I did not go as far as the monastery of Solovetsk, but I have collected a great number of details about that place of pilgrimage. In the White Sea, about 280 verstes to the westward of Archangel, there is a group of islands, and of these the largest bears the name of Solovetsk. Originally inhabited by the Fins, it was afterwards occupied by some intrepid trappers (promylchlenniki) of the ancient republic of Novgorod. It became afterwards the asylum of St. Zosimus, who built a cell there, and founded a little wooden chapel. Other cenobites succeeded him on that spot. A convent of monks (tcherntsé) was formed, and this foundation soon becoming celebrated for its miracles, was enriched by the offerings of the faithful, and was finally endowed with a fortress or stronghold, for the preservation of its treasures. With the republic of Novgorod, Solovetsk and its monastery passed under the domination of the Tzars, who strengthened its fortifications. In the time of the false Demetrius, the partisans of Boris Godounov, along with their riches, took refuge in the castle of the Holy Isle, and there made an obstinate resistance ‘to the most intrepid knights who held with the pretender:’ thus saith tradition. May they, by any chance, have been our celebrated Lissovians—our hardy warriors of the seventeenth century. At any rate, this defence of the place added to the glory of the island, which, after Kiow, occupies the first place in the list of the holy places of the Russian Empire.
The situation of Solovetsk in a frozen region, and in one that is difficult of access, makes all culture there next to impossible. Latterly, and chiefly by reason of the labours of the monks, some vegetables, chiefly cabbages, have been raised on the island; but flour, wheat, groats, oil, and other articles of food only come thither from Archangel. The recluses can make kvass for themselves, and their manufacture has a peculiar celebrity. They also possess a mill, a few cattle, and even some horses. Close to their cloisters are large warehouses in which the pilgrims deposit their baggage, receiving a numbered ticket in exchange; but the buildings destined to shelter the bohomolets are a much greater affair, and their numbers are very considerable. There are large furnished rooms or halls with long tables and benches. There the faithful lodge, sleep, and eat their meals; the compartments of the men being separated from those for women. I have never heard the hospitality of the brotherhood spoken of but in terms of praise. During the repasts, a monk reads to the guests in each hall, out of the ‘Lives of the Saints,’ or recites some prayers. Every bohomolets has the right of being lodged and fed gratuitously for the three first nights. During that time he prays, goes to confession, lights and hold candles, and gets akathisti (antiphones) or gospels read over his head. There is a tariff for all these spiritual exercises, but the terms are very modest, though the visit to the tombs of St. Zosimus and of St. Savatyï have to be paid for separately. When the three days have expired, the pilgrim will be expected, if he stays longer, to provide for his own wants, and to pay for his lodging. A number of devout persons make a vow to remain on the island for whole years at a time, and these years they spend in acts of devotion and of penitence. Such guests are warmly welcomed by the brothers, but on the condition that they pay their own expenses, or make themselves useful in the convent by some occupation, and become workmen, gardeners, and the like.
As soon as the White Sea has become navigable, that is to say, by the first days of June, the pilgrims crowd into little boats, called karbasses, which, from Archangel, carry them to the Holy Isle. The price of the voyage is very small, but owing to the discomforts, and indeed to the dangers of a long crossing on a sea generally very rough, many bohomolets go on foot from Archangel, and skirt the shore till they reach a promontory opposite Solovetsk, from which it is separated by an arm of the sea not one verst in width, and only then do they commit themselves to the karbasses. No one can land on the island, except during the four months of June, July, August, and September, for by the beginning of October all navigation of the White Sea is prevented by the violence of its tempests, and still more by the ice which enters it from the Polar Sea. So from October to June there are no visitors at the convent.
It is a strange thing, and one perhaps not without significance, that alongside of the very house of God, the Tzars have built one for themselves—a mysterious prison, of which the bohomolets speak with the greatest terror, because no one knows what is the meaning or the use of it. Who may be the unhappy beings who are inclosed within these dungeon walls! No common criminals certainly, for they are sent to Siberia. And yet the prison of Solovetsk is certainly occupied, for sentries and keepers are always on duty, and at their posts. I have been told that some years ago an old man was seen there. He had a white beard, and had become blind from weeping. I do not pretend to give any guarantee for the truth of this tale, which has, however, been narrated by many; still less do I venture to vouch for the secret which has been whispered into my ear on more than one occasion; but they say that the blind prisoner of Solovetsk is a brother of Nicholas—that he is the Grand Duke Constantine himself...!
But to return to my own history; on the day which followed the night in which I determined to abandon any further attempts at evasion from Archangel, I rose at daybreak, received my baggage from the porter of the dvorets, and declared to him my intention of pressing on to the monastery of Solovetsk. After having bought some bread and some salt, I crossed the Dvina, and struck away in the direction of the western promontory which faces the Holy Isle. The day was hot and fine, the country flat, but wild and deserted. By evening I reached a little hamlet, and there I decided to take a Russian bath, a measure which had become indispensable after my long sojourn among the saints. The Russians, even the lowest of the people, frequently use these baths on Saturdays, or on the eve of their festivals. The bath house is a simple wooden building, where you find a huge stove of about two yards square, formed of bricks or of unquarried stone, put together without any cement. There is no chimney, and the smoke goes out at the holes in the roof. As soon as these stoves are really heated, water is poured over them, and the steam which flies from them, filling the whole place, turns it into a bath room.
After leaving the stove, I felt a strange longing to drink some milk, and on going to get some in a hut pointed out by my host, I found two women, to whom I made my wants known, after having made the three signs of the cross, which are expected of one. They gave me very scant measure for the piece of money which I offered, and served me with a bad grace, for which I was not at first able to account. While I took some mouthfuls of the milk we began to converse, and at last I found the solution of the enigma. They belonged to the sect of the ‘staroviertsi,’ or old believers, and by the way in which I made the sign of the cross they recognised in me an orthodoxy that was to be deplored. They did not conceal from me what was their regret that a man of such piety, a bohomolets, should be thus wandering in the ways of certain perdition. They then showed me how truly to make sure of my salvation, and tired at last of differing with them, I ended in adopting their method. These good women were so happy, that they gave to their neophyte three fresh measures of milk, and refused payment for it. As they took leave of me, they offered fervent prayers to God that I might be preserved in the paths of conversion! But these prayers, alas! were not to be granted, for as soon as I returned to my landlord’s dwelling, I was again obliged, to cross myself in the orthodox fashion.
I continued my journey, walking for several days in a marshy country, or through woods of stunted fir trees, where I was often obliged to spend the night. I became more and more aware of the polar nature of the climate. The sun hardly ever left us; and even during the short interval between his setting and his rising again, his level rays threw over the landscape a clearness of light which would have allowed one to execute the finest needlework. Night was only to be distinguished from day by the greater stillness which reigned over the face of nature. It is true, that the geographical ideas which had been acquired by me when I sat on a form in school had prepared me years before for this phenomenon, yet I felt as if in a dream on thus finding myself in regions where the sun never sets. The country, I found, became always poorer and more desolate, until, at last, I reached the coast; and after that, I continued to walk along the cliffs, where, for several days, the weather was extremely fine, and the sun so warm that I was obliged to take off my pelisse. But, before long, a heavy gale of wind rose; and the ocean, rolling in mountainous waves, and covered with snowy foam, seemed eager to justify its name of White Sea, and presented a spectacle at once mournful and admirably grand. The tempest lasted for several days. I hardly ever met a human being; but the sight of a serpent, which had been newly killed, showed me that in this country and in this latitude reptiles were not wanting. On reaching a small village on the sea-shore, I found in a possada—that is to say, in a colony—a multitude of bohomolets, and, among others, my former companions from Véliki-Oustiong, who had set out, long before me, from Archangel, in karbasses bound for the Holy Island, but who had been driven by the storm to land and seek for shelter at this spot. One of the karbasses had been swamped, and every soul on board lost in the waves; and now these poor people awaited the laying of the tempest; but I left them, assuring them that I should reach the monastery much sooner and safer on foot than they would in their wretched little boats. Towards evening, the sea went down, and I had soon reached the promontory which faces the island of Solovetsk. Leaning on my staff, I stood for some moments contemplating the shores, and thinking of our old Lissoviens, who may, perhaps, have encamped on this very spot, while pushing their adventurous course to the extreme north. Then, turning to the left, and without waiting for a passage to the monastery, I struck into the road which would take me to Onega.
And, in truth, now that my attempts at Archangel had failed, this was the only route open to me; for a return to Archangel and Véliki-Oustiong, with a journey thence through the very heart of Russia Proper, was not to be thought of; and, again, there was nothing more natural than that a bohomolets, having accomplished his pilgrimage to Solovetsk, should turn to Onega, and to the government of Olonets, so as to make the pious round of Novgorod and of Kiow, and there salute the holy bones—for such is the sanctified phraseology in use (dla pokloniénïa swiatym mostcham). I do not say that I yet saw what I ought to do on reaching Onega; but after the mistake about Archangel, I was not inclined to make any great plans, or to think of the morrow. I therefore resolutely pursued my way, skirting the western edge of the promontory, and walking, for several days, along a path which was bounded, on the one side, by the sea—on the other, by a low range of hillocks, densely covered with wood. Before me, I saw nothing but sands, heaths, and marshes; and one incident will, I think, suffice to give an idea of this desolate country. One day, having arrived at a possada, I could get no bread. The inhabitants had been without any for a week, because the bad weather had stopped the boats that came from Archangel; but, as an equivalent, I found some of the fresh herrings of the White Sea, which were of a good size and excellent flavour.
At Onega, I was not tempted to make any further experiments among the foreign ships that I saw at anchor in the port. In order to have made any attempts of the kind, with the slightest chance of success, it would have been necessary for me to pass several days in the town, where there was no crowd of pilgrims among whom I could hide, as at Véliki-Oustiong and at Archangel, so as to conceal myself from the eyes of the Police. Moreover, I was still under the painful impression left by the discovery of my last bad reckoning, and I had decidedly more confidence in terra firma, which, as yet, had never deceived my hopes. Two land routes were open to me from Onega, and it was now time to choose between them. The one to the right would have led me, by the marshes of Laponia and the river Torneo, to the Swedish frontier; the other, to the left, trending across the government of Olonets, would take me, by Vytiégra, to the Gulf of Finland, and to the Baltic. Of these lines, the first was the most fatiguing—the second the most dangerous. Had I not already crossed the Ourals and the steppe of Petchora, I should certainly have taken an extreme northern direction to Laponia; but I now dreaded the privations, and the miseries with which I was too well acquainted. Wasted and disheartened, I had begun to fear hardships more than danger, and I decided in favour of Vytiégra.
Without, therefore, making too long a halt in Onega, I pushed towards the south, by skirting the banks of the river which also bears the name of Onega. Every now and then I met solitary pilgrims on their way to the monastery of Solovetsk, to whom naturally I could impart the latest intelligence about the island. I remember one old man in particular—small, withered, and white as a dove, but very fresh and hearty withal, who said to me, ‘Can you doubt where I come from? I am from Kargopol...!’ He pronounced the name with such pride, with such a sense of the greatness of his native town, that I really might have fancied that I heard the famous civis Romanus. Now Kargopol, which I soon reached, may truly be said to be one of the saddest little hamlets of a very sad country. Yet, in spite of the sombre and monotonous aspect of these districts, where marshes alternate with boundless woods, in spite of the enormous distances I had to traverse on foot, in spite of the discomforts incident to the condition of a fugitive who has always to fear gendarmes, inns, or any expenditure which exceeds the bare necessaries of life, this journey from Onega to Vytiégra was very far from being equal in suffering to that which I had made over the Ourals and the plain of Petchora. My character of a pilgrim gave me a certain assurance that I need no longer to the same extent avoid the dwellings of men. Besides, the season was milder; and when at nightfall I had to turn into some wood to sleep, I could find branches and green leaves enough to fashion a pretty soft bed. What most surprises me is, that, in all these nights passed in the solitude of the forests, I was never once disturbed by wild beasts. Sometimes, indeed, I was startled by the distant howling of the wolves, but none of these animals ever presented themselves to my eyes.