As to the new science, he had never heard of it, and as to protection, he thought that the inhabitants of the villages in question were quite capable of protecting themselves.

"I could invent," he added, with a malicious smile, "a society for the protection of ALL peasants, but I am quite sure that the authorities would not allow me to carry out my idea." My ethnological curiosity was thoroughly aroused, and I endeavoured to awaken a similar feeling in my friend by hinting that we had at hand a promising field for discoveries which might immortalise the fortunate explorers; but my efforts were in vain.

The old gentleman was a portly, indolent man, of phlegmatic temperament, who thought more of comfort than of immortality in the terrestrial sense of the term.

To my proposal that we should start at once on an exploring expedition, he replied calmly that the distance was considerable, that the roads were muddy, and that there was nothing to be learned.

The villages in question were very like other villages, and their inhabitants lived, to all intents and purposes, in the same way as their Russian neighbours.