Their kinsmen are the Zirianians further north towards the Frozen Ocean, and the Votiaks on the north bank of the Viatka, who however call themselves Udy, or Ut-murt. The fourth, which is the true Finnish branch, has spread over the northern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, and received from German neighbours its European appellation which is connected with Veen, turf or bogs. 24 They moreover call their country Suomi, swamp and sea-land, and themselves Suomalaisia.25 There is no longer any doubt that Tacitus and Ptolemy knew of these people under the name of Fenni and Phinni in or near their present place of abode.26 Their dialects distinguish them into the Suomi on the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia, the neighbouring Karelians, the Vesps, or North Tshud, on the south-western shores of Lake Ladoga, the Vods, or South Tshud, to the north-east of the town of Narva, both in course of extinction, the Krevins who have died out in Courland since 1846, the Livonians, now reduced to two thousand individuals, also in Courland on the Gulf of Riga, and the Ehsts a numerous and compact body. Allied to these tribes by consanguinity are the Lapps, or Kvans, of Scandinavia and Russia, whose language, in Castrèn's opinion, was only two thousand years ago the same as that of the Suomi. These only migrated to their present place of abode at a late period.27 The consanguinity of the Finnish group with the nations of the Mongolian race is most distinctly recognizable in the Voguls, who resemble the Kalmuks far more than is the case with the Ostiaks. 28 Carl Vogt recognized the characteristics of the Mongolian race even in the Lapps of Norway, in the narrow slit eyes, hori zontally set, broad cheek-bones, wide mouth, short nose, and yellow complexion.29 The Finns of the Baltic have borrowed from their Teutonic and Slavonic neighbours a number of words for civilized 24 H. Guthe, Die Lande Braunschweig und Hannover, p. 62. 25 Prof. Hjelt in the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthro pologie, p. 117. 1872. This derivation has recently been contested by Sjögren, and the proper name of the Finns is provisionally pronounced to be without explanation. 26 Forbinger, Alte Geographie, vol. iii. p. 1124. 27 Ujfaloy, Migrations des peuples touraniens, pp. 118–120. 28 Castrèn, Vorlesungen, p. 128. 29 C. Vogt, Nord-Fahrt, p. 166. In implements, and with the words the objects also. This gives an idea of their condition before the acquisition of these. The only domestic animals which they bred were dogs, horses, and oxen, and the only cereal which they cultivated was barley. summer they lived in leather tents, in winter, like all Polar nations of the Old World, in semi-subterranean yourts. It is therefore possible that the Ostiaks and Voguls of the present day represent the state of their western kindred in olden times. 30 Unfortunately, the history of the language of the Baltic Finns does not extend beyond the year 1542. But their epic poems, collected in the Kalevala, certainly belong, at least in their present form, to a very recent period. While the Mongolian and Tungus dialects have remained more pure but also poorer, and the Mandschu has hardly freed itself from monosyllabism, in the Ugrian group, Magyar and the Finnish of the Baltic have almost reached the stage of the inflected languages.31 Besides these people the Bashkers, Meshtsheriaks, and Teptiars, on the European slopes of the Central and Southern Urals, speak Turkish languages, but are reckoned in the Finnish group on account of their physical characters, and must therefore be regarded as Turco-Finnish hybrid nations. The fifth branch of the so-called Altaic group of nations, by the Russians termed Samoyeds, originally came from the Saian mountains, near the sources of the Yenesei and the Ob. We still find there the Samoyed Soiots, on the northern slopes of the Saian chain the Karagasses and Kamassintzi, and to the east of the Yenesei the Koibals.32 From these, their southern kinsmen, the Samoyeds, have spread as breeders of reindeer to the north of the continent from the White Sea to the Bay of Chatanga. In ancient Yugria, on both sides of the Sea of Ob, lives the tribe of Yuraks, and further east the Tawgi. As the same family names occur among these northern Samoyeds as among the Kamassintzi of the south, the emigration must have taken place downwards 30 Prof. Ahlquist über die Culturwörter in den westfinnischen Sprachen. Ausland, 1871. No. 31, p. 741 et seq. 31 Whitney, Language and the Study of Language, p. 320. 32 Pallas, Voyages, vol. iv. p. 433. along the Yenesei. In point of language the Samoyeds are nearest allied to the Finnish division, and in this to the Bulgarian branch. Through fear of incest the Samoyeds do not intermarry with the Ostiaks of the same family names pointing to a near relationship.33 It is very possible that in some future classification of nations the Samoyeds will not be ranked as a separate division of the Altaian family, but only as a branch of the Finnish. The term Altaian was originated, as we have observed, by Castrèn, and the supposition that even the Finns formerly inhabited the Altai mountains is based on the fact that names of waters in the Yenesei district, such as Oja, Yoga, Kolba, mean in Finnish and Lapp, brook, water, and fishing-water, and that in its upper course the Yenesei itself is called Kem, which signifies stream in the Finn language only, where it appears in the form of Kemi and Kymi. V.-NORTHERN ASIATICS OF DOUBTFUL POSITION. This chapter is not a description of a new group of the Mongolian family, but a candid confession that the system which we set forth is given in an incomplete condition, as there are three distinct tribes which cannot be included in any of the greater divisions. The first of these are the Ostiaks of the Yenesei, who have nothing in common with the Ostiaks of the Ob, except their ill-chosen name. They live on the upper course of the Yenesei as far as the confluence of the lower Tunguska, first on the left bank only and afterwards on the right also. Their language, which has nothing in common with the Ural-Altaic typical tongue, has six dialects, of which we will name only the Assan, Arinzi, and Kottish, the latter of which was spoken by only five persons in Castren's time. These Siberian tribes are now reduced to one thousand individuals and must inevitably die out, principally owing to the fact that hunting and fishing are their only means of livelihood. their physical constitution the Ostiaks of the Yenesei are, moreover, 33 Castrèn, Vorlesungen, pp. 82, 84, and 107. 1 Latham, Varieties, p. 268. Castrèn, Vorlesungen, pp. 87, 88. In in no way distinguished from their Siberian neighbours, so that they certainly belong to the Mongolian race, but occupy an independent position within it. Both these remarks apply to the Yukagiri, who now live on the polar sea of Siberia, eastward of the Lena. In 1809, Hedenström found in the islands of New Siberia vestiges of former Yukagiri settlers who were even then extinct. Their language is altogether different from that of the Ural-Altaic group.3 They call themselves Andon domni. It is far more difficult to define the position of the third race, which has given itself the name of Aino, or Ainu, the people. As we have already stated, they were the oldest inhabitants of the Japanese islands, but are now met with only in Yesso. With them must be classed the inhabitants of southern Saghalien, of the Kurile Islands, and the Giliaks on the Lower Amoor1 and in northern Saghalien.5 Their language has been pronounced akin to the Japanese, but without sufficient reason." At the sitting of the Anthropological Society of Berlin, December 16th, 1871, Herr von Brandt, the German Consul in Japan, exhibited photographs of Ainos, the expression of whose faces was very like that of the Japanese. The inhabitants of the island of Paramushir at the southern point of Kamtshatka, who speak a Kurilian dialect, have "obliquely slit eyes" which is one of the most easily recognizable characters of the Mongolian race.7 The skulls of these people have almost the same index of breadth as those of the Japanese, namely, 76-788; but their index of height, 69-76, proves to be considerably lower, though this is not a very important difference. We are far more puzzled by 2 F. von Wrangell, Reisen längs der Nordküste von Siberien. 3 Whitney, Study of Language, p. 330. 4 Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1857, p. 305; 1860, p. 99. 5 Wenjukow maintains on the contrary that the language of the Giliaks is different from that of the Tongus as well as of the Kurilians, who speak Aino. 7 According to Russian authorities in the Zeitschrift der Wiener geogr. • Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellsch. für Anthropologie, pp. 27-29. their luxuriant growth of beard, the bushy, curly hair of the head, and general hirsuteness, which latter, although not more abundant than in Europeans, is highly significant in the midst of smoothskinned races. This peculiarity alone would suffice to separate the Ainos from other Asiatics as a distinct race, did not all our information respecting them depend on such scanty and cursory statements that only later and better-instructed ethnologists will be able to decide as to their position. It is not quite impossible that they may be related to the Aëta, for the Asiatic Papuans may have spread across the Loochoo Islands to the Kuriles. We do not make this conjecture with any confidence, but only in order that the dialects of the Aëta may be compared with the Aino languages. It is only when this investigation has led to some result, whether affirmative or negative, that their true position can be more satisfactorily assigned to the Ajno. See "The Palace Picnt. of See A pre-tino mil in "Science", xxii. 3378xxiii 108 E. S. Binoe, "Velence", &apan by 7. xiii. 852. xx.148, VI. THE BEHRING'S NATIONS. The Under this head we include a number of North Asiatic and American tribes which, for the most part, either inhabit the shores of Behring's Straits or have migrated, like the Eskimo, from its shores to Greenland. The name of Hyperborean Mongols, which Latham employed, is inapplicable to this group, as we mean it to include nations as far as the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Only some of these tribes are united by a common type of language. physical characters are more satisfactory, for they form a transition from the Mongol-like Siberians to the aborigines of America. This transition justifies our intention of not separating the Americans as a distinct race, but of connecting them with the Mongolian Asiatics. All the people named have reddish or brownish darkcoloured skin, stiff cylindrical hair, and, with one exception, no beard, and scarcely any hair on the rest of the body. (a) Itelmes, or Kamtskadals.-These characters together with their narrow slit eyes caused George Steller to describe the • Blakiston, Journey in Yezo, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xlii. p. 80. |