furs, and clothing and food, as
well as the munitions and military equipment. What they did not carry by
rail to Vologda they took by river to Kotlas. We have seen how they have
been pursued and battled on the Onega, on the Railroad, on the Vaga, on
the Dvina. Now we turn to the short narrative of their activities on the
Pinega River. As the Reds at last learned that the expedition was too
small to really overpower them and had returned to dispute the Allies on
the other rivers, so, far up the Pinega Valley, they began gathering
forces. The people of the lower Pinega Valley appealed to the Archangel
government and the Allied military command for protection and for
assistance in pursuing the Reds to recover the stores of flour that had
been taken from the co-operative store associations at various points
along the river. These co-operatives had bought flour from the American
Red Cross. Accordingly on October 20th Captain Conway with "G" Company
set off on a fast steamer and barge for Pinega, arriving after three
days and two nights with a force of two platoons, the other two having
been left behind on detached service, guarding the ships in the harbor
of Bakaritza. Here the American officer was to command the area,
organize its defense and cooperate with the Russian civil authorities in
raising local volunteers for the defense of the city of Pinega, which,
situated at the apex of a great inverted "V" in the river, appeared to
be the key point to the military and political situation.

Pinega was a fine city of three thousand inhabitants with six or seven
thousand in the nearby villages that thickly dot the banks of this broad
expansion of the old fur-trading and lumber river port. Its people were
progressive and fairly well educated. The city had been endowed by its
millionaire old trader with a fine technical high school. It had a large
cathedral, of course. Not far from it two hours ride by horseback, an
object of interest to the doughboy, was the three hundred-year-old
monastery, white walls with domes and spires, perched upon the grey
bluffs, in the hazy distance looking over the broad Pinega Valley and
Soyla Lake, where the monks carried on their fishing. In Pinega was a
fine community hall, a good hospital and the government buildings of the
area.

Its people had held a great celebration when they renounced allegiance
to the Czar, but they had very sensibly retained some of his old trained
local representatives to