dy forming on the surface of the Baikal. Although the raft
managed to pass easily over the lake, it might not be so easy between
the banks of the Angara, should pieces of ice be found to block up its
course.

At eight in the evening the moorings were cast off, and the raft drifted
in the current along the shore. It was steered by means of long poles,
under the management of several muscular moujiks. An old Baikal boatman
took command of the raft. He was a man of sixty-five, browned by the
sun, and lake breezes. A thick white beard flowed over his chest; a
fur cap covered his head; his aspect was grave and austere. His large
great-coat, fastened in at the waist, reached down to his heels. This
taciturn old fellow was seated in the stern, and issued his commands by
gestures. Besides, the chief work consisted in keeping the raft in the
current, which ran along the shore, without drifting out into the open.

It has been already said that Russians of all conditions had found a
place on the raft. Indeed, to the poor moujiks, the women, old men, and
children, were joined two or three pilgrims, surprised on their journey
by the invasion; a few monks, and a priest. The pilgrims carried a
staff, a gourd hung at the belt, and they chanted psalms in a plaintive
voice: one came from the Ukraine, another from the Yellow sea, and
a third from the Finland provinces. This last, who was an aged man,
carried at his waist a little padlocked collecting-box, as if it had
been hung at a church door. Of all that he collected during his long and
fatiguing pilgrimage, nothing was for himself; he did not even possess
the key of the box, which would only be opened on his return.

The monks came from the North of the Empire. Three months before they
had left the town of Archangel. They had visited the sacred islands near
the coast of Carelia, the convent of Solovetsk, the convent of Troitsa,
those of Saint Antony and Saint Theodosia, at Kiev, that of Kazan, as
well as the church of the Old Believers, and they were now on their way
to Irkutsk, wearing the robe, the cowl, and the clothes of serge.

As to the papa, or priest, he was a plain village pastor, one of the six
hundred thousand popular pastors which the Russian Empire contains. He
was clothed as miserably as the moujiks, not being above them in social
position; in fact, laboring like a peasant on his plot of ground;
baptis-ing, marrying, burying. He had been able to protect his wife and
c