MATTHIAS ALEXANDER GASTRIN. 



171 



guage. In the hnt and society of this savage he passed the remainder of the 

 summer, his health improved, and soon also his finances changed wonderfully 

 for the better — the Government of Finland having granted him a thousand sil- 

 ver roubles for the prosecution of his travels. With a light heart he continued 

 his linguistic studies until the end of November, when he started with renewed 

 enthusiasm for the land of the European Samoiedes. These immense tundras 

 extend from the White Sea to the Ural Mountains, and are bounded on the 

 north by the Polar Sea, and on the south by the region of forests, which here 

 reaches as high as the latitudes of 66° and 67°. 



The large river Petschora divides these dreary wastes into two unequal 

 halves, whose scanty population, as may easily be imagined, is sunk in the deep- 

 est barbarism. It consists of nomadic Samoiedes, and of a few Russians, who 

 inhabit some miserable settlements along the great stream and its tributary 

 rivers. 



To bury himself for a whole year in these melancholy deserts, Castren left 

 Archangel in [N'ovember, 1842. As far as Mesen, 345 versts north of Archan- 

 gel, the scanty population is Russ and Christian. At Mesen civilization ceases, 

 and farther north the Samoiede retains for the most part, with his primitive 

 habits and language, his heathen faith — having, in fact, borrowed nothing from 

 occasional intercourse with civilized man but the means and practice of drunk- 

 enness. Castren's first care, on his arrival at Mesen, was to look for a Samoiede 

 interpreter and teacher ; but he was as unsuccessful here as at Somsha, a village 

 some forty versts farther on, where drunkenness was the order of the day. He 

 took the most temperate person he could find in all Somsha into his service, 

 but even this moderate man would, according to our ideas, have been accounted 

 a perfect drunkard. He now resolved to try the fair sex, and engaged a female 

 teacher, but she also could not remain sober. At length a man was introduced 

 to him as the most learned person of the tundra, and at first it seemed as if he 

 had at length found what he wanted ; but after a few hours the Samoiede be- 

 gan to get tired of his numerous questions, and declared himself ill. He threw 

 himself upon the floor, wailed and lamented, and begged Castren to have pity 

 on him, until at length the incensed philologist turned him out-of-doors. Soon 

 after he found him lying dead drunk in the snow before the " Elephant and 

 Castle " of the place. 



Thus obliged to look for instruction elsewhere, Castren resolved to travel, in 

 the middle of winter, to the Russian village of Pustosersk, at the mouth of tlie 

 Petschora, where the fair annually attracts a number of Samoiedes. During 

 this sledge-journey of 700 versts, he had to rest sometimes in the open air on the 

 storm-beaten tundra, and sometimes in the rickety tent of the Samoiede, or in 

 the scarcely less wretched hut of the Russian colonist — where the snow pene- 

 trated through the crevices of the wall, where the flame of the light flickered in 

 the wind, and a thick cloak of wolf-skin afforded the only protection against the 

 piercing cold of the Arctic winter. 



For this arduous tour, two sledges, with four reindeer attached to each, were 

 employed — the traveller's sledge, which was covered, being attached to an un- 

 covered one occupied by the guide. The Kanin Tundra stretched out before 



