wrapped in fur blankets, fur inside and fur outside, one | does not suffer much from the cold, even when the tem- | perature is forty or sixty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. — Traveling in courier fashion, — that is, rapidly changing | horses at each station and stopping only once a day for one hour to take a meal, — I reached Irkutsk nineteen days after leaving St. Petersburg. Two hundred miles a day is the _ normal speed in such cases, and I remember having covered _ the last 660 miles of my journey in seventy hours. The | frost was not severe then, the roads were in an excellent condition, the drivers were kept in good spirits by a free allowance of silver coins, and the team of three small and | light horses seemed to enjoy running swiftly over hill and | vale, across rivers frozen as hard as steel, and through | forests glistening in their silver attire under the rays of the sun.
I was now appointed attaché to the Governor-General of | East Siberia for Cossack affairs, and had to reside at. ‘Irkutsk; but there was nothing in particular todo. To let IN IRKUTSK AGAIN 199 everything go on according to the established routine, with no more reference to changes, — such was the watch- word that came now from St. Petersburg. I therefore gladly accepted the proposal to undertake geographical exploration in Manchuria.
If one casts a glance on a map of Asia, one sees that the Russian frontier which runs in Siberia, broadly speak- ing, along the fiftieth degree of latitude, suddenly bends in Transbaikdlia to the north. It follows for three hun- dred miles the Argufi River; then, on reaching the Amur, it turns southeastward, the town of Blagovéschensk, which was the capital of the Amir land, being situated again in about the same latitude of fifty degrees. Between the southeastern corner of Transbaikdlia (New Tsurukhaitu) and Blagovéschensk on the Amtir, the distance west to east is only five hundred miles; but along the Argun and the Amir it is over a thousand miles, and moreover communi- cation along the Argtifi, which is not navigable, is extremely difficult. In its lower parts there is nothing but a moun- tain track of the wildest description.
Transbaikdlia is very rich in cattle, and the Cossacks who occupy its southeastern corner and are wealthy cattle- breeders wanted to establish a direct communication with the middle Amir, which would be a good market for their cattle. They used to trade with the Mongols, and they had heard from them that it would not be difficult to reach the Amur, traveling eastward across the Great Khingan. Going straight towards the east, they were told, one would fall in with an old Chinese route which crosses the Khin- gin and leads to the Manchurian town of Merghén (on the Nénni River, a tributary to the Sungarf), whence there is an excellent road to the middle Amur.
I was offered the leadership of a trading caravan which the Cossacks intended to organize in order to find that route, and I accepted it with enthusiasm. No European 200 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST had ever visited that region; and a Russian topographer who went that way a few years before was killed. Only two Jesuits, in the times of the Emperor Kan-si, had pene- trated from the south as far as Merghén, and had deter- mined its latitude. All the immense region to the north of it, five hundred miles wide, and seven hundred miles deep, was totally, absolutely unknown. I consulted all the available sources about this region. Nobody, not even the Chinese geographers, knew anything about it. Besides, the very fact of connecting the middle Amtr with Trans- baikaélia had its importance, and Tsurukhditu is now going to be the head of the Trans-Manchuria Railway. We were thus the pioneers of that great enterprise.
There was, however, one difficulty. The treaty with China granted to the Russians free trade with the “‘ Empire of China, and Mongolia.”” Manchuria was not mentioned in it, and could as well be excluded as included in the treaty. The Chinese frontier authorities interpreted it one way, and the Russians the other way. Moreover, only trade being mentioned, an officer would not be allowed to enter Manchuria. I had thus to go as a trader; so I bought at Irkutsk various goods and went disguised as a merchant. ‘The governor-general delivered me a passport ‘To the Irktitsk second guild merchant, Petr Alex¢iev, and his companions;’ and he warned me that if the Chinese | authorities arrested me and took me to Pekin, and thence | across the Gobi to the Russian frontier, —in a cage, on: a camel’s back, was their way of conveying prisoners across | Mongolia, —I must not betray him by naming myself. — I accepted, of course, all the conditions, the temptation to | visit a country which no European had ever seen being too great for an explorer to resist.
it would not have been easy to conceal my identity while I was in Transbaikdlia. The Cossacks are an extremely inquisitive people, —real Mongols, —and as soon — DISGUISED AS A MERCHANT 201 as a stranger comes to their villages, while treating him with the greatest hospitality, the master of the house where he stays subjects him to a formal interrogatory.
“A tedious journey, I suppose,” he begins; ‘a long way from Chita, is it not? And then, perhaps, longer still for one who comes from some place beyond Chita. Maybe from Irkutsk? Trading there, I believe. Many tradesmen come this way. You are going also to Ner- chinsk, are you not? Yes, people are often married at your age: and you, too, must have left a family, I sup- pose. Many children? Not all boys, I should say?” And so on for quite half an hour.
The local commander of the Cossacks, Captain Bux- hévden, knew his people, and consequently we had taken our precautions. At Chita and at Irkutsk we often had had amateur theatricals, playing by preference dramas of Ostrévsky, in which the scene of action is nearly always amongst the merchant classes. I played several times in such dramas, and found so great pleasure in acting that I even wrote on one occasion to my brother an enthusi- astic letter confessing to him my passionate desire to aban- don my military career and to go on the stage. I played mostly young merchants, and had acquired sufficiently well their ways of talking and gesticulating and tea-drinking from the saucer, —I learned those ways in my Nikdlskoye experiences, — and now I had a good opportunity to act it all out in reality for useful purposes.
“Take your seat, Petr Alexéievich,’’ Captain Buxhévden would say to me when the boiling tea urn, throwing out _ clouds of steam, was placed on the table.
“Thank you; we will stay here,” I would reply, sitting on the edge of a chair at a distance, and beginning to drink my tea in true Moscow merchant fashion, Buxhévden meanwhile nearly exploding with laughter, as I blew upon my saucer with “ staring eyes” and bit off in a special way 202 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST microscopic particles from a small lump of sugar which was to serve for half a dozen cups.
We knew that the Cossacks would soon make out the truth about me, but the important thing was to win a few days, and to cross the frontier while my identity was still undiscovered. I must have played my part pretty well, for the Cossacks treated me like a petty merchant. In one village an old woman beckoned to me as I passed, and asked, ‘‘ Are there more people coming behind you on the zoad, my dear? ” ‘‘ None, grandmother, that we heard of.”
‘‘They said a prince, Rapdtsky, was going to come. Is he coming? ”’ “Oh, I see. Youareright, grandmother. His highness intended to go, too, from Irkutsk. But how can ‘they’? Such a journey! Not suitable for them. So they remained where they were.”
‘‘Of course, how can he!”
To be brief, we crossed the frontier unmolested. We were eleven Cossacks, one Tungus, and myself, all on horse- back. We had with us about forty horses for sale and two carts, —one of which, two-wheeled, belonged to me, and contained the cloth, the velveteen, the gold braid, and so on, which I had taken in my capacity of merchant. I at- tended to my cart and my horses entirely myself, while we chose one of the Cossacks to be the “ elder” of our caravan. He had to manage all the diplomatic talk with the Chinese authorities. All the Cossacks spoke Mongolian, and the Tungus understood Manchurian. The Cos- sacks of the caravan knew of course who I was, — one of them knew me at Irktitsk, — but they never betrayed that knowledge, understanding that the success of the expedi- tion depended upon it. I wore a long blue cotton dress, like all the others, and the Chinese paid no attention to me, ) so that, unnoticed by them, I could make the compass survey | CROSSING THE KHINGAN MOUNTAINS 203 of the route. On the first day, when all sorts of Chinese soldiers hung about us, in the hope of getting a glass of whiskey, I had often to cast only a furtive glance at my com- pass, and to jot down the bearings and the distances inside of my pocket, without taking my paper out. We had with us no arms whatever. Only our Tungus, who was going to be married, had taken his matchlock gun and used it to hunt fallow deer, bringing us meat for supper, and securing furs with which to pay for his future wife.
When there was no more whiskey to be obtained from us, the Chinese soldiers left us alone. So we went straight eastward, finding our way as best we could across hill and dale, and after a four or five days’ march we actually fell in with the Chinese track which would take us across the Khingan to Merghén.
To our astonishment, we found that the crossing of the great ridge, which looked so black and terrible on the maps, ’ was very easy. We overtook on the road an old Chinese functionary, miserably wretched, traveling in a_ two- wheeled cart. For the last two days the road was up-hill, and the country bore testimony to its high altitude. The ground became marshy, and the road muddy; the grass was very poor, and the trees grew thin, undeveloped, often crip- pled, and covered with lichens. Mountains bare of forests rose to right and left, and we were thinking already of the difficulties we should experience in crossing the ridge, when we saw the old Chinese functionary alighting from his cart _ before an 060, — that is, a heap of stones and branches of trees to which bundles of horsehair and small rags had _ been attached. He drew several hairs out of the mane of his horse, and attached them to the branches. ‘ What is that?” we asked. ‘‘ The obd; the waters before us flow now to the Amur.” “Ts that all of the Khing4n?” “It’s all! No more mountains to cross until we reach the Amur, , only hills!”
Rr 204 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST Quite a commotion spread in our caravan. ‘The rivers flow to the Amur, the Amur!” shouted the Cossacks to one another. All their lives they had heard the old Cos- sacks talking about the great river where the vine grows wild, where the prairies extend for hundreds of miles and could give wealth to millions of men; then, after the Amur had been annexed to Russia, they heard of the long journey to it, the difficulties of the first settlers, and the prosperity of their relatives settled in the upper Amur; and now we had found the short way to them! We had before us a steep slope, the road leading downwards in zigzags to a small river which pierced its way through a choppy sea of mountains, and led to the Amur. No more obstacles lay between us and the great river. A traveler will imagine my delight at this unexpected geographical discovery. As to the Cossacks, they hastened to dismount and to attach in their turn bundles of hair taken from their horses to the branches thrown on the obdéd. The Siberians in general have a sort of awe of the gods of the heathens. They do not think much of them, but these gods, they say, are wicked creatures, bent on mischief, and it is never good to be on bad terms with them. It is far better to bribe them with small tokens of respect.
‘‘ Look, here is a strange tree; it must be an oak,” they exclaimed, as we descended the steep slope. The oak does not grow in Siberia at all, and is not found until the east-: ern slope of the high plateau has been reached. ‘Look, | nut trees!” they exclaimed next. ‘‘And what tree is — that?”? they said, seeing a lime-tree, or some other trees | which do not grow in Russia, and which I knew as part of the Manchurian flora. The northerners, who for many years had dreamed of warmer lands, and now saw them, | were delighted. Lying upon the ground covered with rich grass, they caressed it with their eyes, — they would have kissed it. Now they burned with the desire to reach the IN MANCHURIA 205 Amur as soon as possible. And when, a fortnight later, we stopped at our last camp-fire within twenty miles of the river, they grew impatient like children. They began to saddle their horses shortly after midnight, and made me start long before daybreak; and when at last from an emi- nence we caught a sight of the mighty stream, the eyes of these unimpressionable Siberians, generally devoid of poetical feeling, gleamed with a poet’s ardor as they looked upon the blue waters of the majestic Amur. It was evident that, sooner or later, with or without the support, or even against the wish, of the Russian government, both banks of this river, a desert now but rich with possibilities, as well as the immense unpopulated stretches of North Manchuria, would be invaded by Russian settlers, just as the shores of the Mississippi were colonized by the Canadian voyageurs.
In the meantime, the old half-blind Chinese functionary with whom we had crossed the Khingdn, having donned his blue coat and official hat with a glass button on its top, declared to us next morning that he would not let us go further. Our “elder”? had received him and his clerk in our tent, and the old man, repeating what the clerk whis- pered to him, raised all sorts of objections to our further progress. He wanted us to camp on the spot while he should send our pass to Pekin to get orders, — which we absolutely refused to do. Then he sought to quarrel with our passport.
“ What sort of a passport is that?’ he said, looking with disdain at our pass, which was written in a few lines on a plain sheet of foolscap paper, in Russian and Mongo- lian, and had a simple sealing-wax seal. “ You may have written it yourselves and sealed it with a copper,” he re- marked, “Look at my pass: this is worth something;”’ and he unrolled before us a sheet of paper, two feet long, covered with Chinese characters.
I sat quietly aside during this conference, packing some- 206 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONISS thing in my box, when a sheet of the ‘ Moscow Gazette ” fell under my hand. The “ Gazette,” being the property of the Moscow University, had an eagle printed on its title-heading. “Show him this,” I said to our elder. He unfolded the immense sheet and pointed out the eagle. ‘‘That pass was to show to you,” our elder said, ‘‘ but this is what we have for ourselves.” « Why, is it all written about you?” the old man asked, with terror. “All about us,’”’ our elder replied, without even a twinkle in his eyes.
The old man — a true functionary — looked quite dum- founded at seeing such a proficiency of writing. He ex- amined every one of us, nodding with his head. But the clerk was still whispering something to his chief, who finally declared that he would not let us continue the journey.
“Enough of talking,” I said to the elder; “give the order to saddle the horses.” The Cossacks were of the same opinion, and in no time our caravan started, bidding | good-by to the old functionary, and promising him to report that short of resorting to violence— which he was not able.
to do —he had done all in his power to prevent us from entering Manchuria, and that it was our fault if we went.
nevertheless. A few days later we were at Merghén, where we traded a little, and soon reached the Chinese town Aigtifi on the — right bank of the Amur, and the Russian town of Blago- | véschensk on the left bank. We had discovered the direct route and many interesting things besides: the border-ridge — character of the Great Khingdn, the ease with which it can be crossed, the tertiary volcanoes of the Uytin Kholdontsi region which had so long been a puzzle in geographical lit- erature, and soon. I cannot say that I was a sharp tradesman, for at Merghén I persisted (in broken Chinese) in asking thirty-five rubles for a watch, when the Chinese COST OF THE EXPEDITION 207 buyer had already offered me forty-five; but the Cossacks traded all right. They sold all their horses very well, and when my horses, my goods, and the like were sold by the Cossacks, it appeared that the expedition had cost the government the modest sum of twenty-two rubles, — eleven dollars, VI Aut this summer I traveled on the Amur. I went as far as its mouth, or rather its estuary, — Nikolaevsk, — to join the governor-general, whom I accompanied in a steamer up the Usurf; and after that, in the autumn, I made a still more interesting journey up the Sungartf, to the very heart of Manchuria, as far as Ghirfn (or Kirin, according to the southern pronunciation).
Many rivers in Asia are made by the junction of two equally important streams, so that it is difficult for the geographer to say which of the two is the main one, and which is a tributary. The Ingodd and the Onédn join to make the Shilka; the Shilka and the Argufi join to make the Amur; and the Amur joins the Sungari to form that mighty stream which flows northeastward and enters the Pacific in the inhospitable latitudes of the Tartar strait.
Up to the year 1864, the great river of Manchuria re- mained very little known. All information about it dated from the times of the Jesuits, and that was scanty. Now that a revival in the exploration of Mongolia and Man- churia was going to take place, and the fear of China which had hitherto been entertained in Russia appeared to be exaggerated, all of us younger people pressed upon the governor-general the necessity of exploring the Sungari. To have next door to the Amur an immense region, almost as little known as an African desert, seemed to us provoking. Suddenly General Korsdkoff decided to send a steamer up the Sungarf, under the pretext of carrying some message of friendship to the governor-general of the Ghirin province. A Russian consul from Urgé had to carry the message. A UP THE SUNGARI 209 UP THE SUNGARI 209 doctor, an astronomer, and myself, all under the command of a Colonel Chernydeff, were sent upon the expedition in a tiny steamer, Usurf, which took in tow a barge with coal. Twenty-five soldiers, whose rifles were carefully concealed in the coal, went with us, on the barge.
All was organized very hurriedly, and there was no ac- commodation on the small steamer to receive such a numer- ous company; but we were all full of enthusiasm, and huddled as best we could in the tiny cabins. One of us had to sleep on a table, and when we started we found that there were not even knives and forks for all of us, — not to speak of other necessaries. One of us resorted to his pen- knife at dinner time, and my Chinese knife with two sticks, serving as a fork, was a welcome addition to our equipment.
It was not an easy task to go up the Sungari. The great Tiver in its lower parts, where it flows through the same low lands as the Amur, is very shallow, and although our steamer drew only three feet, we often could not find a channel deep enough for us. There were days when we advanced but some forty miles, and scraped as many times the sandy bottom of the river with our keel; over and over again a rowboat was sent out to find the necessary depth. But our young captain had made up his mind that he would teach Ghirin that autumn, and we progressed every day. As we ascended higher and higher, we found the river more md more beautiful, and more and more easy of navigation; md when we had passed the sandy deserts at its junction with its sister river, the Néuni, progress became easy and dleasant. In a few weeks we thus reached the capital of hat province of Manchuria. An excellent map of the ‘iver was made by the topographers. There was no time © spare, unfortunately, and so we very seldom landed in imy village or town. The villages along the banks of the iver are few and far between, and on its lower parts we ound only low lands, which are inundated every year; 210 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST higher up we sailed for a hundred miles amidst sand dunes 5 and it was only when we reached the upper Sungari and began to approach Ghirin, that we found a dense population.
If our aim had been to establish friendly relations with Manchuria, and not simply to learn what the Sungari is, our expedition might well have been considered a dead failure. The Manchurian authorities had it fresh in their memories how, eight years before, the “ visit” of Muravioff ended in the annexation of the Amur and the Usuri, and they could not but look with suspicion on this new and uncalled-for visitation. The twenty-five rifles concealed in the coal, which had been duly reported to the Chinese authorities before we left, still more provoked their sus- picions; and when our steamer cast her anchor in front of the populous city of Ghirfn, we found all its merchants armed with rusty swords from some old arsenal. We were not prevented, however, from walking in the streets, but all shops were closed as soon as we landed, and the merchants were not allowed to sell anything. Some provisions were sent to us on board the steamer as a gift, but no money was taken in return.
The autumn was rapidly coming to its end, the frosts had begun already, and we had to hurry back, as we could not winter on the Sungari. In short, we saw Ghirin, but spoke to no one but the two interpreters who came every morning on board our steamer. Our aim, however, was fulfilled: we had ascertained that the river is navigable, and an ex- cellent map of it was made, from its mouth to Ghirin, with, the aid of which we were able to steam on our return journey | at full speed without any accident. At one time our steamer ran upon a sandbank. But the Ghirin officials, desirous above all things that we should not be compelled to winter on the river, sent two hundred Chinese, who aided us in getting off. When I jumped into the water, | and, taking a stick, began to sing our river-song, ‘¢ Dubr- | ee ee Se or a _— = ne J i Py we, ry et LF LF Ct, for; Of e Vite ene FRIENDLY CHINESE 211 nushka,” which helps all present to give a sudden push at the same moment, the Chinese enjoyed immensely the fun of it, and after several such pushes the steamer was soon afloat. The most cordial relations were established between ourselves and the Chinese by this little adventure. I mean, of course, the people, who seemed to dislike very much their arrogant Manchurian officials.
We called at several Chinese villages, peopled with exiles from the Celestial Empire, and were received in the most cordial way. One evening especially impressed itself on my memory. We came to a picturesque little village as night was already falling. Some of us landed, and I went alone through the village. A thick crowd of about a hundred Chinese soon surrounded me, and although I knew not a word of their tongue, and they knew as little of mine, we chatted in the most amicable way by mimicry, and we un- derstood one another. To pat one on the shoulders in sign of friendship is decidedly international language. To offer one another tobacco and to be offered a light is again an in- ternational expression of friendship. One thing interested them, — why had I, though young, a beard? They wear none before they are sixty. And when I told them by signs that in case I should have nothing to eat I might eat it, the joke was transmitted from one to the other through the whole crowd. They roared with laughter, and began to pat me even more caressingly on the shoulders; they took me about, showing me their houses; every one offered me his pipe, and the whole crowd accompanied me as a friend to the steamer. I must say that there was not one single boshko (policeman) in that village. In other villages our soldiers and myself always made friends with the Chinese, but as soon as a boshkdé appeared, all was spoiled. In Teturn, one should have seen what ‘ faces” they used to make at the boshkdé behind his back! They evidently hated this representative of authority.
212 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST This expedition has since been forgotten. The astrono-: mer Th. Uséltzeff and I published reports about it in the Memoirs of the Siberian Geographical Society; but a few years later a terrible conflagration at Irkutsk destroyed all the copies left of the Memoirs, as well as the original map of the Sungarf; and it was only last year, when work upon | the Trans-Manchurian Railway was beginning, that Russian | geographers unearthed our reports, and found that the great river had been explored five-and-thirty years ago by our | expedition.
VII As there was nothing more to be done in the direction of reform, I tried to do what seemed to be possible under the existing circumstances, — only to become convinced of the absolute uselessness of such efforts. In my new capacity of attaché to the governor-general for Cossack affairs, I made, for instance, a most thorough investigation of the econom- ical conditions of the Usurf Cossacks, whose crops used to be lost every year, so that the government had every winter to feed them in order to save them from famine. When I returned from the Usuri with my report, I received con- gratulations on all sides, I was promoted, I got special rewards. All the measures I recommended were accepted, ‘and special grants of money were given for aiding the ‘emigration of some and for supplying cattle to others, as I had suggested. But the practical realization of the measures went into the hands of some old drunkard, who would “squander the money and pitilessly flog the unfortunate Cossacks for the purpose of converting them into good agri- enlturalists. And thus it went on in all directions, be- ‘ginning with the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, and ending with the Usuri and Kamchatka. ‘The higher administration of Siberia was influenced by excellent intentions, and I can only repeat that, everything ‘considered, it was far better, far more enlightened, and far “more interested in the welfare of the country than the ad- ‘ministration of any other province of Russia. But it was an administration, — a branch of the tree which had its root at St. Petersburg, and that was quite sufficient to paralyze all its excellent intentions, and to make it interfere with all 514 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST beginnings of local spontaneous life and progress. Whatever was started for the good of the country by local men was looked at with distrust, and was immediately paralyzed by hosts of difficulties which came, not so much from the bad intentions of men, — men, as a rule, are better than institu- tions, — but simply because they belonged to a pyramidal, centralized administration. The very fact of its being a government which had its source in a distant capital caused it to look upon everything from the point of view of a ‘functionary of the government who thinks, first of all, about what his superiors will say, and how this or that will appear \in the administrative machinery, and not of the interests \ of the country.: Gradually I turned my energy more and more toward ‘scientific exploration. In 1865 I explored the western Saydns, where I got a new glimpse into the structure of the Siberian highlands, and came upon another important volcanic region on the Chinese frontier; and finally, next year, I undertook a long journey to discover a direct com munication between the gold mines of the Yakutsk province (on the Vitim and the Oldkma) and Transbaikalia. Fo) several years (1860-64) the members of the Siberian expe dition had tried to find such a passage, and had endeavoret to cross the series of very wild stony parallel ridges whiel separate these mines from Transbaikalia; but when they reached that region, coming from the south, and saw befor them these dreary mountains spreading for hundreds 0 miles northward, all of them, save one who was killed by natives, returned southward. It was evident that, in orde to be successful, the expedition must move from the nortl to the south, — from the dreary and unknown wilderness t the warmer and populated regions. It also happened tha while I was preparing for the expedition, I was shown } map which a native had traced with his knife on a piece 0 bark. This little map—a splendid example, by the way) SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 215 of the usefulness of the geometrical sense in the lowest stages of civilization, and one which would consequently interest A. R. Wallace —so struck me by its seeming truth to nature that I fully trusted to it, and began my journey, following the indications of the map. In company with a ~ young and promising naturalist, Polakoff, and a topo- grapher, I went first down the Léna to the northern gold mines. ‘There we equipped our expedition, taking pro- visions for three months, and started southward. An old Yakut hunter, who twenty years before had once followed the passage indicated on the Tungus map, undertook to act for us as guide, and to cross the mountain region, — full 250 miles wide, — following the river valleys and gorges indicated by the knife of the Tungus on the birch-bark map. He really accomplished this wonderful feat, although there was no track of any sort to follow, and all the valleys that one sees from the top of a mountain pass, all equally filled with _ woods, seem, to the unpracticed eye, to be absolutely alike.
This time the passage was found. For three months wel wandered in the almost totally uninhabited mountain Bdesorts, and over the marshy plateau, till at last we reached our destination, Chité. I am told that this passage is now of value for bringing cattle from the south to the gold mines; as for me, the journey helped me immensely after- ward in-finding the key to the structure of the mountains _and plateaus of Siberia, }- but I am not writing a book of travel, and must stop.
The years that I spent in Siberia taught me many lessons’ _which I could hardly have learned elsewhere. I soon’ ; realized the absolute impossibility of doing anything really \ useful for the mass of the people by means of the adminis- trative machinery. With this illusion I parted forever. Then I began to understand not only men and human character, but also the inner springs of the life of human 216 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST society. The constructive work of the unknown masses, which so seldom finds any mention in books, and the im- ~ portance of that constructive work in the growth of forms of society, fully appeared before my eyes. To witness, for instance, the ways in which the communities of Dukho- bértsy (brothers of those who are now going to settle in Canada, and who find such a hearty support in the United States) migrated to the Amur region, to see the immense advantages which they got from their semi-communistic brotherly organization, and to realize what a wonderful success their colonization was, amidst all the failures of state colonization, was learning something which cannot be learned from books. Again, to live with natives, to see at work all the complex forms of social organization which they have elaborated far away from the influence of any civ- ilization, was, as it were, to store up floods of light which illuminated my subsequent reading. The part which the unknown masses play in the accomplishment of all impor- ‘ tant historical events, and even in war, became evident to me from direct observation, and I came to hold ideas similar to those which Tolstoy expresses concerning the leaders and the masses in his monumental work, “‘ War and Peace.’’ Having been brought up in a serf-owner’s family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like. But when, at