Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Spring Scenes in Samara
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not infrequently sent to Siberia for political or ecclesiastical
reasons.
Birukoff had brought bandages and antiseptics, and
occupied himself each day with washing and dressing the sores
of the mushiks, and speaking words of cheer to them.
The second night, also, I could not sleep a wink; it was not
merely the heat and the stifling, poisonous air, but there were
a number of suspicious individuals about, and thieving is
of very common occurrence on the cars. The third night
tired nature would be denied no longer, and I slept soundly.
At five a.m. the Count woke me to see the Volga bridge, and an
hour later we were in the city of Samara, whose elevated
position on the east bank of the Volga, and public buildings
and churches, give it a striking appearance.
We stopped here a day to transact some business. The place
was crowded with starving mushiks, suffering from spotted
typhus, black small-pox, and scurvy, begging for bread by day
and sleeping in hovels and cellars at night. Very many of the
rich had fled to Paris or Nice. Private relief-work was chiefly
carried on by foreigners. Two Germans, Herr Koenitser
and Herr Wakano, fed respectively fifty and a hundred people
daily. An Englishman, Mr. Besant, with means brought from
Great Britain, gave each day two meals to four hundred of the
sufferers. The Russian helpers were mainly sectarians; a
Molokhan lady, a widow, worked assiduously and quietly,
according to her means, among the poor. It was the same in
the province. The English Friends, supported Prince Dolgorukoff’s
medical expedition to Eastern Samara, and dispensed
much help through their agents. The young Count Tolstoi’s
funds, by which he carried on his extensive work, came mostly
from foreign countries, chiefly England and America.
At one a.m. we were at the railway station, but the train was
not. All was quiet as death. In the second-class waiting-room
we found a number of men, women, and children, covering about
a quarter of an acre of flooring, making night musical by
snores in various keys, surrounded by immense piles of luggage.
Lyeff Tolstoi came in with the tickets, after sending an express
telegram to the place to order horses, and told us the train was
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