ributable altogether to restlessness
or love of change. A herd of four or five thousand reindeer will in a
very few days paw up the snow and eat all the moss within a radius of
a mile from the encampment, and then, of course, the band must move to
fresh pasture ground. Their nomadic life, therefore, is not entirely a
choice, but partly a necessity, growing out of their dependence upon
the reindeer. They _must_ wander or their deer will starve, and then
their own starvation follows as a natural consequence. Their
unsettled mode of life probably grew, in the first place, out of the
domestication of the reindeer, and the necessity which it involved of
consulting first the reindeer's wants; but the restless, vagabondish
habits thus produced have now become a part of the Korak's very
nature, so that he could hardly live in any other way, even had he
an opportunity of so doing. This wandering, isolated, independent
existence has given to the Koraks all those characteristic traits of
boldness, impatience of restraint, and perfect self-reliance, which
distinguish them from the Kamchadals and the other settled inhabitants
of Siberia. Give them a small herd of reindeer, and a moss steppe to
wander over, and they ask nothing more from all the world. They are
wholly independent of civilisation and government, and will neither
submit to their laws nor recognise their distinctions. Every man is
a law unto himself so long as he owns a dozen reindeer; and he can
isolate himself, if he so chooses, from all human kind, and ignore
all other interests but his own and his reindeer's. For the sake of
convenience and society they associate themselves in bands of six or
eight families each; but these bands are held together only by mutual
consent, and recognise no governing head. They have a leader called a
_taiyon_ who is generally the largest deer-owner of the band, and
he decides all such questions as the location of camps and time of
removal from place to place; but he has no other power, and must refer
all graver questions of individual rights and general obligations
to the members of the band collectively. They have no particular
reverence for anything or anybody except the evil spirits who bring
calamities upon them, and the "shamans" or priests, who act as
infernal mediators between these devils and their victims. Earthly
rank they treat with contempt, and the Tsar of all the Russias, if he
entered a Korak tent, would stand upon the sam