Should this be the last? Involuntarily this question arose; it was gruesome for us all to have death as a travelling companion. Fortunately for us, Hadt’s grave was the last on this journey.
Seriously, very seriously, still oppressed by increasing dearth of provisions, we turned again towards the Shtchutshya. Zanda provided a scant diet for our followers, while we relied on what we could shoot, and were pinched enough. But one forenoon we captured a family of geese, and shot several willow grouse, snipe, and plovers, and celebrated a feast, for it was pleasant to be able to eat without counting the mouthfuls. But without the help of our host it would hardly have been possible for us to have survived.
We reached the river, and, almost at the end of our stores, we regained our boat. Here we feasted on fare which was poor enough, though, after a fortnight’s privation, it seemed most sumptuous. We said farewell for ever to the tundra.
A Shaman, whom we had found busy fishing further up the Obi, and had asked to give us a sample of his art and wisdom, had duly beaten his dull-sounding drum to summon Yamaul, the messenger of the gods, who befriended him, and had told us that we should next year revisit the inhospitable country which we had just left, but that we should then go to the region where the Shtchutshya, Bodarata, and Ussa have their source. For two emperors would reward us, and the elders of our people would be satisfied with our report, and send us forth again. Moreover, on our journey no further misfortune would befall us. So the messenger of the gods, perceived by him alone, had said.
The last part of his prophecy was true enough. Slowly but without mishap or accident we journeyed for twenty-three days up the Obi, and after long delay we fortunately reached a steamboat, on which we ascended the Irtish for three days. Without misfortune, though not without hindrance, we crossed the Ural, in a comfortable steamer we glided swiftly down the Kama, more slowly we ascended the Volga. In Nijni-Novgorod, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, we were hospitably received, as before, and were joyously welcomed at home. Our “elders” seem to have been well pleased with our report, but to the tundra I at least shall never return.
THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS.
The struggle for existence which man has to maintain in Siberia is easy and toilless now, and will probably remain so for centuries to come—easy and toilless especially among the lavishly endowed lands in the south of the country, and not too hard or laborious even in those regions which we are wont to picture as an icy waste, an inhospitable desert, which we still regard in this light if we only travel hastily and unwillingly through them. In the far north of West Siberia the climate is harsh and severe; the earth which, a little below the surface, is frozen and stiffened for ever, refuses to bring forth fruit; the sun will not ripen the bread-yielding grain; but even here Nature has bountifully shaken her horn of plenty, for what the land denies, is yielded by the water. The people who have dwelt for centuries in these latitudes, which we so carefully avoid, may appear poor and miserable in our eyes; in reality they are neither. They are able to procure all they need; they can even secure many luxuries, for their country yields them much more than is enough merely to sustain life. They do of course struggle, more or less consciously, for “an existence worthy of man”, but not with any grudge, outspoken or suppressed, against those whose lot is happier. Indeed they are happier than we think, for they are more modest, more easily satisfied than we are; they are utterly ignorant of what we call passion in the stricter sense; they accept the pleasures within their reach with a childlike joy, and the sorrows which visit them, with that deeply felt but quickly forgotten grief which is characteristic of childhood. Black care may stand beside their bed; but they banish it whenever they perceive a ray of joy, and they forget affliction whenever the sun of good fortune once more shines upon them. They rejoice in wealth and complain of poverty, but they see their riches disappear without giving way to despair, and their poverty turn to wealth without losing their equanimity. Even in mature age they remain children in thought, feeling, and behaviour; they are happier than we.
The Ostiaks with whom we came most frequently in contact on the lower Obi, whose society we preferred, and whom we learned to know best, belong to the Finnish family, and profess the same religion as another branch of the same family, the Samoyedes, while their manners, customs, and way of life generally, are approximately the same as those of all the Finns in a restricted sense, and therefore also of the Lapps. They are wandering herdsmen and fisher-folk, huntsmen and fowlers, like the Samoyedes and like the Lapps. Apart from their religion, and perhaps also their language, they resemble the Lapps more than the Samoyedes, for there are among them dwellers in fixed homes as well as nomadic herdsmen, while the Samoyedes, even when engaged in fishing, very rarely exchange their movable hut for a fixed log-house, at least in the parts of Siberia through which we travelled.
It may be that the Ostiak tribe was more numerous at one time than it is now, but it was probably never a people in our sense of the word. In some parts of the territory inhabited, or at least traversed by them, the population is said to be continually decreasing, while in others it is slightly on the increase; but the extent of increase or decrease seems inconsiderable. To reckon the whole number of these people at fifty thousand individuals is probably a high estimate. In the whole of the great district of Obdorsk, which extends from 65 degrees northern latitude to the northern end of the Samoyede peninsula, and from the Ural to the upper Chass river, there live at present, according to official statistics, not more than five thousand three hundred and eighty-two male Ostiaks, of whom not more than one thousand three hundred and seventy-six are able-bodied or assessable men. If we take for granted that there are as many women and girls, the whole number does not reach eleven thousand; and the above estimate is rather too high than too low, even though the tract inhabited by our people extends up the Obi to the district of Surgut, and up the Irtish to the neighbourhood of Tobolsk.
All the Ostiaks on the upper Irtish and middle Obi live in fixed log-houses, very simple, but resembling those of the Russians, and only here and there among these permanent dwellings, which indicate a higher degree of civilization, do we come upon a birch-bark tent or tshum. On the other hand, on the lower Obi, and especially between Obdorsk and the mouth of the stream, only birch-tents are to be seen, and they are, naturally, the only homes of the nomadic reindeer herdsman. Almost, if not exactly in agreement with this difference in dwelling, is the difference in religion, for the Ostiaks inhabiting settled villages belong to the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, and are reckoned among its members, as they have been baptized, while those dwelling in the tshum are still true to their ancient faith, which, although regarded by the Russian priests and their followers as blind heathenism, is by no means devoid of poetic grandeur, still less of moral worth. The tent-dwellers certainly practise their religion with more ardour and conviction than the settled villagers do their so-called Christianity, which, as far as can be observed, seems to an unbiassed onlooker rather a superstitious idolatry than a nobler substitute for the religion which grew out of a childlike mood, and finds expression in childlike ways. With the adoption of log-houses and of Christianity, the Ostiaks of the central Obi and lower Irtish regions have, to a certain extent, given up their own dress in favour of that of the neighbouring Russian fisher-folk, and in their intercourse with these, have adopted many of their manners and customs. In part, too, they have lost their purity of race, and have retained only the inalienable characteristics, the language and all peculiarities preserved by it, perhaps also the skill, dexterity, and harmless good-nature common to all the Ostiaks. But one cannot venture to assert that their morals have improved with their civilization, or that their purity of life has increased with Christianity; and in any case it is more satisfactory to get to know the heathen Ostiaks, and to come into close contact with a still primitive people, than to concern ourselves with that portion of the tribe which gives us but a dim picture of what they once were, or others still are. I shall, therefore, limit my remarks to a consideration of those Ostiaks who worship the divinity Ohrt, who live in polygamy when their means permit, who bury their dead exactly as their fathers did. My sketch will lose nothing, and will gain in unity, if it takes account of these alone, and leaves the others out.