ercing, but once indoors the sun streamed into the room with such
force that I was compelled to move my seat away from a window. One might
have been lunching in the late spring at Nice or Beaulieu. The
scrupulous cleanliness of Markha after the dirt and squalor of most
Siberian villages was striking. Our host's sitting-room contained even
palms and flowers, artificial, of course, but cheerful to the eye. He
himself waited on us during the meal, and continually plied his guests
with champagne and other rare vintages, for the Skopt, although a miser
at heart, is fond of displaying his wealth. Avarice is the
characteristic of these people, although they are kind to their own
poor. We visited an institution maintained solely by the village for
the old and decrepit of both sexes, and this place would have done
credit to a European city. On the way to this establishment we passed
several windmills, a rare sight in Siberia, also a number of corn and
saw mills driven by steam. The engines were of American make, also all
the agricultural machinery, which was shown us with pardonable pride. In
every shed we entered the cattle looked sleek and well fed, and the
poorest and tiniest hut had its poultry yard. The Lena Province now
contains over 300,000 head of cattle, and their number is yearly
increasing. When the Skoptsi first came here, forty years ago, cows and
oxen were numbered by the hundred.

Books and European newspapers were plentiful in all the houses we
visited in Markha, and the Skoptsi with whom I conversed were men of
considerable intelligence, well up in the questions of the day. But
their personal appearance is anything but attractive. Most of the men
are enormously stout, with smooth flabby faces and dull heavy eyes,
while the women have an emaciated and prematurely old appearance. The
creed is no doubt a revolting one, physically and morally, but with all
his faults the Skopt has certain good points which his free neighbours
in Yakutsk might do well to imitate.[24]

[Footnote 24: When a Skopt dies, his property is confiscated by the
State, but he generally finds means to dispose of his wealth in other
ways. Occasionally it is buried in remote places, where it remains if
not discovered by accident.]

Although the Yakutes form the bulk of the population in Yakutsk (the
entire province contains about a quarter of a million) they do not mix a
great deal with the Russians, and we saw little of the better class. As
a