Our credentials for the journey consisted of our passports, some university papers, and an open letter which I had received in St. Petersburg from Prince Chilkoff, the Minister of Ways and Communication. It was addressed to the director of the Siberian Railway, but I kept it by me for the sake of identification, and it helped me through many a predicament, although the officials to whom it was presented could never get it through their heads how I, an Amerikanski tramp, could be in the possession of such an almighty document. There were times, I fear, when they were tempted to arrest me as an impostor, but they never did--a good fortune which I can only explain on account of the singularity of the situation. The Russian "system" was evidently not prepared for so weird a creature, and I was allowed to pass as an anomaly. With the Moscow student I tramped for three days in the Vitebsk government, between the towns of Polotsk and Dünaburg, as dreary a stretch of country as is to be found anywhere in our West. It was warm August weather, and the sun came down on us in all its Russian fierceness. There were times when I simply had to get under a tree to keep from sun-stroke. At night we slept out of doors, or in haystacks and barns. The peasants always offered us the hospitality of their cabins, as they do to all tramps, but we could not bring ourselves to put up with the vermin we should have found there. In winter, on the other hand, the Gorioun is glad enough to curl up over their stoves, and I suppose that we also should have been, had the weather been cold. As it was, most of the vagabonds we met slept outside, as we did, and we always had plenty of company. On this trip we met two hundred, traveling in bands and families. They invariably wanted to know where I came from, which is the first question they ask, after the greeting, "Strassvuitye," and I told them the truth on each occasion. "America--America," they would say in their simple way. "What government is that in?" meaning what Russian province. I could not make them understand that it was not in Russia at all, which to them is the entire world, but they called me "the far-away brother," and I was probably considered a new species in their class. I never had the feeling that they accepted me as one of their own,--it would have been strange if they had,--but they, at any rate, dubbed me "brother," and this was as much as I could ask. They always wanted to share their simple fare with me, and I soon saw that there was but little danger in associating with them. II