There is nothing of the merely sentimental in this feeling that their government is, and ought to be, paternal in its character. Every Russian peasant drinks it in from the first, for he gets his training in the _Mir_ of his native village. It is there he learns what family and social rule really mean, and they are identical. His home is ruled by his father, the village by the elder; and everything is as constitutional and as democratic as it can be, or is anywhere else in the world. The children have their rights, but look up to and obey their father. They are free and responsible in village life, but yield to their elders. It is natural, therefore, and no other view is even possible, for men brought up in such surroundings to look outside the village and regard the State as a whole in the same way. There too they feel that they have full rights, and yet are under a firm, unquestioned, and paternal rule--the rule of him who, while rightly called their Emperor, yet is better known to themselves and loyally loved as their "Little Father." FOOTNOTES: [10] Dr. E. J. Dillon. [11] The Hon. Maurice Baring. CHAPTER VIII THE STEPPES Amongst all the interesting experiences of an unusually varied and adventurous life, since, in the very middle of my Oxford course I had, for health's sake, to spend a couple of years ranching in the River Plate, my long drives across the steppes stand out in bold and pleasing relief. They were necessitated by a Mining Camp Mission in Siberia, for the steppes form a large part of the eastern portion of the Russian Empire, and do not belong to Russia proper at all, lying beyond the Volga and the Urals. It is in that part of Asiatic Russia that the development of the empire's vast resources is taking place with special rapidity, and our own countrymen are bearing a hand in it and playing no unworthy part. I believe the word "steppes" is given to that undulating but level country in the provinces of Ufa and Orenburg, about two days' and two nights' journey by train east of Moscow, inhabited by the Bashkirs, the descendants of those Tartar hordes who nearly overwhelmed Russia at one time, and possibly Europe itself, and were called for their relentless cruelty "the Scourge of GOD." [Illustration: _Consecration of Burial Ground in the Siberian Steppes._ (See page 178.)]