boats,
stacks of timber, sledge roads--everything--with it. The point near the
bridge held for some time, until the weight behind forced some part down
and crunched its way through in one irresistible push; the other part
rose over the resistance and rolled like an avalanche over and over,
smashing itself into huge blocks which were forced into a rampart fifty
feet high, when the enormous weight broke the ice platform on which it
was piled, and the whole moved majestically off towards the Volga. Then
one experienced the peculiar illusion of gliding along the river; it was
necessary to plant one's feet far apart to prevent a fall. The Khama
near Perm is over a mile wide, and this method of Nature to herald
spring to these snow- and ice-bound regions lacks nothing so far as
grandeur is concerned. During the next few days millions of tons of
derelict timber passed on its way to the Caspian. The careless Russian
never thinks of hauling his spare stock off the ice until the ice
actually begins to move. He tells you that the proper time for the ice
to move is between May 1 and 5; that if it moves a week earlier it means
good crops, which would balance the loss of the timber, so that he has
no cause to complain.

It is no part of my business to deal with atrocities such as have
disgraced the proletarian dictatorship of Moscow. Where I could not
avoid them in my narrative of events, I have done so without reference
to the revolting details which everybody so hungrily devours. History
shows that it is not possible to avoid these excesses whenever the
safeguards of civil order are swept away by the passions of the mob. Our
own revolutionaries should remember this before and not after the event.
They should be considered not as a risk but as a certainty when once the
foundations of order are uprooted. At Perm the breaking of the ice
revealed some of the truth, and it formed quite sufficient evidence of
the callous behaviour of the Bolshevik administrators.

Below a steep bank a few yards from the Terrorist headquarters a small
shed was erected on the ice. It was called a wash-house, and during the
day washing was done there. At night the place, apparently, was, like
the streets, deserted, but as a square hole was cut through the ice, it
was an ideal place for the disposal of bodies, dead or alive. The people
knew that after an inspection of the better-class homes by officers of
the Soviet if there was evidence of valuable loot;