Mikhail showed me where they boiled the horns, and explained the process of preservation. There were enormous coppers for the boiling. The horns were put into boiling brine, just dipped in and taken out several times. The difficulty was to immerse them and yet not touch the metal sides of the pots. If the sides were touched the delicate skin might easily be frayed. After the immersion the horns were exposed in the open air. They dried fairly rapidly, and lost weight; by the time they would be ready for sale they would have lost half their original weight. In the late summer and autumn Chinese and Tartar merchants appeared and made great deals in maral horns throughout the whole district. In China the substance of the horn is known as ludzon.
Mikhail was an extraordinarily hospitable type of peasant, and heaped plenty on the table that evening—a great crust of honeycomb, for he kept his own bees and possessed a hill-side dotted with white hives; wooden basins full of berries; butter—and butter is rare enough in peasants’ houses; and soup and chicken and white bannocks. We had an amusing talk about England. He had never seen a train, the sea, an Englishman, or a German or a Frenchman, or, indeed, any race but Russian, Kirghiz, Chinamen, Tartars, Kalmeeks. We compared the prices of things, and he was greatly alarmed at the cost of meat in England. I made him wonder more and more.
“Now, for instance, a hare,” said I. “I do not suppose they cost much here, but in our country we pay six or seven shillings for one at Christmas.”
Mikhail was astonished.
“What, for the skin?” asked he.
“Oh, no; we don’t value the skin—throw it away or sell it to the rag-and-bone man for twopence.”
“You don’t mean to say you pay that for a hare. Now, here we keep the skin to sell and throw away the flesh. It’s good enough for hogs. I never thought of a hare having a price as food. I don’t know that I could say what was the price of hare’s flesh here. We throw it away.”
He played with the idea, and then eventually inquired of me whether it were possible to get an iced freight-truck from Omsk to London, and what would it cost.
I could not say.
“Well,” said Mikhail, “supposing we put a nominal price of two copecks (a halfpenny) a hare exported from here, we could make a big profit, and it seems to me they could be got to London, and there would be a big profit for every one concerned.”