Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848

After many days' journey through Tatar villages of wooden huts, and towns that are little better, the first view of Tobolsk, obtained some miles before reaching the place, is quite imposing; and the traveller, who might think he had got a few stages beyond civilisation, is cheered and encouraged by the sight of church-towers, lofty monasteries, and well-built houses. In vain does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master, who recommends him to the hospitality of an inhabitant, by whom he is made welcome during his stay, without demand for remuneration, although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this manner Mr Erman and his companions were accommodated in the upper storey of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It was the commencement of October, the period of transition from summer to winter, and the traveller's entrance into the town was rendered memorable by a heavy fall of snow – "white flies," as the postilions called the flakes, which they beheld with much pleasure. Their satisfaction was probably owing to the fact that in Siberia the coldest part of the year is the most favourable for travelling, a matter of interest to people of their profession. But the moment of transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter, when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it, is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter, as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads;) and the Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow obstructs wheeled carriages, and forbids the use of the sledge; and, unless peremptorily compelled to move forward, the Russian merchants – the most experienced of Siberian travellers – await, in some convenient resting-place, the hardening of the winter road. From Mr Erman's account, a better place than Tobolsk could scarcely be found, in those wild regions, wherein to pass a few weeks of compulsory inaction. Nevertheless, and although cordially received by the governor-general, Velyaminov, from whom, and from other Russian officers, he got much useful information, our traveller was impatient to be off. He had a pet scheme in view. From the very commencement of the journey he had planned an excursion to the mouth of the Obi, within the Arctic circle. To this he was partly induced by the desire of tracing certain magnetic lines, and partly by "the alluring prospect of enjoying, on the northern part of the Obi, the first undisturbed intercourse with the aboriginal possessors of the land, where they are little changed by foreign influence." Accordingly, towards the middle of November, the drifting ice upon the Irtuish having united into a solid sheet, Mr Erman joyfully made final preparations for his journey to Obdorsk. They were few, and soon completed. A Kosak guide and interpreter, a fur dress, a copper kettle, bread and ham, salted salmon and caviar, were stowed in a couple of sledges, one of which was light enough to be drawn by dogs or reindeer. It was held advisable also to take out a fresh passport, signed by the governor of Tobolsk, in lieu of the one delivered at St Petersburg, for, in places far removed from the great road across Siberia, people have confused and indistinct notions of the power which issues from the capital of the empire. The larger sledge was provided with otvódi or guides – two strong bars placed lengthways on either side the carriage to prevent an upset. "Towards the end of winter, the snow-ways, which are constantly travelled upon, have an undulating surface, like that of a stormy sea, and give the sledge a motion so like that of a ship tossed on the waves, that travellers unused to it often grow sea-sick on the road, and the use of otvódi is a very necessary precaution." Russian travelling, delightfully rapid, has many drawbacks. Upon the log-roads, (formed of tree-trunks,) the violent and incessant jolting is said to have even worse effects than the excessive undulations of the sledge. After a few years, it not only brings on a complete paralysis of the mental faculties of the Russian postilions, but also occasions spinal disease, to such an extent as to have obtained for those roads the significant name of spine-crushers.

On the 22d November, when Mr Erman began his slide northwards, traffic had not yet given the road that wavy configuration so uncomfortable to the bilious traveller. The post from Tobolsk to Beresov had made but one journey on the winter-track, and the sledges glided rapidly and smoothly on the almost virgin snow-way. Beyond Tugalova, a village 140 miles from Tobolsk, they travelled on the frozen Irtuish, and frequently passed the self-acting machinery used for the winter fishing. This consists of a strong pole in an inclined position, with its lower extremity frozen fast in the ice. "At the upper end of this pole was a continuation made of switches, which, bending down, reached to the surface of the ice; at that point was a hole through which was let down the hook and line. The upper part of the apparatus is seen bent down more or less according as the bait is still untouched, or as a fish pulling at it has freed a check put to the elasticity of the rod, and is thus, in consequence of its own efforts, drawn nearer to the surface of the water." The ingenuity of this contrivance would avail little, however, were not means found of rousing the sleepy sturgeon from their winter slumbers. They lie in muddy hollows in the bed of the river, quite motionless, and clustered together for the sake of warmth. To awaken them, hard balls of clay, heated in the fire, are thrown from time to time into the water, below the line. Driven from their resting-place, they swim up stream, according to their custom, and come upon the bait. This mode of fishing is very productive. Fishing, of one kind or other, is the principal occupation of the Ostyaks, in the heart of whose country, after three or four days' journey, Mr Erman found himself. The rivers abound with excellent fish – eels, especially, being very abundant, but not much eaten, although their skins are in great request as window-panes. These are rubbed with fat, to make them more transparent, but there are small roundish swellings in the skin which refract and confound the rays of light. A better substitute for glass is a flake of ice, used by the Sosnovian Ostyaks, a tribe further north. The flakes are about a foot thick, and are propped from without by a pole, whose lower end bears obliquely against the ground. The fire, kept burning in the hut, thaws the inner surface of the ice, rendering it smooth as a mirror. A whiter and brighter light penetrates through these windows than through the fish-skins, which the Sosnovians use for boots, and even for clothes. Strong and air-tight, and well rubbed with fat, they are almost as warm as fur, and better against the wet.

The commencement of a fishing season or expedition is celebrated by the Ostyaks with all manner of queer saturnalia. Although nominally Christians, and accustomed to attend church once a-year, they are very heathenish in some of their rites and ceremonies, and make a strange jumble of their old superstitions and their new faith. The priests do not invariably set them a good example. "Our Russian informant complained bitterly of the priest in his neighbourhood, who came into the village on holidays so drunk, that the congregation assembled to no purpose." With such pastors, no wonder if the sheep cleave to some of their ancient usages. Those who are departing on an expedition, slaughter a tame animal, and smear their faces with its blood, accompanying the sacrifice with a carousal. In one village Mr Erman found the huts remarkably empty, and was told that the men had just gone a-fishing, and that their wives were drinking brandy in the kabak or public-house. The sale of spirits in Siberia, as in all the Russian dominions, is a government monopoly, and brandy is only to be had in certain houses, to whose keepers the privilege is farmed. In a small dark room, scarcely ten paces wide, Mr Erman found ten or twelve Ostyak dames clustered round the bottle, and benevolently drunk. His account of their maudlin state is amusingly grave and sentimental. "A number of short corpulent figures, with black sparkling eyes, could be just seen, moving and mingling together, in the narrow space. They all talked with animation, and with remarkably delicate voices, which now gave expression only to soft and joyous emotions. They embraced, one after the other, the Yamschik, who entered with us; and their soft voices, now almost whining, seemed attuned, not so much to words of old acquaintance, as to the endearments of young and growing love." The ladies having emptied their purses without quenching their thirst, the good-natured German, who observed that "the pleasure of drinking had but just risen to its highest pitch," opened them a credit with the kabak-keeper. "They now took especial pains to show themselves deserving of the European treat, by good Christian observance. Devout Russians are in the habit of neutralising the Satanic operation of spirituous liquors by a rapid movement of the right hand, intended to describe the cross, or by a softly-ejaculated prayer, or merely by blowing the breath upon the glass. But the good-humoured Ostyaks, novices in Christian prayer as in drinking, made the sign of the cross to such an extent, so slowly and with such deep bowing of the body, as would be required by the church only on the most solemn occasions."

Although much engrossed by fishing, the Ostyaks do not neglect the chase. Their thick woods abound in the better kinds of fur animals, and the annual tribute of two sable skins, payable by each family to the Russian government, is not very difficult to obtain. It is seldom found necessary to pay an equivalent in other skins. Although quite the beginning of winter, Mr Erman's host, in an Ostyak village, showed him a fine sable skin, which he kept in a strong box, like a treasure, concealed in a corner of his dwelling. Its value was diminished by a yellowish tinge, ascribed to the animal's having lived in a wood where there was too much light. Besides sable and squirrel, the reindeer, the fox, the glutton, and the elk, are objects of chase. Mr Erman tried to get at the fact of the enmity said to exist between the two latter animals. The reply to his inquiries was the old story current in Europe – how the glutton leaps from a branch on the elk's neck, and keeps his seat till the death of his steed. No one, however, had seen any thing of the kind: it was matter of tradition, handed down from their dead fathers. The ermine is taken in traps. The fox is in great variety, the most esteemed being the crossed stone fox, whose colour is partly a grayish yellow, partly white, so distributed that the grayish parts unite prettily to form a cross, one bar of which extends along the back, whilst the other stretches obliquely down the middle ribs to the belly. The fur of this animal is greatly prized by the Russian clergy, for whom pelisses, covered with natural crosses, are made from it. The latitude of the town of Beresov is the headquarters of the Siberian beaver, hunted not for the fur but for the precious castoreum or beaver-stone, to which such great medical virtues are ascribed. Attempts have been made in Germany to obtain from the beavers of that country a product which might replace that of Siberia; but all in vain. The fine quality is only to be had in the far north, where, as Mr Erman fancifully observes, nature scatters animal perfumes in place of fragrant flowers. "The Kosaks and Russian traders have exalted the beaver-stone into a panacea… To the sentence, 'God arose, and our enemies were scattered,' the Siberians add, very characteristically, the apocryphal interpolation, 'and we are free from headache.' To ensure this most desirable condition, every one has recourse, at home or on his travels, and with the firmest faith, to two medicines, and only two, viz., beaver-stone, or beaver-efflux, as it is here called, and sal-ammoniac." From the strength of the castoreum, the Siberians infer that other parts of the animal must possess peculiar virtues. Gouty swellings are said to subside rapidly when rubbed with the fat, and the beaver's teeth are popularly believed to cure toothach.

The beaver is the only fur animal in these latitudes that does not change its colour in the course of the year. This is probably owing to the circumstance, that in winter it dwells wholly in the water, thus enjoying a comparatively equable temperature. In the river Obi, at Beresov, the water does not usually freeze below the depth of four feet eight inches, and the beaver always has two entrances to his dwelling, one high on the bank above the stream, the other below the freezing limit. The architectural and wood-cutting habits of the animal are the same here as in America; but two assertions, new to Mr Erman, were made respecting it by the Beresov hunters. He was assured that "among beavers, as with bees and men, there are distinctions of ranks; each chief keeping a number of labourers, the toils of which he oversees and directs without taking part in them; and, again, it was stated that the contents of the castoreum bags depend on the moon." It was impossible to verify the veracity of these two statements. As regards the moon's influence, however, there is ground for a suspicion that its advantages are rather felt by the hunter, than essential to the virtues of the drug. Full moon is maintained, both by Ostyaks and Russians, to be the propitious time.

The most northern tribe of Ostyaks, who dwell between the rivers Obi and Yenisei, surpass their southern neighbours in venatorial skill, as they, in their turn, are surpassed by the Samoyedes, who live in the northernmost regions of Siberia. The men of the Yenisei kill wolves, which, on account of their long soft hair, are reckoned greatly superior to the forest and steppe wolves of middle Siberia. They are also famed for their dexterity in killing and capturing reindeer. "Tying leathern cords between the tops of the antlers of their tame deer, they turn the animals loose, one by one, in the neighbourhood of a wild herd: these do not fail to attack the strangers, and their antlers becoming entangled in the cords during the contest, they are held fast by the tame deer till the men arrive. These Ostyaks know also how to plant spring-bows, which send the arrow against the animal's breast." But the Samoyedes, besides these ordinary artifices, have other and ingenious ways, peculiar to themselves, of ensnaring and slaying the brute creation, by putting themselves as much as possible on an equality with the animals pursued, going on all-fours, and imitating them in voice and clothing. The Polar bear is a common victim to their cunning devices, and even to their open attacks; for their intimate acquaintance with the formidable beast makes them regard him as an easy prey. "The Samoyedes assert that the white bear far exceeds the black bear in ferocity and strength, whilst fully equal to it in cunning; yet, owing to his unwieldiness, they encounter it without fear, and always reckon on victory as certain. A man will often go singly against a Polar bear, eight feet long, without any other weapon than his knife, which he fastens to the end of a pole. In spring and autumn these animals are found upon the ice, near the hole, whence the seals come forth to breathe. There the bear covers himself up with snow, facing the hole, and with one paw stretched into the water." The Samoyede seal-hunters imitate the bears, and when the seal walks out upon the ice, they shove a board over the hole and capture the phoca. Concerning the bear the Ostyaks entertain peculiar notions, viewing it with a sort of superstitious respect. "A member of the court of justice told me that, in suits between Russians and Ostyaks, it is still the custom here (at Beresov) to bring, into court the head of a bear, and that this animal, which is supposed to be omniscient, is there appealed to as a witness by the Ostyaks. In swearing, they make the gesture of eating, and call upon the bear to devour them in like manner if they do not tell the truth." Some similar reverence for Bruin exists, we believe, amongst certain North American tribes.

The draught-dogs, so faithful and useful to the northern Siberians, often receive but scurvy treatment at their masters' hands. The Ostyaks, who are honesty personified, and who laugh at the common European precautions of locking up valuables and bolting doors, cannot endure the predatory propensities of their canine allies, and fly into a passion whenever an unlucky dog sneaks into their dwelling in search of warmth or food. The poor brute is immediately a mark for the blows and kicks of every body present, the storm of abuse being justified by the cunning and greediness of its object, who, if allowed to abide in the house, would soon reduce its inmates to short commons. There is some excuse for the dogs' voracity, however; for, according to Mr Erman's account, they are considerably more than half-starved, and are rarely admitted to the fire to be fed, save when they return weary and distressed from a long journey. Severe as is the cold in those regions, protection from it is not essential to the existence, or even to the health of these hardy dogs. They sleep outside the houses, in holes which they thaw in the snow by their own warmth. At Obdorsk, where there are no pastures, and consequently no horses, four hundred dogs are kept by sixty inhabitants, and each of them is estimated to draw five poods' (two hundred pounds) weight in the loaded sledge. About eight o'clock in the evening these four hundred brutes set up a hideous howling, by way of claiming their daily meal, consisting invariably of fish, which, for them as well as for their owners' consumption, is first dried in the sun and then pounded, bones and all. Except this evening concert, a bark or a cry is rarely uttered by these dogs, unless at first starting when yoked to the sledge, or on coming across a reindeer team upon the road. Hydrophobia would be a terrible scourge in this dog-district, but the disease is fortunately unknown there. Steller has stated the same thing of the dogs of Kamschatka, and Mr Erman concludes that the malady is a result of the European system of living in towns. And as the Siberian dogs are so very moderately fed, he infers that excess, not want, generates the morbid habit. We are inclined to attribute more importance to the quality than to the quantity of the food. A fish diet may be more conducive to a wholesome state of the animals' blood than the masses of horse-flesh, paunch, and other rank and unclean offal commonly given to dogs in Europe, and especially in England, where the carnivorous addictions of the bipeds induce a belief in the propriety of unlimited flesh-feeding for quadrupeds.

The large annual importation of exiles, the system of conscription, and the advantages offered to public officers volunteering for Siberian service, are the most important and efficacious measures by which Russia proceeds gradually but steadily with the colonisation and civilisation of her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts are sometimes drawn, not only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest parts of Siberia, and the term of military service being twenty-eight years, it is probable that only a small proportion return to their native villages. Those who do are looked up to as oracles by their countrymen. They are objects of pride to their families and of respect to every body else; the place of honour is theirs by right, and they are addressed by the title of Master Soldier.7 The ferry of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose passage is considered the symbol of political death to the numerous exiles who each year cross it – bestows a step of rank on all public servants offering themselves for duty in Siberia Proper. The passion for rank, stronger in Russia than in any other country, drives hosts of officers across this important boundary; but as they are not obliged to remain more than three years, most of them return home at the end of that time. Far nearer to St Petersburg than the Asiatic frontier, civilisation is still at a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod, and within a very short distance of Moscow, the prevailing population consists of Cheremisses and Chuvashes, two tribes many of whose customs are nearly as barbarous as their names. These people are shy and timid, very slow in acquiring industrious habits, and addicted to sundry practices stamping them as semi-savages. In some places they cling to paganism, and offer up horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables to their various deities. The Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle of sheet copper, hanging from the girdle backwards over the hips, and having appended to it all manner of metal ornaments, making a perpetual clatter in walking. But these tribes are the pink of refinement by comparison with those in the northern portion of the Muscovite empire, – with the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same trough with their dogs, or with the Samoyedes who tear with their teeth, and swallow with infinite relish, huge lumps of raw and reeking flesh. The women of the latter people wear, as their favourite decoration, (certainly no inappropriate one) a glutton's tail, hanging down the back of their pelisse. Their hair is plaited in tails, to which all manner of lumber, brass and iron rings, and rusty musket-locks, are attached. Mr Erman's account of "Life in the Chum" (the skin tent of the Samoyedes) is quaint and graphic.

"The reindeer calf, which we had got on the way, was killed and cut up in front of the tent a few minutes, after our arrival. The men now brought the bleeding flesh into the tent, and began devouring it immediately, quite raw, with the heartiest appetite. The old man was satisfied with sucking the brain from the head, whilst each of our younger comrades gnawed away at a limb of the animal, even to the bone. They laughed at the amazement which my good-humoured Esthonian attendant expressed at their blood-stained faces; and when he gave them to understand, through the interpreter, that they were no better than wolves, they seemed quite unprepared for such reproof; replying gravely, that they were at the same time no worse than the wolves, since they shared honestly with them, and left the bones and some scraps of flesh merely for their sake." In this same tent there was a little monster of a boy named Peina, whom one reads of with a sort of shudder, and with a strong suspicion that the creature was not canny. Mr Erman himself seems to write of him with peculiar reserve, stating facts, but evidently unwilling to give an opinion as to the exact nature of the beast. Peina, who had first-rate masticators, got his share of the raw meat, which did not prevent his drawing on his mother's lacteal resources, and thumping her brutally till she honoured the draft, or handed him the pot-ladle, with which he supped scalding porridge to his great internal contentment. The travellers' bread, although frozen hard and not easy eating for adult jaws, disappeared by wholesale within those of Peina. At night the anomalous urchin was laid naked in a canoe-shaped basket, and covered up so thickly with furs that his cries seemed to come from the depths of the earth. In the morning his mother took him from his bed and set him up, still naked, before the fire to warm himself. Sugar, when first presented to him, he called snow, and threw away, but when once he had tasted the dainty, his demands for it were unceasing and peremptory. Taking into consideration the uncomfortable and uncleanly peculiarities of the Samoyedes, both young and old, we cannot feel surprised that Mr Erman's interpreter conceived an intense dislike to their society, and so managed matters that one morning, whilst the man of science was busy measuring a base-line to ascertain the heights of some mountains, his Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared with their tent and their reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped sledges and a few Ostyak attendants, and with no choice but to make the best of his way back to Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards returned to Tobolsk. There he passed his Christmas, and then resumed his journey; but this time in a southerly direction. After having penetrated to sixty-seven degrees north, the region of eternal frost, he struck southwards to the latitude of the Land's End, making a dip into China, which furnishes some of the best chapters in his book.

Irkutsk, the last town of importance north of the Chinese frontier, consists of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being of brick, and the remainder of wood, and is probably the cheapest place in the civilised world as regards articles of food. We say "civilised," because, although situate in a barbarous region, and possessing a population of a very motley character, the town has much that is European in its aspect and usages. It possesses an exchange, government factories, where newly-arrived convicts are employed, a school of medicine, a gymnasium, and a handsome parade-ground. In the market, formed of wooden booths, the stores of food were enormous. Beef cost about a halfpenny a pound; of flour one penny would purchase nearly eight and a half pounds; partridges and heathfowl were sold at five farthings a-piece. But we are in haste to get amongst the Celestials. First comes a gallop across More Baikal, a large lake just beyond Irkutsk, on which the Russian government maintains an armed flotilla. This gallop is a fine bit of helter-skelter, over ice brilliant as glass. "There was no snow upon the ice, so that its surface shone like a polished mirror in the moonlight. The horses that were put under our sledges in Kadilnaya had to be held on each side till the very moment of starting, when they broke at once into full gallop, which they kept up till we landed on the further shore. We completed seven German miles in two hours and a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary as well as the most speedy stage upon any route in Russia." Thence, onwards to the frontier line. "We followed the crowd that pressed forward towards a narrow door in the front of a long wooden building. This admitted us into the inner quadrangle of a Russian warehouse. A corresponding door, at the opposite side of this court, opens just upon a wooden barricade, which constitutes the barrier of China. In this there is a wide portal, ornamented with pillars, and displaying the Russian eagle above it, along with the cipher of the reigning emperor, Nicholas the First, by whom it was erected." On passing through this gate, the change is immediate and striking, – from Russian sobriety of aspect and hue to the gaudy finery of China. Maimachen, the name of the Chinese town visited by Mr Erman, has a very masquerading air to a European eye. The walls on either side of the streets do not look like house walls, the roofs being flat and invisible from the street. "Indeed, they are nearly altogether concealed by the gay-coloured paper lanterns and flags, with inscriptions on them, hung out on both sides of the way. Cords, with similar scrolls and lanterns, are likewise stretched from roof to roof across the street. These dazzling decorations stand out in glaring contrast with the dull yellow of the ground and walls. In the open crossings of the streets, which intersect each other at right angles, stood enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron, like basins, upon a slender pedestal four feet in height. The benches by which they were surrounded were occupied by tea-drinkers, who sat smoking from the little pipes they carry at their girdles, whilst their kettles boiled at the common fire." Mr Erman had the good fortune to be on the frontier at the period of the Chinese festival of the White Moon, which is in fact the celebration of the new-year, and he had the still greater luck to be invited to share in it at Maimachen. He found the town in its gayest costume. The expenditure of flags and lanterns was prodigious. The scrolls usually contained the names of the families before whose houses they were hung out, coupled with words of auspicious import, as gladness, riches, wisdom, &c. There was a great firing of crackers and rockets, partly to celebrate the day, but chiefly in honour of the guests. Before dinner the latter were diverted by a theatrical representation. Maimachen boasts a regular company of actors, and upon this great occasion they did their best. Their orchestra was of a rather violent description, consisting of "wooden drums, shaped like casks, brass cymbals, and plates of the same metal, or gongs, held by a string and beaten with knockers, and wooden truncheons, of different sizes, which they used as castanets." There were no actresses; but the deficiency was not to be detected, the younger and more delicate men personating women to the life by the aid of wigs and long tresses of black hair, but especially by curls pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks were not used, but paint was in abundance; in some cases with a view to represent spectacles, mustachios, &c.; in others to conceal the human features, or give them a monstrous aspect. "One face was covered with coloured rays, issuing from the mouth. The same actor had also a feather on his head – in Chinese comedy the conventional mark of a ghost or apparition. Another wore a golden helmet, which constituted him a warrior. Several kept beating themselves incessantly on the hip with a cane, and by so doing intimated that they were on horseback." The play itself was more like a game of romps than any regular dramatic representation. Little was said; but, on the other hand, there was a deal of dancing, drumming, and running about. Mr Erman could make neither head nor tail of the proceedings. By way of experiment, however, he made some tender gestures to one of the pseudo-ladies, who acknowledged them in the most amiable manner, and after that the horsemen without horses paid him much attention, pointing with their sticks to his spectacles, and trying to touch them as they passed. All this greatly diverted the Mongol audience, evidently delighted to see a real counterpart to the painted spectacles of some of the actors.