colonists have expended in creating that agreeable shade which they love to enjoy in their leisure hours.  If climate is affected at all by the existence or non-existence of forests—­a point on which scientific men do not seem to be entirely agreed—­any palpable increase of the rainfall can be produced only by forests of enormous extent, and it is hardly conceivable that these could be artificially produced in Southern Russia.  It is quite possible, however, that local ameliorations may be effected.  During a visit to the province of Voronezh in 1903 I found that comparatively small plantations diminished the effects of drought in their immediate vicinity by retaining the moisture for a time in the soil and the surrounding atmosphere.

After the Mennonites and other Germans, the Bulgarian colonists deserve a passing notice.  They settled in this region much more recently, on the land that was left vacant by the exodus of the Nogai Tartars after the Crimean War.  If I may judge of their condition by a mere flying visit, I should say that in agriculture and domestic civilisation they are not very far behind the majority of German colonists.  Their houses are indeed small—­so small that one of them might almost be put into a single room of a Mennonite’s house; but there is an air of cleanliness and comfort about them that would do credit to a German housewife.

In spite of all this, these Bulgarians were, I could easily perceive, by no means delighted with their new home.  The cause of their discontent, so far as I could gather from the few laconic remarks which I extracted from them, seemed to be this:  Trusting to the highly coloured descriptions furnished by the emigration agents who had induced them to change the rule of the Sultan for the authority of the Tsar, they came to Russia with the expectation of finding a fertile and beautiful Promised Land.  Instead of a land flowing with milk and honey, they received a tract of bare Steppe on which even water could be obtained only with great difficulty—­with no shade to protect them from the heat of summer and nothing to shelter them from the keen northern blasts that often sweep over those open plains.  As no adequate arrangements had been made for their reception, they were quartered during the first winter on the German colonists, who, being quite innocent of any Slavophil sympathies, were probably not very hospitable to their uninvited guests.  To complete their disappointment, they found that they could not cultivate the vine, and that their mild, fragrant tobacco, which is for them a necessary of life, could be obtained only at a very high price.  So disconsolate were they under this cruel disenchantment that, at the time of my visit, they talked of returning to their old homes in Turkey.

As an example of the less prosperous colonists, I may mention the Tartar-speaking Greeks in the neighbourhood of Mariupol, on the northern shore of the Sea of Azof.  Their ancestors lived in the Crimea, under the rule of the Tartar Khans, and emigrated to Russia in the time of Catherine II., before Crim Tartary was annexed to the Russian Empire.  They have almost entirely forgotten their old language, but have preserved their old faith.  In adopting the Tartar language they have adopted something of Tartar indolence and apathy, and the natural consequence is that they are poor and ignorant.