344 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



CHAPTER XXL 



THE TUNGUSI. 



Their Relationship to the Maiitchou. — Dreadful Condition of the outcast Nomads. — Character of 

 the Tungusi. — Their Outfit for the Chase. — Bear-hunting. — Dwellings. — Diet. — A Night's Halt with 

 Tungusi in the Forest. — Ochotsk. 



THOUGH both belonging to the same stock, the fate of the Tungusi and 



Mantchou has been very different ; for at the same time when the latter 

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

 greatest part of East Siberia, and driven before them the Jakuts, the Jukahii-i, 

 the Tchuktchi, and many other aboriginal tribes, were in their turn subjugated 

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

 the Tungusi, and in 1644 the first Mantchou 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 worse armed and less 

 disciplined than the Mantchou, while 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 they have a rich literature, and their 

 language is spoken at the court of Peking ; while the Tungusi, oppressed 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, and 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 them 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 his dog, or retires into the forests as a promyschlenik, or hunter. 

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

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



