Azamburi is exactly like any other Russian village, a long, dirty, double row of wretched hovels. Each farmer has his house and buildings arranged round a square courtyard, in the midst of which lie carts, pigs, agricultural produce, and filth of all kinds. The inhabitants are Molokans; some account of the religious opinions of these people will be found in Mr. D. M. Wallace's well-known work on Russia; they have no priests nor sacraments, neither smoke nor drink, do not swear, and pay great reverence to the Bible, a copy of which may be seen on a shelf in the living-room of every house. They are not at all attractive, either in physiognomy or conversation; their awful stupidity and ugliness are all the more powerfully felt from the contrast which the native population presents to them. Their choice of a piece of ground for colonization would be inexplicable did we not remember their peculiar religious convictions; they have chosen the very worst place in the whole plain; the only drinking water in the neighbourhood is very bad, so bad that the tea made from it is almost undrinkable, even by people accustomed to Kura water. Quite near the village are stinking, stagnant marshes, which must make the place terribly unhealthy. After dinner we went outside to smoke, for the Molokan will not suffer the mildest cigarette in his house, and even in the depth of winter the visitor who smokes must burn his weed in the open air. Returning along the road for some little distance, followed by a crowd of children, who, evidently, had never before seen a lady in European dress, we mounted a little hill, whence we saw in the distance our baggage-waggons slowly approaching. In re-entering the village we overtook a farmer with an English reaping-machine; this man was less taciturn than his neighbours, and of his own accord entered into conversation with us; he was loud in his praises of the reaper, and said that the man who invented a certain part of it (a patent screw, I think) ought to be "kissed behind the ear." We tried to interest him in a pet idea of our own, viz., that village communities should buy machinery collectively, but we regret to say that we could not make a convert of him.