ALTAI 135 



defiant nTanner and abusive language. He had a 

 number of friends ahiong the students and spent 

 rriuch of his time with them, so that when, on the 

 occasion of the disturbances, he was seen in company 

 with the ringleaders, one of the officials ordered 

 him to go home. One morning, some time lafter- 

 wards, the American was sitting in the hotel near 

 soffie of this man's student friends, when he came 

 in and asked them to lend him the money with which 

 to get out of the country as the police had taken 

 his passport. My American friend told me that he 

 looked very crestfallen and despondent. The next 

 that was heard of him was that the police had taken 

 him" away in irons, and he is now under police super- 

 vision in some Siberian village, probably the one in 

 which he was born. This, my friend told me, was 

 only one of many cases he had witnessed, and was 

 typical of the manner in which the Government deals 

 with agitators. This man had filled the heads of 

 the students with insane ideas of self-government 

 and brought serious trouble upon them and those 

 related to them\ My friend referred to the removal 

 of Rabinovich as a good riddance. " He was a 

 fanatic," he said, " or, as we say in America, a 

 ' nutty pole ' — one of the same type of tnen as the 

 madman who shot M'Kinley." 



In another case I was told that the governor had 

 been assaulted and his life threatened. 



It was, perhaps, a mistake on the part of the 

 Minister of the Interior to take so much notice of 

 the riot, thereby giving the students an exaggerated 

 idea of their own importance. Probably he may 

 have been misled by incorrect versions of the dis- 

 turbances, similar to those which were circulated in 

 England at the time, and which stated that the mili- 

 tary had shot down the students. This is not the 

 only case of false reports respecting the terrible 



