Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/410

394 fiercest, most savage native tribe in all northern Mongolia; but after I discovered that they understood the value of doublets in backgammon, knew how to checkmate in three moves with a two-humped Bactrian camel, and could play sweet Mongolian æeolian airs on the identical jewsharp of my boyhood, I felt as if I had suddenly discovered a long lost tribe of Asiatic cousins. It was of no use, after that, to try to impress me with the Soyóts' wildness and ferocity. Any tribe that could throw dice, play the Mongolian jewsharp, and open a game of chess with the khan's double-humped-Bactrian-camel's dog gambit was high enough in the scale of civilization to teach social accomplishments even to the Siberians. It is true that the Soyóts last year lay in wait for and captured the distinguished Finnish archæologist Professor Aspelin, and held him for some time a prisoner; but they may have done this merely as a means of getting him to teach them some new jewsharp music, instruct them in Finnish backgammon, or show them the latest method of cornering a king with two camels and a dog. A tribe that lives strictly according to Hoyle ought not to be called savage merely because it makes game of an archæologist and acquires its science by means of an ambuscade. Noticing the interest with which I regained the objects of Soyót and Tatár origin, Mr. Martiánof said that there was a tribe of Tatárs known as the Káchintsi living within a short distance of Minusínsk, that they were believed to be ethnologically second cousins of the Soyóts,