THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



245 



C. A., the Knights of Columbus, and 

 the Red Cross, the theaters, the visiting 

 musical, theatrical, and lecture enter- 

 tainments, all carry the impression of 

 which I have spoken. The men have to 

 work hard. They begin early in the 

 morning and they continue through. Of 

 course, they have hours of leisure, but 

 one of these cantonments is no idle place 



for any one. It is a manual training 

 school with long hours. 



On the whole, therefore, I came away 

 with a conviction that we had begun 

 right. The draft law will win the war 

 through American manhood, with its na- 

 tive courage, independence, and adapta- 

 bility, instructed and trained in modern 

 scientific warfare. 



VOYAGING ON THE VOLGA AMID WAR AND 



REVOLUTION 



War-time Sketches on Russia's Great Waterway 

 By William T. Ellis 



NO TRAVELER fully knows Rus- 

 sia who has not sailed down the 

 Volga River — "Little Mother 

 Volga," as the people affectionately call 

 it — the stream which unites the cold 

 North with the glistening sands of the 

 Caspian depression ; which flows through 

 Europe and ends in Asia; which runs 

 from furs to cotton, and which links the 

 Baltic with the Caspian. To journey 

 down the Volga amid the ferment of war 

 and revolution and economic upheaval is 

 to have as good an opportunity as can 

 anywhere be found for 1 studying the com- 

 position and mind of this bewildered and 

 bewildering nation. 



Naturally, there is no tourist travel in 

 Russia during the war, and an "Ameri- 

 canski" is a marked and favored man 

 aboard the comfortable Volga steamers. 

 Since it befell that duty called me from 

 Petrograd and Moscow to the Caucasus, 

 with an obligation to observe Russia by 

 the way, I followed the circuitous and 

 slower route, in the latter part of August, 

 1917, thus building up, little by little, day 

 after day, impressions of the people that 

 were clearer than those obtainable in the 

 two chief cities. 



This Volga journey is so different from 

 that across Siberia, which I have twice 

 made, that one seems in another world — 

 though both reveal imperial possibilities. 



These experiences spell in large letters 

 the potentiality of the Russia that is yet 

 to be. 



THE STORY OF THE VOLGA 



Largest of Europe's rivers, and rank- 

 ing high among the great streams of the 

 earth, the Volga follows a tortuous, lei- 

 surely course, through a watershed three 

 times as large as France, for 2,305 miles, 

 until it pours its waters, through a wide 

 delta of many mouths, into the briny 

 Caspian, the largest inland sea in the 

 world. Its rise is far up in the north, 

 not greatly distant from Petrograd, with 

 which it is connected by canals and the 

 River Neva, thus linking it to the Gulf of 

 Finland. 



A large motor-boat or a yacht could 

 doubtless sail from America to the Baltic 

 Sea, and so, through the Neva and con- 

 necting canals, down the Volga to the 

 Caspian Sea and the shores of Turkestan, 

 the Caucasus, and Persia. So far as I 

 know, no adventurer has yet essayed this 

 romantic trip, so rich in historical asso- 

 ciations and in human interest. 



The story of the Volga is the story of 

 Russia. Slav, Tatar, Mongol, and Ger- 

 man all have left their impress upon its 

 banks, not to mention the score of minor 

 nationalities and tribes who still fill the 

 eye of the traveling American. Khan 



