Chapter I: Hyperborean Branch

The Hyperborean branch is composed of the various races inhabiting the districts in the vicinity of the North Pole, small in stature and possessing the principal characteristics of the Yellow Race.

The people belonging to the Hyperborean branch are nomadic, and their only domestic animals are the dog and the reindeer. They are spread over a vast surface, but are few in number. They support themselves by hunting and fishing. They are passionately fond of strong drinks, and their civilization is of a very rudimentary character.

Some of these people might perhaps be more properly classed under the Mongolian branch. Possibly some even should be classified in the White Race, for they have lost, under the influences of climate and of their mode of life, the distinguishing characteristics of the Yellow Race. As it is very difficult to make a natural classification of these people, we will retain that set up by M. D’Omalius d’Halloy.

This naturalist distinguishes, amid the people who compose the Hyperborean branch, seven families, taking the affinities of language as a basis. These are the _Lapp_, the _Samoiede_, the _Kamtschadale_, the _Esquimaux_, the _Ienissian_, the _Jukaghirite_, and the _Koriak_ families.

THE LAPP FAMILY.

The Laplanders are thin and short, but pretty strong and active. Their head is disproportionately large. They have a round skull, wide cheek-bones, the broad flat Mongol nose, a protruding forehead, and goggle eyes. Their complexion is a yellowish brown, and their hair is usually black. This curious race of men is divided into two distinct classes, the nomadic Laplander and the sedentary Laplander.

The sole property of the former is his herd of reindeer. He takes these to the high grounds, and after spending the months of June, July, and August there, returns in September to his winter quarters. In his journeys to and fro, he uses the reindeer as beasts of burden. When the ground is covered with snow, he harnesses these useful quadrupeds to his sledge. (Fig. 90.)

Dogs are also used as draft animals in Lapland. On the borders of the scanty forests of Lapland and Siberia, the inhabitants of these barbarous countries may often be seen gliding rapidly by on a sledge drawn by dogs.

The usual life of the nomadic Laplander is about as wretched as can well be imagined. A tent stretched on four uprights is his abode summer and winter. The fire-place is in the middle of the tent, and the smoke escapes through an opening in the top. Five or six reindeer skins stretched round the fire form the beds of the whole family, to which the surrounding smoke serves as the only curtain. Their furniture consists of an iron pot and a few wooden pails. The Laplander carries in his pocket a horn spoon and a knife. He often, instead of wooden pails, makes use of the bladders of the reindeer. In them he carries the milk mixed with water which is his daily beverage. Whenever he sets out on a journey, he harnesses a pair of reindeer to his sledge.

This nomadic race, which formerly occupied a part of Sweden, is now much diminished in numbers. Thirty years ago their number, counting all that could be found in Russian, Norwegian, and Swedish Lapland, only came to twelve thousand.

The sedentary Laplander is usually some poor reindeer proprietor, who having ruined himself, and being unable to continue the life of a wandering herdsman, becomes a beggar or a servant. If he has still a little money left, he settles down on the sea coast, and turns fisherman, while his wife spins wool. His existence in the midst of men of a different race is then a solitary one. He is a regular pariah, despised by both Swede and Norwegian. His hut, his dress, his customs, are all different to those of the people amongst whom he has taken shelter. His children are not allowed to marry into any of the neighbouring families, and he is utterly and entirely alone amid strangers.

In his “Travels in the Scandinavian States,” M. de Saint-Blaize tells us how he suddenly fell in with an encampment of Laplanders in the night time. A hundred deer, whose immense antlers, interlaced the one with the other, produced the effect of a little forest, were grouped around the camp fires. Two young Laplanders and some dogs watched over the safety of the whole. Hard by were the tents. An old Laplander and his wife offered the traveller some reindeer milk. It was very oily, and reminded him of goat’s milk.

The same traveller tells us that when on a journey a Laplander’s wife gives birth to a child, she places it in a piece of hollow wood with the opening fenced in with wire to give play to the baby’s head. This log with its precious contents is then placed on the mother’s back and she rejoins the rest. When they halt, she hangs this kind of wooden chrysalis to the bough of a tree, the wire protecting the child from the teeth of wild animals (fig. 91).

THE SAMOIEDE FAMILY.

The Samoiedes are a wandering race, spread over both sides of the great Siberian promontory ending in Cape North. Some of their tribes are also to be met with pretty far to the west, to the east, and to the south of this region. They support themselves by hunting and fishing on the borders of the Frozen Ocean. They bear much resemblance to the Tunguses of whom we shall speak later. Their face is flat, round and broad, their lips are thick and turned up, and their nose is wide and open at the nostrils. Their hair is black and coarse, and they have but little on their face. Most of them are rather under the middle size, well proportioned and rather thick set. (Fig. 92.) They are wild and restless in disposition.

THE KAMTSCHADALE FAMILY.

We can only just make a note of the Kamtschadales, with whom the navigators of the Arctic seas have been for a long time acquainted. They inhabit the southern portion of the peninsula that bears their name. They are short men with a tawny skin, black hair, a meagre beard, a broad face, a short flat nose, small deep-set eyes, scanty eyebrows, immense stomachs, and thin legs.

More to the South, in the Kourile Islands, and on the adjacent continent, we meet with a race differing widely from the preceding one. They are the inhabitants of these islands, and are called _Aïnos_. They are of short stature, but their features are regular. The most remarkable of their physical characteristics is the extraordinary development of their hair. They are the hairiest of men, and it is this peculiarity that makes us allude to them. Their beards cover their breasts, and their arms, neck, and back are covered with hair. This is an exceptional peculiarity, particularly with men of the Mongol type.

The language spoken by the Aïnos, is strikingly like that spoken by the Samoiedes and by some of the inhabitants of the Caucasus. Their bodies are well formed and their disposition is gentle and hospitable. They live by hunting and fishing.

THE ESQUIMAUX FAMILY.

Greenland and most of the islands adjacent to this portion of the American continent are inhabited by a people that have received the common name of Esquimaux and who constitute a very numerous family.

The principal and the most numerous tribes of the Esquimaux family belong to the American continent. But as they are quite distinct from the other inhabitants of this continent, and as they have a much greater resemblance to the people of Northern Asia, and to the Mongols, it is here that we mention them.

The head of the Esquimaux has a more pyramidal shape than that of the Mongols of Upper Asia. This is owing to the narrowing of the skull. Such an outward sign of degradation reveals at once the moral and social inferiority of these poor people. Their eyes are black, small and wild, but show no vivacity. Their nose is very flat, and they have a small mouth, with the lower lip much thicker than the upper one. Some have been seen with plenty of hair on their face. Their hair is usually black, but occasionally fair, and always long, coarse, and unkempt. 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 latitude, 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.

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 masses of accumulated 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 latitudes.

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 constitution 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 sexes; 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.

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.

Seal-hunting is the chief occupation of the Esquimaux. The seal is a providential animal to the wild inhabitants of the shores of the Frozen Ocean of America, as the reindeer is the godsend of the Laplanders, inhabitants of the shores of the same seas in the north of Europe.

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 assign 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 shores of Behring’s Straits, or in the interior, and much resemble the Samoiedes in their customs and in their language.