Novgorod began very early, certainly by the eleventh century, for the chronicle of Nestor (the monk of Kiev), called Povest vremennykh let (Annals of Contemporary Years), which appeared in 1110, contains a number of items from the Novgorod Chronicle. Thus we read, in Nestor, that in 1063 the Volkhov flowed backwards for six days foreboding disaster, and four years later Novgorod was burned by the Prince Vseslav of Polovtsk. It is clear that this information could only have reached the Pechersk monastery in Kiev, where the Annals of Contemporary Years were composed, through the channel of a Novgorod chronicle. The latter was probably composed and kept in the Bishop's Palace or " Court," a fact to which the following data point: In 1136 and 1137, the entries were made by Kirik, one of the clergy of St. Sophia, well known in the history of early Russian literature, and the author of several works, including one of exceptional interest on chronology. Again, the entries in the Chronicle from the twelth to the fifteenth centuries largely relate to the Vladyka or Archbishop of Novgorod and the affairs of the See. Several considerations, mostly founded on the text of the Novgorod Chronicle in the Synodal 1 and other transcripts, point to the fact that in 1167 the archiepiscopal chronicle was rearranged as an historical compilation on a larger scale.-The foundation for this was formed by the incorporation in it of the text of the Kiev Annals of Contemporary Years, to which were added under their respective dates all the annual entries of events made in Novgorod. This rearrangement was probably made by order of Ilya (Elias), first Archbishop of Novgorod. In its original form this rearrangement of the archiepiscopal chronicle has not survived; but we can gain some idea of it, first, from the later historical compilations, which were no longer of local, but of general, Russian character and scope, and comprised the Novgorod Chronicle among their other component parts, and secondly, from the oldest existing transcript of the Novgorod Chronicle itself, viz. the Synodal Transcript here translated. The Synodal Transcript had, as its foundation, an historical compilation made by a priest of the Novgorod Church of St. James, one Herman Voyata. The compiler speaks of himself in the entry for A.D. 1144, saying that in that year he was appointed priest;