148 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



getting the railway employees to exchange a receipt 

 for our money, and to take the responsibility of for- 

 warding the valise. There were no suspicions here, 

 however, to overcome — nothing but red tape ; skeins of 

 that precious claptrap commodity having to be un- 

 raveled at eight different desks and departments ere a 

 common traveler's valise could be sent away. 



At the police station we obtained, for rubles, a 

 genuine Russian responsibility-shirking document for 

 my companion ; a sort of a " house-that-Jack-built " 

 paper, stating that he had come there and said he had 

 lost his passport, which he said he had obtained in 

 Moscow, in which city he had said he resided, and in 

 which city he had said he had received his education ; 

 together with a whole string of other " saids," but 

 which as a passport was of no account whatever. 



South of Kursk we began to find a decided and 

 exceedingly welcome improvement in the interiors of 

 the people's houses. Here and there we were, at first, 

 astonished to find houses that were clean and sweet 

 within, and before reaching Kharkoff we were among 

 a people who whitewash their interiors every six 

 weeks, an improvement indeed upon the moujiks of 

 the northern forests. We were getting into the famous 

 "black earth region," and a change, too, came over the 

 life to be seen in the fields. Men were harrowing 

 newly plowed fields with as many as four harrows 

 strung one behind another ; and on the road we met 

 single teamsters in charge of as many as ten telegas. 



Wheat, rye, and oat harvest was in progress, and 

 the fields were alive with moujiks and their wives and 

 children, all taking a hand. As a general thing, the 



