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Vassily Vassilitch left Archangel for Nova Zemlia one morning in July. The boat steamed placidly and peacefully out of the vast and enlarged Dwina into the White Sea, and then out of the White Sea into the cold and buffeting Arctic. On board were two Government officials going to consider “Colonisation,” an English artillery officer, an astronomer, a journalist from Archangel, a monk going to relieve another monk and spend the winter on the island, peasant fur-buyers, carpenters, and workmen.

The monk was one of the most interesting characters, and told how a Samoyede once in a storm dug a hole in the snow and lay there three or four days, and slept till it was over. When the blizzard ceased he broke out of his white grave and went home. He told how there was once such a storm on Easter Eve that he and the villagers had to crawl to church on hands and knees. Coming home they were all blown about half a mile out of their course.

From the hunting expeditions the islanders nearly always brought home young bears taken alive, and they fed them and reared them and eventually sold them into menageries and circuses. The monk had two young bears one season and they were very much attached to him. They followed him everywhere and would take food from his hands alone. If by any chance he escaped them and got away by himself to do something they raised a scandal. However, on the return journey to Archangel the monk lost one of them. When they were some 250 miles out at sea one of the bears broke her fastenings, jumped into the ocean and swam away. And she swam all the way back to the harbour and was recaptured by the Samoyedes there. The other bear gave a lot of trouble at Archangel by absolutely refusing to be tended by any one else but the monk who had brought him. But at last the monk exchanged his cassock with some one else, and it was found that the bear at once transferred his obedience, and that he could be managed by any one who wore the monk’s garments. The monk therefore sold the cassock with the bear, and both are now part of the stock-in-trade of a circus. In this case the habit did make the monk.