294 FROM GOKTCHAI TO LENKORAN. 



not have to drag; out a miserable existence at 



o 



Tchaillee much longer. The children were dirty, 

 listless skeletons, too lifeless even to quarrel or 

 play. The man seemed to do his work as driver in 

 the apathetic way in which a horse might work in a 

 mill, taking no interest in his task, and feeling no 

 desire to better his condition. The apathy of the 

 Russian moujik is the truly wonderful part of his 

 nature. Here was a man not more than thirty - 

 live, with half his days idle, witli his wife and 

 children dying before his eyes for the want of a 

 little comfort, which a week's work would have 

 given them, and yet he never seemed to dream of 

 mending the windows or roof, of draining the water 

 from the floor, or of doing anything to prevent the 

 stifling inroads of the smoke, any more than his 

 wife dreamt of cleaning or rendering comfortable 

 the inside of her dwelling. And yet these people 

 were Molochans, a religious sect, professing to lead 

 a pure life according to the light of their own rea- 

 son, disbelieving in fasting as practised by ortho- 

 dox Russians, and, as a rule, more sturdy, cleanly, 

 and useful than the average Russian moujik. The 

 Russian peasant settlers in the Caucasus struck me 

 everywhere as deteriorating rather than improving 

 with their change of country. F;ir into the 

 night my man and myself lay unable to sleep, tired 

 though \ve were, in this miserable den, passing the 



O ' 1 O 



time by knocking over with our kinjals as many as 



