. All the Russias; travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, & Central Asia. led off while boiling (whenthe world was made), of the vivid verdigris-green that is likenothing else. The palaces and galleries of St. Petersburg andMoscow are full of vases and tables and basins of these jaspersand lapis la/Aili, and nothing could be more beautiful if only themakers would follow classic shapes instead of choosing as theirmodels the stucco horrors of the suburban garden, or of inlayingtables with diamond-work in contrasting colours which ape thepatchwork bed
. All the Russias; travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, & Central Asia. led off while boiling (whenthe world was made), of the vivid verdigris-green that is likenothing else. The palaces and galleries of St. Petersburg andMoscow are full of vases and tables and basins of these jaspersand lapis la/Aili, and nothing could be more beautiful if only themakers would follow classic shapes instead of choosing as theirmodels the stucco horrors of the suburban garden, or of inlayingtables with diamond-work in contrasting colours which ape thepatchwork bed-quilt of the cooks aunt. But the little ash-traysin cloudy rose jasper, polished only on one side, are the best pre- SIBERIA FROM THE TRAIN 135 sents to bring hack to friends who have been very good, as a me-mento of that town where convicts and exiles used to be gatheredin enormous sheds and sorted over before being drafted to placeswhere their labour was required or where their vices—when theyhad any—would remain unheard of. To-day every spring seeshuge crowds of peasant emigrants to Siberia, undergoing ex-. THE WATER-TOWER AND STOREHOUSE AT EVERY STATION amination and selection at Chelyabinsk before being distributedaccording to a regular scheme of colonisation. From Chelyabinsk onward the train crosses the great Siberianplain, and this may be said to continue as far as Tomsk, morethan seven hundred miles away. From Wednesday noon till Fri-day morning, except for the rivers you could hardly tell one pieceof the monotonous landscape from another. But the more yousee of it, the more it appeals to you. I nfinitely simple in its long,sunburnt expanses to right, to left, and behind the train, dottedsparsely with meagre beasts which may be dromedaries, may beoxen, may be horses ; broken by tracts of bog where silver birches,very old and very small, struggle for their life ; flecked here and 136 ALL THE RUSSIAS there at wide intervals by a wooden hut or the rounded tent ofa Kh
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