Now of these three processes, absorption may have been more frequent than is commonly supposed, and it seemed to me that in Northern Russia this process might be conveniently studied.

A thousand years ago the whole of Northern Russia was peopled by Finnish pagan tribes, and at the present day the greater part of it is occupied by peasants who speak the language of Moscow, profess the Orthodox faith, present in their physiognomy no striking peculiarities, and appear to the superficial observer pure Russians.

And we have no reason to suppose that the former inhabitants were expelled or exterminated, or that they gradually died out from contact with the civilisation and vices of a higher race.

History records no wholesale Finnish migrations like that of the Kalmyks, and no war of extermination; and statistics prove that among the remnants of those primitive races the population increases as rapidly as among the Russian peasantry.* From these facts I concluded that the Finnish aborigines had been simply absorbed, or rather, were being absorbed, by the Slavonic intruders.
* This latter statement is made on the authority of Popoff ("Zyryanye i zyryanski krai," Moscow, 1874) and Tcheremshanski ("Opisanie Orenburgskoi Gubernii," Ufa, 1859).
This conclusion has since been confirmed by observation.

During my wanderings in these northern provinces I have found villages in every stage of Russification.