ONEGA. 



355 



in the first half of the fifteenth century. The monks, who depend directly on the 

 Holy Synod, long maintained their primitive rites in opposition to the reforms of 

 the Patriarch Nikon, but in 1676 the place was taken through the treason of a 

 monk, who revealed an underground passage to the besiegers. Most of its 1,600 

 defenders, monks and peasants alike, were put to the sword or flogged to death 

 with rods. Yet the spirit of religious independence is not quite extinct in Solovki, 

 where the monks are recruited from the natives, still imbued with the Novgorod 

 spirit. 



The village of Onega, also an old Novgorod settlement at the mouth of the 

 river of like name, and at the southernmost extremity of the White Sea, is an 



Fig. 186.— SoLovETZKiY Islands. 

 Srale 1 : 000,000. 



35°P0 



E.ofP 



55M0' 



se'sû' 



E.ofG 



Depth m Fathoms. 



Under 13. 



important fishing station. The herrings swarm here in such quantities that they 

 may at times be taken in bucketfuls, and all the fish — herrings, cod, salmon, 

 perch, pike — are generally preserved in frozen masses, very few being smoked or 

 cured, owing to the inferior quality of the salt. On this coast the cattle and swine 

 are mostly fed on red herrings. 



The vast basin of the Dvina, larger in extent than all Italy, has only three 

 towns whose population exceeds 5,000, and two of them, Vologda and Archangel 

 (Arkhangelsk), owe their importance partly to their rank as provincial capitals. 



