306 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



Fanatics are even said to have entombed themselves in these catacombs, where 

 they wasted away far from the profane world. One of the tombs is that of the 

 monk Nestor, who lived in the cloister, and here doubtless composed portions of 

 the annals attributed to him. The Lavra is a place of pilgrimage, yearly visited 

 by about 300,000 Great and Little Russian devotees, especially on the feasts of the 

 Trinity and Assumption. During the night of August 15th, 1872, as many as 

 72,000 la)' stretched on the bare ground, and whenever an epidemic prevails in 

 any part of the empire it is soon propagated to this Mecca of the Orthodox 

 Greeks, where it often makes frightful ravages, and is thence disseminated 

 throughout the land. In years of distress the number of pilgrims increases, a 

 visit to the holy Lavra entitling them to beg for the bread which fails them at 

 home. 



The old fortifications of the Lavra have been enlarged by regular lines 

 enclosing all the hill, and the Pechersk quarter has been destroyed to make 

 room for these works. On the other hand, the enclosures of the old town have 

 been demolished, but detached forts have been raised on the heights, commanding 

 the line of railway, and there is a project to erect others on the present site of 

 the University, Observatory, and other large buildings. The University, trans- 

 ferred from Vilna after the Polish insurrection of 1831, still remains the third 

 in the empire, notwithstanding its recent losses, especially those of 1878, when 

 140 students were exiled for political offences. The natural history and some 

 other collections are very valuable, and the library (150,000 volumes) has 

 been enriched with the plunder of those of Vilna and Kremenetz. Since 1878 

 courses have been opened for women, and in that year there were altogether 

 94 professors and 771 students. Besides the University there is an ecclesiastical 

 academy, with library and museum, frequented by students from Servia and 

 Bulgaria. 



Apart from the churches and schools, the only monuments are the statue of 

 St. Vladimir and the column commemorating the baptism of his people in 988 in 

 the waters of the Potshaïna. For at this period the Dnieper did not flow at the 

 foot of the Kiev hills, but much farther east, where is now the "Devil's Ditch," 

 joining the Potshaïna at the base of the Pechersk bluff. At present it shows a 

 tendency to return to its old bed, and for some twenty years works of embankment 

 have been carried on to preserve the existing channel, now lined by timber, corn, and 

 beet-root sugar depots, and the various factories and dockyards of the busy Podol 

 quarter. Lower down it is crossed by a suspension bridge 2,650 feet long, and 

 2 miles farther south by the new railway bridge. 



Twenty-four miles south-west of Kiev lies the old town of Vasilkov, on the 

 Stugna, a western affluent of the Dnieper, and on the Pos is Belaya Tzerkov, or 

 " White Church," a former capital of the Cossacks, now a busy mart, with a factory 

 of agricultural implements, and a castle containing some valuable historical records. 

 South of the Stugna are the remains of old ramparts raised against the Polvotzes, 

 or Kumans, and now known as the " Snake's Ditch " [Zmii/cv Vol). According to 

 the legend the fosse under the breastworks was hollowed out by a dragon yoked to 



