Their Relationship to the Mantchou.—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 Jukahiri, 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 Cossacks.

According to their occupations, and the various domestic animals employed by them, they are distinguished by the names of Reindeer, Horse, Dog, Forest, 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 epidemic disorders transmitted to them by the Russians. Only a few rear horses and cattle, the reindeer being generally their domestic animal; and the impoverished Tunguse, who has been deprived of his herd by some contagious disorder 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 a245 Tunguse and his daughter. While the father, with his long snow-shoes, was pursuing a reindeer for several days together, this unfortunate girl remained alone and helpless in the hut—which even in summer afforded but an imperfect shelter against the rain and wind—exposed to the cold, and frequently to hunger, and without the least occupation. No wonder that the impoverished Tungusi not seldom sink into cannibalism. Neither the reindeer nor the dogs, nor the wives and children of their more fortunate countrymen, are secure from the attacks and voracity of these outcasts, who, in their turn, are treated like wild beasts, and destroyed without mercy. A bartering trade is, however, carried on with them, but only at a distance, and by signs; each party depositing its goods, and following every motion of the other with a suspicious eye.

The Russian Government, anxious to relieve the misery of the impoverished nomads, has given orders to settle them along the river-banks, and to provide them with the necessary fishing implements; but only extreme wretchedness can induce the Tunguse to relinquish the free life of the forest. His careless temper, his ready wit, and sprightly manner, distinguish him from the other Siberian tribes—the gloomy Samoïede, the uncouth Ostiak, the reserved Jakut—but he is said to be full of deceit and malice. His vanity shows itself in the quantity of glass beads with which he decorates his dress of reindeer leather, from his small Tartar cap to the tips of his shoes. When chasing or travelling on his reindeer through the woods, he of course lays aside most of his finery, and puts on large water-tight boots, or sari, well greased with fat, to keep off the wet of the morass. His hunting apparatus is extremely simple. A small axe, a kettle, a leathern bag containing some dried fish, a dog, a short gun, or merely a bow and a sling, is all he requires for his expeditions into the forest. With the assistance of his long and narrow snow-shoes, he flies over the dazzling plain, and protects his eyes, like the Jakut, with a net made of black horse-hair. He never hesitates to attack the bear single-handed, and generally masters him. The nomad Tunguse naturally requires a movable dwelling. His tent is covered with leather, or large pieces of pliable bark, which are easily rolled up and transported from place to place. The yourt of the sedentary Tunguse resembles that of the Jakut, and is so small that it can be very quickly and thoroughly ............