an earnest request from Kolmagorof that Viushin should give him some article of clothing, which I understood to be a scarf or tippet.  Viushin immediately went to a little closet in one corner of the room, where he was in the habit of storing his personal effects, dragged out a large sealskin bag, and began searching in it for the desired article.  After pulling out three or four pair of fur boots, a lump of tallow, some dogskin stockings, a hatchet, and a bundle of squirrelskins, he finally produced and held up in triumph one-half of an old, dirty, moth-eaten woollen tippet, and handing it to Kolmagorof, he resumed his search for the missing piece.  This also he presently found, in a worse state of preservation, if possible, than the other.  They looked as if they had been discovered in the bag of some poor rag-picker who had fished them up out of a gutter in the Five Points.  Kolmagorof tied the two pieces together, wrapped them up carefully in an old newspaper, thanked Viushin for his trouble, and, with an air of great relief, bowed again to me and went out.  Wondering what use he could make of such a worn, dirty, tattered article of clothing as that which he had received, I applied to Viushin for a solution of the mystery.

“What did he want that tippet for?” I inquired; “it isn’t good for anything.”

“I know,” replied Viushin, “it is a miserable old thing; but there is no other in the village, and his daughter has got the ‘Anadyrski bol’” (Anadyrsk sickness).

“Anadyrski bol!” I repeated in astonishment, never having heard of the disease in question; “what has the ‘Anadyrski bol’ got to do with an old tippet?”

“Why, you see, his daughter has asked for a tippet, and as she has the Anadyrsk sickness, they must get one for her.  It don’t make any difference about its being old.”

This struck me as being a very singular explanation of a very curious performance, and I proceeded to question Viushin more closely as to the nature of this strange disease, and the manner in which an old moth-eaten tippet could afford relief.  The information which I gathered was briefly as follows:  The “Anadyrski bol,” so called from its having originated at Anadyrsk, was a peculiar form of disease, resembling very much the modern spiritual “trance,” which had long prevailed in north-eastern Siberia, and which defied all ordinary remedies and all usual methods of treatment.  The persons attacked by it, who were generally women, became unconscious of all surrounding things, acquired suddenly an ability to speak languages which they had never heard, particularly the Yakut language, and were gifted temporarily with a sort of second sight or clairvoyance which enabled them to describe accurately objects that they could not see and never had seen.  While in this state they would frequently ask for some particular thing, whose appearance and exact location they would describe, and unless it were brought to them they would apparently