"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 to me:

"It is great good fortune that among the Bolsheviki the good-for-nothing
shoemaker of yesterday is the Governor of today and scientists sweep
the streets or clean the stables of the Red cavalry. I can talk with
the Bolsheviki because they do not know the difference between
'disinfection' and 'diphtheria,' 'anthracite' and 'appendicitis' and can
talk them round in all things, even up to persuading them not to put a
bullet into me."

And so we talked the members of the "Cheka" round to everything that we
wanted. We presented to them a bright scheme for the future development
of their district, when we would build the roads and bridges which would