444 BY STEAMER TO YENESEISK 



fully railed off, were planted with potatoes. Everything 

 betokened order, industry, and comparative wealth. In 

 sooth, a model village, without crime, where idleness and 

 drunkenness were unknown. And yet the people did 

 not look happy. There was no fire in their glance, no 

 elasticity in their step, there seemed to be no blood in 

 their veins. They were as stolid as Samoyedes ; their 

 complexions were as sallow, and the men's chins as 

 beardless. Strange to say, there was not a living soul 

 in the village under forty years of age. It was the 

 village of the Skoptsi, a sect whose religion has taken 

 an ultra-ascetic form — teetotalism carried out to the 

 bitter end, an attempt to annihilate all human passions, 

 not only their abuse but their use as well. All the men 

 were castrated, and in all the women the milk-glands 

 were extracted from the breasts. They ate no animal 

 food except fish. They did not even allow themselves 

 butter or milk. All intoxicating and exciting drinks 

 were forbidden, such as spirits, wine, tea, and coffee. On 

 the other hand they had a very mild beer called quass, 

 ■which, coming up from the cold cellar on a hot day, was 

 very refreshing. It was a very mild beer indeed, 

 ■certainly not XXXX, nor even single X. Possibly its 

 intoxicating properties might be represented in terms of 

 X by the formula n/X. I was not able to procure a 

 Skoptsi pipe, for tobacco in all forms was prohibited. 

 Although the population of the village numbered under 

 a score, yet there were two sects of Skoptsi among them : 

 one drank milk and the other did not. They kept all the 

 holidays of the Russian Church, but had no priest, saying 

 that every man was a priest, and could perform priestly 

 •offices only for himself ; so curiously do eccentric errors 

 and half-forgotten truths grow side by side. These 

 Skoptsi have been justly banished to this island by the 



