"On the Volga. Our boat travels on, day after day, through an unknown and mysterious land." This typed carbon is paginated 5-7. No number is typed on it; the number is taken from other transcriptions.

This was number 8 in a sequence of eight Russia letters. In the Autobiography, however, it becomes number 4 as the letters that Colette wrote are not published there. This letter was not written from the Volga or on the date written on the letter. It was written after his return from Russia at the end of June.

The original letter is in the letters to Ottoline Morrell (document .001565, record 18772). It somehow ended up in her possession. In the Autobiography Russell writes that this and the other letters were "antedated letters to Colette", i.e. Constance Malleson.

There are four other transcriptions of the letter: document .200651, record 99939 (ribbon copy); document .052461, record 99939 (carbon of .200651); document .200652, record 19657 (carbon copy of the present document); Autobiography chapter "Russia", document .007050f2, pp. 151-2, record 116403.

There is a handwritten version of the letter with the tense changed in The Problem of China at the end of Chapter 1 (ms., Rec. Acq. 1027, box 7, pp. 13-16; record 116404).