Of the communal organisation, domestic life, religious beliefs, ceremonial practices, and nomadic habits of his humble neighbours, he knew little, and the little he happened to know was far from accurate.

In order to gain a knowledge of these matters it would be better, I perceived, to consult the priest, or, better still, the peasants themselves.

But to do this it would be necessary to understand easily and speak fluently the colloquial language, and I was still very far from having, acquired the requisite proficiency.
Even for one who possesses a natural facility for acquiring foreign tongues, the learning of Russian is by no means an easy task.

Though it is essentially an Aryan language like our own, and contains only a slight intermixture of Tartar words,--such as bashlyk (a hood), kalpak (a night-cap), arbuz (a water-melon), etc .-- it has certain sounds unknown to West-European ears, and difficult for West-European tongues, and its roots, though in great part derived from the same original stock as those of the Graeco-Latin and Teutonic languages, are generally not at all easily recognised.

As an illustration of this, take the Russian word otets.