"I departed from Petersburg for the purpose of visiting the Jewish colonies in the south. The purpose of my journey was entirely clear to me. I wanted to acquire a visual perception of those places which had only been depicted in my imagination. I had read of them for a long time in books and newspapers and I wanted to see Jewish countryside, Jewish fields, to behold a Jewish economy, Jewish farmers and Jewish peasant children.

"My plan was to travel to become acquainted firstly with the Yekaterinoslav colonies. From a small book and article, I already knew from memory the names of the colonies. But anything about them, such as where they were adjacent to or whether one could reach them by rail, I didn't know exactly. I looked through the guidebooks by Landsert and Frum to no avail. The Jewish colonies appear to be unacknowledged by geography and the guidebook literature ignores them.

"I resolved that the best thing was to travel straight to the Government capital Yekaterinoslav. There lived the local representative for the agricultural fund. Firstly the town itself was far from attractive. Secondly to get information about the route to the colonies was very difficult. But the local representative of the agricultural fund was sympathetic, wise and devoted to the idea of colonization. But he had never visited the colonies. Likewise various writers with pretentious titles had never actually seen the colonies."