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 PREFACE.

the second half of last century, and again in the second half of this, Southern Russia has been the scene of widespread revolt, the first political, the second religious, both revolts taking place very much in the same latitude, only that one took its rise east of the Volga and the other in the provinces west of that great river. De Quincey, in his own picturesque fashion, has told the story of the first—the revolt of the Kalmuck Tartars in 1771; showing how, because of the oppression of Russia, her pride and haughty disdain towards them, her contempt for their religion, and her determination to reduce them to absolute slavery, this Tartar people, a vast multitude of six hundred thousand souls, burnt their homesteads and started across the wilderness in search of a land of freedom some three thousand miles away.

The great revolt of our own time is that of a people leaving, not the territory, but the religion of the Russian Empire. The story of this second revolt is here told for us with great vividness and power by one who is exceptionally qualified for the task, as being probably better acquainted with the