His Birthplace and first Studies.—Journey in Lapland, 1838.—The Iwalojoki.—The Lake of Enara.—The Pastor of Utzjoki.—From Rowaniémi to Kemi.—Second Voyage, 1841–44.—Storm on the White Sea.—Return to Archangel.—The Tundras of the European Samojedes.—Mesen.—Universal Drunkenness.—Sledge Journey to Pustosersk.—A Samojede Teacher.—Tundra Storms.—Abandoned and alone in the Wilderness.—Pustosersk.—Our Traveller’s Persecutions at Ustsylmsk and Ishemsk.—The Uusa.—Crossing the Ural.—Obdorsk.—Second Siberian Journey, 1845–48.—Overflowing of the Obi.—Surgut.—Krasnojarsk.—Agreeable Surprise.—Turuchansk.—Voyage down the Jenissei.—Castrén’s Study at Plachina.—From Dudinka to Tolstoi Noss.—Frozen Feet.—Return Voyage to the South.—Frozen fast on the Jenissei.—Wonderful Preservation.—Journey across the Chinese Frontiers, and to Transbaikalia.—Return to Finland.—Professorship at Helsingfors.—Death of Castrén, 1855.
Matthias Alexander Castrén, whose interesting journeys form the subject of the present chapter, was born in the year 1813, at Rowanièmi, a Finland village situated about forty miles from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, immediately under the Arctic Circle; so that, of all men who have attained celebrity, probably none can boast of a more northern birthplace. While still a scholar at the Alexander’s College of Helsingfors, he resolved to devote his life to the study of the nations of Finnish origin (Fins, Laplanders, Samojedes, Ostjaks, etc.); and as books gave but an insufficient account of them, each passing year strengthened his desire to visit these tribes in their own haunts, and to learn from themselves their languages, their habits, and their history.
We may imagine, therefore, the joy of the enthusiastic student, whom poverty alone had hitherto prevented from carrying out the schemes of his youth, when Dr. Ehrström, a friend and medical fellow-student, proposed to take him as a companion, free of expense, on a tour in Lapland. No artist that ever crossed the Alps on his way to sunny Italy could feel happier than Castrén at the prospect of plunging into the wildernesses of the Arctic zone.
On June 25, 1838, the friends set out, and arrived on the 30th at the small town of Muonioniska, where they remained six weeks—a delay which Castrén put to good account in learning the Lapp language from a native catechist. At length the decreasing sun warned the travellers that it was high time to continue their journey, if they wished to see more of Lapland before the winter set in; and after having, with great difficulty, crossed the mountain ridge which forms the water-shed between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Polar Sea, they embarked on the romantic Iwalojoki, where for three days and nights the rushing waters roared around them. In spite of these dangerous rapids, they were obliged to trust themselves to the stream, which every now and then threatened to dash their frail boat to pieces against the rocks. Armed with long oars, they were continually at work during the daytime to guard against169 this peril; the nights were spent near a large fire kindled in the open air, without any shelter against the rain and wind.
The Iwalo River is, during the greater part of its course, encased between high rocks; but a few miles before it discharges itself into the large Lake of Enara, its valley improves into a fine grassy plain. Small islands covered with trees divide the waters, which now flow more tranquilly; soon also traces of culture appear, and the astonished traveller finds in the village of Kyrö, not wretched Lapland huts, but well-built houses of Finnish settlers, with green meadows and cornfields.
The beautiful Lake of Enara, sixty miles long and forty miles broad, is so thickly studded with islands that they have never yet been counted. After the travellers had spent a few days among the Fisher Lapps who sojourn on its borders, they proceeded northward to Utzjoki, the limit of their expedition, and one of the centres of Lapland civilization, as it boasts of a church, which is served by a man of high character and of no little ability. On accepting his charge, this self-denying priest had performed the journey from Tornea in the depth of winter, accompanied by a young wife and a female relation of the latter, fifteen years of age. He had found the parsonage, vacated by his predecessor, a wretched building, distant some fifteen miles from the nearest Lapp habitation. After establishing himself and his family in this dreary tenement, he had returned from a pastoral excursion to find his home destroyed by a fire, from which its inmates had escaped with the loss of all that they possessed. A miserable hut, built for the temporary shelter of the Lapps who resorted thither for divine service, afforded the family a refuge for the winter. He had since contrived to build himself another dwelling, in which our party found him, after five years’ residence, the father of a family, and the chief of a happy household. Gladly would the travellers have remained some time longer under his hospitable roof, but the birds of passage were moving to the south, warning them to follow their example.
Thus they set out, on August 15, for their homeward voyage, which proved no less difficult and laborious than the former. At length, after wandering through deserts and swamps—frequently wet to the skin, and often without food for many hours—they arrived at Rowanièmi, where they embarked on the Kemi River.
“With conflicting feelings,” says Castrén, “I descended its stream; for every cataract was not only well-known to me from the days of my earliest childhood, but the cataracts were even the only acquaintances which death had left me in the place of my birth. Along with the mournful impressions which the loss of beloved relations made upon my mind, it was delightful to renew my intercourse with the rapid stream and its waterfalls—those boisterous playfellows, which had often brought me into peril when a boy. Now, as before, it was a pleasant sport to me to be hurried along by their tumultuous waters, and to be wetted by their spray. The boatmen often tried to persuade me to land before passing the most dangerous waterfalls, and declared that they could not be answerable for my safety. But, in spite of all their remonstrances, I remained in the boat, nor had I reason to repent of my boldness, for170 He who is the steersman of all boats granted us a safe arrival at Kemi, where our Lapland journey terminated.”9
In 1841 Castrén published a metrical translation, into the Swedish language, of the “Kalewala,” a cycle of the oldest poems of the Fins; and at the end of the same year proceeded on his first great journey to the land of the European Samoïedes, and from thence across the northern Ural Mountains to Siberia. In the famous convent of Solovetskoi, situated on a small island in the White Sea, he hoped to find a friendly teacher of the Samoïede language in the Archimandrite Wenjamin, who had labored as a missionary among that savage people, but the churlish dignitary jealously refused him all assistance; and as the tundras of the Samoïedes are only accessible during the winter, he resolved to turn the interval to account by a journey among the Terski Lapps, who inhabit the western shores of the White Sea. With this view, in an evil hour of the 27th June, 1842, though suffering at this time from illness severe enough to have detained any less persevering traveller, he embarked at Archangel in a large corn-laden vessel, with a reasonable prospect of being landed at Tri Ostrowa in some twenty-four hours; but a dead calm detained him eight days, during which he had no choice but to endure the horrible stench of Russian sea-stores in the cabin or the scorching sun on deck. At length a favorable wind arose, and after a few hours’ sailing nothing was to be seen but water and sky. Soon the Terski coast came in view, with its white ice-capped shore, and Castrén hoped soon to be released from his floating prison, when suddenly the wind changed, and, increasing to a storm, threatened to dash them on the cliffs of the Solovetskoi Islands.
“Both the captain and the ship’s company began to despair of their lives; and prayers having been resorted to in vain, to conjure the danger, general drunkenness was the next resource. The captain, finding his own brandy too weak to procure the stupefaction he desired, left me no peace till I had given him a bottle of rum. After having by degrees emptied its contents, he at length obtained his end, and fell asleep in the cabin. The crew, following his example, dropped down one by one into their cribs, and the ship was left without guidance to the mercy of the winds and waves. I alone remained on deck, and gloomily awaited the decisive moment. But I soon discovered that the wind was veering to the east, and, awaking the captain from his drunken lethargy, sent him on deck, and took possession of his bed. Exhausted by the dreadful scenes of the day, I soon fell into a deep slumber; and when I awoke the following morning, I found myself again on the eastern coast of the White Sea, at the foot of a high sheltering rock-wall.”
Continued bad weather and increasing illness now forced Castrén to give up his projected visit to the Lapps, and when he returned to Archangel, both his health and his purse were in a sad condition. He had but fifteen roubles in his pocket, but fortunately found some Samoïede beggars still poorer than himself, one of whom, for the reward of an occasional glass of brandy, consented to become at once his host, his servant, and his private tutor in the Samoïede language.171 In the hut 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 silver 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 Samoïedes. 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 deepest barbarism. It consists of nomadic Samoïedes, 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, Castrén left Archangel in November, 1842. As far as Mesen, 345 versts north of Archangel, the scanty population is Russ and Christian. At Mesen civilization ceases, and farther north the Samoïede 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 drunkenness. Castrén’s first care, on his arrival at Mesen, was to look for a Samoïede 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 Samoïede began to get tired of his numerous questions, and declared himself ill. He threw himself upon the floor, wailed and lamented, and begged Castrén 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, Castrén resolved to travel, in the middle of winter, to the Russian village of Pustosersk, at the mouth of the Petschora, where the fair annually attracts a number of Samoïedes. 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 Samoïede, or in the scarcely less wretched hut of the Russian colonist—where the snow penetrated 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 uncovered one occupied by the guide. The Kanin Tundra stretched out before172 them, as they flew along, almost as naked as the sea, of which they saw the margin in the east; and had not the wind here and there driven away the snow which Heaven in its mercy strews over this gloomy land, they might have been in doubt on which element they were travelling. Daily, from time to time, some dwarf firs made their appearance, or clumps of low willows, which generally denote the presence of some little brook slowly winding through the flat tundra.
The village of Ness, on the north coast, was the first halting-place, and here Castrén flattered himself he had at length found what his heart desired, in the person of a Samoïede teacher who knew Russian, and was gifted with a clearer head than is usually possessed by his race.
“The man was conscious of his superiority, and while acting as a professor looked down with contempt upon his weaker brethren. Once, some other Samoïedes venturing to correct one of his translations, he commanded them to be silent, telling them they were not learned. I tried by all possible means to secure the services of this Samoïede phenomenon. I spoke kindly with him, I paid him well, gave him every day his allowance of brandy, and never once forbade him to get drunk when he felt inclined to do so. Yet, in spite of all my endeavors to please, he felt unhappy, and sighed for the liberty of the tundra. ‘Thou art kind, and I love thee,’ said he one day to me, ‘but I can not endure confinement. Be therefore merciful, and give me my freedom.’
“I now increased his daily pay and his rations of brandy, sent for his wife and child, treated his wife also with brandy, and did all I could to dispel the melancholy of the Samoïede. By these means I induced him to remain a few days longer with me.
“While I was constantly occupying him, the wife was busy sewing Samoïede dresses, and sometimes assisted her husband in his translations. I often heard her sighing deeply, and having asked for the reason, she burst into tears, and answered that she grieved for her husband, who was thus imprisoned in a room. ‘Thy husband,’ was my reply, ‘is not worse off than thyself. Tell me, what do you think of your own position?’ ‘I do not think of myself—I am sorrowful for my husband,’ was her ingenuous reply. At length both the husband and the wife begged me so earnestly to set them at liberty that I allowed them to depart.”
On the way from Pjoscha to Pustosersk, after Castrén had once more vainly endeavored to discover that rara avis, a Samoïede teacher, he became thoroughly acquainted with the January snow-storms of the tundra: “The wind arose about noon, and blew so violently that we could not see the reindeer before our sledges. The roof of my vehicle, which at first had afforded me some protection, was soon carried away by the gale. Anxious about my fate, I questioned my guides, whenever they stopped to brush off the snow which had accumulated upon me, and received the invariable answer, ‘We do not know where we are, and see nothing.’ We proceeded step by step, now following one direction, now another, until at length we reached a river well known to the guides. The leader of the first sledge hurried his reindeer down the precipitous bank, and drove away upon the ice to seek a more convenient descent; but as he did not return, the other guide likewise left me to look after his companion, and thus I173 was kept waiting for several hours on the tundra, without knowing where my guides had gone to.
“At first I did not even know that they had left me, and when I became aware of the fact, I thought that they had abandoned me to my fate. I will not attempt to describe my sensation............