from different regions, bringing different beliefs,
superstitions, and modes of thought; but, when both were removed from
all disturbing agencies and subjected to the same external influences,
both developed precisely the same system of religious belief. If
a band of ignorant, barbarous Mahometans were transported to
north-eastern Siberia, and compelled to live alone in tents, century
after century, amid the wild, gloomy scenery of the Stanavoi
Mountains, to suffer terrific storms whose causes they could not
explain, to lose their reindeer suddenly by an epidemic disease which
defied human remedies, to be frightened by magnificent auroras that
set the whole universe in a blaze, and decimated by pestilences whose
nature they could not understand and whose disastrous effects they
were powerless to avert--they would almost inevitably lose by degrees
their faith in Allah and Mahomet, and become precisely such Shamanists
as the Siberian Koraks and Chukchis are today. Even a whole century of
partial civilisation and Christian training cannot wholly counteract
the irresistible Shamanistic influence which is exerted upon the mind
by the wilder, more terrible manifestations of Nature in these lonely
and inhospitable regions. The Kamchadals who accompanied me to the
Samanka Mountains were the sons of Christian parents, and had been
brought up from infancy in the Greek Church; they were firm believers
in the Divine atonement and in Divine providence, and prayed always
night and morning for safety and preservation; yet, when overtaken
by a storm in that gloomy range of mountains, the sense of the
supernatural overcame their religious convictions, God seemed far away
while evil spirits were near and active, and they sacrificed a dog,
like very pagans, to propitiate the diabolical wrath of which the
storm was an evidence. I could cite many similar instances, where the
strongest and apparently most sincere convictions of the reality
of Divine government and superintendence have been overcome by
the influence upon the imagination of some startling and unusual
phenomenon of Nature. Man's actions are governed not so much by what
he intellectually believes as by what he vividly realises; and it is
this vivid realisation of diabolical presence which has given rise to
the religion of Shamanism.

The duties of the shamans or priests among the Koraks are, to make
incantations over the sick, to hold communication with the evil
spirits, and t