We did not remain long enough, or drink enough kumys, to observe any particular effects on our own persons.  As I have said, we ate in town, chiefly, after that breakfast of kumys-mare beefsteak and potatoes of the size and consistency of bullets.  During our food and shopping excursions we found that Samara was a decidedly wide-awake and driving town, though it seemed to possess no specialties in buildings, curiosities, or manufactures, and the statue to Alexander II., which now adorns one of its squares, was then swathed in canvas awaiting its unveiling.  It is merely a sort of grand junction, through which other cities and provinces sift their products.  In kumys alone does Samara possess a characteristic unique throughout Russia.  Consequently, it is for kumys that multitudes of Russians flock thither every spring.

The soil of the steppe, on which grows the nutritious plume-grass requisite for the food of the kumys mares, is very fertile, and immense crops of rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, and so forth are raised whenever the rainfall is not too meagre.  Unfortunately, the rainfall is frequently insufficient, and the province of Samara often comes to the attention of Russia, or even of the world, as during the dearth in 1891, because of scarcity of food, or even famine, which is no novelty in the government.  In a district where the average of rain is twenty inches, there is not much margin of superfluity which can be spared without peril.  Wheat grows here better than in the government just north of it, and many peasants are attracted from the “black-bread governments” to Samara by the white bread which is there given them as rations when they hire out for the harvest.

But such a singular combination of conditions prevails there, as elsewhere in Russia, that an abundant harvest is often more disastrous than a scanty harvest.  The price of grain falls so low that the cost of gathering it is greater than the market value, and it is often left to fall unreaped in the fields.  When the price falls very low, complaints arise that there is no place to send it, since, when the ruble stands high, as it invariably does at the prospect of large crops, the demand from abroad is stopped.  The result is that those people who are situated near a market sell as much grain and leave as little at home as possible in order to meet their bills.  The price rises; the unreaped surplus of the districts lying far from markets cannot fill the ensuing demand.  The income from estates falls, and the discouraged owners who have nothing to live on resolve to plant a smaller area thereafter.  Estates are mortgaged and sold by auction; prices are very low, and often there are no buyers.