mill. This, of course, is easier, and as the quantity of prayer is more

important than the quality, the latter method saves much trouble, and is popular.[4]

The Buriats, who are Buddhists, have temples, ritual, an order of priests, and a considerable literature. With a religion so developed, it will not be difficult to account for its overcoming the older Shamanistic creed, nor will it be hard to understand what was told us by the Ispravnik of Selenginsk,--that of the two religions among the Buriats, with whom the Russian missionaries come in contact, they find the conversion of the Shaman Buriats tolerably easy, but the Buddhists are greatly opposed to Christianity.

We now come to that part of the Buriat people who are Christian. Perhaps it was an inquiry into the false religion of Buddha, under which so many millions of the human race are deluded, or perchance only a timid belief in the power of their own creed, that led our early travellers in Siberia, with one exception, to look coldly and unbelievingly on the efforts of the English mission to the Buriats; in connection with which the thought arises for how little the heathen world would have to thank the Christianity of England, if there were not some who take a more believing view than the travellers who go abroad, looking in a superficial way at what is being done, or sometimes not looking at all, and then coming home to pronounce missions a failure or an imposture. Captain Cochrane, for instance, speaking of the missionaries at Selenginsk, goes so far as to say, “For my own part, so small are my hopes of their success, that I do not expect any one Buriat will be really and truly converted.”[5]

I have shown, however, that the English missionaries laid a solid foundation, taught several scholars, and translated the Scriptures, which translation the Russian missionaries have in their hands to-day; and whatever may have been the success or failures of the English, it certainly cannot be said of the Russian missionaries that they have no converts, for, such as they are, they count them by thousands.

The Ispravnik at Selenginsk told me there were about 40 men engaged in nine districts in the Russian mission to the Buriats, though I am not aware whether some of them are not also parish priests. We called upon a priest at Verchne Udinsk to ask about the matter, and sold him some New Testaments and Gospels. He informed us that there were 15 mission stations among them, and that on the eastern side of Lake Baikal there were baptized annually about 300 Buriats, and on the western side more than 1,000. This was confirmed by the missionary upon whom we called further on, and it agrees tolerably with the general almanack of 1878, in which it is stated that in the Irkutsk diocese there were baptized, in the previous year, 1,505 of both sexes, including four Buriat lamas; though the number of converts given for the Trans-Baikal diocese for that year amounted to only 52, there being one lama to every 20 persons.

We had brought with us a number of copies of the Buriat Scriptures. Some of these we left at Irkutsk, some with the Ispravniks of Selenginsk and Troitzkosavsk, and some for the lamasery of Cheelantoui. Others we left at Chita with a view to spreading them over the district, as well as placing them in the prisons. I asked the Ispravnik at Selenginsk what he thought the lamas would do with the books. He said he thought they would first read them and then destroy them; but Mr. Stallybrass, on my return, was of opinion that they were likely to be deterred from destroying them by a feeling that they were holy books. In any case we gave the copies we had brought, and thus endeavoured to do what little we could for this interesting people, who, I doubt not, will gradually be absorbed into the Russian Church.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The collecting, pounding, moulding, and drying of dung is, further south, an important branch of commerce. Argols are of four classes. In the first rank are the argols of goats and sheep, which make so fierce a fire that a bar of iron placed therein is soon brought to a white heat. The argols of camels constitute the second class; they burn easily, and throw out a fine flame, but the heat they give is less intense than that given by the preceding. The third class comprises the argols of the bovine species; these, when thoroughly dry, burn readily, and produce no smoke. Lastly come the argols of horses and other animals, which, not having undergone the process of rumination, present nothing but a mass of straw more or less triturated. They are soon consumed, but are useful for lighting a fire. This fuel is called _kiseek_ in Russia, and in the southern governments was the only kind available for the poorer inhabitants, wood being very scarce and dear. The discovery of coal, and the establishment of manufactories, has wrought a complete change in the means of heating in Ekaterinoslaf. Kiseek was made from the dung of cattle and sheep, laboriously trodden under foot by women, and then sun-dried.

[2] At Lhassa, the capital of Thibet, dwells the _Dalai Lama_, who is the head of the Buddhist religion; and though his followers acknowledge him to be mortal, they believe his soul to be an immediate emanation from the essence of their supreme deity, Buddha. In places where this worship prevails are found religious communities gathered round the temples dedicated to the rites of their faith, and monasteries, or, as they are called, _lamaseries_, containing the various orders of priests. It was one of these we visited at Cheelantoui. When the great lama dies, it is held that his spirit immediately enters the body of another human being, who thus becomes successor to all the rights and privileges held by his predecessor, and some little difficulty often occurs in discovering who may be the favoured individual; but as the priests are the chief actors in the scene, their search is generally successful. Commonly the spirit is recognized as having animated some new-born infant, who is at once taken to the religious establishment and educated by the lamas in the mysteries of their faith.

[3] The lamas are divided into four classes. Those of the first are occupied with the study of doctrine, and with the tenets and mysteries of their faith; those of the second with the regulation of certain religious rites and ceremonies; those of the third busy themselves in the study and direction of their worship; the fourth class study and practise medicine, in which it would appear that some of them attain eminence, for when we arrived at Kiakhta we found Mr. Tokmakoff, on account of his health, was gone to Urga, the Mongolian capital, to be near a native doctor.

[4] Inside the cylinder is placed the oft-used prayer of the Buddhist, “_Om mani padme houm_,” of which a Russian near the monastery said the meaning was _Gospodi pomilui_,--_i.e._, “Lord, have mercy upon us!” Its real meaning, however, does not appear to be very clear. Klaproth understood it to mean, “_O the gem in the lotus. Amen!_” and Huc paraphrases it into, “_O that I may obtain perfection, and be absorbed in Buddha. Amen._” The lamas assert that the doctrine contained in the marvellous words is immense, and that the whole life of man is insufficient to measure its depth and extent. At Lhassa the formula is heard from every mouth--is everywhere visible in the streets, in the interior of the houses, and on every flag and streamer floating over the buildings, printed in Tatar and Thibetan characters. Certain rich and zealous Buddhists even entertain, at their own expense, companies of lamas for the propagation of the _mani_; and these strange missionaries, chisel and hammer in hand, traverse field, mountain, and desert to engrave the sacred formula on the stones and rocks they encounter in their path. There was a stone with inscriptions, in the temple yard at Cheelantoui; and I found other stones, bearing the _mani_, on the supposed site of a temple at Tyr, on the Lower Amur.

[5] He does, indeed, afterwards allow that what is impossible with man is possible with God; but goes on to insinuate that the missionaries knew of the uselessness of their work, but that they had “too comfortable a berth to be given up,” and then he thinks, forsooth, that justice is not done to the people of England in so squandering money, etc., etc. Mr. Atkinson contented himself with a passing compliment to the character of the missionaries, and said that they were unable to make converts among the Buriats; whilst Mr. Hill, who visited Selenginsk, records that, “notwithstanding all their labours, not a single Buriat had been converted by them”; and then he quotes the testimony of a lady living on the spot, who said, “The missions only failed because the undertaking was beyond the power of man to accomplish unaided by more than his own genius. The missionaries had all the zeal and perseverance of the Apostles, but they wanted their power of working miracles, or the aid of some such startling circumstances as the history of religious revolutions has often presented to us, and without which all efforts at all times to convert the Buriats will be equally fruitless.”