We drove back to the ship impressed with the pluck and cleverness of those heroic people making bricks without straw. A great windstorm caught us. The dust whirled about our heads. The rain began to fall. I hid behind a bank of flowers, which had been given us, to avoid seeing the half-eaten corpse of a dead dromedary as well as to shelter from the rain. We reached the steamship. The whistle hooted, and off we went to the next scene.
Saratov is the finest city we saw on the Volga. It is a great deal cleaner than most, and compares in this very favourably with Tsaritzin. But Tzaritzin has experienced more of the depredations and disorders of the Koltchak bands, so must be excused.
It was at Saratov we discovered the origin of that silly story of the nationalisation of women. Whoever knows the Russian woman would wonder if she had changed to allow herself to be nationalised. I could not imagine those huge women fish-curers and net-makers at Astrakhan tolerating for one second of time any such gross interference with their personal liberty; nor the gentle Kalmuk women, nor the self-respecting peasant wives. There is not one atom of truth in the story, and those who repeat it cover themselves with discredit. The story had its origin in Saratov, where a tiny anarchist sect had for one of
