Sir Thomas Mitchell, the very best authority on such subjects, tells

us, "There is no country in which labour appears to be more required

to render it available to, and habitable by civilised man, than New

South Wales. _Without_ labour, the inhabitants must be savages, or

such helpless people as we find the Aborigines. With equal truth, it

may be asserted that there is _no region_ of earth susceptible of so

much improvement solely by the labour and ingenuity of man." There

are no unwholesome savannahs; the rocky ranges afford the means of

forming reservoirs, &c., of water, which, under the tropics, is

life, abundance, and health; there is an immensity if it be properly

used, and Australia might be made the finest scene of vegetation and

luxuriance in the world.

We take our leave of this volume with regret. It is strikingly

written; it excites and rewards curiosity, and (a few rambling

ideas excepted) it powerfully increases our interest in Australian

discovery, and in that whole mighty region of the Pacific, which

God's providence has given into the hands of England, for the

happiness of mankind.

SIBERIA.

_Travels in Siberia: including Excursions Northwards, down the Obi

to the Polar Circle, and Southwards to the Chinese Frontier._ By

ADOLPH ERMAN. Translated from the German by W. R. COOLEY. Two vols.

London, 1848.

Of no important portion of the dominions of the five great European

powers are such vague and imperfect notions entertained, as of the

vast tract comprised between Russia in Europe and the Kamschatkan

sea, between the Chinese empire and the Arctic Ocean. Courageous

explorers have not been wanting, of the inclement steppes and

rugged mountains forming Europe's bulwark against the Mongul and

the Tartar. Men of enterprise and distinction have undertaken the

task, and executed it well. But their journeys, usually performed

with special objects and scientific views, have been recorded

for the most part in a similar spirit. Either an ardent love of

science and zeal for its advancement, or the strong encouragement

and liberal subsidies of an enlightened government, are requisite

inducements to brave the perils and hardships of Siberian travel.

The mere inquisitive and speculative traveller has difficulty

in persuading himself, that the country can reward him for the

discomfort and inconvenience he must endure in traversing it. Not

that Siberia is entirely devoid of wild attractions and romantic

associations. To the adventurous hunter, its vast forests and

thinly-peopled plains give assurance of sport. The motley character

of its native and immigrant population affords to the philosopher

curious matter of consideration. A place of deportation for traitors

and criminals--and not unfrequently for the innocent--its name is

inseparably connected with the memory of innumerable unfortunates

who have there pined out their existence in expiation of crime,

or in obedience to mandates often as unjust as arbitrary. Fallen

favourites of the Czars, rebels against their tyranny, traitors to

their person, murderers, and other malefactors, and even prisoners

of war, have here found a living grave till released by death,

clemency, or flight. Did the tears of exiles fertilise, Siberia

should be a teeming land. Since its first subjugation by Ivan the

Terrible, how many a Russian magnate, lord of thousands of serfs,

owner of millions of rubles, proud of his position, and confident

of imperial favour, has suddenly found himself travelling eastward

under escort, banished and a beggar. How many mournful trains of

minor offenders have plodded their weary way across the Uralian

chain, guarded by barbarian Bashkirs, to labour in the mines of

Nerchinsk, or to lead a peasant's toilsome life on the margin of the

Frozen Sea. From those vast and ice-bound regions, escape can rarely

be accomplished. But at intervals, during the last five-and-thirty

years, bearded and toil-worn men of martial aspect have crossed the

German frontier, and astonished those they accosted by wild tales

of suffering, and ignorance of the most notorious events. Some have

inquired for Napoleon, and wept when they learned he was a captive,

or dead. Circumstances of current history, known to each child

and peasant, were to them a mystery and a marvel. These strange

wanderers, escaped from long bondage in Siberia, were amongst the

last survivors of that countless host led northwards by a Corsican's

ambition, and whose funeral pile was lighted in Moscow's city.

Amongst the delineators of Siberia and its inhabitants, of the

produce, customs, and peculiarities of the country and its people,

one of the most successful is the German gentleman and scholar whose

admirable work has just now appeared in a clever English dress.

The son of a man of great learning and high attainments, Mr Adolph

Erman treads nobly in his father's footsteps. Still young, he has

done much to increase the lustre of the honourable name transmitted

to him. Born in the year 1806, he was but two-and-twenty years of

age when he undertook, at his own cost, a journey round the world,

having for its chief object a series of magnetical observations. The

expedition was completely successful. Starting from Berlin to St

Petersburg, he crossed northern Asia, with occasional digressions

of a few hundred leagues, took ship at Okhotsk for Kamschatka,

thence proceeded to California, visited Otaheite, and came round by

Cape Horn and Rio Janeiro to Europe and Berlin. Then he sat down to

write of what he had seen, entitling his work--"Journey round the

Earth, across North Asia and both Oceans." But the tale of travel

so extensive takes time to tell; and, up to the present date,

he has not protracted his narrative beyond Okhotsk. What he has

done, however, is complete in itself, very interesting, and withal

somewhat voluminous, since its abridged translation forms two heavy

octavos, heavy in amount of paper and print, but not, we must in

justice admit, in the nature of their contents. Whilst recording

scientific investigations, the author does not neglect subjects more

generally interesting. Upon all he brings to bear an extraordinary

amount of reading and research. The result is a book of travels of

no ephemeral nature, but that will long be esteemed as a standard

work, and respected as a valuable authority.

Mr Erman commences his narrative of travel on the day of his

departure from Berlin; but its earlier portion has been compressed

by the translator, in order to escape as soon as possible from

Europe, and get upon the less trodden ground east of Tobolsk. Much

has been written of late years concerning European Russia and its

inhabitants, and it was hardly to be expected that even so acute

an observer as Mr Erman should find any thing particularly novel

to say about them. He takes a sensible and practical view of the

condition, character, and disposition of the population; and is

happy in his detection and indication of national peculiarities.

He does not, like the majority of travellers in Russia, enter the

country with a settled determination to behold nothing, from the

White Sea to the Black, but oppression and cruelty on the one

hand, slavery and suffering upon the other. He does not come to a

premature decision, that because Russia is ruled by an absolute

monarch, all happiness, prosperity, and justice are essentially

banished from the land. It is really pleasant to find a deviation

from the established routine of books about Russia. These are now

nearly all concocted upon one and the same plan. The recipe is as

exact as any in Mrs Rundell: and is as conscientiously adhered to

by literary cooks, as that great artist's invaluable precepts are

by knights and ladies of the ladle. Tyranny, misery, and the knout

are the chief ingredients of the savoury dish. We are shown a nation

of cretins, crushed under the boot-heel of an imperial ogre; whilst

a selfish, servile aristocracy salaam their admiration, and catch

greedily at the titles and gewgaws thrown to them as a sop by their

terrible master. This is the substance of the mess, which, being

handsomely garnished with lying anecdotes of horrible cruelties

practised upon the unfortunate population, is deemed sufficiently

dainty to set before the public, and is forthwith devoured as

genuine and nutritive food by the large body of simpletons who take

type for a guarantee of veracity. Mr Erman despises the common trick

and claptrap resorted to by vulgar writers. Avoiding anecdotage, and

abuse of the powers that be, he gives, in brief shrewd paragraphs,

glimpses of Muscovite character and feelings, which clearly prove

the people of that vast empire to be far happier, more prosperous,

and more practically free, than the inhabitants of many countries

who boast of liberty because anarchy has replaced good government.

Judging less from any distinct assertions or arguments advanced in

these volumes, than from their general tenor, and by the inferences

to be gleaned from them, we must consider the Russians a contented

and flourishing nation, likely to make the larger strides in

civilisation that they are unimpeded by revolutionary agitation.

Propagandists meet little encouragement amongst the loyal and

light-hearted subjects of the autocrat. "We have often observed at

Moscow," says Mr Erman, "birch-trees hewn for fencing, yet still

alive in the horizontal position, and throwing out shoots. The

great distinction of the vegetable nature in this region is its

tenacity of life; and, singularly enough, the same capability of

existing under oppression, and of withstanding stubbornly every

revolutionising influence, is here the characteristic of man also.

The ear of the stranger is sure, at every turn of conversation, to

catch the sounds--'Kak ni bud,' (no matter how,) with which the

Russians are used to give expression to their habitual indifference,

and renunciation of all care.... Notwithstanding the great variety

of condition which the population exhibit, every thing has the stamp

of nationality, and an obstinate adherence to established usage

may be plainly recognised as a fundamental principle. Some foreign

customs, indeed, are adopted from strangers residing in Moscow; but

they are, at the same time, so changed as to be assimilated to the

national manners. Russian nationality may be compared to a river,

which receives other streams without changing its name; or, still

better, to a living organism, which, while devouring every variety

of food, continues still the same."

It was on the 29th of July that Mr Erman, who travelled in

company with the Norwegian professor Hansteen, left Moscow, and

moved eastwards, passing through a productive country, strewn

with populous and comfortable villages. At Pokròf, his first

halting-place, his chamber walls were adorned with rude carvings and

paintings, whose subjects were taken from the events of 1812, and

represented the valiant deeds of the peasantry. Buikova, a village

forty miles east of Moscow, was the farthest point to which the

French penetrated. Their invasion has left but a faint impression

upon the popular mind in Russia--even in Moscow, which suffered so

much at their hands. Conflagrations have been common occurrences

in that city, and the inhabitants are accustomed to be burned out.

We read of seven such events, from the thirteenth to the beginning

of the nineteenth century, in all of which the destruction was

complete, or very nearly so. The fire of 1812 spared many of the

stone churches, on whose towers "the Mahomedan crescent rises above

the cross, a monument of earlier revolutions. The yoke of the Tatars

was so lasting and oppressive, that later events of a similar kind

seem comparatively unimportant; and even the French invasion is

here thought little of, being usually compared with the irruptions

of the Pechenegues and that of the Poles in later times, but never

set on a level with the Tatar domination." The French have little

prestige in Russia. Whatever respect they previously enjoyed there,

was completely annihilated by the pitiful figure they cut in the

Moscow campaign; retreating, as they did, a ragged, disorderly,

frost-bitten remnant, before a swarm of armed peasants and irregular

horse. And Muscovite sign-painters and saint-carvers decorate

village walls with episodes of the disastrous overthrow of an army,

probably the most powerful and really efficient ever got together.

Any notion entertained by the Russians of French invincibility was

as completely dissipated in that country by the events of 1812,

as it was in Germany by the ensuing, and scarcely less important,

campaign of 1813.

Passing Murom, where a sort of Yankee tradition exists of a

"robber-nightingale," which entices travellers into the woods by

its song, and then kills them by the power of its notes, Mr Erman

reached Nijni Novgorod at the moment of the great annual fair. The

mixture of European and Asiatic produce and manufactures gives the

Russian fairs an appearance singularly striking to the foreigner's

eye. Things the most opposite are there brought together. _Obrasá_,

or Greek holy images, amulets, and other objects used in the

solemnities of the Græco-Russian church, are seen in juxtaposition

with the elegant luxuries and superfluities of extreme European

civilisation. The clumsy carvings of Uralian peasants are found in

the next warerooms to the fragile and fashionable masterpieces of

a Parisian milliner. The chief part of the goods come from great

distances. Amongst the important articles of traffic are tea from

China, horse-hides from Tatary, iron bars from Siberia, shawls

of camel's-down from Bokhara. The Bokharians also import large

quantities of cotton, partly raw and partly spun. This is one of the

principal objects of trade at Nijni. Concerning the origin of this

useful substance, curious fables were current in Russia not quite a

century ago. "It appears to me certain," says Mr Erman, "that the

story of the zoophytic plant called Baránez, or lamb-plant (formed

as a diminutive from Barán, a sheep,) originated in some embellished

account of the cotton plant. Herberstein relates it at full length

and unchanged, just as he had heard it. 'There has been seen, near

to the Caspian Sea, a seed, rather larger and rounder than that of

a melon, from which, when set in the ground, is produced something

similar to a lamb, of the altitude of five palms, having a very fine

fleece, &c., &c. The German edition of Herberstein (Basel, 1563)

adds that the Baránez has a head, eyes, ears, and all the limbs,

like a sheep. But it mentions correctly '_the very fine fleece

which the people of that country commonly made use of to pad their

caps withal_.' This is the ordinary use which the Tatar tribes

in general make of cotton at the present day." The fair at Nijni

lasts two months, and brings together six hundred thousand persons

of different nations and tribes, or about thirty-three times the

number of the stationary population. It produces a large revenue

to the imperial treasury,--the letting of the wooden booths, and

of two thousand five hundred and twenty-two stone storerooms, (to

each of which latter is attached a chamber for the owner of the

goods to live in) alone yielding, so far back as 1825, nearly four

hundred thousand rubles; whilst the population of the government, or

district, amounting to nearly a million of souls, paid taxes to the

amount of fourteen millions of rubles.

Nijni Novgorod is the point of rendezvous for criminals from the

western provinces of the empire, condemned to Siberian exile. They

arrive there in small detachments, to pursue their journey in

large bodies. In the vicinity of every post-house along the road

is another building known as the Ostrog or fort, which is merely a

large barrack divided into numerous small chambers, and surrounded

by a fence of palisades, where the convicts are lodged upon the

journey. From various passages scattered through Mr Erman's book, it

appears that these Siberian exiles are by no means so badly treated

as has frequently been stated and believed. In most instances the

punishment derives its severity less from any painful toil or cruel

discipline imposed upon them, than from the rigidity of the climate,

the separation from friends, and the mortal ennui those accustomed

to civilisation and society cannot but experience, whilst leading

the monotonous life of a peasant or Cossack in regions as dreary

as any the globe's surface affords. The first caravan of prisoners

encountered by Mr Erman, at about a hundred versts beyond Nijni,

were well clothed and cared for, and seemed neither dissatisfied

with their past journey, nor overwhelmed with care about the

future. "With every train of them are several waggons, drawn by

post-horses, to carry the women and the old and infirm men; the

rest follow in pairs, in a long train, after the waggons, escorted

by a militia established in the villages. It is but rarely that

one sees special offenders with fetters upon their legs during the

march." The majority of tales circulated by romancing travellers,

with reference to Siberian exile, have little foundation save in

the imagination of the narrators. Amongst these fictions is to

be reckoned the statement that certain classes of the banished

are compelled to pass their lives in hunting the sable, and other

animals. The great majority of the delinquents are condemned only to

settle in Siberia; and when hard labour in the Uralian mines, and

in certain manufactories, is superadded, it is generally for a year

or other limited period. Those of the peasant class have to support

themselves, whilst offenders of a higher rank, and unused to manual

labour, have an allowance made them by the government. In various

places Mr Erman met with exiles, from some of whom he obtained

curious information. They are usually known by the mild name of

"_the unfortunates_," and are held in no particular disfavour by

the natives, with whose families they intermarry. By a remarkable

enactment of the Russian law, serfs, when transported to Siberia,

become in all respects as free as the peasants in western Europe. Mr

Erman refers to this with strong approval, and attributes to it the

happiest results. "I have often," he says, "heard intelligent and

reflecting Russians mention, as an almost inexplicable paradox, that

the peasants condemned to become settlers, all, without exception,

and in a very short time, change their habits and lead an exemplary

life; yet it is certain that the sense of the benefit conferred

on them by the gift of personal freedom is the sole cause of this

conversion. Banishment subservient to colonisation, instead of

close imprisonment, is, indeed, an excellent feature in the Russian

code; and though the substitution of forced labour in mines for the

punishment of death may be traced back to Grecian example, yet the

improving of the offender's condition by bestowing on him personal

freedom, is an original as well as an admirable addition of a

Russian legislator." It is of course by the higher class of exiles

that the banishment is most severely felt; but these live in the

towns, that the succour received from government may reach them the

more easily, and submit, for the most part, with great equanimity

to the startling change from the luxury of Moscow or St Petersburg,

to the dulness and simplicity of Tobolsk, and even of worse places.

Some of them have to do penance in church for a certain time after

their arrival, and a portion of these continue the practice when

it is no longer compulsory. At Beresov, a town in western Siberia,

which Mr Erman passed through on an excursion northwards from

Tobolsk, the oral chronicles of the inhabitants furnish curious

details of the numerous illustrious exiles who have there ended

their days. Menchikoff, the well-known favourite of Peter I., was

one of these. "After his political extinction, he prepared himself,

by devout penitence, for his natural decease. He worked with his

own hands in erecting the little wooden church, now fallen to

decay, which stands thirty or forty feet above the bank of the

Sosva, at the southern extremity of the town: he then served in it

as bell-ringer, and was finally buried by the grateful inhabitants

of Beresov, immediately before the door of the building." It was

here, at Beresov, that Mr Erman fell in with a number of unlucky

conspirators, who had lost fortune, rank, and home, by their

association in a recent abortive revolutionary attempt. Amongst them

were a M. Gorski, at one time a count and general of cavalry, and

the ex-chieftains Focht and Chernilov. They usually wore the costume

of the country, but upon holidays they donned European coats, _in

order to display the vestiges of the orders which had once been

sewed upon them_. A curious instance of vanity, traceable, perhaps,

to a desire to distinguish themselves from persons condemned to the

same punishment for crimes of a more disgraceful nature.

In the streets of Yekaterinburg, the first town of importance after

crossing the Asian boundary, parties of exiles are a frequent

spectacle; the number passing through in a year being estimated at

five thousand, or about two-fifths of the annual export of convicts

to Siberia, as stated by Mr Stepanov, whose statement, however,

Mr Erman seems disposed to consider exaggerated. The detachments

are usually guarded by Kosaks of the Ural, and by a company of

Bashkir militia. These Uralian Kosaks are well uniformed, armed,

and mounted, and enjoy the same privileges as the Kosaks of the

Don. They are allowed an immunity from every impost, but are bound

to devote themselves to the public service. Touching the Bashkirs,

another irregular and half-savage militia, serving to swell the

ranks of Russia's enormous army, Mr Erman, who made some stay at

Yekaterinburg, the northern limit of their residence, gives curious

particulars. They are the only aboriginal Siberian tribe whose mode

of life regularly alternates from the nomadic to the fixed. Their

winters are passed in permanent villages of wooden huts, erected

usually upon the skirt of a forest. But when spring approaches,

they collect their flocks and herds, strap hair tent-cloths upon

their saddles, and are off to the plains. They appear to live

upon horseback, and are indolent, indocile, and useless out of

the saddle. The only thing the men do, is to drive home the mares

at milking-time; all other domestic toil is left to the women.

And although grass abounds in the summer pastures, hay is unknown

amongst them. The cattle sustain life in winter as best they may, on

stunted or decayed herbage, sought under the snow and gathered on

the dunghills. Fermented mare's milk is the favorite drink of the

Bashkirs, who live chiefly upon mutton and fish, and upon the fruit

of the bird-cherry (_Prunus padus_) kneaded into a sort of cake.

In the chase they make use of hawks, which they are particularly

skilful in training. The smaller species of these birds are used to

take hares, whilst the greater will strike foxes, and even wolves.

The roving careless life of the Bashkirs possesses a peculiar charm,

admitted even by the civilised Russians; and it is with no good will

that, on the return of winter, the tribes re-enter their settled

habitations. "They approach them with reluctance, and believe that

Shaitan, or the evil spirit, has taken up his abode in the huts that

oppress them with such a sense of restraint. The men accordingly

remain at some distance from the settlement, and send the women

forward, armed with staves, with which they strike the door of every

hut, uttering loud imprecations; and it is not till they have made

the rounds with their noisy exorcisms, that the men ride forward at

full speed and with terrific shouts, to banish the dreaded demon

from his lurking-place." The chief weapon of these Bedouins of the

north is the same which so forcibly excited Captain Dalgetty's

risibility upon his visit to the Children of the Mist. But although

in these days of Paixhans and percussion, bows and arrows certainly

appear rather anomalous, they are by no means contemptible weapons

in the hands of some of the Siberian tribes. Of this Mr Erman had

abundant opportunity to convince himself, especially when his ramble

northwards from Tobolsk brought him amongst the Ostyaks of the river

Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons of these people are bows six feet

long, of very slight curve, and from which four-feet arrows are

discharged with murderous effect. Much practice and strength are

required to draw these bows; and our scientific traveller, who, not

having taken the necessary precaution of shielding the left arm with

a piece of horn, from the recoil of the string, had been unable to

draw his bow to more than one third of the arrow's length, was not a

little astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy, with sore eyes and a sickly

aspect, send a blunt arrow one hundred and sixty feet, and strike

the object aimed at, the stem of a larch, near its summit, fully

sixty feet from the ground. Blunt arrows, headed with flattened iron

balls, are used to kill sables and squirrels, that the skin may

not be injured; the sharp ones are a settler for any quadruped the

country produces.

After many days' journey through Tatar villages of wooden huts,

and towns that are little better, the first view of Tobolsk,

obtained some miles before reaching the place, is quite imposing;

and the traveller, who might think he had got a few stages

beyond civilisation, is cheered and encouraged by the sight of

church-towers, lofty monasteries, and well-built houses. In vain

does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he

has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master,

who recommends him to the hospitality of an inhabitant, by whom he

is made welcome during his stay, without demand for remuneration,

although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this

manner Mr Erman and his companions were accommodated in the upper

storey of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress

eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It was the

commencement of October, the period of transition from summer to

winter, and the traveller's entrance into the town was rendered

memorable by a heavy fall of snow--"white flies," as the postilions

called the flakes, which they beheld with much pleasure. Their

satisfaction was probably owing to the fact that in Siberia the

coldest part of the year is the most favourable for travelling, a

matter of interest to people of their profession. But the moment of

transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter,

when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it,

is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter,

as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads;) and the

Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow

obstructs wheeled carriages, and forbids the use of the sledge;

and, unless peremptorily compelled to move forward, the Russian

merchants--the most experienced of Siberian travellers--await, in

some convenient resting-place, the hardening of the winter road.

From Mr Erman's account, a better place than Tobolsk could scarcely

be found, in those wild regions, wherein to pass a few weeks of

compulsory inaction. Nevertheless, and although cordially received

by the governor-general, Velyaminov, from whom, and from other

Russian officers, he got much useful information, our traveller was

impatient to be off. He had a pet scheme in view. From the very

commencement of the journey he had planned an excursion to the mouth

of the Obi, within the Arctic circle. To this he was partly induced

by the desire of tracing certain magnetic lines, and partly by "the

alluring prospect of enjoying, on the northern part of the Obi,

the first undisturbed intercourse with the aboriginal possessors

of the land, where they are little changed by foreign influence."

Accordingly, towards the middle of November, the drifting ice upon

the Irtuish having united into a solid sheet, Mr Erman joyfully

made final preparations for his journey to Obdorsk. They were few,

and soon completed. A Kosak guide and interpreter, a fur dress,

a copper kettle, bread and ham, salted salmon and caviar, were

stowed in a couple of sledges, one of which was light enough to

be drawn by dogs or reindeer. It was held advisable also to take

out a fresh passport, signed by the governor of Tobolsk, in lieu of

the one delivered at St Petersburg, for, in places far removed from

the great road across Siberia, people have confused and indistinct

notions of the power which issues from the capital of the empire.

The larger sledge was provided with otvódi or guides--two strong

bars placed lengthways on either side the carriage to prevent

an upset. "Towards the end of winter, the snow-ways, which are

constantly travelled upon, have an undulating surface, like that

of a stormy sea, and give the sledge a motion so like that of a

ship tossed on the waves, that travellers unused to it often grow

sea-sick on the road, and the use of otvódi is a very necessary

precaution." Russian travelling, delightfully rapid, has many

drawbacks. Upon the log-roads, (formed of tree-trunks,) the violent

and incessant jolting is said to have even worse effects than the

excessive undulations of the sledge. After a few years, it not

only brings on a complete paralysis of the mental faculties of the

Russian postilions, but also occasions spinal disease, to such an

extent as to have obtained for those roads the significant name of

spine-crushers.

On the 22d November, when Mr Erman began his slide northwards,

traffic had not yet given the road that wavy configuration so

uncomfortable to the bilious traveller. The post from Tobolsk to

Beresov had made but one journey on the winter-track, and the

sledges glided rapidly and smoothly on the almost virgin snow-way.

Beyond Tugalova, a village 140 miles from Tobolsk, they travelled on

the frozen Irtuish, and frequently passed the self-acting machinery

used for the winter fishing. This consists of a strong pole in an

inclined position, with its lower extremity frozen fast in the

ice. "At the upper end of this pole was a continuation made of

switches, which, bending down, reached to the surface of the ice;

at that point was a hole through which was let down the hook and

line. The upper part of the apparatus is seen bent down more or less

according as the bait is still untouched, or as a fish pulling at

it has freed a check put to the elasticity of the rod, and is thus,

in consequence of its own efforts, drawn nearer to the surface of

the water." The ingenuity of this contrivance would avail little,

however, were not means found of rousing the sleepy sturgeon from

their winter slumbers. They lie in muddy hollows in the bed of the

river, quite motionless, and clustered together for the sake of

warmth. To awaken them, hard balls of clay, heated in the fire, are

thrown from time to time into the water, below the line. Driven from

their resting-place, they swim up stream, according to their custom,

and come upon the bait. This mode of fishing is very productive.

Fishing, of one kind or other, is the principal occupation of the

Ostyaks, in the heart of whose country, after three or four days'

journey, Mr Erman found himself. The rivers abound with excellent

fish--eels, especially, being very abundant, but not much eaten,

although their skins are in great request as window-panes. These are

rubbed with fat, to make them more transparent, but there are small

roundish swellings in the skin which refract and confound the rays

of light. A better substitute for glass is a flake of ice, used by

the Sosnovian Ostyaks, a tribe further north. The flakes are about a

foot thick, and are propped from without by a pole, whose lower end

bears obliquely against the ground. The fire, kept burning in the

hut, thaws the inner surface of the ice, rendering it smooth as a

mirror. A whiter and brighter light penetrates through these windows

than through the fish-skins, which the Sosnovians use for boots, and

even for clothes. Strong and air-tight, and well rubbed with fat,

they are almost as warm as fur, and better against the wet.

The commencement of a fishing season or expedition is celebrated

by the Ostyaks with all manner of queer saturnalia. Although

nominally Christians, and accustomed to attend church once a-year,

they are very heathenish in some of their rites and ceremonies,

and make a strange jumble of their old superstitions and their new

faith. The priests do not invariably set them a good example.

"Our Russian informant complained bitterly of the priest in his

neighbourhood, who came into the village on holidays so drunk, that

the congregation assembled to no purpose." With such pastors, no

wonder if the sheep cleave to some of their ancient usages. Those

who are departing on an expedition, slaughter a tame animal, and

smear their faces with its blood, accompanying the sacrifice with

a carousal. In one village Mr Erman found the huts remarkably

empty, and was told that the men had just gone a-fishing, and that

their wives were drinking brandy in the kabak or public-house. The

sale of spirits in Siberia, as in all the Russian dominions, is a

government monopoly, and brandy is only to be had in certain houses,

to whose keepers the privilege is farmed. In a small dark room,

scarcely ten paces wide, Mr Erman found ten or twelve Ostyak dames

clustered round the bottle, and benevolently drunk. His account of

their maudlin state is amusingly grave and sentimental. "A number

of short corpulent figures, with black sparkling eyes, could be

just seen, moving and mingling together, in the narrow space. They

all talked with animation, and with remarkably delicate voices,

which now gave expression only to soft and joyous emotions. They

embraced, one after the other, the Yamschik, who entered with us;

and their soft voices, now almost whining, seemed attuned, not so

much to words of old acquaintance, as to the endearments of young

and growing love." The ladies having emptied their purses without

quenching their thirst, the good-natured German, who observed

that "the pleasure of drinking had but just risen to its highest

pitch," opened them a credit with the kabak-keeper. "They now took

especial pains to show themselves deserving of the European treat,

by good Christian observance. Devout Russians are in the habit of

neutralising the Satanic operation of spirituous liquors by a rapid

movement of the right hand, intended to describe the cross, or by a

softly-ejaculated prayer, or merely by blowing the breath upon the

glass. But the good-humoured Ostyaks, novices in Christian prayer as

in drinking, made the sign of the cross to such an extent, so slowly

and with such deep bowing of the body, as would be required by the

church only on the most solemn occasions."

Although much engrossed by fishing, the Ostyaks do not neglect the

chase. Their thick woods abound in the better kinds of fur animals,

and the annual tribute of two sable skins, payable by each family

to the Russian government, is not very difficult to obtain. It is

seldom found necessary to pay an equivalent in other skins. Although

quite the beginning of winter, Mr Erman's host, in an Ostyak

village, showed him a fine sable skin, which he kept in a strong

box, like a treasure, concealed in a corner of his dwelling. Its

value was diminished by a yellowish tinge, ascribed to the animal's

having lived in a wood where there was too much light. Besides

sable and squirrel, the reindeer, the fox, the glutton, and the

elk, are objects of chase. Mr Erman tried to get at the fact of the

enmity said to exist between the two latter animals. The reply to

his inquiries was the old story current in Europe--how the glutton

leaps from a branch on the elk's neck, and keeps his seat till the

death of his steed. No one, however, had seen any thing of the kind:

it was matter of tradition, handed down from their dead fathers.

The ermine is taken in traps. The fox is in great variety, the

most esteemed being the crossed stone fox, whose colour is partly

a grayish yellow, partly white, so distributed that the grayish

parts unite prettily to form a cross, one bar of which extends

along the back, whilst the other stretches obliquely down the

middle ribs to the belly. The fur of this animal is greatly prized

by the Russian clergy, for whom pelisses, covered with natural

crosses, are made from it. The latitude of the town of Beresov is

the headquarters of the Siberian beaver, hunted not for the fur but

for the precious castoreum or beaver-stone, to which such great

medical virtues are ascribed. Attempts have been made in Germany

to obtain from the beavers of that country a product which might

replace that of Siberia; but all in vain. The fine quality is only

to be had in the far north, where, as Mr Erman fancifully observes,

nature scatters animal perfumes in place of fragrant flowers.

"The Kosaks and Russian traders have exalted the beaver-stone

into a panacea.... To the sentence, 'God arose, and our enemies

were scattered,' the Siberians add, very characteristically, the

apocryphal interpolation, 'and we are free from headache.' To ensure

this most desirable condition, every one has recourse, at home or on

his travels, and with the firmest faith, to two medicines, and only

two, viz., beaver-stone, or beaver-efflux, as it is here called, and

sal-ammoniac." From the strength of the castoreum, the Siberians

infer that other parts of the animal must possess peculiar virtues.

Gouty swellings are said to subside rapidly when rubbed with the

fat, and the beaver's teeth are popularly believed to cure toothach.

The beaver is the only fur animal in these latitudes that does not

change its colour in the course of the year. This is probably owing

to the circumstance, that in winter it dwells wholly in the water,

thus enjoying a comparatively equable temperature. In the river

Obi, at Beresov, the water does not usually freeze below the depth

of four feet eight inches, and the beaver always has two entrances

to his dwelling, one high on the bank above the stream, the other

below the freezing limit. The architectural and wood-cutting habits

of the animal are the same here as in America; but two assertions,

new to Mr Erman, were made respecting it by the Beresov hunters. He

was assured that "among beavers, as with bees and men, there are

distinctions of ranks; each chief keeping a number of labourers,

the toils of which he oversees and directs without taking part in

them; and, again, it was stated that the contents of the castoreum

bags depend on the moon." It was impossible to verify the veracity

of these two statements. As regards the moon's influence, however,

there is ground for a suspicion that its advantages are rather felt

by the hunter, than essential to the virtues of the drug. Full moon

is maintained, both by Ostyaks and Russians, to be the propitious

time.

The most northern tribe of Ostyaks, who dwell between the rivers

Obi and Yenisei, surpass their southern neighbours in venatorial

skill, as they, in their turn, are surpassed by the Samoyedes,

who live in the northernmost regions of Siberia. The men of the

Yenisei kill wolves, which, on account of their long soft hair,

are reckoned greatly superior to the forest and steppe wolves of

middle Siberia. They are also famed for their dexterity in killing

and capturing reindeer. "Tying leathern cords between the tops of

the antlers of their tame deer, they turn the animals loose, one

by one, in the neighbourhood of a wild herd: these do not fail

to attack the strangers, and their antlers becoming entangled

in the cords during the contest, they are held fast by the tame

deer till the men arrive. These Ostyaks know also how to plant

spring-bows, which send the arrow against the animal's breast." But

the Samoyedes, besides these ordinary artifices, have other and

ingenious ways, peculiar to themselves, of ensnaring and slaying

the brute creation, by putting themselves as much as possible on an

equality with the animals pursued, going on all-fours, and imitating

them in voice and clothing. The Polar bear is a common victim to

their cunning devices, and even to their open attacks; for their

intimate acquaintance with the formidable beast makes them regard

him as an easy prey. "The Samoyedes assert that the white bear far

exceeds the black bear in ferocity and strength, whilst fully equal

to it in cunning; yet, owing to his unwieldiness, they encounter it

without fear, and always reckon on victory as certain. A man will

often go singly against a Polar bear, eight feet long, without any

other weapon than his knife, which he fastens to the end of a pole.

In spring and autumn these animals are found upon the ice, near the

hole, whence the seals come forth to breathe. There the bear covers

himself up with snow, facing the hole, and with one paw stretched

into the water." The Samoyede seal-hunters imitate the bears, and

when the seal walks out upon the ice, they shove a board over

the hole and capture the phoca. Concerning the bear the Ostyaks

entertain peculiar notions, viewing it with a sort of superstitious

respect. "A member of the court of justice told me that, in suits

between Russians and Ostyaks, it is still the custom here (at

Beresov) to bring, into court the head of a bear, and that this

animal, which is supposed to be omniscient, is there appealed to

as a witness by the Ostyaks. In swearing, they make the gesture of

eating, and call upon the bear to devour them in like manner if they

do not tell the truth." Some similar reverence for Bruin exists, we

believe, amongst certain North American tribes.

The draught-dogs, so faithful and useful to the northern Siberians,

often receive but scurvy treatment at their masters' hands. The

Ostyaks, who are honesty personified, and who laugh at the common

European precautions of locking up valuables and bolting doors,

cannot endure the predatory propensities of their canine allies,

and fly into a passion whenever an unlucky dog sneaks into their

dwelling in search of warmth or food. The poor brute is immediately

a mark for the blows and kicks of every body present, the storm

of abuse being justified by the cunning and greediness of its

object, who, if allowed to abide in the house, would soon reduce

its inmates to short commons. There is some excuse for the dogs'

voracity, however; for, according to Mr Erman's account, they are

considerably more than half-starved, and are rarely admitted to the

fire to be fed, save when they return weary and distressed from a

long journey. Severe as is the cold in those regions, protection

from it is not essential to the existence, or even to the health

of these hardy dogs. They sleep outside the houses, in holes which

they thaw in the snow by their own warmth. At Obdorsk, where there

are no pastures, and consequently no horses, four hundred dogs are

kept by sixty inhabitants, and each of them is estimated to draw

five poods' (two hundred pounds) weight in the loaded sledge. About

eight o'clock in the evening these four hundred brutes set up a

hideous howling, by way of claiming their daily meal, consisting

invariably of fish, which, for them as well as for their owners'

consumption, is first dried in the sun and then pounded, bones and

all. Except this evening concert, a bark or a cry is rarely uttered

by these dogs, unless at first starting when yoked to the sledge,

or on coming across a reindeer team upon the road. Hydrophobia

would be a terrible scourge in this dog-district, but the disease

is fortunately unknown there. Steller has stated the same thing

of the dogs of Kamschatka, and Mr Erman concludes that the malady

is a result of the European system of living in towns. And as the

Siberian dogs are so very moderately fed, he infers that excess,

not want, generates the morbid habit. We are inclined to attribute

more importance to the quality than to the quantity of the food. A

fish diet may be more conducive to a wholesome state of the animals'

blood than the masses of horse-flesh, paunch, and other rank and

unclean offal commonly given to dogs in Europe, and especially in

England, where the carnivorous addictions of the bipeds induce a

belief in the propriety of unlimited flesh-feeding for quadrupeds.

The large annual importation of exiles, the system of conscription,

and the advantages offered to public officers volunteering for

Siberian service, are the most important and efficacious measures by

which Russia proceeds gradually but steadily with the colonisation

and civilisation of her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts are

sometimes drawn, not only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest parts

of Siberia, and the term of military service being twenty-eight

years, it is probable that only a small proportion return to their

native villages. Those who do are looked up to as oracles by

their countrymen. They are objects of pride to their families and

of respect to every body else; the place of honour is theirs by

right, and they are addressed by the title of Master Soldier.[7]

The ferry of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose passage is considered

the symbol of political death to the numerous exiles who each year

cross it--bestows a step of rank on all public servants offering

themselves for duty in Siberia Proper. The passion for rank,

stronger in Russia than in any other country, drives hosts of

officers across this important boundary; but as they are not obliged

to remain more than three years, most of them return home at the end

of that time. Far nearer to St Petersburg than the Asiatic frontier,

civilisation is still at a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal

tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod, and within a very short distance

of Moscow, the prevailing population consists of Cheremisses and

Chuvashes, two tribes many of whose customs are nearly as barbarous

as their names. These people are shy and timid, very slow in

acquiring industrious habits, and addicted to sundry practices

stamping them as semi-savages. In some places they cling to

paganism, and offer up horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables to their

various deities. The Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle of sheet

copper, hanging from the girdle backwards over the hips, and having

appended to it all manner of metal ornaments, making a perpetual

clatter in walking. But these tribes are the pink of refinement

by comparison with those in the northern portion of the Muscovite

empire,--with the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same trough with

their dogs, or with the Samoyedes who tear with their teeth, and

swallow with infinite relish, huge lumps of raw and reeking flesh.

The women of the latter people wear, as their favourite decoration,

(certainly no inappropriate one) a glutton's tail, hanging down the

back of their pelisse. Their hair is plaited in tails, to which all

manner of lumber, brass and iron rings, and rusty musket-locks, are

attached. Mr Erman's account of "Life in the _Chum_" (the skin tent

of the Samoyedes) is quaint and graphic.

[7] _Gospodin Slujivui._ Gospodin is equivalent to the French

Monsieur or Seigneur, and Slujivui means literally one who has

served in the army.

"The reindeer calf, which we had got on the way, was killed and cut

up in front of the tent a few minutes, after our arrival. The men

now brought the bleeding flesh into the tent, and began devouring

it immediately, quite raw, with the heartiest appetite. The old man

was satisfied with sucking the brain from the head, whilst each

of our younger comrades gnawed away at a limb of the animal, even

to the bone. They laughed at the amazement which my good-humoured

Esthonian attendant expressed at their blood-stained faces; and

when he gave them to understand, through the interpreter, that they

were no better than wolves, they seemed quite unprepared for such

reproof; replying gravely, that they were at the same time no worse

than the wolves, since they shared honestly with them, and left

the bones and some scraps of flesh merely for their sake." In this

same tent there was a little monster of a boy named Peina, whom one

reads of with a sort of shudder, and with a strong suspicion that

the creature was not _canny_. Mr Erman himself seems to write of

him with peculiar reserve, stating facts, but evidently unwilling

to give an opinion as to the exact nature of the beast. Peina, who

had first-rate masticators, got his share of the raw meat, which

did not prevent his drawing on his mother's lacteal resources, and

thumping her brutally till she honoured the draft, or handed him

the pot-ladle, with which he supped scalding porridge to his great

internal contentment. The travellers' bread, although frozen hard

and not easy eating for adult jaws, disappeared by wholesale within

those of Peina. At night the anomalous urchin was laid naked in a

canoe-shaped basket, and covered up so thickly with furs that his

cries seemed to come from the depths of the earth. In the morning

his mother took him from his bed and set him up, still naked, before

the fire to warm himself. Sugar, when first presented to him,

he called snow, and threw away, but when once he had tasted the

dainty, his demands for it were unceasing and peremptory. Taking

into consideration the uncomfortable and uncleanly peculiarities

of the Samoyedes, both young and old, we cannot feel surprised

that Mr Erman's interpreter conceived an intense dislike to their

society, and so managed matters that one morning, whilst the man of

science was busy measuring a base-line to ascertain the heights of

some mountains, his Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared with

their tent and their reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped

sledges and a few Ostyak attendants, and with no choice but to make

the best of his way back to Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards

returned to Tobolsk. There he passed his Christmas, and then resumed

his journey; but this time in a southerly direction. After having

penetrated to sixty-seven degrees north, the region of eternal

frost, he struck southwards to the latitude of the Land's End,

making a dip into China, which furnishes some of the best chapters

in his book.

Irkutsk, the last town of importance north of the Chinese frontier,

consists of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being of brick, and

the remainder of wood, and is probably the cheapest place in the

civilised world as regards articles of food. We say "civilised,"

because, although situate in a barbarous region, and possessing

a population of a very motley character, the town has much that

is European in its aspect and usages. It possesses an exchange,

government factories, where newly-arrived convicts are employed,

a school of medicine, a gymnasium, and a handsome parade-ground.

In the market, formed of wooden booths, the stores of food were

enormous. Beef cost about a halfpenny a pound; of flour one penny

would purchase nearly eight and a half pounds; partridges and

heathfowl were sold at five farthings a-piece. But we are in haste

to get amongst the Celestials. First comes a gallop across More

Baikal, a large lake just beyond Irkutsk, on which the Russian

government maintains an armed flotilla. This gallop is a fine bit of

helter-skelter, over ice brilliant as glass. "There was no snow upon

the ice, so that its surface shone like a polished mirror in the

moonlight. The horses that were put under our sledges in Kadilnaya

had to be held on each side till the very moment of starting, when

they broke at once into full gallop, which they kept up till we

landed on the further shore. We completed seven German miles in two

hours and a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary as well as

the most speedy stage upon any route in Russia." Thence, onwards

to the frontier line. "We followed the crowd that pressed forward

towards a narrow door in the front of a long wooden building. This

admitted us into the inner quadrangle of a Russian warehouse. A

corresponding door, at the opposite side of this court, opens just

upon a wooden barricade, which constitutes the barrier of China. In

this there is a wide portal, ornamented with pillars, and displaying

the Russian eagle above it, along with the cipher of the reigning

emperor, Nicholas the First, by whom it was erected." On passing

through this gate, the change is immediate and striking,--from

Russian sobriety of aspect and hue to the gaudy finery of China.

Maimachen, the name of the Chinese town visited by Mr Erman, has a

very masquerading air to a European eye. The walls on either side

of the streets do not look like house walls, the roofs being flat

and invisible from the street. "Indeed, they are nearly altogether

concealed by the gay-coloured paper lanterns and flags, with

inscriptions on them, hung out on both sides of the way. Cords,

with similar scrolls and lanterns, are likewise stretched from roof

to roof across the street. These dazzling decorations stand out

in glaring contrast with the dull yellow of the ground and walls.

In the open crossings of the streets, which intersect each other

at right angles, stood enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron, like

basins, upon a slender pedestal four feet in height. The benches

by which they were surrounded were occupied by tea-drinkers, who

sat smoking from the little pipes they carry at their girdles,

whilst their kettles boiled at the common fire." Mr Erman had the

good fortune to be on the frontier at the period of the Chinese

festival of the White Moon, which is in fact the celebration of

the new-year, and he had the still greater luck to be invited to

share in it at Maimachen. He found the town in its gayest costume.

The expenditure of flags and lanterns was prodigious. The scrolls

usually contained the names of the families before whose houses

they were hung out, coupled with words of auspicious import, as

gladness, riches, wisdom, &c. There was a great firing of crackers

and rockets, partly to celebrate the day, but chiefly in honour of

the guests. Before dinner the latter were diverted by a theatrical

representation. Maimachen boasts a regular company of actors, and

upon this great occasion they did their best. Their orchestra was of

a rather violent description, consisting of "wooden drums, shaped

like casks, brass cymbals, and plates of the same metal, or gongs,

held by a string and beaten with knockers, and wooden truncheons,

of different sizes, which they used as castanets." There were no

actresses; but the deficiency was not to be detected, the younger

and more delicate men personating women to the life by the aid

of wigs and long tresses of black hair, but especially by curls

pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks were not used, but paint was

in abundance; in some cases with a view to represent spectacles,

mustachios, &c.; in others to conceal the human features, or give

them a monstrous aspect. "One face was covered with coloured rays,

issuing from the mouth. The same actor had also a feather on

his head--in Chinese comedy the conventional mark of a ghost or

apparition. Another wore a golden helmet, which constituted him a

warrior. Several kept beating themselves incessantly on the hip with

a cane, and by so doing intimated that they were on horseback." The

play itself was more like a game of romps than any regular dramatic

representation. Little was said; but, on the other hand, there was

a deal of dancing, drumming, and running about. Mr Erman could make

neither head nor tail of the proceedings. By way of experiment,

however, he made some tender gestures to one of the pseudo-ladies,

who acknowledged them in the most amiable manner, and after that the

horsemen without horses paid him much attention, pointing with their

sticks to his spectacles, and trying to touch them as they passed.

All this greatly diverted the Mongol audience, evidently delighted

to see a real counterpart to the painted spectacles of some of the

actors.

The play over, Mr Erman and the other guests, preceded by the

uproarious orchestra, marched off to dinner at the house of the

sarguchei or chief officer of Maimachen. This gentleman, a tall,

thin person of stern countenance, dressed in gray velvet, had a

white button on the crown of his black felt hat, indicating his

rank, and a chalcedony ring, an inch wide, upon his right-hand

thumb, this being a mark of official dignity. "His nails," says our

traveller, "did not extend above half an inch beyond the tips of

his fingers, his personal vanity being in this respect subdued, as

might be expected in a man of sober mind and mature years." The man

of short nails and sober mind was exceeding hospitable, welcomed

his guests in a soft and sonorous voice, and sat down with them

to dinner at tables covered with scarlet cloth. The regale that

followed might have caused a European _chef_ to pale his ineffectual

fires from sheer envy. It began, oddly enough, with fruits,

sweetmeats, and tea. These discussed, a piece of fine paper, for a

napkin, and a pair of ivory chopsticks, were laid before each guest,

and the tables, which were six feet wide, were covered over thickly

with small porcelain plates full of all manner of complicated

edibles. Fat abounded in the dressing, to neutralise which weak

vinegar was used. The first series of saucers duly honoured, a

second was brought in and put on the top of its predecessor. Others

followed, and as the previous stratum was never removed, there soon

arose upon the table a lofty pile of gastronomical curiosities.

Pipes and _chowsen_, a Chinese spirit distilled from rice, concluded

the feast, as the strangers thought;--but they were vastly mistaken.

The soup course had still to come, and that was followed by an

infusion of cabbage-leaves, drawn out of an urn by a cock, and drunk

steaming hot. How a dinner commencing with preserved apricots,

and concluding with cabbage water, agreed with German stomachs,

Mr Erman does not inform us. After managing to taste upwards of

a hundred dishes, he went to visit the temple of Fo, whose court

was guarded by two clay lions painted green, whilst at his shrine

were deposited, on account of the festive season, a prodigious heap

of delicacies. Whole sheep without the skin, plucked chickens,

pheasants, and guinea-fowls, in their natural positions, and

glistening with fat, lay in hillocks at the feet of half-a-dozen

grotesque and indecent idols. On a long table, a wall of offerings

was built up, consisting of dressed meat and cakes of every kind,

the whole surrounded with an elaborate lattice-work of white dough,

five or six feet high, the openings of which were filled with dried

fruits and confectionary of the finest kind. Perfumed candles burned

before the disgusting idols, and brass discs hung from the ceiling,

and were struck with clappers when any bearing offerings approached.

The contents of the shops at Maimachen gave Mr Erman a very

high opinion of Chinese skill and ingenuity. He saw scientific

instruments of great merit, very clever clockwork, paintings drawn

and finished with the greatest care, (although highly objectionable

by the indelicacy of their subjects,) porcelain, sculpture, bowls,

vases, and figures of various kinds of stone. "There were large

spherical bowls, and oval vases, of chalcedony and agate, and

reliefs cut in cornelians, nephrit, and other coloured stones. Of

the latter kind, the most common are flowers, the several parts of

which are formed of various and tastefully selected stones, and then

cemented with mastic on a foundation of stone. For many of these

articles, highly elaborate, and at the same time quite useless, the

merchants of Maimachen asked four thousand tea-bricks, (a standard

of currency,) or about two thousand five hundred Russian dollars.

In this we saw a proof of luxury and profuse expenditure amongst

the Chinese. Many other branches of industry indicated enervation

and effeminacy of manners:" musk, for instance, and other perfumes,

enclosed in little bags, and considered indispensable appendages

to a young man's dress. A curious plaything, considered equally

essential, is composed of two polished balls, about an inch in

diameter, which the men always carry with them. "These are taken

in the right hand, at idle times, and rolled and rubbed one over

the other with the fingers; the noise they make amuses, and perhaps

there is something agreeable also in the feel of them. Here, in

Maimachen, I saw some of these balls made of glass, striped green

and white, and, hollow, containing within them a little lump of

clay, which rattled with every motion." The musk and perfumes,

however abundantly used, are all insufficient to counteract a very

peculiar and unpleasant smell attributed by Mr Erman to the Chinese.

He first perceived it at the theatre, and took it to arise from an

inordinate addiction to leeks on the part of actors and audience,

whose breath and clothes were infected with the disagreeable

odour of that bulb. But he was subsequently induced to regard it

as a national taint, a Chinese exhalation, not to be overcome by

any amount of artificial perfume, and whose cause is matter of

inquiry for the chemist. Doubtless the Chinese would get rid of it,

were it possible so to do, for the care they bestow on personal

beauty and elegance is very great. Another striking defect in the

inhabitants of Maimachen is to be found in their black and decayed

teeth. The cause of this Mr Erman suspects to be the solution of

copper, produced by the empyreumatic oil of tobacco in the bronze

mouth-pieces of their pipes.

At a post-house upon his road back to Irkutsk, Mr Erman and his

party were met by a deputation from no less a personage than the

Khamba Lama, the high-priest of the Buraets, a Mongolian tribe

closely allied in language and customs to the natives of the

northern provinces of China. The embassy consisted of four lamas

or priests attired in scarlet robes and bright yellow hats. They

brought an invitation to a grand festival, which was readily

accepted,--and a very remarkable business it proved to be. The

discordant theatrical music at Maimachen was a mere trifle compared

to the monstrous noise made by the Buraet kettle-drums, so large

that they were dragged upon four wheels, and by copper trumpets ten

feet long, borne by one man and blown by another. "The grave prelude

of the wind instruments was like a roaring hurricane, and the

chorus of brass gongs, drums, &c., resembled the crash of a falling

mountain." In this place we find some curious and interesting

details respecting the Buddhist religion and priesthood, after which

Mr Erman returns to Irkutsk, and resumes his journey eastward,

through the valley of the Lena, to the land of the Tunguzes and

Yakuts. The chief town of the latter people, Yakutsk, is two degrees

to the south of Beresov, which Mr Erman had visited on his way to

Obdorsk; but, nevertheless, the cold is far more severe at the

former place, where frozen earth is found near the surface all the

year round, and the same condition of the ground continues to the

depth of six hundred feet. "The inhabitants of the Swiss Alps would

not unjustly think themselves lost if they were compelled to live at

the height of ten thousand feet, or two thousand three hundred feet

above the hospital of the great St Bernard, and there to support

and clothe themselves by keeping cattle, and with the productions

of the surrounding mountains; yet they would then, and not until

they arrived at that height, be settled on ground having the same

temperature which I found here amongst the Yakuts, who are rich in

cattle. It would seem, therefore, as if that succeeded in Siberia

which was impossible in Europe, if we did not take into account

that the same constant temperature of the ground may be made up

at different places of very different elements." Notwithstanding

the severity of their climate and resistance of their frozen soil,

the Yakuts are a prosperous people, having attained a considerable

degree of civilisation, and amongst whom crime is rare, although

the influence of Russian example and contact daily renders it less

so. There is much interest in Mr Erman's account of them, and of

the wandering Tunguzses, the last tribe with whom he consorted

before his arrival at Okhotsk. Here his reception was not very

flattering. "We were looked at with much curiosity from all the

house-doors on the way, for the devout elders of the place had been

filled with anxious forebodings by the accounts of the arrival of

a foreigner. They signed themselves with the cross whenever he

was mentioned. And I learned to-day that they had fears of war,

conscription, and other calamities." Nor was their alarm abated by

learning that "the heathen foreigner wore snow-shades (spectacles)

even in thick weather, and that he carried a dog in the sledge

with him. Thus the return to civilised man was marked in the first

instance by the encounter of intolerant superstition, and it was

necessary to forget the nobler traits of the wilderness before

we could become reconciled to the Russians of Okhotsk." At which

place Mr Erman's narrative ceases. We await with interest its

promised continuation--an account of his adventures in Kamschatka,

California, and the Pacific.

THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.

_Lays of the Deer Forest, with Sketches of Olden and Modern Deer

Hunting, &c. &c._ By JOHN SOBIESKI and CHARLES EDWARD STUART. 2

vols., post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.

We would that, like stout Lord Percy of yore, it were in our power

at this present moment to chronicle a vow that we should forthwith

take our pastime for three summer days on the pleasant hills of

Scotland. Alas for us, that we are doomed, from divers causes, to

absent ourselves from felicity awhile, and, amidst the heat and

noise of London, listen with intense disgust to the brutal bayings

of the Chartists! This very night, we hear, the ignoble hunt is to

be up in Bishop Bonner's fields. Crowds of dirty, unshaven, squalid

ruffians, who have not the strength to use the pike, but the will

to employ the knife of the assassin--fellows whom even Cobden would

be chary to recognise as his _quondam_ supporters, defenders, and

dupes--not unmingled with foreign propagandists, whom even France,

in the fury of her revolutionary tornado, repudiates--are thronging

to the place of rendezvous, where, doubtless, their souls will

be worthily regaled by the ravings of some rascally vendors of

sedition, blasphemy, and treason. Then will ensue the usual scene

which for nights has disgraced the metropolis. Some unfortunate

tradesman, whose curiosity has been stronger than his prudence, will

be fixed upon as a "special" or a spy--the cowards, presuming upon

their numbers, and the apparent absence of all executive power,

will attempt a deliberate murder--the police will sally from their

hiding-place to the rescue--there will be a storm of brickbats, a

determined charge with the baton, a shop or two will be gutted,

some score of craniums cracked, and to-morrow morning the greasy

patriots, at the bar of Bow Street, will read their recantation,

and, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, protest

their loyalty to the Queen. Such are the pastimes of merry England

in the month of June, and such the results of that enlightened

policy which yields every thing to popular clamour, adopts the

most fatal delusions as distinct principles of right, and then

shrinks, trembling and aghast, from the inevitable result of their

development!

We do not want--in this article, at least--to be political, and

we vow that we took up our pen three minutes ago in a spirit of

perfect good-will and harmony towards all manner of men. But

the hoarse bawling of these cannibals has somewhat ruffled our

temper, dispelled for the moment our dreams of the mountains, and

forced us back to the sterner realities of popular tumult and

the truncheon. If this sort of thing lasts, we shall indubitably

emigrate. Assassination, as recommended by the modern Hamilcar, is

by no manner of means to our taste. Our opinion coincides with that

of the gracious Captain of Knockdunder, and, were we promoted to

a judicial function, "the chiel they ca' the Fustler" should ere

long fustle in a tow. Neither are we at all disposed to fraternise

with the milder Cuffey--a fellow, by the way, who is not without

some redeeming scintillations of humour. We have no wish to be

introduced to him even at a mesmeric soiree; and, acting upon

the principle of Jacquey, we shall pray heaven to decrease our

acquaintance, and put the Tweed as speedily as possible between

ourselves and the partisans of O'Connor. We hope the Lord Provost,

though discomfited in his Police Bill, has been looking after the

tranquillity of the Calton. If not, we must move further north, and

finally locate ourselves somewhere in the vicinity of Dalnacardoch.

The deuce is in it, if the revolutionary mania has penetrated

to that sequestred region! No son of the mountains has ever yet

given in his adhesion to the Charter--treason hath not stained the

tartan, and no republican pins have ever been exposed beneath the

checkered margin of the kilt. There is loyalty at least in the

land which was traversed by Montrose and Dundee; and without the

slightest fear that any of the numerous points of that interesting

but incomprehensible public document, which Mr Joseph Hume proposes

to condense, shall be unduly obtruded on our notice, we shall at

once exchange our London dwelling for the more pleasant bothy of the

hills.

As for a companion, we shall seek none better--for we could not

find one--than this last publication of the Stuarts. And here,

once for all, let us draw a line of distinction betwixt the poetry

and the prose of these very remarkable brothers. We have not the

remotest intention of sitting in judgment on the "Lays," or of

testing the poetical merits of John Sobieski and Charles Edward,

either by the canons of Longinus, or by that superior code of

literary laws which Maga has promulgated to the world. The poems,

which occupy exclusively the first of these volumes, are, with one

exception, fugitive in their nature, and appear to have been penned

rather from occasional impulse, than from any deliberate intention

of publication. Accordingly, we find that most of them relate to

topics personal to the authors themselves--and with these we do not

meddle. In others, there are flashes of the deep national spirit

which still survives--though our rulers do not seem to mark it--in

Scotland: indignation at the neglect with which too many of our

national institutions have been treated, and mournful lamentings

over the misfortunes of a former age. But the impulse which leads to

the composition of poetry does not always imply its accomplishment.

Poetry, as an art in which excellence can only be obtained by a

combination of the simple and the sublime, requires a study far

more intense and serious than the mere critic is apt to allow. In

a former Number we devoted an article to an exposition of those

principles, which are absolutely invariable in their application,

and which must be thoroughly understood, if they are not intuitive

to the poet; and, being in no mood for repetition, we shall simply

say that we adhere to our recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it must

be confessed, are more successful with the rifle than the lyre. We

would far rather meet them in the garb of the forester, than in the

more fantastic fashion of the minstrel: be theirs the lot of Ryno

the hunter, not the darkened destiny of the bard.

Do, therefore, what you please with the first volume--pack it up

in your portmanteau, or place it on the shelf beside Chambers'

History and the collections of good old Bishop Forbes. But if you

profess to be a deer-stalker--though we fear your profession to be

false--or if you are but an aspiring neophyte, and hankerer after

that proud position--or if you merely bound your aspirations towards

the compassing of the death of a roebuck--or if simply you have a

keen and a kindly eye for nature, and are a lover of the sylvan

solitudes--in one or other, or all of these characters, we pray you

to deal more leisurely with the other tone, which is the Hunter's

Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet published to the haunts of the

antlered monarch.

We are fond of Mr Scrope, and we have an excessive partiality for St

John. Two finer fellows never shouldered a rifle; and our conscience

does not accuse us of having used too superlative, in epithet in

their praise. This was the more creditable on our part, because

we knew them both to be Southrons; and while freely admitting the

sportsman-like qualities of the one, and the strong picturesque

style and spirit of the other, we felt a slight, passing, but

pardonable pang of jealousy, that they should have stepped in, and

pre-occupied the native field. Where, thought we, are our Scottish

deer-stalkers? Can the lads not handle a pen as well as touch a

trigger? Will none of them, who have been trained to the hills since

they were striplings, stand forth for the honour of Albyn, and try

a match with these fustian-coated circumventers of the stag? By the

shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidlhnan Dan, we blush for the literary

reputation of our country, and almost wish that we were young enough

ourselves to take the hill against the invading Sassenach! At

length--and we are delighted to see it--the reproach has been swept

away. Two stalwart champions of the forest have risen in the persons

of the Stuarts--they have encountered the Englishmen with their own

weapons, and, in our opinion, beaten them hollow.

Mr Scrope had the merit of producing the earliest work in which

deer-stalking was treated as a distinct and peculiar branch of

the art venatory. We speak of it now from recollection; for

our copy, somewhat frayed and worn by the fingers of ambitious

sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a library some hundred miles

to the northward. But we remember well the Waltonian character of

the book--the professional style in which the elder practitioner

enforced his precepts upon the dawning intellect of his companion;

and the adventures, neither few nor feeble, which were depicted

in the heart of the Atholl forest. Taken as the production of

an English sportsman, Mr Scrope's book is highly creditable:

considered as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is at the best

indifferent. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise. Not until

middle age, if we are informed rightly, did Mr Scrope first send

a ball into the ample shoulder of a hart: his young blood never

beat tumultuously in his veins at the sight of the mighty creature

rolling over upon the heather, and its antlers buried in the

moss. His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was expended upon game of

less mark and likelihood--partridges, perchance, as they whirred

from the turnips, or possibly he was "entered" with the hare.

Wordsworth's maxim, that the boy is the father of the man, is

peculiarly applicable in sporting matters. Upon the character of

the country in which the latent spirit of the hunter is earliest

developed, depends, in a great degree, his future success, and

certainly his accomplishment as an Orion. The young squire, who

has been brought up in the faith of Sykes, who never stirs abroad

without a keeper, and who is accustomed to see his delicate pointers

execute their manœuvres with almost mathematical precision on the

flat stubbles of Norfolk, labours under a huge disadvantage in the

higher branches of his science, compared with the Highland boy who

has received his education on the hill. What though the single

barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement indeed in competition

with the Purdie which decorates the shoulder of the former--though

the hound that sometimes attends him, though oftener he is alone,

never slept a single night in a kennel, and is the ruggedest

specimen of his kind--still he is in the enjoyment of advantages

incomparably superior for the development of all his faculties,

and the sharpening of every sense. The triumph of the sportsman

does not lie so much in the killing as in the finding of his game.

Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer of Battersea or the Red-house

would have just claims to the honours of Sir Tristram, and the

annihilator of poultry to rank with the Nimrods of the world. Our

young friend the Squire shoots well--that is to say, he can kill

with reasonable precision: but, after all, what is he save an

instrument? Take Ponto away from him, tie up Juno, send a bullet

through the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly account you will

have of it in the evening when we come to the emptying of the bags!

Or lead him down to the sea-shore, and show him a whaup, which in

the English tongue is denominated a curlew; request him to use all

his possible skill to compass possession of the bird; but do not set

your heart on having it, else, as sure as fate, you are doomed to

disappointment. Whaup is quite alive to his own interests, and by

no means unsuspicious of the Saxon, who advances straight towards

him with a hypocritical air of unconcern. Had the Highland lad been

there, what a difference! He would have dropped like a stone behind

that rock, wriggled like a serpent over the sand, kept the bird

between himself and the sea, taken advantage of every inequality in

the ground, discerned from the attitude of his quarry whether its

suspicions were aroused or not, and in ten minutes a pluff of white

smoke and a report would have announced its extermination. As it

is, the curlew remains apparently unconcerned until the Lord of the

Manor has reduced the intermediate distance to a hundred and twenty

yards, and then, with a shrill whistle, takes flight along the

margin of the tide. Or set him to stalk a blackcock, perched high

of an Autumn morning on a dyke. How clumsily he sets about it! how

miserable is his stoop! how wretchedly he calculates his distance!

That wide-awake hat, which, for the sake of symmetry, he has been

pleased to surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous to the country

for miles round, and of course to the blackcock, as was the white

plume of Murat in the field of battle, and as potent to effect a

clearance, of which we presently have ocular demonstration.

We contend, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for the man,

be he ever so addicted to field-sports, who has been educated in

a cultivated country, to disembarrass himself of the artificial

habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire. His trolling may

be excellent--indeed, English gentlemen are, generally speaking,

first-rate shots--but he will be deficient in the science of the

naturalist, and in that singular acuteness of perception which can

hardly be gained save by an early intimacy with nature, on the

mountain, the moor, or in the glen. No subsequent education or

experience can make up for the normal deficiency, least of all in

the pursuit of an animal so wary, so instinctive, and so peculiar in

its habits as the deer. Of course we do not mean to deny that there

is much which may be learned. What a pointer is to partridges, some

wary and experienced forester may often be made to the deer; and

if you put yourself under his tuition, and scrupulously obey his

orders, you may very possibly succeed in attaining the object of

your desires. Nor indeed can you do better, up to a certain point,

notwithstanding the strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we think,

unnecessarily wroth at the system which would call in the aid of

any supplementary assistance. We hope no gentleman who has rented a

forest for the ensuing season will be deterred from following the

feet of a Highland Gamaliel on account of any ridicule which may

be attached to the fact of his having been "taken up" to a deer.

If he should rashly attempt stalking at his own hand, without any

preliminary instruction, we should be sorry to found our hopes of

dinner on the chance of his acquisition of a haunch.

"When advancing upon deer [say our authors]--except in strange

ground--the forester, or any other attendant, should be left

behind a stone, or in some covert, before the stalker commences

his approach; not from any recognition of the false reproach

made against the guides by Mr Scrope, but because there is

no occasion for an assistant, and the action of one has more

celerity, independence, and security from discovery, than when

a greater number are in motion. The charge made by the author

of 'The Art of Deer-stalking,' that the forester is often in

the way, and sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true, unless

in instances of inexperienced and awkward individuals, who are

not to be found among that class of foresters of whom the guest

of the _Atholl Forest_ proposes his remarks. With a MacKenzie,

or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie, the asserted

inconvenience must proceed from the ignorance or maladroitness

of the gray worm which crawls at his back, and who often does

not know what he is doing, or where he is going, with his

ideas _égaré_ on his sensitive knees and varnished Purdie,

unconscious of what he ought to do and nervous for what he ought

not, flurried with eagerness and disgusted with his posture,

and who, never seeing a deer except once in the year, is led

up to him like a 'blind burraid,' by one whose language he

scarcely understands. In general, therefore, the embarrassments

of the 'creep' are those of the superior, who is frequently so

ignorant, unpractised, and dependent upon the guidance of the

forester, that to be '_taken up to the deer_' has become the

modern forest phrase for the approach of the sportsman. This

contemptible term, and its contemptible practice, has only

been introduced within the last quarter century, since the

prevalence of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the

ground and pursuit of deer. Of old, the '_Seàlgair uasal nam

bèann_' was initiated to the hill when yet but a '_biorach_'

of a stalker; and when he became a matured hill-man, he should

no more have suffered himself to be--'_taken up_ to his deer'

by an attendant, than a Melton fox-hunter to be trained after

the hounds by a whipper-in with a leading rein.--What should

have been the sentiments of the old chiefs and Uaislean of the

last century--the Dukes of Atholl and Gordon--Glengarrie--John

Aberardar--Iain dubh Bhail-a-Chroäin--to hear a deer-hunter

speak of being '_taken up to his deer_!'--Certainly that he was

a noble 'amadan' or 'gille-crùbach,' who had not the faculties

or the limbs to act for himself.--But this is only one of the

many instances for which the hills of Gael may mourn with the

mountains of Gilboa--'_Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!_'"

Far are we from insinuating that Mr Scrope is at all liable to the

remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we

hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and any thing

but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own

experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and

higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a

stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a

respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend,

have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less

effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so

great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and

his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels

he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not

unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide

to the Southren, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in

woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation.

Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already

spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was

never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or

observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His

sketches and pictures of deer-stalking we allow to be as perfect in

their way as the compositions of Landseer; and having said so much,

we shall not make any further call upon that gentleman's blushes.

Still, even his experience is limited, and his knowledge imperfect.

He has given us a brilliant account of his own exploits upon the

hill, but he has not lived long enough in the wilder haunts of the

deer accurately to understand their habits. Not so our authors, who

for years have been denizens of the mountains, speaking the tongue

of the Gael, wearing the native garb, and following the chase with

an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled in these degenerate days.

Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by

some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland--who are shocked

at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about

your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp

sheets--how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty

hill-side, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if

you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to

reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A

terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr St John well knows; but we

question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was

done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends,

we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this

furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of the

hunters and their favourite ground.

"That stream, however, which was so calm, and bright, and sunny,

when the otters floated down its current in a still summer's

morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy in its anger; and,

for a great part of the year, the dread of its uncertainty

and danger was a formidable cause for the preservation of

that profound solitude of the forest which so long made it

the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind of wild game. The

rapidity with which the river comes down, the impassable height

to which it rises in an incredibly short time, its incertitude

and fury, would render it an object of care to bold forders and

boatmen; but with the peasants of the 'laich,' unaccustomed,

like the Highlanders, to wrestle with a mountain torrent, and,

excepting in rare instances, unable to swim or manage a coble,

it inspires a dread, almost amounting to awe, and none except

ourselves ventured to keep a boat above the fishing-station of

Slui. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred

and eighty feet in height, the rise of the water is rapidly

exaggerated by the incapability of diffusion; and the length of

its course sometimes concealing beyond the horizon the storms by

which it is swelled at its source, its floods then descend with

unexpected violence. Frequently when, excepting a low wreath

upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky,

and the water scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a deep

hollow sound--a dull approaching roar may be heard in the gorges

of the river; and almost before the wading fisherman can gain

the shore, a bank of water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and

wreck, will come down three--four--five feet abreast--sweeping

all before it in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases,

after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty

feet--it _has_ risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and

once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter

of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through

the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its

brink--a black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris,

from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of

trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of houses--a

cart--a door--a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam

and spray, like the scattered 'floatsome' of a wreck.

"It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt

a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest

certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with

frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we

have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce

a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over

our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached

through the dark veil of pines which descended to the river,

have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the

black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a

furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping,

over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had

left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in

the far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was

then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by

the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between

the trees and stones,--now it came yelling, and skirling, and

clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full

of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and

yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going

to do, if you attempted to cross."

We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently

see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of

the Findhorn. Once or twice in our life we have been in similar

jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations

which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids

are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his

feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at

length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut.

"Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the

Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in

darkness.--Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and

more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and--I say it

with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven--that I owed

rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired

by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy.

"This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however,

became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and

certainty; and as I would--and often--have made my bed under

a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich,

I resolved upon another alternative--to build in the forest a

'_bothan an t-sealgair_,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might

lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the water.

"There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river

near the 'Little Eas,'--a precipice eighty feet in height, and

then like a vast stone helmet crowned with a feathery plume of

wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop

a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is

an accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels

firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a

descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of

the rock there is, or there was--my blessing upon it!--a thick

and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose

pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up

again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close

trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little

gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely

lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter

of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little

cell large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table,

and a 'kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked

with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but

covered with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope of the

surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from

thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves,

could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was

on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries

on the edge of the precipice; and the entrance to the little

path, which ascended from either side upon the brow of the

rock, was concealed by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath

which the banks were covered with primroses, wood-anemones,

and forget-me-not. Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses twined

among the lower trees; and even in the tall pines above, the

rose sometimes climbed to the very top, where all its blossoms,

clustering to the sun, hung in white tassels out of the

dark-blue foliage. There the thrush and the blackbird sang at

morning and evening, and the owl cried at night, and the buck

belled upon the Torr.--Blessed, wild, free, joyous dwelling,

which we shall never see again!"

A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of

summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts

speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the

midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists

within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know,

elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the

banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that

deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the

descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned

out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by

breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into

description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after

all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already

illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will

not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with

formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so

perfect as the following sketch:--

"Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a range of precipices

and wooded steeps crowned with pine, and washed by a clear

and rippling stream of the river, through which there is an

excellent ford, very well known to the roe, for escaping to

the woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds. This reach is

called the Ledanreich, from a remarkable craig, a sheer naked

even wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal strata eighty or

ninety feet high: At the eastern extremity of this rock there

is a great division, partly separated from the main curtain by

a deep woody slope, which dips into the precipice with little

more inclination from the perpendicular than to admit of careful

footing. In the face of the divided craig, the decomposition of

the softer stone between the courses of the strata has wasted

it away into narrow galleries, which, passing behind the tall

pillars of the pines growing from the rifts and ledges, extend

along the face of the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of

ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall of rock, and hangs

from shelf to shelf over the covered ways. Beyond the craigs,

the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep, covered with oak and

copsewood, slopes down to the river, its brow darkened with a

deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent carpeted with moss,

primroses, and pyrolas, here and there hollowed into quaint

'cuachs,' filled with hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along

this woody scarp, and through its thick copse, the roe had made

narrow galleries, which communicated with the ivy corridors

on the face of the craig, to which there were corresponding

ways upon the opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for

shelter from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of

the world during the day in the heat of summer, the red-deer

and roe made their secret haunt, concealed behind the deep dim

veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected in the cool hollows of

the cliff. The prying eye might search the craig from below,

and the beaters or the woodmen might whistle, and whoop, and

shout above, but nothing appeared or moved except the gray

falcon, which rose channering out of the rifts. Above the craig

the wooded bank was so abrupt, that to the front view there

was no indication of a slope, and any who passed quickly over

the brow was immediately out of sight. At each descent beyond

the extremities of the whole range of rocks there was a common

roe's run and pass, which was supposed to be 'deadly sure' if

the deer took the path, since the precipice below was believed

to be an infallible barrier against any intermediate escape.

Often, however, when pressed upon the terrace above, the deer

neither went through the passes nor turned against the beaters,

but vanished as if by magic--nobody could tell where; and it

was the common opinion of the drivers and fishermen, that, when

forced near the river, they threw themselves over the craigs

'for spite,'--a belief often confirmed by old Davie Simpson, who

declared that he had often found their bodies beneath the rocks,

and in the Cluach, the Clerk's Pool, and the 'Furling Hole.' He

did not, however, relate what _wounds_ they had, and the truth

was, that those which disappeared at the brow of the Ledanreich

dashed down the sudden dip of the bank between the precipices,

and, turning through the ivy corridors, went out through the

copse galleries upon the other side, and either descended to the

water or skirted below the pass, and went back into the forest.

Those which were found dead were such as had been mortally

wounded at some in-wood pass, and, unable to take, or cross

the water, had died on the beach, or been carried down by the

river. In the same mysterious passages which gave concealment

and escape to the stags and bucks, the does were used to lay

with their kids, and from thence at morning and evening they

brought them out to pluck the tender grass upon the green banks

beyond. Often from the brow above, or from behind the ivy

screen, we have watched their 'red garment' stealing through the

boughs, followed by their little pair drawing their slender legs

daintily through the wet dew, and turning their large velvet

ears to catch every passing sound upon the breeze as it brought

the hum of the water, or the crow of the distant cock--now

trotting before, now lingering behind their dam, now nestling

together, now starting off as the gale suddenly rustled the

leaves behind them--then listening and re-uniting in a timorous

plump, pricking their ears, and bobbing their little black noses

in the wind,--then, as the doe dropped on her knees in the moss,

and laid her side on the warm spot where the morning sun glanced

in through the branches, they gambolled about her, leaping over

her back, and running round in little circles, uttering that

soft, wild, plaintive cry like the treble note of an accordion,

till, weary of their sport, they lay down at her side, and

slept while she watched as only a mother can. No marvel it was

that they loved that safe and fair retreat, with all its songs

and flowers, its plenty and repose. All around was sweet, and

beautiful, and abundant, such as the poetical imagination of the

painter can rarely compose, and _never_, unless like Salvator

he has lived in the wilderness with its free denizens. Upon the

summit above the craig there was a broad and verdant terrace

surrounded by ivied pines and feathering birches, and upon a

little green glade in the midst grow two of the most beautiful

objects ever produced by art or nature. These were a pair of

twin thorns exactly similar in size, age, and form, and standing

about three yards from each other: their stems as straight as

shafts, and their round and even heads like vast bushes of wild

thyme, but each so overgrown with ivy and woodbine, that their

slender trunks appeared like fretted columns, over which the

thorny foliage served as a trellis to suspend the heavy plumes

of the ivy and the golden tassels of the woodbine. Many a

'ladye's bower' we have seen, and many a rich and costly plant

reared by the care of man, but none so beautiful as those lonely

sisters of the forest, planted by His hand in His great garden,

where none beheld but those for whom He made it lovely--the

ravens of the rock, the deer who couched under its shade by

night, and the birds who sang their matins and their even-song

out of its sweet boughs."

If we go on quoting at this rate, we shall never reach the hill, and

as yet we have not started from the hut. To say the truth, we are

in no hurry, and neither, we suspect, upon many occasions were the

Stuarts, indomitable huntsmen as they are. What though at night the

river swept with the sound of thunder below, making the solid rock

vibrate to its deep foundation,--what though the wind swept mightily

down the ravine, swaying the trees like saplings, and threatening to

tear them away,--what though the windows of heaven were open, and

the deluge came down, and the bark of the hill-fox sounded sharp

above the roaring of the water and the wood,--yet within that little

bothy that rests upon the face of the craig, the wearied huntsmen

slept peacefully; and in the morning, says one of them,--"I was

awakened as usual by the whistle of the robin in the bird-cherry,

and the sharp note of the blue bonnet sharpening his little saw on

the top of the holly. I went out to the narrow terre-plain over the

craig. The wind was gone, and the sun smiling on the still leaves

and dewy grass--the flood torrent of the river dancing and laughing

in its light, and the calm bright air breathing with the sweet

perfume of the damp plants, and all the freshness and fragrance of

the forest wilderness." We back it against the forest of Ardennes!

Every true hunter is humane. What! you say--do you call it humane

to persecute the unfortunate stag, the monarch of the wilds, to the

death?--to drive rifle-bullets into the target of the harmless roe?

to murder otters by the dozen, and to slaughter seals by the score?

Indubitably we do. Let us reason a little upon this. Yesterday,

you recollect that you dined upon very juvenile veal, smothered in

a mess of dingy vegetable matter which we apprehend to have been

sorrel, after the beastly fashion of the Gauls. Posterior to that,

you devoured the larger moiety of a duckling. This morning we saw

you, with our own eyes, regaling yourself at the club, between the

intervals of muffin, with what assuredly were cutlets of lamb. After

all this, can you have the face to stand up and defend your own

humanity? For how many days had the sun dawned upon that luckless

calf, the mangled fragments of which upon your platter rather

resembled the rags of a kid-glove, than food meet for the stomach

of a Christian? How long had the feeble quackle of Draco been heard

round the row of peas near which he unsuspiciously perambulated,

little dreaming how much the pods thereof were mixed up with his

future destiny? How many races were run upon the meadow by that

perished daughter of the sheep? Three infantine lives cut off simply

for your sole gormandising! This is but a slight case. Set you down

to a rook-pie, and you will engulf a dozen unfortunates before you

bury your visage in the pewter. Pay for you at Blackwall, and the

whitebait will disappear by the thousand. It is in vain that you

attempt to shift the atrocity of your inordinate appetite from your

own shoulders to those of the grazier, the butcher, the poulterer,

or the fisherman. Cobden, or Joe Hume, or any other of the political

economists belonging to the tribe who would starve the workman in

order that they may guzzle themselves, will tell you that invariably

the demand regulates the supply. You, therefore, are the responsible

party: the young have fallen into your Scylla--the immature of

days have been swept into the vortex of your Charybdis! Moreover,

if you were a sportsman--which you are not--our minds would be

grievously troubled for the future safety of the singing-birds.

Welford, the friend of Bright, as we all remember, proposed a grand

crusade throughout Britain against the feathered tribe; and you

are not at all unlikely to join in a general St Bartholomew of the

sparrows. Do you venture to retort upon us? Do you think we take

life unnecessarily, or that we are base enough to use our weapons

until the quarry has reached its prime? No calf or fawn ever fell

by the hand of the genuine hunter--no cheeper or pout ever sullied

the interior of the sportsman's bag. Not until the better part of

his life has been run,--till his muscles are hard as iron, his slot

deep, and his branches towering on the beam,--not until he has lived

and loved, do we strike down, as if with lightning and painless

death, the great hart in the middle of the wilderness. But to all

innocent things--to the harmless indwellers of the forest and moor,

the true hunter is a guardian and a friend. The strong man is ever

brave, and none but the strong can pass to where the herds of the

mountain dwell.

One more scene at the Hut, and we shall illustrate this subject

further.

"But though our bothie was far from resembling the Peri

Paribanon's cell, or the rock-palace where the old kaiser keeps

his court in the bowels of the Unterberg--we loved it, not

only for its bucks and stags, and all its greenwood cheer, but

for the love of nature by which it was surrounded. Beyond its

'vert and venison,' there was a world of life and interest for

those who had the eye to mark and the heart to read its book.

On every side we had companions; from the passenger which came

from Norway, to the little native guest--the robin which roosted

in the holly-bush above us. '_The_ robin?'--you smile and say.

Yes, there was but one. He lived in the bush, as we lived in

the bothie, and we were his neighbours too long not to be very

well acquainted. His species, as well as all the small tribes,

conformable to the minuteness of their range and habits, are

very local, and may be found all the year in, or near, the same

place; and those who feed them will rarely wait many minutes

for their appearance. There were many robins which lived about

the bothie, and all were continually in its vicinity, and very

tame; but none so gentle and grateful as our little neighbour

in the holly. They would, however, enter the hut, sit on the

bed or the table, and hop about the floor, and, when I went

out, follow me to the brae. They liked very much to see me turn

up the soil, which always provided them with a little feast;

accordingly, they were never absent at the planting of a shrub

or a flower; and when I brought home, in my shooting-bag, a

tuft of primroses, pyrolas, or lilies of the valley, they were

always in attendance to see them put into the bank. For watching

my occupation, they preferred something more elevated than the

ground, but not so high as the branches of the trees, which

were too far from the earth to give them a clear sight of what

I turned up; for their accommodation, therefore, I made little

crosses and crotchets, and, when I was planting, set them up

beside me, moving them as I proceeded from place to place.

Each was immediately occupied by an attentive observer; and,

whenever an insect or a worm was discovered, one of the nearest

darted down and caught it, even from between my fingers, and

disappeared for a few moments under the rock or behind the great

holly, to enjoy his success undisturbed. At his disappearance

his place was immediately occupied by another, but at the return

of the first it was amiably resigned by his successor. The

blue-bonnets were almost as numerous as the robins, but they

never arrived at the same intimacy and confidence. They never

entered the bothie in my presence, and even when I fed them

they would not approach as long as I remained outside the door;

but as soon as I went in they descended four or five together,

chattering and fluttering about the entrance, peeping in at

the little window, and stretching their necks as far as they

could, to see where I was, and if all was right. Then they would

begin their breakfast on what I had left for them, talking a

great deal about it, but occasionally ogling the door, in a

manner from which I concluded that there was but small esteem

or gratitude in their conversation.----Far different was the

friendship of our little neighbour in the holly. In the morning

he used to come down and perch on the arm of the bird-cherry,

which stretched over the precipice before the door, waiting

for its opening and the preparation of the breakfast, which he

always shared; and when we were seated he would venture over the

sill, and gather the crumbs about the table at our feet. Often

when the first blood-red streaks of the autumn morning shone

like lurid fire through the little window, we were awakened by

his sad and solitary whistle, as he sat on his usual branch,

his jet-black eye cast towards the door, impatient for our

appearance. Many of his little cousins there were in the wood,

with whom we were also well acquainted, and between us happened

many an incident, which increased our interest and familiarity.

"I remember a day, one of those deep still blue days so solemn

in the forest; the ground was covered with a foot of snow, and

all the trees were hanging like gigantic ostrich feathers; but

all the world was blue,--the sky was a sleeping mass of those

heavy indigo clouds which forebode a 'feeding storm,'--not a

tempest, but a fall of snow; for, in Scotland, snow is called

'_storm_,' however light and still it falls: thus, in tracking

the deer, we say he 'has brushed the _storm_ from the heather;'

and a '_feeding storm_' is when the clouds are continually

feeding the earth with its velvet pall.--The reflection of

those deep-blue clouds cast a delicate tint of the same colour

over the whitened world. I was standing with my back against a

huge pine--one of the old remnant of the great forest of Moray,

which had, no doubt, heard the bell toll for the first Stuart

earl.--I counted the rings in a smaller tree which once stood in

the same hollow;--I shunned its wreck as I would have avoided a

corpse which I could not bury, and always, when I passed near

it, averted my face; but one day running to cut off a buck, and

just heading him, I dropped on my knee to receive him as he

came out from a mass of junipers, and when reloading, I found

that I had knelt by the stump of my old friend.--I counted two

hundred and sixty-four rings in his wood!--how many earls had

he seen?--Well, I was leaning against his elder brother, as I

suppose by the size. I had been there for a long time, waiting

to hear the dogs bring back a buck from--I don't know now from

where.----As I had been through all the swamps, and stripes, and

wet hollows on that side of the forest, and waded through two

and three feet of snow-wreaths, my kilt and hose, and, as it

seemed, my flesh was saturated to the bones with 'snaw-bree,'

and I began to beat, first one foot, and then the other, to

quicken the blood, which was warm enough in my trunk.--I had

scarce commenced this exercise, when I heard a little 'tic!'

close to my ear, and the soft low voice of a bird--a sound,

neither a whistle nor a chirp, but which I knew very well before

I turned and saw the robin, who sat on a dry branch within a

yard of my cheek. I guessed what had brought him: he was very

cold, his ruffled back humped as round as a ball, and his tail

drooping almost perpendicular with his legs, as if it was a

little brown peg to lean on, like that on which the travelling

Tyrolean merchant rests his pack. He looked at me with his large

black eye, then, with a flirt of his tail and a bow with his

head, indicated that, if I had no objection, he should like to

descend to the place which I occupied; the object of which

he expressed, by turning his head sidelong, and directing one

eye into the black earth which my foot had beaten bare in the

snow. I immediately drew back a couple of feet, and he instantly

dropped into the spot of mould, peeped and picked under every

leaf and clod of earth, and, when there was nothing more, hopped

up on the guard of my rifle, on which I was leaning, and,

turning his head, looked at me with his upper eye.--I again

stepped forward, and recommenced my foot-exercise, during which

he returned to his branch, examining my progress with some

impatience. As soon as my foot was removed, he again dropped

into the hollow, and busily collected all the little grubs and

chrysales which, though too small for me to see as I stood, I

knew abounded beneath the sere leaves and thatch of moss and

sticks. In this manner I repeated his supply several times,

on one of which, when I was too long, or he too impatient, he

dropped from his perch, and hovered over the space in which my

foot was at work, and, as I continued, lighted on the point of

the other shoe, and remained there, peeping into the hollow,

until I withdrew my foot, and then descended to finish his

repast. When he was satisfied, he ruffed his feathers, looked

up sidelong to me, and, after a shake of satisfaction, resumed

his perch close to my head, and, after pruning and oiling his

feathers, mounted another branch higher, and opened his little

throat with that most sad, sweet, and intermitting warble which

gives such a melancholy charm to a still winter's day."

Take a picture of the roe, and you will hardly doubt the humanity

of our sportsmen. But why talk of it thus? No one, we hope,

save a member of the Manchester manufacturing school could feel

otherwise--certainly not a genuine hills-man; and we quote the

passage simply for its extreme beauty and perfect fidelity to

nature. No creature is more beautiful than the kid of the roe-deer,

especially when seen in their rest, or moving through the ferns, on

a summer evening, beside their gentle mother the doe.