"The story of the refugees is a very sad one; I will tell it just as it was told me. Between the time the harvest failed and the time the authorities commenced to aid the family, they had been obliged to sell everything they possessed to get food, and to pull down the outbuildings for firing purposes. The wife had been ill since autumn, and to keep the place warm they had been obliged to burn first the table, then the benches, then the old clothes, and last of all, to pull the straw from the roof and burn it. "Yesterday they had nothing. No food, no firing, and the wind drove the snow through the unthatched house. To have stayed was certain death, so they wandered out into the night and were taken into the house where I saw them on condition that they consented to the four walls of their hut being {133} pulled down and used to heat the hovel in which they had taken refuge. They brought no food with them, and the family of four persons which has taken them in had just five pounds of bread to last till the end of February. "In the hut occupied by Timothy Metchariakof I was shown some _lebeda_ flour which the peasants often mix with rye or maize flour thinking that it gives nourishment to the bread. The fact that there are quantities of _lebeda_ this winter is another sign of famine. Whenever the crops fail the weed from which the grains of _lebeda_ are thrashed is found in abundance. "In spite of what the peasants say about the satisfying properties of these seeds, the doctors consider the flour made from them most injurious to the health. All sorts of stomach complaints can be traced to the consumption of bread of which it is an ingredient. "The bread was very black everywhere, but as long as this blackness resulted from the use of rye flour it was not unhealthy, and the bread although rather bitter was not uneatable. In many houses, however, the people had mixed anything that came to hand with the flour served out to them, and the bread consequently suffered. "I tasted some this morning in which cinders or grit was undoubtedly one of the ingredients. It is also generally very badly baked, and if the authorities can improve on the official bakers I have seen, there should certainly be a public bakery in each village, as many of the sufferers have not sufficient fire in their stoves properly to cook anything. {134} Disease will go on increasing even more rapidly than famine if this unhealthy food is eaten by the peasants. "I visited a great many of the families in this village so as to be satisfied that I was not basing my judgment of the distress on exceptional cases. The misery I found was very widespread, and actual starvation is only avoided by the aid of the Zemstvo and M. Novikoff's committee. If these aids were stopped for a week, nine-tenths of the village would be starving.