Extricating ourselves with some difficulty, we entered a chapel-crypt,
which contains the bodies of Sergius and Herrmann. They lie together, in
a huge coffin of silver, covered with cloth-of-gold. Tapers of immense
size burned at the head and foot, and the pilgrims knelt around, bending
their foreheads to the pavement at the close of their prayers. Among
others, a man had brought his insane daughter, and it was touching to
see the tender care with which he led her to the coffin and directed her
devotions. So much of habit still remained, that it seemed, for the time
being, to restore her reason. The quietness and regularity with which
she went through the forms of prayer brought a light of hope to the
father's face. The other peasants looked on with an expression of pity
and sympathy. The girl, we learned, had but recently lost her reason,
and without any apparent cause. She was betrothed to a young man who was
sincerely attached to her, and the pilgrimage was undertaken in the hope
that a miracle might be wrought in her favor. The presence of the
shrine, indeed, struck its accustomed awe through her wandering senses,
but the effect was only momentary.

I approached the coffin, and deposited a piece of money on the
offering-plate, for the purpose of getting a glimpse of the pictured
faces of the saints, in their silver setting. Their features were hard
and regular, flatly painted, as if by some forerunner of Cimabue, but
sufficiently modern to make the likeness doubtful. I have not been able
to obtain the exact date of their settlement on the island, but I
believe it is referred to the early part of the fifteenth century. The
common people believe that the island was first visited by Andrew, the
Apostle of Christ, who, according to the Russian patriarch Nestor, made
his way to Kiev and Novgorod. The latter place is known to have been an
important commercial city as early as the fourth century, and had a
regular intercourse with Asia. The name of Valaam does not come from