426 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



district about the middle of the river-basin; sheep, and sometimes 

 even a cat may be kept; but the real domestic animals are the rein- 

 deer and dog. Without these, especially without the reindeer, a 

 well-to-do man would scarcely think life possible, and it is indeed 

 to them he owes all that makes up what he looks on as the joy of 

 existence. As the Bedouin, the wandering herdsman of Central 

 Africa, deems himself superior to those of his race who till the 

 fields; as the Kirghiz looks down almost contemptuously on those 

 who strive to wrest subsistence from the soil, so the possessor, or 

 even the herdsman of reindeer, only uses net and hook to supply his 

 own necessities, while the fisherman casts his nets and sets his 

 baskets not for himself alone, but in the service of others. The 

 wealth of a man is calculated by the number of his reindeer; with 

 them his prosperity and his happiness are alike bound up. And 

 when the deadly murrain annihilates his herds, he loses not wealth 

 and happiness alone, but much more: esteem and rank, self-respect 

 and confidence, even, it may be, his religion, manners, and morals, 

 in short himself. "As long as the plague did not ravage our 

 herds," said the district governor, Mamru, the most intelligent 

 Ostiak whom we met, " we lived joyously and were rich, but since 

 we have begun to lose them, we are gradually becoming poor fisher- 

 men; without the reindeer we cannot hold out, we cannot live." 

 Poor Ostiaks! in these words your doom is pronounced. Even now 

 the reindeer, which once were counted by hundreds of thousands, 

 have dwindled to a total of fifty thousand, and still the Destroying 

 Angel passes almost yearly through the antlered herds. What will 

 be the end ? The Russian priests will gain more and more Christians, 

 the Russian fishermen more and more hirelings, but the Ostiaks will 

 be Ostiaks only in name, and that at no far distant time. 82 



The reindeer of Northern Asia is an essentially different creature 

 from that of Lapland, for it is not only larger and more stately, but 

 it is a domestic animal in the best sense of that term. We all ima- 

 gined we knew the reindeer; for in Lapland we had examined it 

 precisely and carefully with the eye of the naturalist; but in Siberia 

 we were obliged to admit that till then we had gained a very imper- 

 fect idea of this most remarkable of domestic animals. In Lapland 



