II.] 
SAMOYED BURYING-PLACE. 
97 
turn the symbol of Christian worship. They left revenge to 
the gods themselves, certain that in a short time they Avould 
destroy all the archimandrite’s reindeer, and merely removed 
their own place of sacrifice a little farther into the land. 
There no injudicious religious zeal has since attacked their 
worship of the “ bolvans.” 
The old place of sacrifice was still recognisable by the number 
of fragments of bones and rusted pieces of iron which lay strewed 
about on the ground, over a very extensive area, by the side 
of the Eussian cross. Eemains of the fireplace, on which 
the Schaman gods had been burned, were also visible. These 
had been much larger and finer than the gods on the present 
eminence, which is also confirmed by a comparison of the 
drawings here given of the latter with those from the time 
of the Dutch explorers. The race of the Schaman gods has 
evidently deteriorated in the course of the last three hundred 
years. 
After I had completed my examination and collected some 
contributions from the old sacrificial mound I ordered a little 
boat, which the steam-launch had taken in tow, to be carried 
over the sandy neck of land which separates the lake shown on 
the map from the sea, and rowed with Captain Nilsson and my 
Russian guide to a Samoyed burying-place farther inland by 
the shore of the lake. 
Only one person was found buried at the place. The grave 
was beautifully situated on the sloping beach of the lake, now 
gay with numberless Polar flowers. It consisted of a box 
carefully constructed of broad stout planks, fixed to the ground 
with earthfast stakes and cross-bars, so that neither beasts of 
prey nor lemmings could get through. The planks appeared 
not to have been hewn out of drift-wood, but were probably 
brought from the south, like the birch bark with which the 
bottom of the coffin was covered. As a pesk,” now fallen in 
pieces, lying round the skeleton, and various rotten rags showed, 
H 
