The immediate result of an over-abundant harvest in far-off Samara is that the peasants who have come hither to earn a little money at reaping return home penniless, or worse, to their suffering families.  Some of them are legitimate seekers after work; that is to say, they have no grain of their own to attend to, or they reap their own a little earlier or a little later, and go away to earn the ready money to meet taxes and indispensable expenditures of the household, such as oil, and so on. “Pri khlyeby bez khlyeby” is their own way of expressing the situation, which we may translate freely as “starvation in the midst of plenty.”  Thus the extremes of famine-harvest and the harvest which is an embarrassment of riches are equally disastrous to the poor peasant.

Samara offers a curious illustration of several agricultural problems, and a proof of some peculiar paradoxes.  The peasants of the neighboring governments, which are not populated to a particularly dense degree,—­ twenty male inhabitants to a square verst (two thirds of a mile), and not all engaged in agriculture,—­have long been accustomed to look upon Samara as a sort of promised land.  They still regard it in that light, and endeavor to emigrate thither, for the sake of obtaining grants of state land, and certain immunities and privileges which are accorded to colonists.  This action is the result of the paradox that overproduction exists hand in hand with too small a parcel of land for each peasant!

Volumes have been written, and more volumes might still be written, on this subject.  But I must content myself here with saying that I believe there is no province which illustrates so thoroughly all the distressing features of these manifold and complicated problems of colonization, of permanent settlements, with the old evils of both landlords and peasants cropping up afresh, abundant and scanty harvests equally associated with famine, and all the troubles which follow in their train, as Samara.  Hence it is that I can never recall the kumys, which is so intimately connected with the name of Samara, without also recalling the famine, which is, alas, almost as intimately bound up with it.

XII.

MOSCOW MEMORIES.

St. Petersburg is handsome, grand, impressive.  Moscow is beautiful, poetic, sympathetic, and pervaded by an atmosphere of ancient Russia, which is indescribable, though it penetrates to the marrow of one’s bones if he tarry long within her walls.  Emperor Peter’s new capital will not bear comparison, for originality, individuality, and picturesqueness with Tzar Peter’s Heart of Holy Russia, to which the heart of one who loves her must, perforce, often return with longing in after days,—­“white-stoned golden-domed, Holy Mother Moscow.”

But a volume of guide-book details, highly colored impressionist sketches, and dainty miniature painting combined would not do justice to Moscow.  Therefore, I shall confine myself to a few random reminiscences which may serve to illustrate habits or traits in the character of the city or the people.