. The world's inhabitants; or, Mankind, animals, and plants; being a popular account of the races and nations of mankind, past and present, and the animals and plants inhabiting the great continents and principal islands. ^, but has numerouspeculiarities. It is difficult to say whether the Ostiaks of the Obi basin are moreclosely allied to the Finns than to the Samoyedes. They were formerlymuch more numerous, and at any rate inhabited a considerablepart of the old Ugria of the Russians, They are now re-duced to about 20,000. Many of them are still quite nomadic, readily re-moving from place to
. The world's inhabitants; or, Mankind, animals, and plants; being a popular account of the races and nations of mankind, past and present, and the animals and plants inhabiting the great continents and principal islands. ^, but has numerouspeculiarities. It is difficult to say whether the Ostiaks of the Obi basin are moreclosely allied to the Finns than to the Samoyedes. They were formerlymuch more numerous, and at any rate inhabited a considerablepart of the old Ugria of the Russians, They are now re-duced to about 20,000. Many of them are still quite nomadic, readily re-moving from place to place with their herds of reindeer. They are rather below the mid- die size, with small feetand hands, and areround-headed. Somedescribe them as red-haired, but such indi-viduals are rare, darkfeatures predominat-ing ; the hair is dark,but soft, the womenwearing it in two longplaits down the flat and broad nose,large mouth, thick lips,and scanty beard arefurther Mongoloid fea- The I VII. E E 4i8 THE INHABITANTS OF ASIA tiires. In some parts they are very much Eussianised, and live chiefly byfishing. They can carve well in wood or bone, tan skins, make im-plements from birch bark, etc. They still use bows and arrows, only a few having eat raw flesh ofcarnivora, as well asother animals. ThejReligion and ^^e more ormorals, i^ss Christ-ianised, but Shamanismhas more power overthem, and they havenot done much morethan borrow St. Nicholasfrom the Russians, as somany Siberian nativeshave done. They onlyshow degradation ofmorals where corruptedby Russians ; they hatetheft and disturbances,and are both kind andgentle. If they aredirty, according to ourideas, they are Hke mostof the less civihsed andsome of the so-calledcivilised peoples. TheirMusical stringed mu-instruments. g^cal instru-ments are worthy ofnotice. One of them,the domhra, is boat-likeand has five Hungarian Mag-yars, it will be remem-bered, have just such aninstrument, the tomhora,i
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectcivilization, bookyea
