The ordinary wooden houses, with their high sloping roofs, gradually gave place to flat-roofed huts, built of a peculiar kind of unburnt bricks, composed of mud and straw.

I noticed, too, that the population became less and less dense, and the amount of fallow land proportionately greater.

The peasants were evidently richer than those near the Volga, but they complained--as the Russian peasant always does--that they had not land enough.

In answer to my inquiries why they did not use the thousands of acres that were lying fallow around them, they explained that they had already raised crops on that land for several successive years, and that consequently they must now allow it to "rest." In one of the villages through which I passed I met with a very characteristic little incident.

The village was called Samovolnaya Ivanofka--that is to say, "Ivanofka the Self-willed" or "the Non-authorised." Whilst our horses were being changed my travelling companion, in the course of conversation with a group of peasants, inquired about the origin of this extraordinary name, and discovered a curious bit of local history.