IX.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 341 



than European, although since the i8th century they have been 

 Christians Lutherans in Scandinavia, Orthodox in Russia. In 

 pagan times Shamanism had nowhere acquired a greater develop- 

 ment than among the Lapps. A great feature of the system were 

 the " rune-trees," made of pine or birch bark, inscribed with 

 figures of gods, men, or animals, which were consulted on all 

 important occasions, and their mysterious signs interpreted by 

 the Shamans. Even foreign potentates hearkened to the voice of 

 these renowned magicians, and in England the expression " Lap- 

 land witches " became proverbial, although it appears that there 

 never were any witches, but only wizards, in Lapland. Such 

 rites have long ceased to be practised, although some of the 

 crude ideas of a material after-life still linger on. Money and 

 other treasures are often buried or hid away, the owners dying 

 without revealing the secret, either through forgetfulness, or more 

 probably of set purpose in the hope of thus making provision for 

 the other world. 



Amongst the kindred Samoyads, despite their Russian ortho- 

 doxy, the old pagan beliefs enjoy a still more vigorous existence. 

 "As long as things go well with him, he is a Christian; but 

 should his reindeer die, or other catastrophe happen, he imme- 

 diately returns to his old god Num or Chaddi... ^o. conducts his 

 heathen services by night and in secret, and carefully screens 

 from sight any image of Chaddi 1 ." Mr Jackson noticed several 

 instances of this compromise between the old and the new, such 

 as the wooden cross supplemented on the Samoyad graves by an 

 overturned sledge to convey the dead safely over the snows of 

 the under-world, and the rings of stones, within which the human 

 sacrifices were perhaps formerly offered to propitiate Chaddi ; 

 and although these things have ceased, "it is only a few years 

 ago that a Samoyad living on Novaia Zemlia sacrificed a young 

 girl." 



Similar beliefs and practices still prevail not only amongst the 

 Siberian Finns Ostyaks of the Yenisei and Obi 

 rivers, Voguls of the Urals but even amongst Finns, 

 the Votyaks, Mordvinians, Cheremisses and other 

 scattered groups still surviving in the Volga basin. So recently as 



1 The Great Frozen Land, p. 84. 



