted from the "black-bread governments" to
Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they
hire out for the harvest.

But such a singular combination of conditions prevails there, as
elsewhere in Russia, that an abundant harvest is often more disastrous
than a scanty harvest. The price of grain falls so low that the cost of
gathering it is greater than the market value, and it is often left to