"See how I live! They're taking my last sheep, and I myself and these brats are barely alive!" She points up at the bunks and the oven-top, where her children are. "Come down!... Now then, don't be frightened!... There now, how's one to keep oneself and them naked brats?" The brats, almost literally naked, with nothing on but tattered shirts--not even any trousers--climb down from the oven and surround their mother. The same day I go to the District Office, to make inquiries about this way of exacting taxation, which is new to me. The District Elder is not in. He will be back soon. In the Office several persons are standing behind the grating, also waiting to see him. I ask them who they are, and what they have come about. Two of them have come to get passports, in order to be able to go out to work at a distance. They have brought money to pay for the passports. Another has come to get a copy of the District Court's decision rejecting his petition that the homestead--where he has lived and worked for twenty-three years, and which has belonged to his uncle, who adopted him,--now that his uncle and aunt are dead, should not be taken from him by his uncle's granddaughter. She, being the direct heiress, and taking advantage of the law of the 9th November, is selling the freehold of the land and homestead on which the petitioner lived. His petition has been rejected, but he cannot believe that this is the law, and wants to appeal to some higher Court--though he does not know what Court. I explain that there is such a law, and this provokes disapproval, amounting to perplexity and incredulity, among all those who are present. Hardly have I finished talking with this man, when a tall peasant with a stern, severe face asks me for an explanation of his affairs. The business he has come about is this: he and his fellow villagers have, from time immemorial, been getting iron ore from their land; and now a decree has been published prohibiting this. "Not dig on one's own land? What laws are these? We only live by digging the iron! We have been trying for more than a month, and can't get anything settled. We don't know what to think of it; they'll ruin us completely, and that will be the end of the matter!" I can say nothing comforting to this man, and turn to the Elder--who has just come back--to inquire about the vigorous measures which are being taken to exact payment of arrears of taxation in our village. I ask under what clauses of the Act the taxes are being levied. The Elder tells me that there are seven different kinds of rates and taxes, the arrears of all of which are now being collected from the peasants: (1) the Imperial Taxes, (2) the Local Government Taxes, (3) the Insurance Taxes, (4) the arrears of Former Grain Reserve Funds, (5) New Grain Reserve Funds in lieu of contributions in kind, (6) Communal and District Taxes, and (7) Village Taxes.