One feels so entirely in the power of natural forces that the fatalism of the poor inhabitants of the land is easily understood. The Kalmuks, primitive and nomadic, produce the impression of ghosts from distant centuries. Metchnikoff noticed that since his last visit in 1874, fatal influences had worked havoc on the population. Four scourges, all of them coming from outside, are destroying the Kalmuks: syphilis, alcoholism, tuberculosis, and the Russians who are constantly pushing them back. Those poor people realise the fate which is awaiting them, and resign themselves like a sick man who knows his sickness to be incurable. The spiritual life of the Kalmuks reduces itself to their religious cult. There are many Buddhist convents where children are being brought up for a monastic life. Religious rites are performed by priests dressed in purple and brilliant yellow; for the uninitiated, their part consists in unrolling interminable bands on which prayers are inscribed, and in executing a religious music which seemed a mixture of a camel's grunt, a dog's howling, and an infinitely sad plaint. Of the pure cult of Buddha, nothing seems to remain but an empty form. However, there is a convent in the steppes--Tshori--a sort of religious academy, where an effort is being made to restore the cult to the original level of Buddhist doctrines. Whilst gathering observations on tuberculosis, we traversed the steppes in a north-easterly direction as far as Sarepta. This town seemed like a civilised centre after the steppes, where the conditions of life were somewhat hard in spite of the cordial reception accorded us everywhere. The food, consisting solely in tinned goods and mutton, had caused intestinal trouble in nearly all the members of the expedition; on the other hand, we were greatly incommoded by the heat, lack of water, and abundance of insects of all kinds. In spite of all, Metchnikoff had hitherto borne the journey fairly well. However, since we left Moscow he had had frequent cardiac intermittence, accompanied sometimes by sharp pains along the sternum. But the stay at Sarepta especially tried his health; the heat reached 35° C. (95° F.) in the shade and 52° C. (about 125° F.) in the sun; in the evening the windows could not be opened because of the mosquitoes. Metchnikoff, who had shown so much endurance, now became weak, drowsy, and nervous; he attributed his condition to the excessive heat. Yet he could not leave Sarepta, for all the members of both branches of the mission had agreed to meet there in order to sum up the results of their observations. The researches of the expedition for the study of plague were not finished, and the Russian mission had agreed to complete them. So far, it was established that neither the corpses--after a certain time--nor the ground, nor the surrounding animals contained any plague microbes, and no carriers had been found among the Kirghiz population.