Says Flerofski: "Women who assist in floating barges down the rivers from the province of Vologda (in North-eastern Russia, three hundred to five hundred miles above Nijni-Novgorod) to Nijni-Novgorod receive two and a half roubles (about $2) for the journey. Both men and women work until they become exhausted, and return back to their villages on foot. Their master, the contractor, who is bound to support them until they return, hastens as much as possible their homeward tramp, in order to save expense, compelling them to walk eighty versts (fifty-five miles) a day along village roads and byways. They will sometimes have to wade for twenty miles through water and mud up to their knees.... The peasant is ready to carry any burden, to suffer anything, to impose any privations on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex, the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage. Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. His principal care is to place her where she can earn some money." In some of the industrial districts of Russia villages may still be found populated at certain seasons of the year exclusively by women and children. The women plough the land, sow, reap, work on the roads and pay the taxes. They fill the offices of _starosta_ (policeman) and tax-gatherer; in short, conduct the entire communal administration. On the shores of the White Sea women often drive the post-carts, whence that branch of the service has taken the name of _sarafannaya_ or "petticoat post." Where are the men who should be seen in these villages of Amazons--the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons of these hard-worked women? Drafted into the army or gone to seek work in the adjacent towns.