IMPRESSIONABLE TRAVELLER

People of the Steppes. By Ralph Fox. (Constable. 13s. 6d.) THOUGH this is a book of exceedingly interesting adventures, it is also something more. The author is an idealist, whose belief in human nature is strengthened rather than shaken by the unpleasant evidence which a life of action has laid before him. He is, too, an incorrigible romantic, and never loses an opportunity of utilizing the passing incident as a stimulation for dreams. These dreams, however, are fed by a good memory and an imagination that has a sane and vivid grip of history. Though he indulges very frequently in some- what richly coloured asides ; summonings-up of the great shades of the Turko-Russian past ; or fantasies spun out of landscape-engendered moods ; yet these dangerous habits never betray him into-banality, or that personal sludge with which many books by amateur travellers are bespattered. Mr. Fox is no dilettante, chasing the mare of ennui round the world ; stopping here and there to indulge in a little patronizing ecstasy over the customs of a certain people, or the sunset behind some particular hill that is not mentioned in Baedeker. He had a definite work to do, and from what one reads between the lines, he did it well.

In his own words, he was " one of a little band of Anglo- Saxon oddities islanded in a small town upon the far south- eastern plain of Russia. Pacifists; Socialists, faithful Christ- ians, rootless Intellectuals, misunderstood and misunder- standing, they were engaged in giving relief to the stricken peasants of the district." He was soon selected for a special job, however, which was to follow up another Englishman who had been sent out to the Khirgiz steppes to buy horses for use in the famine area. Headquarters had lost trace of this envoy, and Mr. Fox was sent out with a supply of paper money to find him and to speed up the purchasing.

He made the journey by ramshackle freight-trains and by horse, taking with him a Polish interpreter who had been through the Ford factories of Detroit. His market was a vast district of desolate sun-baked steppe lying on the eastern shore of the And Sea, above the famous towns of Khiva, Bokhara, Samakand, and Tashkent. It was a wonderful country, and it made a deep mark on our impressionable young English mystic—for that we must call him. Being a practical man, he will not resent the term. The wide spaces ; the silence so intense that it was clamorous with omen ; the tombs of the vanished conquerors, landless princes who had reigned over shifting kingdoms between the Wall of China and the Black Sea ; all these qualities of the desert are recorded in this book with true sensitiveness, so that the reader may share them.

But, above all, our author was moved by the people, and the new hopes stirring in the people. Their Asiatic habits, their brutality and treachery, made no difference to his pas- sionate interest in them both as folk and as individuals. His portraits are full of personality, and really signal his work as being something well out of the usual nick of travel books.

One of his colleagues was a young Russian; Rya Andrey'ich, grandson of the famous writer.

" In height he exceeded six feet, was well-built in proportion, wrestled with much strength and skill and rode like one who is born in the saddle. The powerful jaw, vivacious oyes, broad low brow, were all his famous grandfather's. So was his stormy sensual nature, his love of hunting and wild life, his deep natural pessimism. The grandfather had 'a tremendous will and intellectual power which conquered and crushed the natural Russian in him. The grandson was weaker, the sport of the fate which had cursed- his family for generations, making them wild and wilful, yet loved by all and pitied by a few."

The charm of the young Tolstoyan quite overcame our author.

" At night, when the table was cleared and the candles were lit, he would take up our guitar and sing us gypsy songs in a strong and beautiful tenor . . . so that the commonplace words took on a great beauty of vivid life, and listening to him you said, "This boy is a great lover,' and knew it was true. He was a great lover as others are poets, or kings, or prophets."

That relationship shows how our author's susceptibility often runs away with him. How does he know, for instance, of the famous grandfather's features ? Is his knowledge from acquaintance, or portraits, or is it rather from some self- suggested idea, born out of that glamorous enthusiasm ? We suspect it is the last. But that is not to blame Mr. Fox ; yet it,-makes -ua •careful in accepting his interpretations of- the

intricate political situations and motives amid which lie found. himself ; though at the same time we know he is on the side

of the angels. There, after all the discounting demanded by, common sense and worldly expediency, is where we have to place the enthusiast, amongst the children of light, whose food is faith, hope, and charity. These qualities Mr. Fox has in abundance, and they illuminate his book.

There are many other remarkable people amongst his fellow-workers, both Russian and Khirgiz, whom we hoped to mention, but we have space only to comment on the Khirgiz character in general, and to quote a charming folk- song of this interesting people. The origin of the Khirgiz is a very tangled one, for they are the descendants. of countless generations of steppe wanderers, and in their veins flows the blood of Mongol, Turk,. Russian, and Semite. These are the people whom Colonel Burnaby portrayed years ago in his Ride to lake:. Mr. Fox, however, sees them more inti- mately and imaginatively—their history, their religions, and their present life, with its athletics, art, and social habits.

Here is the folk-song :-

" One evening, I went to my friend's, treading softly, softly. She was sleeping peacefully ; I pressed her in my arms softly, softly.

I said to her : Give me a kiss.' What,' she replied, bast thou no shame ?

Whence thou art come, return, treading softly, softly.'

Obstinate, I would not go. She seized my arm and repulsed me. At last, seeing no other way, I crept away softly, softly.

I went, but unable to bear longer, I returned and cried out : Ah, cruel one, give me a kiss softly, softly.'

Impetuously she wounded me with her dagger,

And, treated so barbarously, I fled -away softly, softly.

Revnak says : ' Since the world is full of clowning and folly, Do not blame me anyone, but read this softly, softly.' "