As a matter of fact, if all of the appanage lands of Simbirsk government were distributed among the peasants of that district, the allotments would average only one eightieth of an acre per capita. Furthermore, a large part of the 480,000 acres--the aggregate amount of imperial lands within the government--are wooded, and consequently unavailable for immediate agricultural purposes. It may be explained that the appanage lands are lands set apart for the support of members of the imperial family. “How did you hear of this imperial proposition so soon?” I inquired, knowing that so remote a village could not yet have received newspapers. “It was read out in the church on Sunday,” they answered. “Then the priests must believe in it.” “That is why we don’t,” they went on. “The priests are ‘Black Hundred,’ and we believe no more in them.” “What do you believe in?” I asked. “We believe in a Duma for the people; a Duma without ministers who work against our interests.” Simbirsk was another famine district. Even for an agricultural district in Russia it was terribly poor. Twenty-four per cent. of the population had no horses at all, and forty per cent. had only one horse per household. This year the crop failure was the worst in two generations. It was estimated that $5,000,000 would be needed for food for the peasants alone, and many millions more for the starving cattle and horses, and for seeds for next year’s harvest. The peasants looked forward to the illimitable suffering of starvation through the long months of the Russian winter. Knowing full well the crying needs which shall soon beset them, and that without money the government will find it impossible to alleviate these needs, one peasant said to me, in the presence of a group: “You wonder, perhaps, why we take strangers into our houses this way and tell them everything, as we are talking to you?” “I have usually found the peasants frank and friendly,” I replied. “At the same time I should be glad to know why you are so free with me.” “Because,” said the speaker, “you come from another country, and it is in other countries that the Russian government borrows money. We think that if the people of other countries only understood how hard our position is, they would not help the government to put us down.”