him. This system of mutual control and mutual
assistance has no doubt something to do with the fact that the Molokanye
are distinguished from the surrounding population by their sobriety,
uprightness, and material prosperity.

Of the history of the sect my friends in Alexandrof-Hai could tell me
very little, but I have obtained from other quarters some interesting
information. The founder was a peasant of the province of Tambof called
Uklein, who lived in the reign of Catherine II., and gained his living
as an itinerant tailor. For some time he belonged to the sect of the
Dukhobortsi--who are sometimes called the Russian Quakers, and who have
recently become known in Western Europe through the efforts of Count
Tolstoy on their behalf--but he soon seceded from them, because he could
not admit their doctrine that God dwells in the human soul, and
that consequently the chief source of religious truth is internal
enlightenment. To him it seemed that religious truth was to be found
only in the Scriptures. With this doctrine he soon made many converts,
and one day he unexpectedly entered the town of Tambof, surrounded by
seventy "Apostles" chanting psalms. They were all quickly arrested
and imprisoned, and when the affair was reported to St. Petersburg
the Empress Catherine ordered that they should be handed over to the
ecclesiastical authorities, and that in the event of their proving
obdurate to exhortation they should be tried by the Criminal Courts.
Uklein professed to recant, and was liberated; but he continued his
teaching secretly in the villages, and at the time of his death he was
believed to have no less than five thousand followers.

As to the actual strength of the sect it is difficult to form even a
conjecture. Certainly it has many thousand members--probably several
hundred thousand. Formerly the Government transported them from the
central provinces to the thinly populated outlying districts, where
they had less opportunity of contaminating Orthodox neighbours; and
accordingly we find them in the southeastern districts of Samara, on the
north coast of the Sea of Azof, in the Crimea, in the Caucasus, and
in Siberia. There are still, however, very many of them in the central
region, especially in the province of Tambof.

The readiness with which the Molokanye modify their opinions and beliefs
in accordance with what seems to them new light saves them effectually
from bigotry and fanaticism, but it at the same