The Human Race Part 18

Their complexion is clear. They are thick-set, have a decided tendency to obesity, and are seldom more than five feet in height.

During a journey undertaken by Dr. Kane of New York to the 82nd degree of northern lat.i.tude, this bold explorer spent more than a year amongst the Esquimaux who live at Etah, the nearest human abode to the North Pole. Men, women, and children, covered only by their filth, laid in heaps in a hut, huddled together in a kind of basket. A lamp, with a flame sixteen inches long produced by burning seal oil, warmed and lighted the place. Bits of seal's flesh, from whence issued a most horrible ammoniacal odour, lay upon the floor of this den.

Fig. 93 represents the summer encampment of a tribe of Esquimaux, and fig. 94 a winter one. Fig. 95 represents a village, that is to say, a collection of huts made of blocks of snow which shelter from the excessive cold these disinherited children of Nature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 93.--ESQUIMAUX SUMMER ENCAMPMENT.]

The seals from the bay of Reusselaer provide the Esquimaux with food during the greater part of the year. More to the south, as far as Murchison's channel, the whale penetrates in due season. The winter famine begins to cease when the sun reappears. January and February are the months of hardship; during the latter part of March the spring fisheries recommence, and with them movement and life begin anew. The poor wretched dens covered with snow are then the scenes of great activity. The ma.s.ses of acc.u.mulated provisions are then brought out and piled up on the frozen ground: the women prepare the skins to make shoes of, and the men make a reserve store of harpoons for the winter. The Esquimaux are not lazy. They hunt with a good deal of pluck, and are often forced to hide their game in excavations that the wild beasts may not get at it. Their consumption of food is very great. They are large eaters, not from greediness, but of necessity, on account of the extreme cold of these high lat.i.tudes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 94.--ESQUIMAUX WINTER ENCAMPMENT.]

Fig. 96 represents, according to Doctor Kane, the chief of an Esquimaux tribe.

Doctor Hayes, in his "Journey to the Open Sea of the North Pole,"

published in 1866, has described the Esquimaux type. A broad face, heavy jaws, prominent cheek bones, a narrow forehead, small eyes of a deep black, thin long lips, with two narrow rows of sound teeth, jet-black hair, a little of it on the upper lip and on the chin; small in stature but stoutly built, and a robust const.i.tution of a vigorous kind; such are the distinguishing characteristics of the people of the far north.

The Esquimaux style of dress seemed, to the learned traveller, pretty much the same for both s.e.xes; a pair of boots, stockings, mittens, trousers, a waistcoat, and an overcoat. The father-in-law of one of his travelling companions wore boots of bearskin coming up to the knee, whilst those of his wife reached much higher, and were made of seal leather. Their trousers were made of sealskin, their stockings of dogskin, their mittens of sealskin, and their waistcoat of kidskin with the fur inside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 95.--ESQUIMAUX VILLAGE.]

The overcoat, made of the skin of the blue fox, does not open in front, but is put on like a shirt. It ends in a hood covering the head like the cowl of a monk. The women cut their coat to a point, in order to confine their hair, which they gather together on the top of the head, and tie up in a knot as close and as hard as a stone, by means of untanned straps of sealskin. This is shown in fig. 93.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 96.--ESQUIMAUX CHIEF.]

Seal-hunting is the chief occupation of the Esquimaux. The seal is a providential animal to the wild inhabitants of the sh.o.r.es of the Frozen Ocean of America, as the reindeer is the G.o.dsend of the Laplanders, inhabitants of the sh.o.r.es of the same seas in the north of Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 97.--ESQUIMAUX BIRD-CATCHER.]

The eggs of the seabirds, particularly of the penguin, are a second source of food to these people. The Esquimaux run all sorts of risks to gather the eggs of these birds on the steep and giddy cliffs where their nests are found (fig. 97).

The Esquimaux can only count up to ten, the number of their fingers.

They have no system of notation, and can a.s.sign no date to past events.

They have no annals of any kind or sort, and do not even know their own age.

TEMISIAN FAMILY.

A people more generally known under the name of _Ostiaks_ of _Temisia_.

They speak a very different language from that of the Ostiaks of the Obi whom we have already mentioned as belonging to the White Race.

JUKAGHIRITE AND KORIAK FAMILIES.

These are wandering people, becoming more and more absorbed in the Russian population. They live on the sh.o.r.es of Behring's Straits, or in the interior, and much resemble the Samoiedes in their customs and in their language.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 98.--YOUNG ESQUIMAUX.]

CHAPTER II.

MONGOLIAN BRANCH.

The peoples belonging to this ethnologic branch exhibit the characteristics of the Yellow Race in the most prominent manner. They are fond of a nomadic life, and have at different periods made wide conquests; but they have, as a rule, become absorbed in the races they have overcome. The Mongols are still, however, the rulers of the Chinese Empire. They belong either to the Buddhist or to the Mahometan faith.

This branch is divided into three great families, a.n.a.logous with the differences in their language: the _Mongols_, the _Tunguses_, and the _Turks_. We may add to them a fourth family, the _Yakuts_, for these latter possess the physical characteristics of the Yellow Race, and speak a Turkish dialect.

THE MONGOL FAMILY.

The most decided features of the Yellow Race are particularly prominent in the _Mongol_ family. Its members have a larger head, a flatter face and nose, and smaller eyes than those of the other families. They have a broad chest, a very short neck, round shoulders, strong thick-set limbs, short bow-legs, and a brownish-yellow complexion. The most nomadic of the Mongol family live under the rule of the Russian and the Chinese Empires.

Fig. 99 represents a Mongol Tartar.

Three princ.i.p.al nations are to be found in this family: the Kalmuks, the Mongols proper, and the Burats.

_Kalmuks._--M. Vereschaguine, in his "Journey in the Caucasian Provinces," has described the nomadic Kalmuks whom he met with on the frontier separating the Caucasus from the district of the Cossacks of the Don. Travelling villages are found on these dreary and monotonous steppes. The habitations of which these villages are composed consist of tattered tents. These contain, mixed up in an incredible confusion, boxes, cases, la.s.soes, saddles, and heaps of rags. A hearth is the only sign of a fireplace. During the heat of summer, the children of both s.e.xes, up to the age of ten, run about almost entirely naked. In winter, in the midst of their terrible snowstorms, and when the thermometer is below zero, they remain for days together huddled up in their tents beneath heaps of their clothing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 99.--A MONGOL TARTAR.]

A Kalmuk's dress consists of a shirt, of a _bechmet_, of a wide pair of trousers, of red leather boots, and of a square cloth cap with a broad border of sheepskin fur, generally ornamented with an immense k.n.o.b on the top. The more wealthy wear into the bargain an ample and lengthy dressing-gown. The women do not, like the men, wear a belt round their shirt; their hair falls from beneath their cap in several plaits tied up with ribbons of different colours.

Cunning, trickery, fraud, and theft, are the staple occupations of these nomadic tribes. The mother supports her child without the father troubling himself about it, and it grows up in a state of neglect.

The food of the Kalmuks is extremely primitive. Boiled flour, diluted with water and cooked up with pieces of horseflesh, forms the staple of their culinary art. They are fond of tea, and drink a great deal of it, but they season it so highly as to entirely lose its flavour. They are downright drunkards into the bargain, and in this respect the women and the children are not a whit behind the men. They sometimes spend whole days in gambling with greasy and ill-a.s.sorted cards.

The Kalmuks are capital hors.e.m.e.n. They also breed and break-in camels, which they sell in the Tiflis market.

_Mongols proper._--The Mongols proper, or the Eastern Mongols, wander in the steppes of Mongolia. They are divided into numerous tribes, of which the most important have received the name of _Khalkas_.

Mongolia may be divided into two parts, as distinct by their political proclivities as by the nature and produce of their soil.

The southern part, an arid district, is only inhabited in the vicinity of the Chinese frontier, where numerous tribes of Mongol origin, direct tributaries of the Chinese Empire, are to be found. The northern division, entirely populated by Khalkas tribes, is fertile.

The Khalkas are subdivided into two castes: the Buddhist priests, and the black men who allow their hair to grow. The latter possess an aristocracy, leading like the rest a pastoral life, from whom are selected the chiefs of the tribes, chosen by election. The Khalkas could bring into the field at least fifty thousand hors.e.m.e.n; but they are wretchedly armed with worthless Chinese double-edged sabres. These are notched or spiral-shaped. Their other weapons are short spears, arrows, matchlocks with queer-shaped breeches, shields stuffed with sheets of leather, and coats of wire mail.

The life of a wandering Khalkasian is very uneventful. He begins his day by going round his flocks, and mounted on a horse which is never unsaddled, and which has spent the night fastened to a stake at the door of his tent, he gallops after the animals that have strayed away; then he bends his steps to a neighbouring camp to gossip with the herdsmen it contains. Returning home, he squats in his tent for the remainder of the day, and kills time by sleeping, drinking tea diluted with milk or b.u.t.ter, or by smoking his pipe; while his wives draw water, milk the cows, collect fuel, make cheese, or prepare wool and the skins of various animals for clothes and shoes.

The Khalkas, hospitable and sober, possess the primitive virtues of the Yellow Race; but they are unacquainted with either commerce or manufactures. The only things they produce are felt stuffs, a little embroidery, and some poorly tanned skin and leather. They dispose of their raw produce to Russian and Chinese traders, who cheat them as much as they can. The payments are made in blocks of tea, five blocks being an equivalent to one ounce of Chinese silver. This tea is composed of the coa.r.s.est kind of leaf and of the small twigs of the herb.

The dull and contemplative existence of the Khalkasian has few events to interrupt it. It is broken only by a pilgrimage, by a funeral followed by long festivities, by the arrival of a few travellers, or by a marriage. This last is, as among the ancient patriarchs, only a species of barter in which the girl is sold by her father to the highest bidder, and is an excuse for a week's rejoicing, in which all concerned revel in orgies of meat, tobacco, and rice brandy.