Our navigation of the Dvina lasted a fortnight. Gradually, as we approached Archangel, I saw that the nights became shorter--the last one, indeed, was marked by an interval of only two hours between the setting of the sun and its rising again; and during that time also, any one might have read or written without difficulty. When at last the towers of Archangel began to glitter in the early morning beams, the whole crew gave a shout of delight, while the boatmen hastened to throw into the stream the big chest full of earth, which had served as our kitchen range. The other boats did the same with their respective kitchens, for this, it appears, is a time-honoured observance. The rowers, in like manner, break off the ends of their oars, with a prodigious noise--another strange custom among the navigators of the Dvina; and when, at last, we reached the landing-place, each man had his passport restored to him, and received from the _prikastchik_ the fifteen roubles which he had gained by the labour of his hands. Thus I was in Archangel! I touched the shores of that bay of the White Sea, which, in all my weary wanderings in the Ourals, had appeared to my mind’s eye as the haven of refuge! I now beheld those flags fluttering on vessels of deliverance, of which a vague and fairy-like impression had often risen, like a _Fata Morgana_, to cheer me on my Ostiak couch in the heart of the lonely forest. Ah, how grateful to my eyes were those pendants, barred with stripes of many hues--to eyes which for so many months had dwelt only on vast desert expanses of snow! How ardent and sincere was the thanksgiving which I now recited among my fellow ‘worshippers of God,’ who were thankful, like myself, to have reached the end of pilgrimage!