Omsk, the Metropolitan of the last-named town, who happened to be in the train, get out at a certain station to visit a church which was being built, and to bestow his benediction upon a crowd of Mujiks who had assembled for the purpose of receiving it. Whilst the ceremony was in progress, a few feet further on five Tatar travellers had stretched their carpets, and, with their faces turned Meccawards, were going through the elaborate gymnastics connected with Mussulman devotion. The Mujiks, who were crowding forward to kiss their priest’s hand, never dreamt of disturbing the Mohammedan worshippers, but watched them quite respectfully. I doubt very much whether in any part of Europe three centuries ago, when the populace was not more developed in the intellectual sense than are these poor Mujiks, such a scene of tolerance could ever have been witnessed. The Russian Government accords the utmost liberty to its subjects in Asia in matters of religion. The origin of Russian official intolerance in Europe is in the main purely political, and if it considers Buddhists and Mussulmans in Siberia less objectionable than Catholics and Protestants, it is simply because the followers of these divergent creeds are the representatives of former and very dangerous enemies, and are, moreover, perpetually endeavouring to impose their doctrine upon anyone with whom they come into contact. The Russian colonization of Siberia has been carried out without the aid of any other European nationality. There are only a few hundred other Europeans settled in the country, the greater number of whom are French people. I was much amused at the little station at Sokur, about nine leagues from the Obi, to find a buffet kept by a Frenchwoman, a peasant who had married a Bessarabian, and who had only been in Siberia a year, after having, however, spent several in Southern Russia. Her buffet was arranged with a greater degree of taste and comfort than those in charge of the Russians, who, however, keep everything scrupulously neat and clean. The worthy lady had forgotten her fluent French, but had not yet acquired fluent Russian. At Tomsk I fell in with another Frenchwoman, who kept a bookshop, and in nearly all the towns along the great post-road at Irkutsk, Blagovyeshchensk, Khabarofsk, and Vladivostok, I found French shopkeepers, some of whom had been thirty years in the country. They seemed to entertain a distinct preference for photography. Now that Siberia is at last thrown open to civilization, foreigners will, of course, become much more numerous, and already many engineers are to be found in various parts of the mining districts; but for all this, I do not think that at any period the Russian colony will be greatly influenced thereby.