THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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starvation. If there are many lepers in a community, men, women and children are herded together in one hut. This happens in a country where there is a short summer of three months of tropical heat and nine months of winter, when the thermometer goes down to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, and the lepers, therefore, do not stir out for days together. »

As I learned more and more of their misery, I felt that God had given these poor outcast lepers into my hand; that I must go to them. God had guided me thus far, and would guide me rightly to the end. In order to find them in the forest I learned that I must ride long distances on horseback through a very difficult country. Thirty brave Yakout men volunteered to accompany me, and at last I was able to leave Yakutsk for my long ride. I had with me some Roman Catholics, some belonging to the Greek Church, and I am a Protestant, but we had not a single discussion, and although I was entirely in the hands of these thirty men for two months, I was always treated with the greatest respect and consideration. I had never been on horseback before except for a few minutes, and as there was nothing obtainable but the native wooden saddle, there was nothing for it but riding like a man. I had great difficulty in keeping on, but managed it with a great deal of bumping up and down. We trav­eled first in the day time, but owing to the heat of the summer in this part of Siberia, and the worrying of mosquitoes and other insects, we were obliged to travel at night at last. We soon left post houses behind, but I carried a tent with me, and when we stopped it was put up and I rested as well as I could, but it was not very comfortable, for inside the tent we were obliged to have a fire to keep off the mosquitoes, and I dared not undress for fear of being dangerously stung. Although I slept in gloves and boots the mosquitoes somehow stung me so that sleep was almost impossible. After a few days’ riding in the native wooden saddle I became so sore all over that I could not get on or off my pony without assistance, and I was in such pain from stings and bruises that it was not easy to rest. Part of the way lay through dreary marshes and part through dense forests. We were sometimes caught in heavy thun­der storms, and when we came to a place where it was possible to stop a fire was made, I was lifted off my horse, laid before the fire, and turned first on one side and then on the other and gradually dried.

Our food was cooked in an iron pot, and when it was ready we all sat on the ground round it, each man dipping in his spoon in turn, but I made it a rule never to look at the man who was dipping in his spoon before me, and then I managed very well. We had taken provisions with us from Yakutsk, brown and black bread in fish- skin bags, tinned and preserved meats, etc., but everything that was capable of break­ing was broken with the constant bumping. Our food consisted for the most part of bread reduced to a powder, of which we made a sort of paste, well flavored from the fish-skin bag, tea, and sometimes a wild duck. We had great difficulty in obtaining water, and had often to squeeze it out of the marshes, and were once even obliged to take water from a lake in which lepers had bathed. There were many bears in some of the forests through which we passed, but we were never attacked. One night we had to pass through some miles of burning earth. The earth is mostly peat, and dur­ing the heat of summer, from some unexplained cause, combustion takes place and spreads for miles. Only one little baggage horse, frightened by the flames, broke loose from the rest and galloped away, disappearing in the smoke. We did not see him any more, only heard for a time the thumping of the packages he was carrying, which had fallen both on one side and, knocking together, frightened the poor little horse still more. Through the providence of God we passed through all these dangers unharmed.

It is in this inhospitable country that I have been describing that the poor lepers lived, and it was in some of these dense forests that I found at last the lepers I had come so far to help. I forgot the difficulties of the journey and the comparatively little injury I had undergone when I saw their misery. I found one woman living alone, and I shall never forget seeing the look of hopelessness in the woman’s eyes change