FUR FACTS 303 



train jumped the track, rolled to the bottom of an embankment and 

 was utterly wrecked. How many people were killed I do not know, 

 but I saw the wrecked cars as I passed the site a few days later. 



One More Train 



"And now we began to hear of another train, which was also west 

 of us and moving east. The station-master had high hopes of this 

 train, for the engineer lived in Harbin and would naturally want to 

 visit his family; but he had grave doubts as to whether he would be 

 willing to continue his journey east. In time this train came. It 

 carried people on it who had been there for ten or twelve days, 

 crawling at a snail's pace over Siberia in an attempt to reach the 

 coast. Among the number there was a general officer of the coura- 

 geous little army of Czecho-Slovaks, which made history in Siberia 

 for two years. I made friends with an American lieutenant who was 

 a friend of this Czecho-Slovak general and could speak a few words of 

 his language. The general sent a file of soldiers to the home of the 

 engineer, who was just enjoying a family reunion, to give him a choice 

 between continuing his journey toward the coast and being stood up 

 against the wall of his own house and shot. He decided to continue. 

 A 16-Year-Old Engineer 



"We started east and ran in a desultory way until the engineer, 

 who was not well, broke down entirely. A sixteen-year-old boy was 

 found who had had a little experience as a fireman. 'You will never 

 get there,' said a chance sympathizer. 'That boy doesn't know a 

 thing about an engine and he will either blow you up or throw you off 

 the track. We had few dull moments after he took the engine. 

 Sometimes we ran 40 miles an hour for a few hundred yards and then 

 the air, which he did not understand and was evidently experimenting 

 with, would go on and the coaches would crash together in an emer- 

 gency stop. We reached a water tank at one point, only to find 

 that it had been destroyed, and we crept on in danger of coming to 

 an utter standstill on account of lack of water. Now we began to 

 hear of the work of Chinese bandits. We did not pay very much 

 attention to these stories until we came on the smoking ruins of a 

 considerable town. The bandits had given the inhabitants the 

 choice of paying a million rubles or having their town burned down. 

 They were unable to raise the money and the town was burned and 

 100 people killed about six hours before we reached it. 



"8. R. 0" 



"Among the casualties was an American Y. M. C. A. man, who 

 had been shot in the mouth. I put him in my bunk and for the rest 



