but his vocabulary failed him as soon as the conversation ran above very ordinary topics; Abdullah, on the contrary, was a first-rate interpreter, and under the influence of his musical pipe and lively talkativeness new acquaintances became sociable and communicative.  Poor Abdullah!  He was a kind of universal genius; but his faded, tattered khalat showed only too plainly that in Bashkiria, as in more civilised countries, universal genius and the artistic temperament lead to poverty rather than to wealth.

I have no intention of troubling the reader with the miscellaneous facts which, with the assistance of these two friends, I succeeded in collecting—­indeed, I could not if I would, for the notes I then made were afterwards lost—­but I wish to say a few words about the actual economic condition of the Bashkirs.  They are at present passing from pastoral to agricultural life; and it is not a little interesting to note the causes which induce them to make this change, and the way in which it is made.

Philosophers have long held a theory of social development according to which men were at first hunters, then shepherds, and lastly agriculturists.  How far this theory is in accordance with reality we need not for the present inquire, but we may examine an important part of it and ask ourselves the question, Why did pastoral tribes adopt agriculture?  The common explanation is that they changed their mode of life in consequence of some ill-defined, fortuitous circumstances.  A great legislator arose amongst them and taught them to till the soil, or they came in contact with an agricultural race and adopted the customs of their neighbours.  Such explanations must appear unsatisfactory to any one who has lived with a pastoral people.  Pastoral life is so incomparably more agreeable than the hard lot of the agriculturist, and so much more in accordance with the natural indolence of human nature, that no great legislator, though he had the wisdom of a Solon and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, could possibly induce his fellow-countrymen to pass voluntarily from the one to the other.  Of all the ordinary means of gaining a livelihood—­with the exception perhaps of mining—­agriculture is the most laborious, and is never voluntarily adopted by men who have not been accustomed to it from their childhood.  The life of a pastoral race, on the contrary, is a perennial holiday, and I can imagine nothing except the prospect of starvation which could induce men who live by their flocks and herds to make the transition to agricultural life.

The prospect of starvation is, in fact, the cause of the transition—­probably in all cases, and certainly in the case of the Bashkirs.  So long as they had abundance of pasturage they never thought of tilling the soil.  Their flocks and herds supplied them with all that they required, and enabled them to lead a tranquil, indolent existence.  No great legislator arose among them to teach them the use of the plough and the sickle, and when they