The Voyage Of The Vega Round Asia And Europe Part 8

6. The mighty beings to which all this splendour was offered.

They consisted of hundreds of small wooden sticks, the upper portions of which were carved very clumsily in the form of the human countenance, most of them from fifteen to twenty, but some of them 370 centimetres in length. They were all stuck in the ground on the south-east part of the eminence. Near the place of sacrifice there were to be seen pieces of driftwood and remains of the fireplace at which the sacrificial meal was prepared. Our guide told us that at these meals the mouths of the idols were besmeared with blood and wetted with brandy, and the former statement was confirmed by the large spots of blood which were found on most of the large idols below the holes intended to represent the mouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IDOLS FROM THE SACRIFICIAL CAIRN. One-twelfth of natural size. ]

After a drawing had been made of the mound, we robbed it discreetly, and put some of the idols and the bones of the animals offered in sacrifice into a bag which I ordered to be carried down to the boat.

My guide now became evidently uncomfortable, and said that I ought to propitiate the wrath of the "bolvans" by myself offering something. I immediately said that I was ready to do that, if he would only show me how to go to work. A little at a loss, and doubting whether he ought to be more afraid of the wrath of the "bolvans" or of the punishment which in another world would befal those who had sacrificed to false G.o.ds, he replied that it was only necessary to place some small coins among the stones. With a solemn countenance I now laid my gift upon the cairn. It was certainly the most precious thing that had ever been offered there, consisting as it did of two silver pieces. The Russian was now satisfied, but declared that I was too lavish, "a couple of copper coins had been quite enough."

The following day the Samoyeds came to know that I had been shown their sacrificial mound. For their own part they appeared to attach little importance to this, but they declared that the guide would be punished by the offended "bolvans." He would perhaps come to repent of his deed by the following autumn, when his reindeer should return from Vaygats Island, where they for the present were tended by Samoyeds; indeed if punishment did not befall him now, it would reach him in the future and visit his children and grandchildren--certain it was that the G.o.ds would not leave him unpunished. In respect to G.o.d's wrath their religious ideas were thus in full accordance with the teaching of the Old Testament.

This place of sacrifice was besides not particularly old, for there had been an older place situated 600 metres nearer the sh.o.r.e, beside a grotto which was regarded by the Samoyeds with superst.i.tious veneration. A larger number of wooden idols had been set up there, but about thirty years ago a zealous, newly-appointed, and therefore clean-sweeping archimandrite visited the place, set fire to the sacrificial mound, and in its place erected a cross, which is still standing. The Samoyeds had not sought to retaliate by destroying in their turn the symbol of Christian wors.h.i.+p. They left revenge to the G.o.ds themselves, certain that in a short time they would destroy all the archimandrite's reindeer, and merely removed their own place of sacrifice a little farther into the land. There no injudicious religious zeal has since attacked their wors.h.i.+p of the "bolvans."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SACRIFICIAL CAVITY ON VANGATA ISLAND. After a drawing by A. Hovgaard. ]

The old place of sacrifice was still recognisable by the number of fragments of bones and rusted pieces of iron which lay strewed about on the ground, over a very extensive area, by the side of the Russian cross. Remains of the fireplace, on which the Schaman G.o.ds had been burned, were also visible. These had been much larger and finer than the G.o.ds on the present eminence, which is also confirmed by a comparison of the drawings here given of the latter with those from the time of the Dutch explorers. The race of the Schaman G.o.ds has evidently deteriorated in the course of the last three hundred years.

After I had completed my examination and collected some contributions from the old sacrificial mound I ordered a little boat, which the steam-launch had taken in tow, to be carried over the sandy neck of land which separates the lake shown on the map from the sea, and rowed with Captain Nilsson and my Russian guide to a Samoyed burying-place farther inland by the sh.o.r.e of the lake.

Only one person was found buried at the place. The grave was beautifully situated on the sloping beach of the lake, now gay with numberless Polar flowers. It consisted of a box carefully constructed of broad stout planks, fixed to the ground with earthfast stakes and cross-bars, so that neither beasts of prey nor lemmings could get through. The planks appeared not to have been hewn out of drift-wood, but were probably brought from the south, like the birch bark with which the bottom of the coffin was covered.

As a "pesk," now fallen in pieces, lying round the skeleton, and various rotten rags showed, the dead body had been wrapped in the common Samoyed dress. In the grave were found besides the remains of an iron pot, an axe, knife, boring tool, bow, wooden arrow, some copper ornaments, &c. Rolled-up pieces of bark also lay in the coffin, which were doubtless intended to be used in lighting fires in another world. Beside the grave lay a sleigh turned upside down, evidently placed there in order that the dead man should not, away there, want a means of transport, and it is probable that reindeer for drawing it were slaughtered at the funeral banquet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMOYED GRAVE ON VAYGATS ISLAND. ]

As it may be of interest to ascertain to what extent the Samoyeds have undergone any considerable changes in their mode of life since they first became known to West-Europeans, I shall here quote some of the sketches of them which we find in the accounts of the voyages of the English and Dutch travellers to the North-East.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMOYED-ARCHERS. After Linschoten. ]

That changes have taken place in their weapons, in other words, that the Samoyeds have made progress in the art of war or the chase, is shown by the old drawings, some of which are here reproduced. For in these they are nearly always delineated with bows and arrows. Now the bow appears to have almost completely gone out of use, for we saw not a single Samoyed archer. They had, on the other hand, the wretched old flint firelocks, in which lost pieces of the lock were often replaced in a very ingenious way with pieces of bone and thongs. They also inquired eagerly for percussion guns, but breechloaders were still unknown to them. In this respect they had not kept abreast of the times so well as the Eskimo at Port Clarence.

One of the oldest accounts of the Samoyeds which I know is that of Stephen Burrough from 1556. It is given in Hakluyt (1st edition, page 318). In the narrative of the voyage of the _Searchthrift_ we read:--

"On Sat.u.r.day the 1st August 1556 I went ash.o.r.e,[56] and there saw three morses that they (Russian hunters) had killed: they held one tooth of a morse, which was not great, at a roble, and one white beare skin at three robles and two robles: they further told me, that there were people called Samoeds on the great Island, and that they would not abide them nor us, who have no houses, but only coverings made of Deerskins, set ouer them with stakes: they are men expert in shooting, and have great plenty of Deere. On Monday the 3rd we weyed and went roome with another Island, which was five leagues (15') East-north-east from us: and there I met againe with Loshak,[57] and went on sh.o.r.e with him, and he brought me to a heap of Samoeds idols, which were in number above 300, the worst and the most unartificiall worke that ever I saw: the eyes and mouthes of sundrie of them were bloodie, they had the shape of men, women, and children, very grosly wrought, and that which they had made for other parts, was also sprinkled with blood. Some of their idols were an olde sticke with two or three notches, made with a knife in it. There was one of their sleds broken and lay by the heape of idols, and there I saw a deers skinne which the foules had spoyled: and before certaine of their idols blocks were made as high as their mouthes, being all b.l.o.o.d.y, I thought that to be the table whereon they offered their sacrifice: I saw also the instruments whereupon they had roasted flesh, and as farre as I could perceiue, they make the fire directly under the spit.

Their boates are made of Deers skins, and when they come on sh.o.a.re they cary their boates with them upon their backs: for their cariages they haue no other beastes to serve them but Deere only. As for bread and corne they have none, except the Russes bring it to them: their knowledge is very base for they know no letter."

Giles Fletcher, who in 1588 was Queen Elizabeth's amba.s.sador to the Czar, writes in his account of Russia of the Samoyeds in the following way:--[58]

"The _Samoyt_ hath his name (as the _Russe_ saith) of eating himselfe: as if in times past they lived as the _Cannibals_, eating one another. Which they make more probable, because at this time they eate all kind of raw flesh, whatsoeuer it bee, euen the very carrion that lyeth in the ditch. But as the _Samoits_ themselves will say, they were called _Samoie_, that is, _of themselves_, as though they were _Indigenae_, or people bred upon that very soyle that never changed their seate from one place to another, as most Nations have done. They are clad in Seale-skinnes, with the hayrie side outwards downe as low as the knees, with their Breeches and Netherstocks of the same, both men and women. They are all Blacke hayred, naturally beardless. And therefore the Men are hardly discerned from the Women by their lookes: saue that the Women weare a locke of hayre down along both their eares."

In nearly the same way the Samoyeds are described by G. DE VEER in his account of Barents' second voyage in 1595. Barents got good information from the Samoyeds as to the navigable water to the eastward, and always stood on a good footing with them, excepting on one occasion when the Samoyeds went down to the Dutchmen's boats and took back an idol which had been carried off from a large sacrificial mound.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMOYEDS. From Schleissing's Neu-entdecktes Sieweria, worinnen die Zobeln gefangen werden. Zittau 1693.[59] ]

The Samoyeds have since formed the subject of a very extensive literature, of which however it is impossible for me to give any account here. Among other points their relations to other races have been much discussed. On this subject I have received from my learned friend, the renowned philologist Professor AHLQUIST of Helsingfors the following communication:--

The Samoyeds are reckoned, along with the Tungoose, the Mongolian, the Turkish and the Finnish-Ugrian races, to belong to the so-called Altaic or Ural-Altaic stem. What is mainly characteristic of this stem, is that all the languages occurring within it belong to the so-called agglutinating type. For in these languages the relations of ideas are expressed exclusively by terminations or suffixes--inflections, prefixes and prepositions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown to them.

Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular. The affinity between the different branches of the Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on a.n.a.logy or resemblance in the construction of the languages, while the different tongues in the material of language (both in the words themselves and in the expression of relations) show a very limited affinity or none at all. The circ.u.mstance that the Samoyeds for the present have as their nearest neighbours several Finnish-Ugrian races (Lapps, Syrjaeni, Ostjaks, and Voguls), and that these to a great extent carry on the same modes of life as themselves, has led some authors to a.s.sume a close affinity between the Samoyeds and the Fins and the Finnish races in general. The speech of the two neighbouring tribes however affords no ground for such a supposition. Even the language of the Ostjak, which is the most closely related to that of the Samoyeds, is separated heaven-wide from it and has nothing in common with it, except a small number of borrowed words (chiefly names of articles from the Polar nomad's life), which the Ostjak has taken from the language of his northern neighbour.

With respect to their language, however, the Samoyeds are said to stand at a like distance from the other branches of the stem in question. To what extent craniology or the modern anthropology can more accurately determine the affinity-relations.h.i.+p of the Samoyed to other tribes, is still a question of the future.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREEDING-PLACE FOR LITTLE AUKS. Foul Bay, on the West Coast of Spitzbergen, after a photograph taken by A. Envall on the 30th August, 1872. ]

[Footnote 53: "Letter of Richard Finch to Sir Thomas Smith, Governor; and to the rest of the Wors.h.i.+pful Companie of English Merchants, trading into Russia." _Purchas_, iii. p. 534. ]

[Footnote 54: Mr. Serebrenikoff writes _Samodin_ instead of _Samoyed_, considering the latter name incorrect. For _Samoyed_ means "self-eater," while _Samodin_ denotes "an individual," "one who cannot be mistaken for any other," and, as the Samoyeds never were cannibals, Mr. Serebrenikoff gives a preference to the latter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova, and appears to be a literal translation of the name which the Samoyeds give themselves. I consider it probable, however, that the old tradition of man-eaters (_androphagi_) living in the north, which originated with Herodotus, and was afterwards universally adopted in the geographical literature of the middle ages, reappears in a Russianised form in the name "Samoyed." (Compare what is quoted further on from Giles Fletcher's narrative). ]

[Footnote 55: This name, which properly denotes a coa.r.s.e likeness, has pa.s.sed into the Swedish, the word _bulvan_ being one of the few which that language has borrowed from the Russian. ]

[Footnote 56: Probably on one of the small islands near Vaygats. ]

[Footnote 57: A Russian hunter who had been serviceable to Stephen Burrough in many ways. ]

[Footnote 58: _Treatise of Russia and the adjoining Regions_, written by Doctor Giles Fletcher, Lord Amba.s.sador from the late Queen, Everglorious Elizabeth, to Theodore, then Emperor of Russia.

A.D. 1588. _Purchas_, iii. p. 413. ]

[Footnote 59: A still more extraordinary idea of the Samoyeds, than that which this woodcut gives us, we get from the way in which they are mentioned in the account of the journey which the Italian Minorite, Joannes de Plano Carpini, undertook in High Asia in the years 1245-47 as amba.s.sador from the Pope to the mighty conqueror of the Mongolian hordes. In this book of travels it is said that Occodai Khan, Chingis Khan's son, after having been defeated by the Hungarians and Poles, turned towards the north, conquered the Bascarti, _i.e._ the Great Hungarians, then came into collision with the Parositi--who had wonderfully small stomachs and mouths, and did not eat flesh, but only boiled it and nourished themselves by inhaling the steam--and finally came to the _Samogedi_, who lived only by the chase and had houses and clothes of skin, and to a land by the ocean, where there were monsters with the bodies of men, the feet of oxen and the faces of dogs (_Relation des Mongols ou Tartares_, par le frere Jean du Plan de Carpin, publ. par M.

d'Avezac, Paris 1838, p. 281. Compare Ramusio, _Delle navigationi e viaggi_, ii. 1583, leaf 236). At another place in the same work it is said that "the land Comania has on the north immediately after Russia, the Mordvini and Bileri, _i.e._ the Great Bulgarians, the Bascarti, _i.e._ the Great Hungarians, then the Parositi and _Samogedi_, who are said to have the faces of dogs" (_Relation des Mongols_, p. 351. Ramusio, ii., leaf 239). ]

CHAPTER III.

From the Animal World of Novaya Zemlya--The Fulmar Petrel-- The Rotge or Little Auk--Brunnich's Guillemot--The Black Guillemot--The Arctic Puffin--The Gulls--Richardson's Skua-- the Tern--Ducks and Geese--The Swan--Waders--The Snow Bunting--The Ptarmigan--The Snowy Owl--The Reindeer--The Polar Bear--The Mountain Fox--The Lemming--Insects-- The Walrus--The Seal--Whales.

If we do not take into account the few Samoyeds who of recent years have settled on Novaya Zemlya or wander about during summer on the plains of Vaygats Island, all the lands which in the old world have formed the field of research of the Polar explorer--Spitzbergen, Franz-Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Vaygats Island, the Taimur Peninsula, the New Siberian Islands, and perhaps Wrangel's Land also--are uninhabited. The pictures of life and variety, which the native, with his peculiar manners and customs, commonly offers to the foreigner in distant foreign lands, are not to be met with here.

But, instead, the animal life, which he finds there in summer--for during winter almost all beings who live above the surface of the sea disappear from the highest North--is more vigorous and perhaps even more abundant, or, to speak more correctly, less concealed by the luxuriance of vegetation than in the south.

It is not, however, the larger mammalia--whales, walruses, seals, bears and reindeer--that attract attention in the first place, but the innumerable flocks of birds that swarm around the Polar traveller during the long summer day of the North.

Long before one enters the region of the Polar Sea proper, the vessel is surrounded by flocks of large grey birds which fly, or rather hover without moving their wings, close to the surface of the sea, rising and sinking with the swelling of the billows, eagerly searching for some eatable object on the surface of the water, or swim in the wake of the vessel in order to snap up any sc.r.a.ps that may be thrown overboard. It is the Arctic _stormfogel_[60] (Fulmar, "Mallemuck," "Hafhaest," _Procellaria glacialis_, L.). The fulmar is bold and voracious, and smells villanously, on which account it is only eaten in cases of necessity, although its flesh, if the bird has not recently devoured too much rotten blubber, is by no means without relish, at least for those who have become accustomed to the flavour of train oil, when not too strong. It is more common on Bear Island and Spitzbergen than on Novaya Zemlya, and scarcely appears to breed in any considerable numbers on the last-named place. I know three places north of Scandinavia where the fulmar breeds in large numbers: the first on Bear Island, on the slopes of some not very steep cliffs near the so-called south harbour of the island,[61] the second on the southern sh.o.r.e of Brandywine Bay on North-East Land, the third on ledges of the perpendicular rock-walls in the interior of Ice Fjord. At the two latter places the nests are inaccessible.

On Bear Island, on the other hand, one can without very great difficulty plunder the whole colony of the dirty grey, short eggs, which are equally rounded at both ends. The eggs taste exceedingly well. The nest is very inconsiderable, smelling badly like the bird itself.

When the navigator has gone a little further north and come to an ice-bestrewed sea, the swell ceases at once, the wind is hushed and the sea becomes bright as a mirror, rising and sinking with a slow gentle heaving. Flocks of little auks (_Mergulus alle_, L.) Brunnich's guillemots (_Uria Brunnichii_, Sabine), and black guillemots (_Uria grylle_, L.) now swarm in the air and swim among the ice floes. The _alke-kung_ (little auk), also called the "sea king," or rotge, occurs only sparingly off the southern part of Novaya Zemlya, and does not, so far as I know, breed there. The situation of the land is too southerly, the acc.u.mulations of stones along the sides of the mountains too inconsiderable, for the thriving of this little bird. But on Spitzbergen it occurs in incredible numbers, and breeds in the talus, 100 to 200 metres high, which frost and weathering have formed at several places on the steep slopes of the coast mountain sides; for instance, at Horn Sound, at Magdalena Bay, on the Norways (near 80 N.L.), and other places. These stone heaps form the palace of the rotge, richer in rooms and halls than any other in the wide round world. If one climbs up among the stones, he sees at intervals actual clouds of fowl suddenly emerge from the ground either to swarm round in the air or else to fly out to sea, and at the same time those that remain make their presence underground known by an unceasing cackling and din, resembling, according to Friedrich Martens, the noise of a crowd of quarrelling women. Should this sound be stilled for a few moments, one need only attempt in some opening among the stones to imitate their cry (according to Martens: _rott-tet-tet-tet-tet_) to get immediately eager and sustained replies from all sides. The fowl circling in the air soon settle again on the stones of the mountain slopes, where, squabbling and fighting, they pack themselves so close together that from fifteen to thirty of them may be killed by a single shot. A portion of the flock now flies up again, others seek their safety like rats in concealment among the blocks of stone. But they soon creep out again, in order, as if by agreement, to fly out to sea and search for their food, which consists of crustacea and vermes. The rotge dives with ease. Its single blueish-white egg is laid on the bare ground without a nest, so deep down among the stones that it is only with difficulty that it can be got at. In the talus of the mountains north of Horn Sound I found on the 18th June, 1858, two eggs of this bird lying directly on the layer of ice between the stones. Probably the hatching season had not then begun. Where the main body of these flocks of birds pa.s.ses the winter, is unknown,[62] but they return to the north early--sometimes too early. Thus in 1873 at the end of April I saw a large number of rotges frozen to death on the ice in the north part of Hinloopen Strait. When cooked the rotge tastes exceedingly well, and in consequence of the great development of the breast muscles it affords more food than could be expected from its small size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LITTLE AUK, OR ROTGE. Swedish, Alkekung. (_Mergulus Alle_, L.) ]

Along with the rotge we find among the ice far out at sea flocks of _alkor_ (looms, or Brunnich's guillemots), and the nearer we come to the coast, the more do these increase in number, especially if the cliffs along the sh.o.r.e offer to this species of sea-fowl--the most common of the Polar lands--convenient hatching places. For this purpose are chosen the faces of cliffs which rise perpendicularly out of the sea, but yet by ledges and uneven places afford room for the hatching fowl. On the guillemot-fells proper, eggs lie beside eggs in close rows from the crown of the cliff to near the sea level, and the whole fell is also closely covered with seafowl, which besides in flocks of thousands and thousands fly to and from the cliffs, filling the air with their exceedingly unpleasant scream. The eggs are laid, without trace of a nest, on the rock, which is either bare or only covered with old birds' dung, so closely packed together, that in 1858 from a ledge of small extent, which I reached by means of a rope from the top of the fell, I collected more than half a barrel-full of eggs. Each bird has but one very large egg, grey p.r.i.c.ked with brown, of very variable size and form. After it has been sat upon for some time, it is covered with a thick layer of birds' dung, and in this way the hunters are accustomed to distinguish uneatable eggs from fresh.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOOM OR BRuNNICH'S GUILLEMOT. Swedish, Alka (_Uria Brunnichii_, Sabine). ]

If a shot be fired at a "loomery," the fowl fly away in thousands from their hatching places, without the number of those that are not frightened away being apparently diminished. The clumsy and short-winged birds, when they cast themselves out of their places, fall down at first a good way before they get "sufficient air" under their wings to be able to fly. Before this takes place, many plump down into the water, sometimes even into the boat which may be rowed along the foot of the fell.

An unceasing, unpleasant cackling noise indicates that a continual gossip goes on in the "loomery"; and that the unanimity there is not great, is proved by the pa.s.sionate screams which are heard now and then. A bird squeezes forward in order to get a place on a ledge of rock already packed full, a couple of others quarrel about the owners.h.i.+p of an egg which has been laid on a corner of the rock only a few inches broad, and which now during the dispute is precipitated into the abyss. By the beginning of July most of the eggs are uneatable. I have seen the young of the size of a rotge accompany their mothers in the middle of August. The loom breeds on Walden Island and the north coast of North-East land, accordingly far north of 80. I found the largest "loomeries" on Spitzbergen south of Lomme Bay in Hinloopen Strait, at the southern entrance to Van Meyen Bay in Bell Sound, and at Alkornet in Ice Fjord. In respect to the large number of fowl, however, only the first of these can compete with the south sh.o.r.e of Besimannaja Bay (72 54' N.L.) and with the part of Novaya Zemlya that lies immediately to the south of this bay. The eggs of the loom are palatable, and the flesh is excellent, though not quite free from the flavour of train oil.

In any case it tastes much better than that of the eider.

Along with the rotge and the loom two nearly allied species of birds, _lunnefogeln_, the Arctic puffin (_Mormon arcticus_, L.) and _tejsten_ or _tobis-grisslan_, the black guillemot (_Uria grylle_, L.) are to be seen among the drift-ice. I do not know any puffin-fells on Spitzbergen. The bird appears to breed there only in small numbers, though it is still found on the most northerly part of the island. On Novaya Zemlya, too, it occurs rather sparingly.

The black guillemot, on the other hand, is found everywhere, though never collected in large flocks, along the sh.o.r.es of Spitzbergen, and Novaya Zemlya, even as far north as Parry Island in 80 40' N.L., where in 1861 I saw several of their nests. These are placed near the summits of steep cliffs along the sh.o.r.e. The black guillemots often swim out together in pairs in the fjords. Their flesh has about the same taste as Brunnich's guillemot, but is tougher and of inferior quality; the eggs, on the other hand, are excellent.