Paderin shrugged his shoulders expressively and said that he believed what he saw.  He then proceeded to relate to us further and still more incredible particulars as to the symptoms of the disease, and the mysterious powers which it developed in the persons attacked, illustrating his statements by reference to the case of his own daughter.  He was evidently a firm believer in the reality of the sickness, but would not say to what agency he ascribed the phenomena of second sight and the ability to speak strange languages, which were its most remarkable symptoms.

During the day we happened to call upon the ispravnik or Russian governor, and in course of conversation mentioned the “Anadyrski bol,” and related some of the stories which we had heard from Paderin.  The ispravnik—­skeptical upon all subjects, and especially upon this—­said that he had often heard of the disease, and that his wife was a firm believer in it, but that in his opinion it was a humbug, which deserved no other treatment than severe corporal punishment.  The Russian peasantry, he said, were very superstitious and would believe almost anything, and the “Anadyrski bol” was partly a delusion and partly an imposition practised by the women upon their male relatives to further some selfish purpose.  A woman who wanted a new bonnet, and who could not obtain it by the ordinary method of teasing, found it very convenient as a dernier ressort to fall into a trance state and demand a bonnet as a physiological necessity.  If the husband still remained obdurate, a few well-executed convulsions and a song or two in the so-called Yakut language were generally sufficient to bring him to terms.  He then related an instance of a Russian merchant whose wife was attacked by the “Anadyrski bol,” and who actually made a winter journey from Gizhiga to Yamsk—­a distance of 300 versts—­to procure a silk dress for which she had asked and which could not be elsewhere obtained!  Of course the women do not always ask for articles which they might be supposed to want in a state of health.  If they did, it would soon arouse the suspicions of their deluded husbands, fathers, and brothers, and lead to inconvenient inquiries, if not to still more unpleasant experiment, upon the character of the mysterious disease.  To avoid this, and to blind the men to the real nature of the deception, the women frequently ask for dogs, sledges, axes, and other similar articles of which they can make no possible use, and thus persuade their credulous male relatives that their demands are governed only by diseased caprice and have in view no definite object.  Such was the rationalistic explanation which the ispravnik gave of the curious delusion known as the “Anadyrski bol”; and although it argued more subtlety on the part of the women and more credulity on the part of the men than I had supposed either sex to be capable of, I could not but admit that the explanation was a plausible one, and accounted satisfactorily for most of the phenomena.