ir.] 
OLD ACCOUNTS OF THE SAMOYEDS. 
101 
bring it to them : their knowledge is very base for they know 
no letter.” 
Giles Fletcher, who in 1588 was Queen Elizabeth’s 
ambassador to the Czar, writes in his account of Russia of the 
Samoyeds in the following way :—^ 
The Samoyt hath his name (as the Riisse saith) of eating 
himselfe: as if in times past they lived as the Cannibals, eating 
one another. Which they make more probable, because at 
this time they eate all kind of raw flesh, whatsoeuer it bee, 
euen the very carrion that lyeth in the ditch. But as the 
Samoits themselves will say, they were called Samoie, that is, 
of themselves, as though they were Indigence, or people bred 
upon that very soyle that never changed their seate I'rom one 
place to another, as most Nations have done. They are clad 
in Seale-skinnes, with the hayrie side outwards downe as low 
as the knees, with their Breeches and Netherstocks of the 
same, both men and women. They are all Blacke hayred, 
naturally beardless. And therefore the Men are hardly dis¬ 
cerned from the Women by their lookes : saue that the Women 
weare a locke of hayre down along both their eares.” 
In nearly the same v^ay the Samoyeds are described by 
G. De Veer in his account of Barents’ second voyage in 1595. 
Barents got good information from the Samoyeds as to the 
navigable water to the eastward, and always stood on a good 
footing with them, excepting on one occasion when the 
Samoyeds went down to the Dutchmen’s boats and took back 
an idol which had been carried off from a large sacrificial 
mound. 
The Samoyeds have since formed the subject of a very 
extensive literature, of which however it is impossible for 
me to give any account here. Among other points their 
^ Treatise of Russia and the adjoining Regions, written by Doctor 
Giles Fletcher, Lord Ambassador from the late Queen, Everglorious 
Elizabeth, to Theodore, then Emperor of Russia. A.i). 1588. Purchas, 
hi. p. 413. 
