Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-30
HAVEN OF THE EXILE
Starting Point of an Underground
Railroad in America
DEAR TO SIBERIAN SUFFERERS.
Father Agapius Honcharenko's Mountain
Home in California.
A WORK THAT RUSSIA CANNOT STOP

| WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH
There is tiny plateau upon the summit
of one of the mountain spurs of the coast
range in California which sweeps along the
back of Alameda county and divides the
valley of the bay of San Francisco from the
great sun-baked plains of the San Joaquin.
1t is the tiniest Of plains, just large enough
to accommodate a wee house, toy barn and
one other building which is the caravanseral
of the Orient transferred with all its Eastern
associations to the extreme Occident
The hills which tower along behind fence
off the chilly winds, the sun shines warm
upon the little spot and ripens earliest in all
the country round the early vegetables
which, sold in San Francisco, supply the
wants of a frugal couple and leave little
surplus to relieve the needy, hunted man,
fleeing from tyranny and to carry on
work which has for its object the raising
Of humanity.
There is tiny gap between the mountain
| peaks, through which is drawn a cleaning
ribbon of water, and through this Golden
Gate the man who sits most often on this
block of rugged rocks bends his eyes across
the thousand leagues of sea toward the un-
seen shores of that distant land where men
and women suffer heavy pain and torture
because their lips have once whispered the
| sacred word, Freedom"
| At the base of this rock a grave is dug
| deep into the soil and covered over with
boards in readiness for the day when it shall
| be needed. $50 if you please, sir, when l
! die my wife will dress me in my robes of
priest, will put upon me the black gown,
the gold embroidered stole and the hat. Two
men will come from the village down below,
paid them long ago, and will lift the
boards aside and lay me down there without
coffin and shovel in the earth and make all
smooth and fat and plant handful of
seeds, which in year shall cover the spot
with the brambles of wilderness. Then my
wife will have my papers, and that will be
the end of Agapius Honcharenko. But I
shall rest as well beside this rock as though
| l lay beneath the altar of the Troitsa in
Kier the holy, where was born"
| A STRANGE CHARACTER.
Honcharenko is living riddle to his
| farming neighbors, and the wisest of them
have long since given him up as beyond
solution. His ways are old-countrv ways,
incomprehensible despite the cosmopolitan
ism of California. When he speaks it is
with mild gestures to bespeak your kind at
tention; to listen is to confer on him favor
acknowledged by gracious inclination of
the head and clasping of the hands before
his breast, and not period omits the cour-
teous 'if you please, sir" He is Kossack,
of that race of horsemen who swept from
Asia in the footsteps of fierce Attila the Hun
and made their settlements in the black val
| ley of the Dnieper, Kharkov, Kier the Holy,
Tchernigov and Pottava, where Asia vet
| lives in Europe, and whence came this
| colony of one to distant California. Driven
from home the home longing still is strong,
true and steaGfast after all these many
years, and the little mountain plateau bears
the name of Ukraina-the Cossack "bit of
bread bread it never refused the
needy or the afflicted.
The formers call him crank. At the Con-
sulate of Russia in San Francisco they call
him 'pestilent Nihilist;" they ascribe to
him all sorts of plans to murder all sorts of
persons by detonation. eyes, know Con-
sui olarovsky calls me Nigilist" (for so he
calls it, with a common Russian mixing of
e with h). "aud as such he does report me
to his Government, which has known me
many years." Ask of him at the Russian
church and Bishop and Archimandrite will
| call him renegade priest, hereto, apostate,
every sort of ecclesiastical hard name, and,
to crown it all, will dub him Raskolnik,
Old Believer To be an Old Believer is to
be scorned by every church dignitary, to be
under the ban of ukase and decree of Holy
Synod. Yet the Raskolulk are older than
the orthodox rite, they are simpler in their
faith, the are in history and in numbers the
true national church of Russia. He simply
smiles when confronted with the sneers of
Archimandrite Vladimir.
A REvERED NAME IN SIBERIA.
State. church and commonplace men
contemn him, yet his name is known and
held in reverence in the mines of Kara,
about the Lake Baikal, from east to west
across Siberia wherever tortured men and
women pay the price of thought of freedom
with bleeding backs or the restful grave.
They know OF Papa Agapie and his Ukraina
and in their dreams they long to seek him
out and rest for once in safety. His thoughts,
his efforts, every endeavor are all for these
who suffer in Siberia and for those who yet
remain in Russia who long for freedom not
yet of speech, but only OF thought and
shudder nightly lest in their dreams the for
hidden word should fash upon their minds,
What they in secret hope and work and die
cruel deaths for, ne has reached and on the
gable of his house boldly proclaims in gilt
tering letters, Svoboda-Liberty." He is
revolutionist whose one idea of revolution
is education, he is prescribed for teaching
1CSbclot AS 40 Oh Vuton iOI W Say
that man even Russian man, was endowed
with brains that he might use them.
Honcharenko has had a strange career
from his cradle in Kier the Holy to the
ready graveSthat waits for him in his
Ukraina. In his youth the road lay open
before him to honor and place and he might
have gone on to high estate. Called to the
priesthood at an early age. he was at once
appointed domestic chaplain of the Russian
embassy at Athens. There he was called
upon to make his choice, one path led to
ignoble honor and for prize at the further
end the gold and jewels of prince of the
9hurch; one led rapidly to ruin of every
material hope. But the young priest of the
embassy had learned to think. Suddenly
warning came through secret channels that
the great white Czar had discovered that his
humble priest was thinking aud bad re-
solved to teach him that thought was not
for such as he. Swift as is the stroke of
Russian government, the warning came-s
little swifter-for by the time the order
came for his arrest the priest had left the
embassy and with two hours start was out
by Salamis, heading for Constantinople.
Thence he fled to London and was associ-
ated with Alexander Herzen in the man.
sgement of the Kolokol, which somehow
despite all Introduction, passed
FROM HAND TO HAND
in Russia and brought education to many
who since have paid the forfeit for their
presumption. From London to New York |
he came and assisted the Bible society in |
their translation of the Scriptures into Rus
sian. Then came bitter time when be had |
freedom but no bread, and at last he went |
to Alaska to be with his compatriots there. |
From Alaska he came to San Francisco |
and published paper in Russian with the |
title Suoboda-Liberty, which in itself is |