ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 309 



German or a sectarian colony as far as you could see it, 

 on account of the vast difference between its surround- 

 ings and those of an Orthodox moujik village. 



Only a few miles across the steppe, on the same soil 

 and with no advantages or favors from nature, you 

 reach a village that seems to belong to another country 

 or to an age centuries ahead of the one you have just 

 left. The houses are built with some pretext to 

 architectural beauty ; they are painted white and 

 roofed with red tiles. The windows, which in the 

 Orthodox villages were broken, stuffed with rags, or 

 covered with dirt, are as clean as in an American 

 house. Each house stands in a flower-garden, neatly 

 fenced, and avenues of trees are along the streets. 

 Here, too, if it is harvest time, you will find the peas- 

 ants owning a threshing-machine and other modern ap- 

 pliances for saving time and labor. Hitherto, though 

 you have ridden on horseback all the way from Mos- 

 cow, you have seen nothing but flails and rude stone 

 rollers for threshing, and the grain has been winnowed 

 by tossing it in the air on windy days. 



The secret of this tremendous transformation is that 

 you have reached the colonies of the sectarians, who 

 have pulled their necks out of the yoke of the monopo- 

 listic church. When I first reached one of these clean 

 and prosperous villages, after several weeks' experience 

 among the Orthodox, my eyes were gladdened as at 

 the sight of an oasis in the desert. 



I was alone, a stranger and a foreigner, unable to 

 speak the language beyond making known my wants. 

 My companion and interpreter had returned to Mos- 

 cow. As I expected, I was received with suspicion. 



