MY INTERPRETER RETURNS. 227 



ground partaking of their coarse fare, stoically happy 

 under conditions that I, who had roughed it in India, 

 Africa, Afghanistan, and China, would have regarded 

 as the height of indiscretion, the homely boast of the 

 Russians, that, " what is death to the foreigner is life 

 to a Russian," came home to me in its full signifi- 

 cance. 



Here, too, was fanaticism, that other quality which 

 the military authorities of Russia turn to good account 

 on the field of battle. The Russian soldier always 

 fights in a holy as well as a national cause, and, no less 

 than the Turk, believes that death on the field of bat- 

 tle is a passport to paradise. And these, their wives, 

 mothers, and sisters, were tramping a hundred versts 

 through the heat and dust, in preference to riding by 

 rail or boat, because they believed there was virtue in 

 undergoing toil to get the holy water. 



The population of Nicopol, or the business part of 

 it, seemed to consist largely of Jews and Germans. 

 The hotel was kept by a German family, and was 

 a tremendous improvement on the native-managed 

 caravanserai. " English spraken ? ' said the worthy 

 and fairly energetic hostess. " Ah, beefsteak ! " And 

 fifteen minutes later I was doing ample justice to a 

 smoking steak and a bottle of lager beer. 



My road from Nicopol was down the eastern bank 

 of the Dneiper, whose waters came into view nearby, to 

 the left, many times a day. The people of the little 

 villages I passed through were inordinately suspicious. 

 Each contained a sort of policeman in ordinary peas- 

 ant garb, and whose only badge of authority seemed 

 to be a disk of tin as large as a blacking-box, stamped 



