If I were asked to give my opinion, as a geographer, on the pending conflict on the Afghan frontier, I should merely open the volume of Elisée Reclus's Geographie Universelle L'Asie, Russe, and show the pages he has consecrated under this head to the description of the Afghan Turkistan. Summing up the result of his extensive careful and highly impartial studies of Central Asia, Reclus has not hesitated to recognize that, geographically, the upper Oxus and all the northern slope of the Iran and Afghan plateaux belong to the Ural-Caspian region, and that the growing influence of the Slavonian might cannot fail to unite, sooner or later, into one political group, the various parts of this immense basin. And, surely, nobody who has studi... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
We were hunting bears. My companion had a chance to shoot at a bear: he wounded him, but only in a soft spot. A little blood was left on the snow, but the bear got away. We met in the forest and began to discuss what to do: whether to go and find that bear, or to wait two or three days until the bear should lie down again. We asked the peasant bear drivers whether we could now surround the bear. An old bear driver said: "No, we must give the bear a chance to calm himself. In about five days it will be possible to surround him, but if we go after him now he will only be frightened and will not lie down." But a young bear driver disputed with the old man, and said that he could surround him now. "Over this snow," he said, "the bear cannot get away far,—he is fat. He will lie down today again. And if he does not, I will overtake him on snow-shoes." My companion, too, did not want to surround the bear now, and advised waiting.