The priests of the Ostiaks are called Schamans; their immense influence they employ to promote their own personal interests, and maintain the meanest superstitions.
In summer the Ostiak fixes his residence on the banks of the Obi or one of its tributaries. It is generally square in form, with low stone walls, and a high pointed roof made of willow-branches, and covered with pieces of bark. These having been softened by boiling, are sewn together so as to form large mats or carpets, which are easily rolled up and carried from place to place. The hearth is in the centre; it consists of a few stones set round a cavity in the soil. Here the Ostiak lives; supporting himself on fish, which he frequently eats without cooking—and purchasing a few occasional luxuries, such as tobacco and drink, with the salmon and sturgeon caught by his dexterity.
In winter he withdraws into the woods, to hunt the sable or the squirrel, or to pasture the herds of reindeer which some of them possess. He builds his jurt on a small eminence near the bank of a stream, but out of reach of its spring inundations. It is low, small, squalid; its walls plastered with clay; its window made of a thin sheet of ice.
The Ostiaks are generally of small stature, dark-complexioned, and with black hair, like the Samojedes; but this is not invariably the case. They seem to belong to the same family as the Samojedes and Finns. They are honest, good-natured, inert, and extremely careless and dirty in their habits; though it may be conceded that their huts are not filthier than the “interiors” of the Icelandic fishermen. Their women are not much better treated than African slaves, and are given in marriage to the highest bidder. The price necessarily varies according to the condition of the parent; the daughter of a rich man sells for fifty reindeer, of a poor man for half-a-dozen dried sturgeon and a handful of squirrel-skins.
JAKUT HUNTER AND BEAR.
The Ostiaks and the Samojedes are great hunters of the white bear. It is the same with the Jakuts (or Yakouts), a people dwelling near the Bouriats, and, like them, approximating to the Mongol type. Their object in the chase, however, is not always to kill the animal, but to take it alive. Madame Felinska asserts that, one day, she saw a considerable herd of bears conducted to Bérézov, like a herd of tame cattle, and apparently quite as inoffensive. She does not inform us, however, by what means they had been reduced to such a desirable state of subjection. Frequently the Ostiaks and the Jakuts attack the white bears body to body, without any other weapon than a hatchet or long cutlass. They require to strike their formidable antagonist with immense vigour, and to slay it at the first blow, or their own danger is extreme. Should the hunter miss his stroke, his sole 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.
We now reach the peninsula of Kamtschatka. In area it is equal to Great Britain, and its natural resources are abundant; yet, owing to the ravages of smallpox, and excessive brandy-drinking, its population does not exceed seven or eight thousand souls. Its climate is much milder than that of the interior of Siberia, being favourably affected by the warm breezes from the sea; and though cereals do not flourish, its pasture-grounds are rich and ample, and its herbaceous vegetation is exceedingly abundant.