I and the luggage flew in all directions, and the horse ran away.

Everything retrieved, we drove into the city, across a great market place full of Russians and strange Orientals and stalls and carts of produce, past a wild-looking chap galloping in with a string of huge horses, the halter of each tied to the tail of the one in front, and to the post office, where I found Kosloff. He was cordial and sent me on home to his wife.

We drove up to a two-story unpainted log house and I banged on the front door to no effect. I went around to the back and a woman in a shawl pointed me up some steep stairs and through a door into a kitchen littered with dirty dishes, remnants of food, dogs, cats, and babies, where several women with rough red hands and faces were working. A merry roly-poly girl owned to being Mrs. Kosloff and took me into her little room, a typical tenementhouse room where she and her husband, two small children, the dog and the cat, all lived together in grubby squalor.

The Kosloffs insisted on my staying with them, which seemed impossible, as, except for sharing a kitchen with the other occupants of the tenement, they had only the one room, which was nearly half filled with my luggage. But I saw they were going to be really offended if I would not accept their hospitality, so here I am. Mr. Kosloff has given me his bed, two boards on horses, Chinese style, and he sleeps on the floor.

Mr. Kosloff came home at four and we had dinner-a piroque, which was a sort of fish pie, soup, and little birds. We sat on packing boxes around an oilcloth-covered table. There were n't enough dishes and everything was dirty, but it tasted wonderful, as it was my first real meal since leaving Manchouli a week ago. Mrs. Kosloff feeds

two men who live in the next room, as well as her own family.

It is easy to see that the Kosloffs have not always lived as they do now, and I liked their manner of being apologetic about and at the same time unashamed of their poverty. We have had great fun laughing over our pocket-dictionary conversations, and they have told me a little about themselves. At the time of the Revolution many of their friends and relatives fled from Russia and some took an active part in General Anenkoff's attacks against the Bolsheviki from across the Turkestan border. They themselves were undecided whether to attempt to flee to America or remain in Russia, but could not bear the idea of living in any other country and so stayed on, hoping for the gradual return of prosperity under Communist rule. The Communists, however, were suspicious of them because of their many connections with imperialists. For a while Mr. Kosloff was imprisoned and later had much difficulty obtaining work, and, while he has become a thoroughly loyal Communist, it is only very recently that he has been really trusted by his party.

They seem very confident that better times are coming soon, and suffer their poverty cheerfully for what they consider a great cause. The two handsome youths who board with them, now actors in a local company, also talked of Communism ardently and with the idealism of youth, and the little girl proudly showed me pictures of Lenin in her schoolbook.

February 4

I slept well on my board bed, and helped wash last night's greasy dishes in a saucer of water with no soap and dried them with a dirty rag. Then we had breakfast of the cold remains of the fish pie, tea, and bread and butter.

The room was cold, shivery cold, and

the baby spread his tea over most of the table and hit us all with his spoon. They feed him all the sugar he yells for. Neither the dog, the cat, nor the baby is house-broken.

After breakfast we made a gesture of cleaning up and Mrs. Kosloff took me to the Soviet House to register. It was bitter cold, but sunny. It all looked exactly as a Siberian town should look - houses of plaster or log lining wide snowy streets that lead to a greendomed church. On the way home we stopped in the market to buy fresh butter and honey and black bread. Everywhere I have been in Siberia food seems plentiful and very cheap, though other prices are high. It was there in the market place, with its frontier mixture of races and costumes and its camels and horses and ponies, that I realized that I was really at the gateway of Central Asia.

Mrs. Kosloff enterprisingly accosted every group of Orientals we met while we were out to ask if they had come from Chuguchak and how they came and what the road was like. They all reported that the road is bad and cold and that it takes from ten to twenty days to make the trip. We've followed several clues as to possible drivers, all in vain, and now I feel balked and discouraged and at a loss what to do next. I was told at the Soviet House that I must leave Semipalatinsk in a couple of days in order to cross the border before my visa expires.

But what really worries me is that I can't get in touch with Owen and so have no way of knowing if he has been able to get to Chuguchak himself. I expected to find letters or a telegram here, but none have come. There is a telegraph line from here to the Turkestan border, from which messages can be sent by courier to the Russian consul in Chuguchak to be delivered if

advisable. I sent two messages, but no answer has come. He had wanted to come here to meet me if he could get a Russian visa, but there has not been time for him to do that since he wirelessed me from Urumchi, and as my visa is expiring fast I can't wait on the chance that he will come. But it would be tragic to pass him on the way. It is all very confusing.

February 6

Suddenly I seem to be on my way. Instead of living in the Kosloffs' merry, grubby tenement I am sitting on the felt-covered floor of a mudwalled low-ceilinged Kazak hut, with scarcely enough light to write by at nine o'clock in the morning, for the hut is buried in snow.

But first I must tell you how I got here. Yesterday morning, still no telegram, and only one day left. My Russian friends had failed to find a sleigh for me, so I determined to look for one myself. I went first to the Chinese consulate, thinking that they must have made arrangements there for Chinese travelers passing through and might be able to help me. The consul was cordial, and I was so stirred to find someone with whom I could talk that my Chinese has never been so fluent.

He told me that a courier from the consulate was starting out that very afternoon, traveling down with some cargo, and that I could go with him if I wished. I shied a little when I heard 'cargo,' knowing how slowly freight usually travels, but he assured me that we should n't be more than ten days on the road. He spoke of it as a wonderful opportunity, and yet when it came I was almost afraid to take it because I had n't heard from Owen. I explained my fears to him and he reassured me again, saying that even if he had started from Chuguchak I could n't miss him, as there was only one road

and everyone traveling it stopped at the same inns at night. So he called the courier, a merry Chinese youth, and it was all arranged on the spot that a sleigh would call for me at three that afternoon.

It was then twelve. Mrs. Kosloff dumped the baby with a neighbor and went out to help me buy food for the trip and big felt boots. Everyone in Siberia wears felt boots to the knees, huge and shapeless and awkward to walk in, but the only things to keep feet warm in this bitter climate, I tried on a dozen pairs in as many little stalls in the market before I found some that were in the least comfortable.

The sleigh was waiting when we got home, and Mr. Kosloff with a bottle of vodka, which he said I must drink when I got cold but must not give to the drivers. I packed and got into my furlined leather suit in a great rush and swallowed some dinner and kissed all the Kosloffs. They had been so generous and hospitable that I wished I Icould have done more for them than leave some clothes behind that I said I had n't room for.

We drove to the inn from which we were to start and found fourteen sledges in the yard all loaded with crates of matches. It seemed that the courier and I were supposed to perch on top of the matches. The consul had told me that the courier was taking two sleighs and that I should have one all to myself, but the courier assured me that fourteen sledges were better than two because of bandits, and he had the drivers arrange one of them more comfortably for me.

The sledges are crude triangular little rafts made of a rough network of small logs and dragged along on very low runners. The usual passenger sleighs have covers over them, something like a Peking cart, and are pulled by two horses, but these were

quite uncovered, and as they were heavily loaded and had only one horse apiece my heart sank to think how slowly they would travel.

The Russian drivers, who look like pirates but seem to be good-hearted enough, fixed a little nest for me, put straw on the logs and my bed roll on top of that, and matches and my luggage all around the edge. There is n't room to stretch out my legs, so I get cramped, but it is better than being exposed to the weather.

They were hours getting ready to start, with a great bustle of roping boxes and feeding horses and mending harness. The sun had set and I thought they were really ready at last when everyone yelled 'Chai pit!' ('Drink tea!") and we all piled into the low, dark little inn. It was full of men sitting around long rough tables, and fitted exactly my picture of what a den of bandits ought to look like. The men were swarthy and unshaven and were dressed in rough, dirty sheepskin clothes with gay sashes around their waists.

A red-bearded chap at the head of one table, evidently the innkeeper, was settling accounts with a crowd of men, which consisted in much shouting and pounding of the table till I thought there'd be a riot. At another table there was a huge samovar and men were drinking tea out of wooden bowls and munching hunks of black bread. They called to me to sit down with them and gave me a bowl of tea and sugar for it. They all seem to know the Chinese courier, and call him 'Kitaiski,' which means 'Chinese.'

We were off at last, about seven. The drivers tucked me into my sleeping bag as far as I could get with my big boots and fur suit and big fur coat on top of that, and covered me over with fur and canvas till I thought I could never get cold, though the town

thermometer registered forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit when we left.

I could n't see out of my nest at all, and we went crunching along on the snow with bells jingling for what seemed like days and nights before we stopped. And when we did I was so numb that I could scarcely struggle out from under cover. When I got my head out the world seemed very weird indeed—nothing but wide stretches of snow in every direction. Misty flurries of snow were falling and there was no light but the light from the snow. The air felt biting cold on my face. In the dim white light I could see that the drivers were unhitching the horses, which seemed mysterious, as there was no sign of any shelter.

Then I saw that they were leading them into a black hole in a snowdrift. Kitaiski went in, too, and I tumbled out of my sledge and followed him. He lit matches so I could see a little. We were in a great low square cave full of horses, on the far side of which was a mud wall and a little door in the wall about three feet high. It all seemed like the weirdest kind of an Arabian Night out of a completely white and empty world into that black cave of horses, the flare of a match lighting it a little way; the brown side of a great horse, heads of others; then darkness. and stumbling till the next flare.

Then the little door pulled open and we climbed into another wide low room, smoke-filled, and lit with candlelight and firelight. Near the door a scrawny woman in a loose dirty white cotton garment and a once white kerchief was stuffing great branches of twigs into a crackling fire in a low mud fireplace. Behind her, in the centre of the room, was a round table about a foot high with a samovar beside it and pirate drivers sitting around it drinking tea. In dark corners sleepy heads were appearing from under bed covers and

brown arms and legs struggling into white clothes.

Kitaiski led me into an inner room, where the floor was covered with felts and a dozen figures were sleeping. I looked at my watch and it was two o'clock. Kitaiski helped me bring in my bed roll and I was soon asleep on the floor.

I was half conscious of a good deal of talking and shouting and opening and closing of doors all night, but the first time I really wakened daylight was beginning to creep in through the one tiny window, where a shaft was dug from the surface of the snow. An old woman crawled out from under covers on a wooden bed against the wall. I watched her dress and wash in a basin of water and go over to the little window, kneel, and bow her head to the ground, muttering prayers all the while, all this in the half dawn. Then children began to cry and other women appeared and dressed them. They brought out a low round table and a samovar and invited Kitaiski and me to have tea with the family.

I fished a loaf of bread out of the sack in my sledge to eat with my tea, and it was frozen as hard as a lump of ice. The old woman put it on the top of the samovar to thaw.

Kitaiski tells me these people are Kazaks, a tribe of Kirghiz. The Russians call them all Kirghiz, but the true Kirghiz live mostly in the Pamirs. They are Mohammedans, though not very strict about it. He can talk their queer guttural language. The women wear white kerchiefs with a square of red embroidery under the chin and loose calico clothes, full long gowns and tight short-skirted jackets, and silver rings, bracelets, and earrings.

The only pieces of furniture in the room are two wooden beds, curved up at the ends like a Chinese sacrifice table, but lower and wider. They are