the Votiaks were fifty-five thousand in number, and since this period no census has been taken. Many have been converted to Christianity, though a large number remain idolaters, and still practise the superstitious ceremonies of their worship in the depths of their forests.
Tents pitched at certain distances from each other, generally in some picturesque spot, covered with groups of pine and birch, serve them as a sanctuary; these tents have but one opening, and that always facing the south. They are entirely void of furniture or ornament.3
3 Müller.
The Votiaks have three principal divinities: a Master and Supreme Lord of everything, called Inmar; a god that protects the land and the harvests; and a third god that has dominion over the waters. Inmar dwells in the sun, which is an object of their highest veneration.
The principal fête of the year is in the month of August, and then the grand priest known as Toua proceeds to one of the sanctuaries I have just mentioned, and there sacrifices, in due order, one after the other, a duck, a goose, a bull, and a horse. The horse should be chestnut, though in cases of necessity it may be of any other colour, except black. Afterwards the faithful have a repast on the flesh of these animals; then the Toua collects the blood and the fat, and, putting them into the stomachs, he burns them with a portion of the bones; the heads are hung up on a neighbouring pine, and the skins sold for the benefit of the high-priest.4
4 Pallas.
Before burying their dead the Votiaks wash them carefully and clothe them in rich ornaments. When they are about to close the grave they throw in a few pieces of silver, and say: “This ground is thine.” Finally, when a member of the family is dangerously ill, the parents are accustomed to sacrifice a black sheep.5 As these practices are always carried out in secret, it was not without much difficulty that Pallas and Müller were able to penetrate the mysteries I have just mentioned.
5 Müller.
It is the custom in Russia, whenever a new emperor mounts the throne, to oblige the Votiaks to take a fresh oath of fidelity. The ceremony is curious. They stretch a bear’s skin on the ground, and then lay on it an axe, a knife, and a bit of bread. Every Votiak cuts off a morsel of this bread, and, before eating it, recites this formula: “If I should not remain ever faithful to my sovereign during my life, or should I rebel against him with my free will and knowledge; if I neglect to perform the duties that are due to him, or if I offend him in any manner whatever—may a bear like this tear me to pieces in the heart of the forest, this bread choke me at once, this knife pierce my body, and this axe cut off my hand.” There is not an instance, says Gmelin, of a Votiak having violated his oath, although they have been so often persecuted on the ground of their religion.
The road leading from Kazan to Perm passes through immense forests of evergreen trees. My journey through this region was attended with a degree of cold rather severe. The thermometer varied from twenty to thirty degrees below zero (Centigrade). At this temperature, a temperature not at all unusual in Siberia, it rarely happens that the least breeze comes to disturb the tranquillity of the atmosphere. All the trees of the forest were therefore almost perfectly at rest: the only movement perceptible from time to time was a branch bending down slowly to relieve itself from a too heavy burden of snow.
This complete silence—this all-pervading stillness of nature, in which she seems to repose from the terrible manifestations of her power, as in the tempest and in the billows of the ocean—is not without grandeur, and to the thoughtful, perhaps, if less imposing, is more solemn than her other phases. On the one side she presents to us vicissitude and transitoriness, and on the other unchangeableness and duration; the agitation and the turmoil of the one may, indeed, remind us more vividly of life, but the quiescence and sepulchral muteness of the other draw our thoughts nearer to eternity.
The aspect of Asiatic Russia produces on the mind an impression not dissimilar from that derived from contemplating the ocean, or the African desert, and this is immensity—mournful immensity.
To be lost amid this inhospitable, boundless space is not to pine away simply from hunger and thirst, as on the sands of the desert, with some prospect, however remote, of relief; here one dies pierced with cold to the marrow, lingering without hope; for what hope could exist to escape from a region interminable to the desponding eye, whose glacial temperature without movement means inevitable death?
With the muteness and unchanging aspect of these limitless wilds is associated another of a fantastic character, doubtless one of the causes of the all-pervading superstition of this country. In the depth of these forests, which may be called virgin forests—not that they are untrodden, for they are inhabited—the snow falls very unequally. Here and there enormous cedars preserve beneath their branches large bare spaces; and farther on the avalanches from weaker branches accumulate into high pyramids. On one side the wind rounds off the angularity, and on the other it is pierced by protruding branches of vigorous shrubs. It follows that the snow, thus heaped up in these spots, takes many irregular forms, which, to the excited imagination, may easily become terrifying, especially at approaching night, when these white phantoms stand forth from the mysterious obscurity under the spreading cedars.
When we dismounted at the end of our stage, there was a little adventure that made me blush, I must admit, for my French gallantry. We met here two women, who had been waiting the whole day long, till the posting master was pleased to give them horses to continue their journey. This autocrat had at last relented just before we came up; the horses were put in their sledge, and they were going to start at once, when Constantine presented our Crown podarojnaia order. “That is my last troïka,” exclaimed the master of the relays; “I shall be obliged, I am sorry to say, to my great regret, to keep you waiting here——”
“Take the horses out of that sledge,” said Constantine authoritatively, perfectly indifferent to the distressing embarrassment into which he had thrown these two poor travellers.
I did not clearly understand the affair at first, but I doubt whether, after having examined these two personages, my gallantry would have overruled my selfishness, for their departure or detention depended on the one or the other. If at night all cats are grey, in Siberia all women swaddled for a journey are uniformly unattractive; and the face, besides, is disfigured with a look of uncleanliness from intense and prolonged cold.
I do not know what Don Quixote would have done in the presence of these two Dulcineas: as it was quite impossible for me to follow them, the only alternative was to precede them.
The reader will soon learn what followed from this incident. I am ashamed to say I had the cowardice to approve, at least by my silence, Constantine’s decision; and we continued our journey, without any other adventure, as far as Perm, where we arrived on the 26th of December at daybreak.
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