eka" in Minnusinsk, where we should have sung our
last song. Secondly, in his documents my fellow traveler was granted
permission to use the government post relays for forwarding him on his
journey. Therefore, we were forced to visit the village Soviets and
change our horses. Our own mounts we had given to the Tartar and Cossack
who helped us at the mouth of the Tuba, and the Cossack brought us in
his wagon to the first village, where we received the post horses. All
except a small minority of the peasants were against the Bolsheviki and
voluntarily assisted us. I paid them for their help by treating their
sick and my fellow traveler gave them practical advice in the management
of their agriculture. Those who helped us chiefly were the old
dissenters and the Cossacks.

Sometimes we came across villages entirely Communistic but very soon we
learned to distinguish them. When we entered a village with our horse
bells tinkling and found the peasants who happened to be sitting in
front of their houses ready to get up with a frown and a grumble that
here were more new devils coming, we knew that this was a village
opposed to the Communists and that here we could stop in safety. But,
if the peasants approached and greeted us with pleasure, calling us
"Comrades," we knew at once that we were among the enemy and took great
precautions. Such villages were inhabited by people who were not the
Siberian liberty-loving peasants but by emigrants from the Ukraine,
idle and drunk, living in poor dirty huts, though their village
were surrounded with the black and fertile soil of the steppes. Very
dangerous and pleasant moments we spent in the large village of Karatuz.
It is rather a town. In the year 1912 two colleges were opened here and
the population reached 15,000 people. It is the capital of the South
Yenisei Cossacks. But by now it is very difficult to recognize this
town. The peasant emigrants and Red army murdered all the Cossack
population and destroyed and burned most of the houses; and it is at
present the center of Bolshevism and Communism in the eastern part of
the Minnusinsk district. In the building of the Soviet, where we came to
exchange our horses, there was being held a meeting of the "Cheka." We
were immediately surrounded and questioned about our documents. We were
not any too calm about the impression which might be made by our papers
and attempted to avoid this examination. My fellow traveler afterwards
often said