s are
very hot and dusty, and often full of mosquitoes in the two or three
months of summer, which is quite tropical in its character.

Thus there are the two extremes, an Arctic winter and a tropical summer.

The country houses are entirely summer residences, with great verandahs
and balconies and other facilities for life in the open, and are often
placed amongst pine-woods or by the sea. Some of my friends use their
_datchas_ in winter also; and it is interesting to see how balconies and
verandahs which in summer are filled with carpets, furniture, and
plants, and are quite open on every side to meet the needs of the family
and its guests all through the day in the open air, in winter are closed
in by double windows fitted in on every side, and thus are made into
additional and altogether different rooms.

The homes of the Russian nobility are very richly and artistically
appointed in every particular. I stayed with friends a couple of years
ago who had taken such an establishment for the summer; and furniture,
pictures, china, arrangements and decorations of rooms all gave striking
testimony to the wealth and cultivated tastes of the absent family.
Even beyond the Urals, at the Kyshtim Mine, when first I visited it and
was the guest of the managing director, I was amazed at the sumptuous
character of his abode built by the former owners of the mine.

It is a vast building approached by a great courtyard and in the Greek
style of architecture, with towers in different places giving it a
fortress-like appearance in the distance. The rooms are extraordinarily
large and numerous, and here and there are bits of Venetian furniture,
old paintings, and rich carpets. On going straight through the great
salon, which one enters from the outer door and into the open air on the
other side, one is again under a great portico with Greek pillars,
capitals, and frieze, looking out over a large sheet of water towards
hills and forests. I could not help saying to myself in amazement the
first time I went there, "And this is Siberia!"

I am not at all sure that social life upon European lines will not
develop more rapidly in Siberia than in European Russia. Even now I do
not know any railway station in Russia proper that can compare with that
of Ekaterinburg, just where Siberia really begins, in all its
arrangements for the travelling public and especially in the equipment
of its restaurant and dining-rooms, where every comfort in