Note 11 — Chapter XX · FROM KRASNOIARSK TO ALEXANDREFFSKY.

This compared favourably with the sales at the Bible Society’s depôt at Tomsk, which is the only one in Siberia, though I had hoped to be able to establish others at Tobolsk, Omsk, Krasnoiarsk, and especially Irkutsk. The depôt at Tomsk had been opened about three years, the annual sales having amounted to about 300 Bibles, 200 New Testaments, and 500 copies of the four Gospels in Sclavonic and Russian. They had also sold a few Hebrew Bibles and the Psalms, the latter chiefly in Sclavonic. The Protopope said he would gladly become a depositary for the Bible Society; and would purchase at once 50 copies from me of the New Testament, but Kansk had not been mentioned as one of the places at which a depôt was desired. Moreover, I had been instructed, in opening a depôt, to require the depositary to sign an agreement to abide by certain terms, after which I might take an order to the value of £30. But I did not gather that our friend wished altogether to turn merchant; and therefore I thought it better to let him have the 50 copies out of hand, rather than to put him into more complicated mercantile transactions with Petersburg.