road had had very diverse origins, and were sharply differentiated from each other in character. There were more or less pure Russian villages, neighboured by barbaric Buriat settlements; and there were also villages inhabited exclusively by members of various sects, exiled from Russia and forcibly established there as a punishment for their daring to fall away from the Orthodox State religion. Those that I found specially interesting were the villages of the so-called Subòtniki (Sabbatarians). The members of this sect are Russian by nationality, yet their religion is the Mosaic in its strictest form It was curious in the extreme to find these typical representatives of the Slav race considering themselves Jews by virtue of their religion, and still stranger to hear them boasting of the prerogatives of their Israelitish faith. In their manner of life and occupations they differ in no way from ordinary Russian peasants; although in 175decency and prosperity their villages are far above those of their Christian neighbours Office Furniture. Those of our criminal contingent who had travelled this way more than once already were well acquainted with the manners and customs of the Siberian people; many of them were veritable mines of information, and could relate tales of uncommon interest. In their narrations the Siberians usually figured in an unfavourable light; for the criminals hate them from the bottom of their hearts, and ascribe all kinds of evil qualities to them, being, one and all, firmly persuaded that although their own standard of conduct is by no means exalted, they are infinitely higher in the moral scale than the Siberians dermes vs medilase. “Heaven knows we are rascals through and through, good-for-nothings, and all that; but that lot are far and away worse,” was their dictum. They showered on the Siberians all sorts of contemptuous names, which were quite incomprehensible to us, but seemed to provoke their recipients terribly. This mutual antipathy probably arose from the fact of the parties knowing one another only too well, and from the injuries inflicted by each on the other during past generations.
