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106 Spring Scenes in Samara. 131
131
to look for work, but tliere were not many who could afford to
hire labour.
My stay with Count Lyeff drew to a close. It had been
decided that when the Volga traffic was open, I should go to
Southern Samara and Saratoff to arrange for the opening of
free eating-rooms for the sick and convalescent.
The evening before my departure I paid a number of farewell
visits to friends in Patrovka. As I returned, I saw a curious
piece of evidence of the straits to which the peasants were
reduced. A poor musliik, with a shaggy little horse, was
driving a plough over the land made, altogether of ivood. I
found that many peasants had pawned all their implements to
get money to pay their taxes, or to buy food.
There was still one visit to pay. I was up at sunrise next
morning, and went to the cemetery to have a last look at the
graves of those who had died in the famine. All was quiet in
the village, except for several cocks that were scratching on a
dunghill before an izba, and crowing their welcome to the day.
It seemed as if I should be able to make my little pilgrimage
to the graves of my friends unobserved, Hit on reaching the
burial-ground I saw a number of peasants digging graves for
their dead at that early hour. I took a photograph of them,
and of the fresh graves that told of Death’s winter-harvest in
the famine-stricken village.
It was May when I left, yet the young Count was still
feeding twenty thousand people a day, and helping the needy
in countless other ways beside. Almost all that summer he
worked on, distributing the food that came through friends
outside. Later on, twelve additional car-loads of American
flour were sent him by the Anglo-American Committee in St.
Petersburg. The terrible strain of the hard work and the care
involved in directing this vast and difficult relief in Samara
entirely broke down his health, which, I am sorry to have to
state, has not as yet been restored in this summer of 1895.
Truly he is one of those who have been willing, like their
Master, to lay down his life in self-denying toil and sacrifice
for the sake of others who can never repay him.
I got permission to accompany a physician, sent out by the
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