Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/409

Rh made in the form of preëxisting nephrite celts, and evidently, in pattern, a development from them; axes of pure copper that had partially returned to the form of ore and that looked as if they were composed of metal blended with a substance like malachite; pure-copper knives or daggers with traces of an ornamental pattern in vitreous enamel on the handles, which showed that, in this part of Siberia, the art of enameling preceded even the early acquired art of making bronze; three-tined table-forks; hinged molds of bronze in which, apparently, axes had been cast; a bronze trolling fish-hook and spoon; a bronze pot-lid with the figure of an elephant on it for a handle; earthen jars molded in the form of earlier skin bottles; gypsum death-masks found on the skulls of skeletons in the burial-mounds; and, finally, a quantity of inscriptions, on stone slabs, in characters that seemed to me to resemble the Scandinavian runes. In the department of ethnology the life of the aborigines of Siberia, on its material side, was illustrated very fully by six or eight hundred tools, implements, weapons, utensils, and articles of dress, and there was also an interesting collection of objects made and used by a wild, isolated, and almost unknown tribe known as the Soyóts, who live a nomadic life in the rugged mountainous region of the upper Yeniséi in northern Mongolia. Among these Soyót objects I was surprised to find a big rudely fashioned jewsharp — an instrument that I had never seen in Russia — a set of strange-looking chessmen in which the bishops were double-humped Bactrian camels and the pawns were dogs or wolves, and a set of wooden dice and chips used in playing a game that, as nearly as I could find out, was a Mongolian variety of backgammon. Mr. Martiánof had just been describing the Soyóts to me as the wildest,