My ethnological curiosity was thoroughly aroused, and I endeavoured to awaken a similar feeling in my friend by hinting that we had at hand a promising field for discoveries which might immortalise the fortunate explorers; but my efforts were in vain.  The old gentleman was a portly, indolent man, of phlegmatic temperament, who thought more of comfort than of immortality in the terrestrial sense of the term.  To my proposal that we should start at once on an exploring expedition, he replied calmly that the distance was considerable, that the roads were muddy, and that there was nothing to be learned.  The villages in question were very like other villages, and their inhabitants lived, to all intents and purposes, in the same way as their Russian neighbours.  If they had any secret peculiarities they would certainly not divulge them to a stranger, for they were notoriously silent, gloomy, morose, and uncommunicative.  Everything that was known about them, my friend assured me, might be communicated in a few words.  They belonged to a Finnish tribe called Korelli, and had been transported to their present settlements in comparatively recent times.  In answer to my questions as to how, when, and by whom they had been transported thither my informant replied that it had been the work of Ivan the Terrible.

Though I knew at that time little of Russian history, I suspected that the last assertion was invented on the spur of the moment, in order to satisfy my troublesome curiosity, and accordingly I determined not to accept it without verification.  The result showed how careful the traveller should be in accepting the testimony of “intelligent, well-informed natives.”  On further investigation I discovered, not only that the story about Ivan the Terrible was a pure invention—­whether of my friend or of the popular imagination, which always uses heroic names as pegs on which to hang traditions, I know not—­but also that my first theory was correct.  These Finnish peasants turned out to be a remnant of the aborigines, or at least of the oldest known inhabitants of the district.  Men of the same race, but bearing different tribal names, such as Finns, Korelli, Tcheremiss, Tchuvash, Mordva, Votyaks, Permyaks, Zyryanye, Voguls, are to be found in considerable numbers all over the northern provinces, from the Gulf of Bothnia to Western Siberia, as well as in the provinces bordering the Middle Volga as far south as Penza, Simbirsk, and Tamboff.* The Russian peasants, who now compose the great mass of the population, are the intruders.

* The semi-official “Statesman’s Handbook for Russia,” published in 1896, enumerates fourteen different tribes, with an aggregate of about 4,650,000 souls, but these numbers must not be regarded as having any pretensions to accuracy.  The best authorities differ widely in their estimates.

I had long taken a deep interest in what learned Germans call the Volkerwanderung—­that is to say,