CHAPTER III.

THE INHABITANTS OF THE ARCTIC WILDERNESSES:--THE LAPLANDERS--SAMOIEDES--OSTIAKS--KAMTSCHATDALES--ESKIMOS, OR ESQUIMAUX.

To the various populations which occupy the Arctic regions of both the Old and the New World, the general appellation of Hyperboreans is sometimes given. Do these populations truly form, as some ethnologists assert, a distinct and homogeneous race; or are they not rather independent offshoots of the Japhetic race in Europe, of the Mongolian in Asia, of the Redskins in America? To this question I can give no satisfactory reply. I will only say that if the different fractions of this great group exhibit among themselves external differences of a very marked character, they are drawn together, on the other hand, by no less striking resemblances. In truth, these resemblances are markedly physiological, and should, I think, be exclusively attributed to the powerful and irresistible action of external agencies. If there be, indeed, one region where the influence of climate on the constitution of man is manifest, that region is assuredly the Polar Zone. There the conditions of life differ wholly from those which prevail in all other parts of the globe, and it necessarily results that modifications take place in the organism of the men subject to those conditions, which ought to be regarded as wholly independent of the origin of races and of their ethnographic characters properly so called.

The Hyperboreans are small, squat, ugly, and deformed. Their legs are short and sufficiently straight, but so thick, says Bory de St. Vincent, that to the spectator they seem swollen and diseased. Their head is generally of large size. They have long, coarse, straight hair, a thin beard, a broad countenance, a great mouth, high cheek-bones, and half-closed eyes, of a light colour, as gray or yellowish, but never blue. Their complexion is sometimes of a yellowish-white, as with the Laplanders; sometimes of a deep yellow or reddish-brown, as with the Eskimos and the Greenlanders. The latter peculiarity may be invoked as a very plausible argument in support of the opinion which gives to the Arctic peoples different origins. It shows also, once more, that the more or less intense colouring of the skin among the African races is not an effect of the solar heat, as was commonly supposed.

Considered from a physiological point of view, the Hyperboreans are distinguished by a remarkable uniformity of characteristics, which deserve to be specified. The sanguine temperament predominates among them. Their nervous system is but slightly developed, their sensibility blunted, their intelligence slow, their imagination feeble. Their external perspiration is almost null, and they are accustomed to suppress it entirely by induing their bodies in oily substances. On the other hand, their organs of nutrition and respiration are endowed with an extraordinary activity; and in this lies the secret of the extreme facility with which they support for several successive months the most rigorous cold. We know, indeed, that man and the warm-blooded animals possess, in their respiratory apparatus, a positive internal furnace, where a notable part of the carbon and the hydrogen contained in their venous blood is consumed in contact with the air. But to maintain this furnace at such a degree of heat as shall always preserve the temperature of the body at its normal standard (39° C.), the inhabitants of Arctic climes need constantly feed it with fuel, that is, with substances rich in carbon and hydrogen. Hence the keen appetite of the Hyperboreans for oil, fat, and flesh; hence, too, their voracity. The inhabitants of torrid or temperate regions, while sojourning among the icy wastes of the Pole, quickly become sensible of the same necessity, and eagerly feed upon aliments which elsewhere would inspire them with insurmountable disgust.

It is a remarkable fact that most of the diseases so frequent and so murderous in civilized countries are unknown in the Polar lands. But, on the other hand, ophthalmia is endemic, and the cutaneous affections, as well as cerebral and pulmonary congestion, are of common occurrence. To sum up: the already scattered and scanty population of the Arctic Zone is daily decreasing, and will probably be extinct in a few generations.

The manners of all the Hyperboreans present the same general features: they are peaceable, inoffensive, and reduced, if I may use the expression, to the utmost possible minimum of physical and intellectual activity. This race, or group of races, is represented on the two continents by several distinct peoples. Those most clearly defined are:--

In Europe, the Laplanders (or Lapps), and the Samoiedes; In Asia, the Ostiaks, Yakouts, and Kamtschatdales; and, In North America, the Eskimos (or Esquimaux).

The Laplanders inhabit the northernmost coasts of the Scandinavian peninsula. They are ignorant, uncultivated, and _torpid_, rather than savage. In spite of their frequent contact with the Russians and the Swedes, they have no industrial resources, no art, no other commerce than that which is afforded by the products of the chase, of their fisheries, or their herds of reindeer. Christianity, to which they were converted about two centuries ago, has not aroused them as yet from their moral and intellectual lethargy. All religion being reduced, so far as they are concerned, to oral tradition, the devotion of each is in proportion to his memory. Education among them has attained to this standard, that a Laplander who knows his alphabet corresponds to a young man among us who has graduated at Oxford or Cambridge.

A French traveller, M. de Saint-Blaize, furnishes some details respecting this people:--

"The race of Laplanders is constantly diminishing in numbers. It is of Asiatic origin, as may be clearly discerned in their language and the type of their physiognomy. Some are fishers, and dwell upon the coast; others are shepherds, who traverse the mountains in every direction, pasturing their reindeer on the white moss. During the three months' summer the Laplander leads his herd into the elevated regions, to withdraw them from the excessive heats and the mosquito-plagues: in winter, he brings them near the dwellings of men, principally for the sake of protecting them more effectually from his bitter enemies, the wolves, of whom he never speaks but with a sentiment of profound hatred. The Laplander's wealth is his herd, which feeds him, clothes him, and procures him, by way of barter, brandy and tobacco, the only objects of his desire.

"The independent life of this nomadic people is not without its charm. Accustomed from his infancy to privations and fatigues of every kind, the Laplander suffers little. His body acquires an extraordinary vigour, and most of our maladies are unknown to him. If during a journey a Lapland woman gives birth to a child, she places the new-born in a piece of hollow wood, where a hole has been cut out to receive the little one's head; then slings this cradle on her back, and resumes her journey. When she halts, she suspends her wooden chrysalid to a tree, and the wire-work protects it from the teeth of ferocious beasts. The reverse of this simple medal is an old age almost inevitably very unhappy. It is said that when a Laplander has no longer the strength to render himself useful, his children abandon him by the roadside, with just provisions enough to support him for a few days. The traveller frequently encounters in the forest the skeletons of old men who have thus perished in gloomy solitude."

The cradle to which our authority refers is described by Professor Forbes as cut out of solid wood and covered with leather, in flaps so arranged as to lace across the top with leathern thongs; the inside and the little pillow are rendered tolerably soft with reindeer moss, and the infant fits the space so exactly, that it can neither stir hand nor foot.

The Lapp hut, says Professor Forbes,[194] is formed interiorly of wood, by means of curved ribs uniting near the centre in a ring, which is open, and allows free escape for the smoke; the fire being lighted in the centre of the floor. The exterior is covered with turf. The door is of wood on one side. The inmates recline on skins on the floor, with their feet towards the fire; and behind them, on a row of stones near the wall of the hut, are their various utensils. Their clothing--chiefly of tanned skins and woollen stuffs--looked very dirty.

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The Samoiedes (or Samoyedes) are scattered, to the number of about a thousand families, along the coasts of the Frozen Sea, in the government of Archangel, and, in Siberia, in the governments of Tobolsk and Tomsk. Ethnologists generally consider them to have a common origin with the Finns of Europe. In stature they are somewhat taller than the Lapps, and their colour is more of a tawny. The marked features of their countenance recall the Hindu type. The forehead is high, the hair black, the nose long, the mouth well-formed; but the sunken eye, veiled by a heavy lid, expresses a cruel and perfidious nature. The manners of the Samoiedes are brutal. In character they are wily, fierce, and cunning. They are shepherds, hunters, traders, and, when opportunity serves, robbers. They clothe themselves in reindeer-skins, like the other Hyperboreans of the old continent. They shave off their hair, except a tolerably large tuft which they allow to flourish on the top of the head, and they pluck out the beard as fast as it grows. The women adorn themselves with a belt of gilded copper, and with a profusion of ornaments in glass beads and metal. They are heathens, worshipping the sun and moon, the water and the trees; in fact, whatever object meets their eyes they convert into a deity; and, above all, they adore the bear, offering prayers and sacrifices to him before venturing on an expedition to hunt him down!

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The Ostiaks and the Yakouts are established in the northernmost districts of Siberia, from the Oural Mountains to Kamtschatka. I borrow from a Polish lady, Madame Felinska, long exiled in Siberia, some curious details relative to the Ostiaks, whom, during her banishment, she had numerous opportunities of studying. Seeking one day a pathway through a wood, she encountered a couple of Ostiaks on the point of performing their religious duties. These consist in placing themselves before a tree--a larch in preference--in the wildest and densest part of the forest, and there executing a series of epileptic contortions. Such pagan demonstrations are forbidden them, says Madame Felinska; but, despite the Christianity which they have professed to accept, they are and will remain pagans.

Nearly every Ostiak carries about his person a rude image of the divinities which he adores under the name of _Schaïtan_; but this does not prevent him from wearing on his breast a small copper crucifix. The Schaïtan represents the human figure, carved in wood, or, rather, cut out of a small fragment of wood. It is of different sizes, according to the price and the various uses for which it is intended: if for carrying on the person, it is small; images for decorating the hut are much larger; but in every case the god is clothed in seven pearl-embroidered chemises, and suspended to the neck by a chaplet of silver coins. The wooden deity occupies the place of honour in the huts and cottages, and before commencing a repast, they take care to offer him the daintiest morsel, smearing his lips with fish or raw game; when this sacred duty is performed, they eat in contentment.

The priests of the Ostiaks are called _Scha-mans_; they enjoy immense influence, which they employ in furtherance of the basest superstition and in promotion of their own personal interest. Ambition and egotism dispense with knowledge and science in order to corrupt mankind.

The Ostiaks and the Samoiedes are great hunters of the white bear. It is the same with the Yakouts, a people dwelling near the Bouriats, and approaching, like them, to the Mongol type. It seems that the object of the chase is not always to kill the animal, but to catch him alive. Madame Felinska relates that she saw one day a considerable troop of bears conducted to Bérézov like a herd of tame cattle, and apparently quite as inoffensive. She neglects to inform us, however, by what means they had been reduced to this state of passive obedience. The Ostiaks and the Yakouts frequently attack the white bears body to body, without any other weapon than a hatchet or a long cutlass. They need to strike the animal with extreme skill and vigour, to slay him at the first blow, or otherwise they incur extreme peril. If he misses his stroke, the hunter's only resource is to fling himself on the ground and lie motionless, until the bear, while smelling his body and turning him over, incautiously offers himself again to his attack.

The Yakouts are nearly of average height. They are robust and brave, honest and hospitable, but addicted to idolatry and polygamy.

The Kamtschatdales are smaller and shorter than the Yakouts. They have a round flat face, a broad depressed nose, and prominent cheek-bones. They are of a friendly, mild, and peaceable character. They have a strong partiality for the song and the dance, and their amusements frequently degenerate into orgies. Small-pox and excessive brandy-drinking have reduced to a few hundred families a population which numbered, a century ago, fully 15,000 souls.

One sole population inhabits the immense icy plains which extend into America even beyond the Polar circle. I refer to the Eskimos, who are found--encamped in summer under tents made of reindeer or seal-skin, hidden in winter in their snow-huts--from Behring's Strait even to Cape Farewell. This race has the reddish-brown tint of the North American Indians. In its small stature and physical forms it does not differ from other Hyperboreans; but in physiognomy and the flattened skull it singularly recalls the men of lofty stature who inhabit the other extremity of the American continent, the Patagonians. The physiognomy, the character, and the manners of the Eskimos have been frequently described. The courageous navigators who have explored the Polar Sea in quest of a North-west Passage have held frequent intercourse with these poor people, and all agree in eulogizing their gentleness, their patriarchal life, their eagerness to succour strangers. An American, Captain Hall, the last adventurer who has set himself the task of discovering the wrecks of Franklin's ill-fated expedition, spent a whole year in the midst of the Eskimos, whose amiability and generosity he praises in no stinted terms. Exclusively hunters and fishers, the Eskimos have no other domestic animal than the dog; they harness it to their sledges, and also train it to chase the seal, the walrus, and the reindeer. It is in the summer only that they hunt the latter animal. In that genial season there is no lack of other game, terrestrial and marine. It is for them a season of abundance, wherein they gorge themselves with flesh, blood, and fat. During the winter they often fast several days at a time, and remain immured in their huts like hybernating animals; but at length, driven by famine and by want of oil, they go forth upon the ice in search of the seals which come up to breathe. When they have been fortunate enough to kill one, they divide it amongst them amicably, and regale themselves upon it until only the bones remain, after which they endure a new period of privation. Thus they live from day to day, in continual alternations of gluttony and abstinence, without injury to their health, and without shortening their lives. And it is worthy of notice that Europeans who once consent to adopt this regime--to drink the warm blood and eat the raw flesh and fat of seals--soon accept of it without the slightest repugnance, and become capable of enduring, like true Hyperboreans, the terrible cold of the long Polar winters.

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The inhabitants of Sagalien, one of the northerly Asiatic islands, are a race called the Anios, the same people who form the aboriginal population of Jesso, and some tribes of whom also dwell on the opposite shores of Manchooria. They are uncultured and pagan savages, who dwell in huts built of rough logs, and live upon the proceeds of their fishery and the chase. Their women are ugly and little; the men are tall, lithe, straight, and strong, with flowing hair and unkempt beard and moustaches. Like the Samoiedes they worship the bear; feasting the living animals on the choicest dried fish, and planting young pines round the cages in which they are kept. Their graves they regard with similar feelings of veneration.

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The other Hyperborean races do not widely differ in character and physical appearance from those already described.