The “Controller” of the train, an official in plain clothes, whose exact duties I was not able to determine, except that he was able to turn the second-class passenger out of our carriage, spent a day and a night with us. He and the engineer talked without ceasing of the meetings of the Zemstva all over the country; of the discontent of the public servants and of the imminence of a strike. They told me there would be a big railway strike, but I did not pay much attention to this, nor did I in the least realise the importance of what they were discussing. In one of the second-class carriages I made friends with two young officers who were going out to the war as volunteers, and two ladies, one the wife of an officer already out there, and the other a hospital nurse. With them also was the son of the officer’s wife, a student from Odessa, who told me many interesting things. He described to me in great detail the mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet, and he prophesied, if not a revolution, at least a great change in Russia in the immediate future. One of the carriages of the train was barred, and in it sat a political prisoner, a schoolmaster from Irkutsk. Some of my friends went to speak to him, but they came back in melancholy and disappointment, since they said this prisoner was hissing hatred and rage through the bars in an undignified and painful manner. Soon after we left Baikal a young man joined us who said he was employed in a firm at Chita. He had brought with him some flowers from Irkutsk. These he carried in a large basket full of wet sand. They were a kind of pathetic stock but not “in fragrant blow”; poor, feeble, starved and rather dirty flowers they were. But in Transbaikalia flowers were rare, and he had paid 18 roubles, he said (£1 8s.), for this nosegay, and he was bringing them to Chita as a gift to the girl to whom he was engaged to be married. He looked after these flowers with the utmost care; the basket was put in my berth and, as it was full of water, a constant stream trickled down from it and made a small pond on the floor of the carriage. _August 20th. Later._