enormous. Each successive Czar has visited it not infrequently and always gave a large donation.

What the attitude of the new leaders of the Ukraine toward this monastery will be remains to be seen. The revolutionary movement as a whole has been anti-clerical and shows a revolt against the former influence of the church in Russia.

The monks do not live the ascetic lives

of their ancestors, although the food still seems plain. Coarse bread is always served, fish frequently, but meat and wine are not unseldom. One monk always reads from the lives of saints while the others eat. The monks seat themselves on benches and they eat off pewter platters. There is an inn at which many stop who can pay, but the fare is too plain for most people. Then there is also a free lodging quarter, where the poorer ones

can stop without charge. Sour black bread and boiled buckwheat groats is about the only food provided for this class of pilgrims.

PILGRIMS SHARE THEIR FLEAS WITH ALL

Many peasants will travel on foot for days and spend almost their last kopeck for the sake of visiting this sacred monastery in the holy city of Kiev. Sienkiewicz makes one of his principal characters say when faced with danger: "I shall die and all my fleas with me." These pilgrims certainly bring theirs with them to Kiev and share them freely with any one with whom they come in contact.

It would be difficult to find a larger or more varied collection of professional or casual mendicants anywhere than congregate here at Kiev during the pilgrimage period. Dressed in rags and wretchedness, these mendicants expose revolting sores and horrible deformities in order

to excite sympathy. Some appear to enjoy vested rights in particular locations. Many might be classed as pious beggars and have an almost apostolic appearance, with their long beards and quiet bearing. All of them may be worthy objects of charity, but the Russian beggars are most importunate.

RUSSIAN PEASANTS EXTREMELY
CHARITABLE

The Russians themselves are very charitable toward the unfortunate class. Poor peasants, themselves clothed in rags, will share their little with those poorer than themselves.

A foreigner, knowing the poverty of the people and the inadequacy of public relief, cannot but feel kindly disposed toward those who are really helpless. Here, as elsewhere, however, it is difficult to distinguish between the unworthy and the deserving.

I

N VIEW of the present pressure on the food supply of the United States, and with special reference to the universal effort to reduce the consumption of wheat by the substitution of corn meal, bran, and other cereal products, it may be worth while to call attention to the high nutritive value of a wholly neglected food of wide distribution. I refer to the

acorn.

There are in the United States more than 50 species of oaks, of which 30 occur in the Eastern States and about 15 in the single State of California.

To the native Indians of that State the acorn is, and always has been, the staff of life, furnishing the material for their daily mush and bread. And when it is remembered that the Indian population of California at the time of its discovery numbered probably not less than 300,000 persons, and that from the Oregon boundary to the Mexican line, except in the desert region, where oaks do not grow, acorns were universally eaten, and in most cases were the principal article of diet, some idea may be had of the vast quantity and high food value of those annually consumed.

In the fall, when the acorns are ripe, the Indians gather them and spread them out to dry in the sun, and when thoroughly dried store them in large baskets and wickerwork caches, sometimes in trees, but usually on rocks or poles.

These receptacles are built to shed the rain and to keep out rats and mice, but are sufficiently open to permit the circulation of air, thus avoiding the danger of molding.

Another and very different way of preserving acorns, practiced by the Wintoon Indians of western Tehama County, in California, was described to me by F. B. Washington, of Oakland. The acorns were buried in boggy places near cold springs, where they became swollen

and softened and turned nearly black in color, but remained fresh for years. When needed they were dug out and roasted, never dried or pounded for flour, the mush and bread being always made. of dried acorns.

White men in plowing have opened up caches of acorns that had lain in these cold, boggy places for fully 30 years, and found the acorns black, but still good.

When preserved dry in the usual way, the acorns are shucked as needed, and the dry meats, each splitting naturally in two parts, are pounded in stone mortars until reduced to a fine meal or flour. This at first is disagreeably bitter, but the bitter element is removed by leaching with warm water, which in seeping through acquires the color of coffee and the bitterness of quinine. The meal is then dried and stored to be used as required, for mush or bread.

According to V. K. Chesnut, the Indians of Round Valley, California, sometimes practice another method of getting rid of the bitter element, namely, by burying the acorns with grass, ashes, and charcoal in a sandy place and afterward soaking them in water from time to time until they become sweet.

BOILED IN BASKETS BY USE OF HOT STONES

The ordinary method of cooking is by boiling in baskets by means of hot stones, the result being a thick jelly-like mush or porridge. Acorn flour makes a rich, glutinous food and contains a surprisingly large quantity (18 to 25 per cent) of nut oil of obvious nutritive value.

Mrs. Merriam tells me that it is easy to work, being what cooks call a "good binder," which means that it holds together well even when mixed with several times its bulk of corn meal or other coarse or granular materials.

Mush and bread made wholly of acorn flour are not pleasing to our taste, but

leached acorn meal mixed with corn meal in the proportion of one part acorn to four parts corn makes excellent corn bread and pones, and mixed with white flour or whole-wheat flour in the same proportion makes palatable bread and muffins, adding to the cereal value the value of a fat nut product.

I have often eaten the pure acorn mush and bread as made by the Indians, but prefer the mixed product above mentioned. John Muir, during his arduous tramps in the mountains of California, often carried the hard, dry acorn bread of the Indians and deemed it the most compact and strength-giving food he had ever used.

Another kind of bread was made by the Indians of Sacramento Valley. The eminent geologist, James D. Dana, who

acorns

traversed the valley with the Wilkes Expedition in 1841, said: "Throughout the Sacramento plains the Indians live mostly on a kind of bread or cake made of kneaded into a loaf about two inches thick, and baked. It has a black color, and a consistency like that of cheese, but a little softer; the taste, though not very pleasing, is not positively disagreeable.

Chesnut tells us that this kind of bread usually contains a red clay which is mixed with the dough before baking, in the proportion of one part clay to 20 of acorn dough. It is then embedded in leaves and baked overnight on hot stones, either in the cooking hole in the ground or covered with earth and hot stones.

"When removed the next morning the bread, if previously mixed with clay, is as

black as jet, and while still fresh has the consistency of rather soft cheese. In the course of a few days it becomes hard.

. . It is remarkable for being sweet, for the original meal, and even the soup, are rather insipid. The sweet taste is very evident, and is due in great measure to the prolonged and gentle cooking, which, favored by the moisture of the dough, gradually converts some constituent of the meal into sugar."

Chesnut adds that the clay really serves a useful purpose, converting any tannin still remaining in the dough into an insoluble form, thus removing the indigestible element. He states further that bread made in the same way, but without the clay, is likewise sweet, differing only in color, the color varying from light tan to dark reddish brown.

The quantity of acorn meal cooked and eaten by Indians is almost beyond belief.

At a ceremony for the dead, held near Bald Rock, Tuolumne County, California, in early October, 1907, the preparation of the acorn food for the mourners and guests was begun several days in advance. Two cooking places and five leaches, each about 4 feet in diameter, were in active operation for several days.

On the opening day I counted at the cooking places about 50 huge baskets, each holding from one to two bushels, full of freshly cooked acorn mush (nup'pah). The mush is so heavy that the services of two strong women were required to lift each basket and place it in the large conical burden basket on the back of a third woman, who slowly carried it to the roundhouse where the ceremony was held.

In addition to the mush, there were at least 50 turtle-shaped loaves of acorn bread (oo-lay), made by dipping out the