When I asked him the reason for this practice, he explained: “This earth has been taken from my native land. If I swallow a morsel of it in this way, from time to time, I am sure of not catching any epidemic disease in the country where I am travelling. If you had known that, before quitting France, you would not have been ill on your arrival at Irkutsk.”
Pablo, it may be seen, was a singular creature. Good nature and devotedness were so conspicuous in him, that I congratulated myself on having brought him with me: but I should never come to the end if I were to relate all the eccentricities of this half-cracked, childish, superstitious specimen of human nature.
Before leaving Verchni-Oudinsk and entering on Chinese territory, I ought to say a few words about a few tribes inhabiting Eastern Siberia, many specimens of which I had the opportunity of seeing before quitting this part of the Russian Empire.
The Yakuts are copper-coloured and have long black hair. Their wives are regarded with contempt. They are invariably covered with ornaments, generally of iron, yet artistically worked. The Yakuts are good-natured, honest, and hospitable. Their religious belief is exaggerated to superstition and idolatry. Their priests, in fact, are sorcerers who exercise great influence over this simple people by their practice of magic.
When Müller was here, he desired to see a priestess who, he was informed by the Yakuts, plunged a knife into her body without causing death. The first time, it seems, the operation did not succeed, but the next day, the attempt was renewed, and this time the blow was better directed. She had really plunged the blade into the intestines, and withdrew it covered with blood! “I examined the wound,” says Müller, “I saw her take a morsel of flesh, which she cut from the incision and, then grilling it on the fire, eat it. She afterwards dressed the wound with a plaster of larch resin and birch bark, and bound it over with a rag. But there was an incident still more singular. She was compelled to sign a sort of official report, in which she declared she had never plunged the knife into her body before having operated before us; that she did not even intend, at first, to go so far; that she designed merely to deceive us as well as the Yakuts, in dexterously slipping the knife between her skin and her dress; that the Yakuts had never suspected the truth of the spell, but we had watched her too closely; that, besides, she had heard from other sorcerers, when one would strike effectively he did not die after it however little he tasted of his own fat; and that, now being required of her own free will to tell the truth, she could not deny that, until now, she had deceived the Yakuts. The wound, which she dressed twice only, was quite cured in ten days, and, probably, her youth contributed much to this prompt cure.”
The city of Yakutsk, in the centre of the territory inhabited by the Yakuts, is considered to be the coldest city in Siberia. It serves as a place of exile. I have frequently heard of a poor poet, who was condemned to live indefinitely in this city, after two years of preliminary imprisonment, for having written a little book unfavourable to the Russian Government, which to me seemed quite harmless. This book is entitled Sto. délaïti, “What is to be done”?[19]
The inhabitants of Kamtchatka are divided into three peoples, whose language and manners are dissimilar. The Koriaks in the north, the Kamtchatdales in the centre, and the Kuriles in the south.
Among the Koriaks,[20] some are nomadic, others stationary.
[20] Krachenninikov.