who decided that, though a wooden vessel would be irremediably polluted, one of stone might be afterwards purified by sand and

water.

In this unattractive town and society the state of roads and weather compelled the party to abide for a month, and even then it was found impossible to proceed by land, as no summer road exists between Kem and Onega, the midway station towards Archangel. No opportunity presenting itself for a direct passage by sea to Archangel, Mr. Castren was advised to avail himself of a vessel about to sail for the island of Solovetzkoi, the seat of a famous convent, some thirty versts from Kem in the White Sea. After an uninteresting detention of ten days at this place they reached Archangel by a passage of four days, through floating ice, in an open boat.

Mr. Castren had reckoned here upon the assistance to his studies of a Samoyede missionary, the Archimandrite Wenjamin. Archimandrites, however, are human, and Wenjamin's weakness was jealousy, and a conviction that a knowledge of the Samoyede language was too good a thing to be imparted. The churlish dignitary's refusal produced a change of plans, and a separation from Mr. Lönrott. That gentleman gave up his Samoyede projects in disgust, and betook himself to Olonetz, whence he proposed to fall back on another race of interesting barbarians, the Tschudi. Mr. Castren abided stedfastly by his original scheme of exploring the Tundras during the ensuing winter, at which season alone those deserts are penetrable. The interval he proposed to turn to account by a journey among the Terzki Laps, who inhabit the western shores of the White Sea.

With these views, in an evil hour of the 27th June, he embarked in a large corn-laden vessel bound for the Murman coast, with a reasonable prospect of being landed at Ti Ostrowa in some twenty-four hours. He was suffering at this time from illness, severe enough to have detained a less persevering traveller. The stench of Russian sea-stores made the cabin insupportable; on deck the sun was scorching. The choice between these alternatives was not always at Mr. Castren's disposal. Captain and crew were Raskolnicks to a man, and while they were busy with their interminable and senseless devotions in the cabin the solitary heathen passenger was forced to keep watch on deck. This was well enough during a dead calm, which at first occurred, but when it came on to blow the situation became one of responsibility. After a narrow escape of being dashed on the western shore, a shift of wind sent them, in a few hours, across the mouth of the White Sea to the eastern coast. Prayer had been the first resource of the ship's company, and that having failed general drunkenness

drunkenness was the next-stupefaction, not exhilaration, being the object in view. The captain, indeed, was so bent on this result, that, finding his own brandy insufficient for the purpose, he borrowed a bottle of rum from Mr. Castren's scanty store. When the gale and the rum had somewhat evaporated, the ship found herself, in company with some thirty others, in the sheltered roadstead of Simnia Gory. We can hardly be surprised that Mr. Castren here determined to quit such companions, whose society had become more irksome from attempts at his conversion, and to land at all risks, with a view to effecting his return to Archangel. After some difficulty he found one of the crew less drunken than the rest, and by him was sculled ashore, with his effects. After a life and death struggle with fever during somedays, exasperated by brutal inhospitality on the part of some fishers, the only inhabitants, he found himself under inspection of two soldiers, who had been sent from the nearest settlement, Kuja, to examine the stranger's luggage and passport. These agents of authority proved his salvation; for finding his passport in order, they conveyed him in their boat to Kuja, where the authorities. treated him kindly, and when sufficiently recovered forwarded him on by sea to Archangel. Here, with only fifteen rubles in his pocket, he found some Samoyede beggars still poorer than. himself. One of these, for the reward of an occasional glass of brandy, consented to become at once his host, his servant, and his private tutor in the Samoyede language. In the hut and society of this man, in a village some seventeen versts from Archangel, he passed the remainder of the summer. Human thirst for knowledge has seldom, we imagine, been more strongly illustrated. Letters of recommendation from high authorities, lay and ecclesiastical, and supplies of money, at length reached him from St. Petersburg. Towards the end of November, hestarted with renewed enthusiasm for the Tundras, or deserts of European Russia, which intervene between the White Sea and the Oural. As far as Mesen, 345 versts north of Archangel, the scanty population is Russ and Christian. At Mesen, as at Kola, civilization ceases, and further north the Samoyede 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. During the author's stay at Mesen, his studies of character were principally conducted in the neighbourhood of a principal suburban tavern, the Elephant and Castle or Horns of that city. The snow around was constantly chequered with dark figures, who, with their faces pressed into it to protect them. from the frost, were sleeping away the fumes of alcohol. Ever

VOL. XCIV. NO. CLXXXVII.

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and anon some one would stagger out from the building with a coffee-pot in hand, and searching about for some object of affectionwife, husband, or other relation-would turn the face upward, and pour a draught of the nectar, which was not coffee, down the throat. Such are the pleasures of the Samoyede on a visit to the metropolis. Mr. Castren left Mesen on the 22nd December. At Somski, the first station on his route, he had made an appointment with a Tabide or Samoyede magician, of great repute for professional eminence. The sage kept his appointment, but, unfortunately, having been just converted to Christianity, had burnt his drum, like Prospero, and now begged hard to be excused from reverting to forbidden practices. Mr. Castren, though armed with Government recommendations, was too good a Christian to use influence for such a purpose as enforcing a relapse into superstitious rites, and the convert was not unwilling to expound the secrets of his former calling. Of the two main divisions of the science, medicine and soothsaying, the former is most prevalent with the Finn, the latter with the Samoyede. The Tabide is a mere interpreter of the oracles of the Tabetsios, the spirits with whom he puts himself in communication. The process is not, like that of the Akkala professors, mesmeric, but one of active drumming, noise, and gesticulation. The man who conducts it must bring youth and physical energy to the task. The Tabetsio laughs at age and decrepitude. With obstinate Tabetsios the magician, like the priests of Baal, must puncture and slash himself with sharp weapons. The latter practice is less common than it was in the good old times of sorcery; but our author relates that, shortly before his arrival, a Tabide in the process of incantation had insisted upon being shot at with a musket, and, after standing two shots from Samoyede bystanders without injury, had been killed on the spot by a third fired by a Russian. Russian authorities were employed in an investigation into this tragical occurrence when Mr. Castren left Shumshi. The office of Tabide, as in Finland, is hereditary. 'Magus nascitur non fit' is the general rule; but to this it seems there are exceptions. A drum, a circle, and a costume, are the principal paraphernalia. In the case of a missing reindeer the circle is made of deer horns; in that of a human being it is made of human hair.

The religious belief of the unconverted Samoyede is as usual founded on celestial and atmospheric phenomena. Their Num or God is lord of the sun, the stars, &c. ; the rainbow is his mantle, the thunder his voice. Any idea of him as a moral governor which may have been observed among them, Mr. Carsten considers as having been infused by Christian missionaries. Without any distinct belief in future reward or punishment, or even in any

future

future state of existence, the Samoyede firmly believes in retribution for crime in this life, that murder will be punished by violent death, robbery by losses of reindeer, &c., and this to a degree which is said to act as a practical preventive of serious crime. Excess in liquor, however, though considered highly sinful, has attractions which few or none resist. In their language the Sunday of the Christian bears a name of which the translation, whether into English or German, becomes a pun. They see that day devoted by their instructors and their converted brethren to intoxication, and call it Sinday. Besides the Num or invisible God, and the Tabetsio, or deity visible only to the magician, they have the Habe or household idol, a fetiche of wood or stone, which they dress in coloured rags, consult, and worship. Some stones of larger size, and bearing some rude natural resemblance to the human form, are also, like the Seidas of the Laplander, objects of general reverence. The island of Waygatz is a chief repository of these. For special purposes, such as the ratification of oaths, fetiches are manufactured of earth or snow, but the most effectual security for an oath is that it should be solemnised over the snout of a bear. The sacrifice of a dog or reindeer is necessary when some benefit is demanded of the Tabetsio. On these occasions no woman may be present. Mr. Castren's next enterprize was the passage of the Tundra to the Russian village Pustosersk, at the mouth of the Petschora, a sledge journey of 700 versts. For this arduous exploit 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 village of Nes, on the north coast, was the first halting-place; and in this remote corner of the world Mr. Castren found a resident angel in the shape of a Christian pastor's wife, a beautiful and accomplished person, who, in the absence of her husband on duty, proved a guardian angel to our traveller, not only harbouring him in comfort and luxury, but procuring him Samoyede instructors, and various opportunities for studying native manners. No wonder that he lingered in such a paradise till the 19th of January. His further course was one of danger as well as difficulty. Not only the storm of the Tundra occasionally brought the sledge to a stand, baffling the guide and paralysing the reindeer; but even this desert is not exempt from the violence of man. The Samoyede, indeed, is harmless, and his active assistance is generally to be won by kind words and brandy; but he himself is exposed to the oppression of Russian traders, who degenerate into robbers, roam these wastes for the plunder of his reindeer, and have little respect for the traveller unaccompanied by some P 2 agent

agent of Russian authority. Through all these perils, resolution and endurance carried our traveller in safety.

From Pustosersk Mr. Castren navigated the Petschora to the base of the Oural, and crossing that frontier range by one of many passes with which that barrier between Europe and Asia is in this latitude deeply indented, reached the Asiatic trading town of Obdorsk, near the mouth of the great Siberian river Ob. Here the volume closes. Here also our limits compel us to conclude a notice which we trust our readers will think not ill bestowed on a most simple and unpretending narrative of toil and danger manfully endured in the cause of science. The author's style is not one either of salient passages and attempts at fine writing, or of dry and prolix detail. Having a large digestion for travels, we should willingly have encountered the diary, of which the published work is evidently a condensation. In its present shape it is probably better suited for readers of less leisure, and those must be difficult to please who can either open it at random, or go through it consecutively without satisfaction. Such men as Mr. Wallin and Mr. Castren do honour to a country which has its claims on the sympathy of Europe. For the convenience of political arrangements, and for the sake of general peace, Finland has undergone a process of absorption in which we apprehend her own wishes and feelings have been little consulted. Should that peace be disturbed, and the foundations of the present system of European polity be shaken by a wanton hand, some countries, and Finland among them, may yet present examples of the instability of a compulsory allegiance, and events may awaken reminiscences which do but slumber under Russian rule. It was not for the diffusion of the doctrines of the orthodox Greek Church, or the establishment of despotism in Europe, that the blue and yellow Finland regiments of Gustavus lay dead in their ranks at Lutzen.

ART. VII.-Mémoires et Correspondance Politique et Militaire du Roi Joseph; publiés, annotés, et mis en ordre par A. Du Casse, Aide-de-camp de S.A.I. le Prince Jérome Napoléon. tomes. Paris, 1853.

2

THE younger Mirabeau used to say that in any other family he might have passed for a cleverish fellow and a mauvais sujet, but that, compared with his brother, the world rated him no higher than a good sort of man and a dunce. This is somewhat the case of Joseph Buonaparte. Whatever good or bad qualities he may have naturally had were alike eclipsed by

the