244 THE POLAR WORLD. 



CHAPTER XXr. 



THE TUNGUSI. 



Their Relationship to the I^Iantchon. — Dreadful Condiiiou of the outcast Nomads. — Character of 

 the Tuiifiusi. — Tlu irOutlit for the Chase. — Beav-inuitiiig. — Dwellings. — Diet. — A Night's Halt with 

 Tiiiigusi in the Forest. — Ochotslj. 



^T^IIOUGII botli belonging to the same stock, the fate of tlie Tungnsi am] 

 -'- Mantchoit lias been very different; for at the same time when the latter 

 conqnerecl the vast Chinese Empire, the former, after having spread over the 

 greatest part of East Siberia, and driven before them the Jakuts, the Jnkahiri, 

 the Tchnktchi, and many other aboriginal tribes, Avere in their turn subjugated 

 by the mightier Russians. In the year 1640 the Cossacks first encountered 

 the Tungusi, and in 1G44 the first 3rantc]iou emperor mounted the Chinese 

 throne. The same race which here imposes its yoke upon millions of subjects, 

 there falls a prey to a small number of adventurers. However strange the 

 fact, it is, however, easily explained, for the Chinese were Avorse armed and less 

 disciplined than the iMantchou, Avhile the Tungusi had nothing but bows and 

 arrows to oppose to the Cossack fire-arms; and history (from Alexander the 

 Great to Sadowa) teaches us that victory constantly sides with the best 

 weapons. 



In their intellectual development we find the same difference as in their 

 fortunes between the ]Mantchou and the Siberian Tungusi. Two hundred and 

 fifty years ago the former were still nomads, like their northern kinsfolk, and 

 could neither read nor write, and already thcj' have a rich literature, and their 

 language is spoken at the court of Peking; while the Tungusi, o])pressed and 

 sunk in poverty, are still as ignorant as when they first encountered the Cos- 

 sacks. 



According to their occupations, and the various domestic animals employed 

 by them, they are distinguished by the names of Reindeer, Horse, Dog, For- 

 est, and River Tungusi; but although they are found from the basins of the 

 Upper, Middle, ami Lower Tunguska to the western shores of the Sea of 

 Ochotsk, and from the Chinese frontiers and the Baikal to the Polar Ocean, 

 their whole number does not amount to more than 30,000, and diminishes from 

 year to year, in consequence of the ravages of the small-pox and other epidem- 

 ic disorders transmitted to tiiem by the Russians. Only a few rear horses and 

 cattle, the reindeer being generally their domestic animal ; and the impover- 

 ished Tunguse, who has been deprived of his herd by some contagious disor- 

 der or the ravages of the wolves, lives as a fisherman on the borders of a river, 

 assisted by liis dog, or retires into the forests as a promyschlenik, or Imnter. 

 Of the miseries which here await him, Wrangell relates a melancholy instance. 

 In a Bolitary hut in one of the dreariest wildernesses imaginable, he found a 



