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134 clergy was by common assent that of the missions among the Mongolian natives of the Russian borderlands, and among the Sectarians.

Bishop Makar, whom I mentioned before, especially distinguished himself as the head of the Altay missions in the Siberian province of Tomsk. In this immense mountainous country the Orthodox faith was spread among Tartars, who were partly Mahommedans, partly Shamanists, and it was done so successfully that the Governor of the province, the German Tobizen, was obliged to draw the attention of the Petersburg Government to the "inadmissible methods" of religious propaganda, which consisted in alcoholic intoxication of the natives, who were being baptised in a state of complete ebriety. The Governor pointed out in his reports that the autochthonous population was being pauperised and decimated under the influence of this "Christian spirit."

The missionaries used to convert with money, clothes, boots, or rifles the Tartars on the Volga, the Cheremis and Votyaks on the Kama, and the Kalmucks in the Caspian steppes, boasting of the great numbers of converts, without being in the least concerned when these "new Christians" put the crosses alongside the old gods, made of wood or clay, and said their prayers simultaneously to both the God of the Christians and the pagan idols with equal and ignorant zeal.

In the north-east of Siberia the Orthodox missionaries also used spirits for their propaganda, and when