Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/150

128 which beat upon their unprotected heads and trickled in little rivulets down their hard, sunburned faces. The crowd numbered, I should think, four or five hundred persons, more than half of whom were women, and as it approached the town it was constantly receiving accessions from the groups of pedestrians that we had overtaken and passed.

Since entering Siberia I had not seen such a strange and medieval picture as that presented by the black-robed priest and acolytes, the embroidered banners, the lighted lanterns, the gilded crosses, and the great throng of bareheaded and bare-legged peasants, tramping along the black, muddy road through the forest in the driving rain, singing a solemn ecclesiastical chant. I could almost imagine that we had been carried back to the eleventh century and were witnessing the passage of a detachment of Christian villagers who had been stirred up and excited by the eloquence of Peter the Hermit, and were marching with crosses, banners, and chanting to join the great host of the crusaders.

When the last stragglers in the rear of the procession had passed, and the hoarse, monotonous chant had died away in the distance, I turned to Mr. Frost and said, "What do you suppose is the meaning of all that?"

"I have n't the least idea," he replied. "It is evidently a church procession, but what it has been doing out here in the woods I can't imagine."

By dint of persistent questioning I finally succeeded in eliciting from our driver an intelligible explanation of the phenomenon. There was, it appeared, in one of the churches of Ishím, a very old ikón, or portrait of "the Mother of God," which was reputed to have supernatural powers and to answer the prayers of faithful believers. In order that the country people who were unable to come to Ishím might have an opportunity to pray to this miracle-working image, and to share in the blessings supposed to be conferred by its mere presence, it was carried once a year,