A way of adventure and strangeness, where the years turn back, is this old road of the Golden Horde, leading down past the ancestral homes of the Turks to the Great Wall. The Cossack sentries at Kiahta look Chinaward. They have become an anomaly, this hard-riding, fierce-fighting soldier class. The plow has metamorphosed into myriad farms the plains along the Don where once their ponies grazed. Mining-cuts score the hills in the Urals where once they hunted. Villages of Slavonic peasants rise along the Amur. The sons of the old warriors grow into peaceful farmer-folk, differing in name alone from their blue-eyed neighbors. Soon they must disappear in all save picturesquely uniformed Hussars of the Guard, and as a memory, chanted by young men and girls in the Siberian summer evenings when Yermak’s song is raised. The task of the Cossack, to lead in the conquest of kindred native races and to weld these through themselves into Russia’s fabric, is nearly done. Down the ancient road lies a last avenue of advance. Eastward is Manchuria, where artillery and science grappling must decide the day with Japan. Southward is India, where England’s guarded gateway among the hills can be opened only from behind. But into Mongolia Fate may decree that the yellow-capped Cossacks, drafted from Russia’s Mongol Buriats, shall lead once more the nation-absorbing march of the White Czar. For another memorable ride, the Cossacks, who on their shaggy ponies led the long conquering way across the continent, may yet mount and take the road to China. II THE GREAT SIBERIAN RAILWAY How long to Irkutsk? Seven days now, seven years when last I came.” The bearded Russian standing in the doorway of the adjoining compartment in the corridor-car of the Siberian Express gazes thoughtfully at the fir-covered slope, whose dark green stands in sombre contrast to the winter snows. The train is slowly climbing the Ural Range, toward the granite pyramid near Zlatoust, on opposite sides of which are graven “Europe” and “Asia.” Neighbors with easy sociability are conversing along the wide corridors, exchanging stories and cigarettes, asking each other’s age and income in naïve Siberian style. Regarding the burly occupant of the next stateroom one may discreetly speculate. From sable-lined paletot and massive gold chains you hazard that he voyaged with the traders’ slow caravans in the days before the railway--that he was a merchant. “A merchant? _Optovi?_ No, I did not come with the caravans.” From the triangle of red lapel-ribbon, the rank-bestowing decoration, you venture a second guess. “Perhaps the _gaspadine_ made the great circuit to oversee the local administrations? He was a government inspector--_Revizor?_” “_Chinovnik niet navierno_,” he answers. Most decidedly he was not an official. The suggestion causes him to smile broadly. “I was with the convicts,” he says. Beside the line of rails curves the old post-road winding like a ribbon through the highlands.