FINNISH SORCERY. 139 



the ghosts of the drowned. 1 They practiced soothsaying 

 as a means of profit. Their traffic in charms was chiefly 

 with the sailor. To him they sold weather, good and bad, 

 and bags of wind ("as Lapland witches pottled air") 

 which would waft his ship to the desired haven, or send 

 that of his enemy to disaster. 2 



The Finn country, with its many inlets and sounds, had 

 an extended sea-coast, so that the early inhabitants be- 

 came navigators from the beginning of their settlement. 

 Therein they differed from the Mongols, who, as I have 

 stated, remained for a long period dwellers inland. If 

 we may conjecture knowledge of magnetic polarity and 

 of the guidance of the lodestone, existing in the ancient 

 people of Central Asia, whence both the Finns and the 

 Mongols sprang, it is as reasonable to infer persistence of 

 the same knowledge among the Finns as among the 

 Chinese; although, as I have also remarked, the unchang- 

 ing nature of Chinese customs would render the conditions 

 for its preservation more favorable in the Middle Kingdom 

 than in the Northern land. In such a country as Finland, 

 however, the need for the land compass would quickly 

 disappear; for there long land journeys were both unneces- 



1 Olaus Magnus: Hist, de Gent. Sept., Rome, 1555, lib. iii., c. xvi. 

 See Lea: History of the Inquisition, N. Y., 1888, iii.; Peschel: The Races 

 of Man, N. Y., 1876. 



2 The nautical superstition as to the weather-controlling power of the 

 Finns is still alive (see Bassett : Phantoms of the Sea, Chicago, 1892). 

 Dana, in his Two Years before the Mast, tells of the crew ascribing per- 

 sistent headwinds to the presence of a Finn on board, whom the captain 

 proceeded to imprison for his refusal to provide good weather. "The 

 Finn held out for a day and a-half, when he could not stand it any 

 longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, 

 and they let him up." The " Rooshian Finn " is a frequent character 

 in the forecastle yarns of the United States navy ; and that he can alter 

 the wind by sticking his knife into the mast is firmly believed by the old 

 man-of-war's man. Whether any possible connection exists between the 

 insertion of the knife for this purpose, and the savage Norse punishment 

 also involving driving the knife into the mast, noted hereafter as a pen- 

 alty for tampering with the compass, may interest those curious in in- 

 vestigating such matters. 



