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Show only shelter was the winter sky Some went bareheaded and barefooted, barefoot-ed, and all rejected leather footgear. Many went crazy and a few died from exposure. The most startling feature of a portion por-tion of this mad pilgrimage, however, was that a small portion of these Doukhobor zealots, not content with throwing off their outer clothing, denuded de-nuded themselves entirely "to show nature to humanity, and how man should return into his fatherland and give back the ripened fruit and its seeds." they said. In passing through many of the Doukhobor villages this naked band were driven out by their co-religionists and beaten with twigs until the blood ran. At night in the rain and snow and wind they clustered into one heap and lay on the ground, one on another, for warmth. Strangely Strange-ly enough it is said that none of them was seriously frozen. This strange march continued until 28 of the unclad un-clad ones reached Yorkton, where they were met by the mounted police and were arrested. Three months' imprisonment impris-onment was their lot. After they were released all but ten of these 28 nude marchers abandoned their curious curi-ous beliefs and went back to work. These ten attempted another outbreak, out-break, destroyed some of the brethren's breth-ren's crops and burned some of their machinery, but 'finally were subdued and imprisoned once more. The next year there was another attempt at a pilgrimage, but by that time "Father" Verigin was in control and it amounted amount-ed to nothing. About the time that Verigin came into the full powers of leadership a movement was set afoot to persuade the government to take back the largest part of the original grant to the Doukhobors. Those behind the agitation claimed that the community had more land than it ever would be able to use. and that a part of the holdings ought to be made available " to $40 an acre, according IbSS' t uk V i to location, which would B S-TM 11 value considerably more llKaBBBMrtl If it had not been for MSt!iirTpTn BO& the forbearance of the iMflfeWS t g j Canadian government, firJ'Ky however, the Doukhobors might have lost their land for other and more profitable settlers. "Father" Verigin at once saw that it was "up to" the Doukhobors to make an adequate defense, and he set about it in a characteristic character-istic way. At the fall meeti ng of the community nearly $100,000 was set aside to be used for buying new land immediately adjacent to the Doukhobor reservation, and all talk of cutting down their holdings ceased forthwith. Another evidence of the quality of Verigin's leadership leader-ship is to be seen in the system of elevators and granaries gran-aries that is found in every center of population in the community. The Doukhobor farmers are thus under no compulsion to sell their wheat and flax the moment it is harvested, but can hold it for weeks or months if necessary. nec-essary. Within the last two years a system of flour mills also has been installed, and the export of flour is beginning to be a considerable item of profit. Plans are afoot for a narrow gauge railroad to connect the various vari-ous villages of the community. They alreadyare connected connect-ed by private telephone lines. In each village there 18 one im nense granary or a modern elevator. All the farm it .plements are owned in common. Much of the machim ry used in cultivating the soil is of the most modern type obtainable, steam plows being numerous. As a class the Doukhobors are a big, tall race, fair-haired, with the flat noses that are peculiar to the Slavs. Each household holds its religious service at four o'clock every morning. They have no civil courts, but settle set-tle their differences in a religious way, based on their interpretation of the Scriptures. There is said to be no crime among them. They are famous throughout Canada for their live stock, and will pay almost any price for the finest blooded breeding animals. side of the Atlantic. For years the "Douks" were looked upon as a joke and Canada was laughed at and ridiculed, but now there is a different tale to tell. Most of the stories that brought the immigrants into contempt were based upon the doings of a small minority of the communists, religious zealots whose fervor led them into extravagance of conduct such as could be explained only by mental derangement. de-rangement. These zealots went naked in the middle of -winter on pilgrimages through the snow in search of the Messiah. They would not work and they would not sanction work by -others. They even turned loose their horses, cattle, sheep and hogs (given to them by the Canadian government), because they didn't believe that horses or oxen should he made to toll for man or that sheep or hogs should be eaten by man. The majority of the immigrants, however, were industrious and painstaking and had little lit-tle sympathy for the fanatics. These industrious indus-trious ones have built up the community property prop-erty until now the Doukhobor colonies are among the best in the Saskatchewan country. They are as deeply religious as ever, and they cling to their old Quaker-like customs tenaciously, tena-ciously, hut they no longer are looked upon as a problem by the Canadian government and there will he no more talk of dispossessing them from the magnificent domain they occupy. oc-cupy. The Doukhobor has made good. The first shipload of Doukhobors left Ba-toun. Ba-toun. in Asiatic Russia, in January, 1899, bound for Canada, and by the middle of that year more than 7,000 of them had settled in the far northwest. Now the number of these peculiar pe-culiar religionists in Canada exceeds 10,000. The creed of the Doukhobors is somewhat vague in many details. The principal points of their belief, however, are these: There is one God: the Holy Trinity is beyond comprehension. compre-hension. They do not believe in praying in temples made with hands, and say that all the ceremonies of the churches, being useless, were much better left alone. Luxury in food or dress is condemned, and going to war, carrying car-rying arms or taking oaths of any description descrip-tion are forbidden. Their mode of life is strictly communistic, all laboring for the common com-mon good. They are abstainers from alcohol and tobacco, and, for the most part, are vegetarians. vege-tarians. For many years the Doukhobors lived in the neighborhood of Kief, in what is called "Little "Lit-tle Russia." In the reign of Alexander I., they all were banished to the Wet mountains of Georgia, in the Caucasus. There they lived for many years among the half-savage Mahometans, Ma-hometans, who have been the rulers of that region for centuries. The crisis in their fortunes for-tunes came in 1SS7. A universal conscription was declared throughout Russia. Every healthy adult male was ordered to be ready for service in the army. For the next three years the Doukhobors were persecuted unremittingly. There were innumerable banishments. imprisonments, floggings and tortures that cannot be described, de-scribed, but the Doukhobors were immovable. Their condition was pitiable in the extreme when Count Tolstoy and the Society of Friends in England came to their relief by trajsing funds for their emigration to Canada. : 'There was little difficulty about obtaining sufficient land at little price for the 7.000 Doukhobors who came to Canada during the first year. Each male over IS years old was allowed to take up 160 acres subject to a payment pay-ment of $10, which was three years deferred. The Dominion government also gave a grant of $5 to each man. woman and child, who reached Winnipeg before June 30, 1899. The region where these Russian exiles have I through their own stubbornness about obeying the laws. They received their land under the terms of the Canadian homestead act, which, among other things, requires that the person who takes up a homestead shall reside on it until he "proves up." Now the solitary life of the homesteader has no attraction for the Doukhobor, with his ages-old fondness for village vil-lage living. The result was that the Doukhobors, Douk-hobors, instead of remaining on their homesteads, home-steads, established themselves in a string of villages, between 40 and 50 in number, that sprawl across the plains for a distance of 100 miles northeast of Yorkton. In due course the government gently reminded re-minded the Doukhobor leaders that their people peo-ple were in danger of losing their homesteads through their failure to live on them. The stolid refugees paid no attention to the warning, warn-ing, and, in the end, they had their own way. The powers of the Dominion decided to let them hold their land and live as they wished. This is not the first concession the Canadian Cana-dian government has made and it is not likely like-ly to be the last. Not long ago a movement was started in certain quarters where the hostility hos-tility to the "Spirit Wrestlers" was marked, to urge the authorities to make all the men take the oath of allegiance to King Edward. As it is one of the cardinal principles of this religious sect that they shall take no oaths of any description, doubtless the instigators of this enforcement of one of the Dominion's laws regarding alien settlers hoped that they would move and leave their lands open for purchase at a low price. The government knew the Doukhobors probably would refuse to take any oath, partly on account of their belief and partly because they would fear that it might lead them at some time to be forced into military service. Therefore, the authorities authori-ties forbore to press the matter of the oath of allegiance, but contented themselves with intimating in-timating to the Doukhobor leaders that his majesty King Edward VII. would take it as a personal favor if the "brethren" would come around when they found it convenient and promise to be good subjects. This plan is working fairly well. Something like 800 of the able-bodied men in the various communities have taken the oath voluntarily during the last IS months. This has been due almost entirely to the influence of their leader. Father Verigin. Peter Verigin has been the greatest power among the Doukhobors for nearly 25 years. For 15 years he was an exile in Siberia, together to-gether with six of his brothers, but they al! were released finally, and reached Canada about six years ago. His followers almost deify him, as they had his six great predecessors who ruled like the kings or prophets of old during the time that the sect sojourned in Russia. During his long exile he became a firm convert to the theories of Tolstoy, and 13 years ago wrote an epistle to his followers which is made up chiefly of passages borrowed verbatim from Tolstoy's "Kingdom of God Is Within You," and containing in particular one long passage from that book a quotation of Tolstoy's translation of the Declaration of Sentiments which William Lloyd Garrison drew up in 1838 for a Peace convention held in Boston. This epistle is part of the sacred lore of the Doukhobors. It contains no acknowledgment acknowl-edgment of the fact that it was taken mostly from Tolstoy. There probably are more people in Assiniboia and Saskatchewan to-day who can repeat the long passage from Garrison's declaration than there are in the United States who ever heard of it. The disturbers among the Doukhobors belong be-long to the reactionary or fanatical element, and these made themselves felt to such an extent before Verigin arrived in Canada that at one time there was serious talk of bundling up all of the thousands of Doukhobors and shipping them out of Canada no one cared much whither. At that time it was considered con-sidered that the czar had played a colossal joke on Canada by letting the 7,000 odd Doukhobors Douk-hobors leave his realm, and it was a matter of congratulation among the Canadians that the 10.000 or more who stayed behind in the Wet mountains of the Caucasus were too stubborn stub-born or too fearful to emigrate. It was this fanatical element that was responsible re-sponsible for the "pilgrimage in search of Jesus" in 1902. These fanatics belonged to the Yorkton colonists and professed the belief be-lief that the use of animals as beasts of burden bur-den was unscriptural and that Christ would soon come again in person. They set free nearly 500 animals which were caught by the authorities and sold back to the more sober-minded sober-minded Doukhobors. Meantime some 600 men, women and children set out across the snow-covered snow-covered prairie, where they expected the Messiah Mes-siah to meet them and lead them to evangelize the world. They were poorly clad, they were without food, except such as they could get from charitable people on the way, and their |
