THE HEATHEN OSTIAKS. 417 



Black care may stand beside their bed; but they banish it whenever 

 they perceive a ray of joy, and they forget affliction whenever the 

 sun of good fortune once more shines upon them. They rejoice in 

 wealth and complain of poverty, but they see their riches disappear 

 without giving way to despair, and their poverty turn to wealth 

 without losing their equanimity. Even in mature age they remain 

 children in thought, feeling, and behaviour; they are happier than 

 we. 



The Ostiaks with whom we came most frequently in contact 

 on the lower Obi, whose society we preferred, and whom we learned 

 to know best, belong to the Finnish family, and profess the same 

 religion as another branch of the same family, the Samoyedes, 

 while their manners, customs, and way of life generally, are 

 approximately the same as those of all the Finns in a restricted 

 sense, and therefore also of the Lapps. They are wandering herds- 

 men and fisher-folk, huntsmen and fowlers, like the Samoyedes 

 and like the Lapps. Apart from their religion, and perhaps also 

 their language, they resemble the Lapps more than the Samoyedes, 

 for there are among them dwellers in fixed homes as well as nomadic 

 herdsmen, while the Samoyedes, even when engaged in fishing, very 

 rarely exchange their movable hut for a fixed log-house, at least 

 in the parts of Siberia through which we travelled. 



It may be that the Ostiak tribe was more numerous at one 

 time than it is now, but it was probably never a people in our 

 sense of the word. In some parts of the territory inhabited, or at 

 least traversed by them, the population is said to be continually 

 decreasing, while in others it is slightly on the increase; but the 

 extent of increase or decrease seems inconsiderable. To reckon 

 the whole number of these people at fifty thousand individuals is 

 probably a high estimate. In the whole of the great district of 

 Obdorsk, which extends from 65 degrees northern latitude to the 

 northern end of the Samoyede peninsula, and from the Ural to the 

 upper Chass river, there live at present, according to official statistics, 

 not more than five thousand three hundred and eighty-two male 

 Ostiaks, of whom not more than one thousand three hundred and 

 seventy-six are able-bodied or assessable men. If we take for 



(M70^ 27 



