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[1] According to several writers, the date of the destruction of the monastery is set down as 1590, but a letter from Vardö, relating to the destruction, is dated August, 1590, so that it must have occurred on Christmas Eve, 1589. [↑]
[2] A ‘gamme’ is the name given to the mud huts in which the Lapps live. [↑]
CHAPTER VIII.
REUNION.
Pilgrimages are very common throughout the whole of the Russian Empire. Men, women, and children travel in company, and move from monastery to monastery, or from one holy place to another, to perform their devotions in them. There are individuals, even among the womenkind, who spend the whole of their lives in pilgrimages, although they could be in possession both of house, and home, and fortune. An unaccountable impulse seems to force them on. They have scarcely returned home from one journey, and rested for a day or so, before they are off again to journey, in want and hardship, to a fresh place, where this or that saint is buried, or where there is some celebrated shrine, with relics of this or that martyr.