Nearly all fugitives from the South of Russia had left for America by way of the Western European centers.

The movement proceeded with elemental force, and entirely unorganized, with the result that in the autumn of that year some ten thousand destitute Jewish wanderers found themselves huddled together at the first halting-place, the city of Brody, which is situated on the Russo-Austrian frontier.

They had been attracted hither by the rumor that the agents of the French _Alliance Israelite Universette_ would supply them with the necessary means for continuing their journey across the Atlantic.

The central committee of the _Alliance_, caught unprepared for such a huge emigration, was at its wit's end.

It sent out appeals, warning the Jews against wholesale emigration to America by way of Brody, but it was powerless to stem the tide.