This account of the new doctrine was given to me by an intelligent Molokan, who had formerly been a peasant and was now a trader, as I sat one evening in his house in Novo-usensk, the chief town of the district in which Alexandrof-Hai is situated.  It seemed to me that the author of this ingenious attempt to conciliate Christianity with extreme Utilitarianism must be an educated man in disguise.  This conviction I communicated to my host, but he did not agree with me.

“No, I think not,” he replied; “in fact, I am sure he is a peasant, and I strongly suspect he was at some time a soldier.  He has not much learning, but he has a wonderful gift of talking; never have I heard any one speak like him.  He would have talked over the whole village, had it not been for an old man who was more than a match for him.  And then he went to Orloff-Hai and there he did talk the people over.”  What he really did in this latter place I never could clearly ascertain.  Report said that he founded a communistic association, of which he was himself president and treasurer, and converted the members to an extraordinary theory of prophetic succession, invented apparently for his own sensual gratification.  For further information my host advised me to apply either to the prophet himself, who was at that time confined in the gaol on a charge of using a forged passport, or to one of his friends, a certain Mr. I——­, who lived in the town.  As it was a difficult matter to gain admittance to the prisoner, and I had little time at my disposal, I adopted the latter alternative.

Mr. I——­ was himself a somewhat curious character.  He had been a student in Moscow, and in consequence of some youthful indiscretions during the University disturbances had been exiled to this place.  After waiting in vain some years for a release, he gave up the idea of entering one of the learned professions, married a peasant girl, rented a piece of land, bought a pair of camels, and settled down as a small farmer.* He had a great deal to tell about the prophet.

     * Here for the first time I saw camels used for agricultural
     purposes.  When yoked to a small four-wheeled cart, the
     “ships of the desert” seemed decidedly out of place.

Grigorief, it seemed, was really simply a Russian peasant, but he had been from his youth upwards one of those restless people who can never long work in harness.  Where his native place was, and why he left it, he never divulged, for reasons best known to himself.  He had travelled much, and had been an attentive observer.  Whether he had ever been in America was doubtful, but he had certainly been in Turkey, and had fraternised with various Russian sectarians, who are to be found in considerable numbers near the Danube.  Here, probably, he acquired many of his peculiar religious ideas, and conceived his grand scheme of founding a new religion—­of rivalling the Founder of Christianity!  He aimed at nothing less than this, as he on one occasion confessed,