The Atlantic Monthly 1928. January-June [antikvár]

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLYJANUARY, 1928 BY SLEDGE TO THE MIDDLE AGESBY ELEANOR LATTIMORENova Sibersk, Siberia February 1, 1927Dearest Family, You know I always did maintain, against the popular assumption and your grave doubts, that a woman could travel alone more easily than a man. A man is expected to look after himself and do things for himself, and besides he is often darkly suspected of being a spy or some sort of subterranean agent, and is in consequence cross-questioned and harried, examined and watched, until he begins to wonder himself if he has any right to be there. Whereas a woman alone, whether she wants it so or not, seems always to be an object of public concern and beneficence. In fact it seems probable that she could travel to any iniquitous city or barbarous country in the world and be convinced that it was full of kindly people. For everywhere there are some who take pleasure in good deeds and she is their involuntary target. To officials she can completely explain her 'profession' by the innocuous term of 'housewife,' and the 'purpose of her journey,' 'to join her husband.' These anyone can understand and warm to. Her existence is explained, her journey justified.And now I feel as if this journey of mine were going to prove or disprove my theory forever, for I am sure that VOL. 11,1 NO. 1nothing could be much more difficult for a woman to do alone than to set out across the snow wastes of Siberia in the dead of winter toward a vague spot in Central Asia with the ridiculous name of Chuguchak,Do you remember how, less than three years ago, when Dorothy and I crossed Siberia on a comfortable modern express train, it seemed an adventuresome and daring journey fraught with unknown dangers? How ridiculously simple that seems now compared with what I am about to do! We would walk up and down the platform at stations like the one where I am now and feel delicious thrills at being in Siberia, and yet we felt so "protected, knowing that we should jump back on to the train again and should n't have to leave it until we were safe in China. I should no more have thought of stopping in a town like this than I should of letting go Mother's hand and venturing across the nursery before I had learned to walk. Yet this morning I watched the Trans-Siberian express disappear into the snowy distance with a feeling of exaltation that now I was really in Siberia with a journey ahead of me into a region few foreigners have traveled.I have been in Siberia, as a matter of fact, for four days now, but always