The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

ONEGA. 155in the first half of the fifteenth century. The monks, who depend directly on theHoly Synod, long maintained their primitive rites in opposition to the reforms ofthe Patriarch Nikon, but in 1676 the place was taken through the treason of amonk, M-ho revealed an underground passage to the besiegers. Most of its 1,600defenders, monks and peasants alike, were put to the sword or flogged to deathwith rods. Yet the spirit of religious independence is not quite extinct in Solovki,where the monks are recruited from the natives, still imbued with the Novgorodspirit.The village of Onega, also an old Novgorod settlement at the mouth of theriver of like name, and at the southernmost extremity of the "White Sea, is anFig. 1S6.Solovetzkit Islands.Scale 1 : 000,000.Depth in Fatboni9.The herrings swarm here in such quantities that theyimportant fishing station.may at times be taken in bucketfuls, and all the fish—herrings, cod, salmon,perch, pike—are generally preserved in frozen masses, very few being smoked orcured, owing to the inferior quality of the salt. On this coast the cattle and swineare mostly fed on red herrings.The vast basin of the Dvina, larger in extent than all Italy, has only threetowns whose population exceeds 5,000, and two of them, Vologda and Archangel(Arkhangelsk), owe their importance partly to their rank as provincial capitals.