THE SAMOYEDES 49 



from Captains Arendt and Engel may be summed up as 

 follows : 



The Samoyedes are a Mongolian race of nomad 

 habits. They live almost entirely upon reindeer. In 

 summer they live in tents made of birch-bark ; in 

 winter their tents or chooms are made of reindeer-skins. 

 They eat the flesh of the reindeer and drink its blood. 

 Their dress is made of its skins, neatly sewn together 

 with its sinews. The wealth of a Samoyede consists 

 entirely in the number of his reindeer ; each knows his 

 own by marks cut upon the animal's ear. In summer 

 the Samoyedes live on the tundras. Some go to the 

 Kanin peninsula, some to the Timanski Tundra or 

 Malyazemlia, and others to the northern shores of the 

 Great Tundra, the Bolshaizemlia of the Russians, the 

 Arkya-ya of the Samoyedes. These tundras are naked 

 tracts of slightly undulating land, rolling prairies of moor, 

 swamp, and bog, full of lakes, and abounding with 

 reindeer-moss, upon which the reindeer feed. In summer 

 the tundras are quite impassable for horses, but the rein- 

 deer, with their broad feet, will carry a sledge over places 

 where it would be impossible for a man to stand. The 

 Samoyedes are always on the tramp, seldom remaining 

 long in one place. A considerable portion of their lives 

 is spent in packing, unpacking, and travelling. In winter 

 the cold is too great for the reindeer to find food under 

 the frozen snow of the Arctic latitudes, and in summer 

 the poor animals would be driven frantic by the mosquitoes 

 which swarm in the more southerly regions. In summer 

 the Samoyedes occupy their spare time in shooting ducks 

 and geese, making their clothes, reindeer harness, etc., 

 and in winter they come down to the towns and villages 

 — Kuya, Pustozersk, Ust-Zylma, Mez^n, Pinega, and 

 others, and barter their surplus reindeer-skins, horns, 



D 



