They Are Men Expert In Shooting, [Footnote:

That the Samoyeds were archers is shewn by old drawings, one of which I reproduce from Linschoten.

Now the bow has completely gone out of use, for Nordenskiold did not see a single archer. Wretched old flint firelocks are, however, common.] and have great plenty of Deere.

This night there fell a cruell storme, the wind being at West.

Sunday (2) we had very much winde, with plenty of snow, and we rode with two ankers a head.

[Illustration: Samoiedarum, trahis a rangiferis protractis insidentium. Nec non Idolorum ab ijsdem cultorum effigies. SAMOYED SLEIGH AND IDOLS. After an old Dutch engraving.]

Munday (3) we weyed and went roome with another Island, which was fiue leagues Eastnortheast from vs, and there I met againe with Loshak, and went on shore with him, and hee brought me to a heap of the Samoeds idols, which were in number aboue 300, the worst and the most vnartificiall worke that euer I saw: the eyes and mouthes of sundrie of them were bloodie, they had the shape of men, women and children, very grosly wrought, and that which they had made for other parts, was also sprinckled with blood. Some of their idols were an old sticke with two or three notches, mode with a knife in it. [Footnote: The accompanying _fac-simile_ of a quaint old engraving of a Samoyed sleigh and idols gives an excellent idea of both.] I saw much of the footing of the sayd Samoeds, and of the sleds that they ride in. There was one of their sleds broken, and lay by the heape of idols, and there I saw a deers skinne which the foules had spoyled: and before certaine of their idols blocks were made as high as their mouthes, being all bloody, I thought that to be the table whereon they offered their sacrifice: I saw also the instruments, whereupon they had roasted flesh, and as farre as I could perceiue, they make their fire directly under the spit.

Loshak being there present tolde me that these Samoeds were not so hurtful as they of Ob are, and that they haue no houses, as indeede I saw none, but onely tents made of Deers skins, which they vnderproppe with stakes and poles: their boates are made of Deers skins, and when they come on shoare they cary their boates with them upon their backes: for their cariages they haue no other beastes to serue them, but Deere onely. As for bread and corne they haue none, except the Russes bring it to them: their knowledge is very base, for they know no letter. [Footnote: This is one of the oldest accounts of the Samoyeds we possess. Giles Fletcher, who in 1588 was Queen Elizabeth's Ambassador to the Czar, writes, in his accounts of Russia, of the Samoyeds in the following way: -

"The _Samoyt_ hath his name (as the _Russe_ 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 _Samoit_, that is, _of themselves_, as though they were _Indigena_, or people bred upon that very soyle that never changed their seate from 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 discerned from the Women by their lookes: saue that the Women wear a locke of hayre down along both their eares." (_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.D. 1588. _Purchas_, iii. p. 413.)

In nearly the same way the Samoyeds are described by G. De Veer, in his account of Barents's Second Voyage in 1595.

Serebrenikoff, according to Nordenskold, maintains that _Samodin_ should be written instead of _Samoyed_. For _Samoyed_ means "self eater," while _Samodin_ denotes an "individual," "one who cannot be mistaken for another," and, as the Samoyeds were never cannibals, Serebrenikoff gives a preference to the latter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova, and appears to be a literal translation of the name which the Samoyeds give themselves. Nordenskiold, however, considers it probable that the old tradition of man-eaters (_androphagi_), living in the north, which onginated with Herodotus, and was afterwards universally adopted in the geographical literature of the Middle Ages, reappears in Russianised form in the name _Samoyed_. With all due respect for Nordenskiold, I am inclined to agree with Serebrenikoff. In the account of the journey which the Italian minorite, Joannes de Piano Carpini, undertook in High Asia in 1245-47, an extraordinary account of the Samoyeds and neighbouring tribes is given. (See Vol. II. of these Collections, pp. 28 and 95). - I give a very curious engraving of Samoyeds from Schleissing. - Nordenskiold inserts, in his _Voyage of the Vega_, the following interesting communication from Professor Ahlquist, of Helsingfors: - .

"The Samoyeds are reckoned, along with the Tungoose, the Mongolian, the Turkish and the Finnish-Ugrian races, to belong to the so-called Altaic or Ural-Altaic stem. What is mainly characteristic of this stem, is that all the languages occurring within it belong to the so-called agglutinating type. For in these languages the relations of ideas are expressed exclusively by terminations or suffixes - inflections, prefixes and prepositions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular.

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