CHAPTER X.
FINNISH AND TARTAR VILLAGES A Finnish Tribe--Finnish Villages--Various Stages of Russification--Finnish Women--Finnish Religions--Method of "Laying" Ghosts--Curious Mixture of Christianity and Paganism--Conversion of the Finns--A Tartar Village--A Russian Peasant's Conception of Mahometanism--A Mahometan's View of Christianity--Propaganda--The Russian Colonist--Migrations of Peoples During the Dark Ages.
When talking one day with a landed proprietor who lived near Ivanofka, I accidentally discovered that in a district at some distance to the northeast there were certain villages the inhabitants of which did not understand Russian, and habitually used a peculiar language of their own.

With an illogical hastiness worthy of a genuine ethnologist, I at once assumed that these must be the remnants of some aboriginal race.
"Des aborigenes!" I exclaimed, unable to recall the Russian equivalent for the term, and knowing that my friend understood French.

"Doubtless the remains of some ancient race who formerly held the country, and are now rapidly disappearing.

Have you any Aborigines Protection Society in this part of the world ?" My friend had evidently great difficulty in imagining what an Aborigines Protection Society could be, and promptly assured me that there was nothing of the kind in Russia.

On being told that such a society might render valuable services by protecting the weaker against the stronger race, and collecting important materials for the new science of Social Embryology, he looked thoroughly mystified.