and stones accumulate to a great size, so similar cairns rise upon these haunted spots in the more remote districts along the cold shores washed by the Baltic Sea.
It is not surprising to find that in a country such as Russia, which through the ages has so often tottered to madness and of late years fallen into stark lunacy, during the seventeenth century an epidemic of suicide raged. It persisted, indeed, at spasmodic intervals throughout the eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries, but it was somewhat earlier than this that the troubles of that luckless nation blazed out in furious frenzy. As when the year 1000 approached a fearful apocalyptic mania inflamed many parts of Europe, and men imagining that the world was about to come to an end, that almost any hour, any moment the Angel’s clarion would blare, heaven and earth shrivel like some parching scroll and the Judge be set on His awful throne, in their hundreds deserted cities and homes to wander abroad preaching fevered repentance and the most extravagent forms of penance, or else in frantic despair abandoned themselves to debauchery and violence, so in Russia some mad visionary who proclaimed that the crack of doom was appointed for the year 1666[23] set the whole country aflame with terror. In many parts, men ceased to labour in the fields, relinquished their businesses and all social intercourse, barricaded themselves in their houses behind closed windows and fast-barred doors, awaiting the end with the gloomiest forebodings. As might have been expected, great numbers completely lost their senses and scores of dangerous lunatics not only infested the highroad but even invaded villages and towns preaching that the only way to escape the wrath to come was to prevent the final day by self-destruction. They were, moreover, very willing and eager to help those who shrank from so severe a test, and before long red murder was rife in every direction. Their services, however, were not required as frequently as might have been supposed for the delirium spread with such alarming rapidity that not merely households but whole communities eagerly devoted themselves to death. If in some paroxysm of wild hysteria a man had declared his intention of becoming a martyr, for so these poor wretches were deemed, the pious duty devolved upon his friends and relations of seeing that he scrupulously fulfilled his vow. Should he
