All these dwellings, it may be added, do not wear the same aspect of prosperous neatness; but even where poverty is present, it is unaccompanied by that sullen gloom and melancholy squalidness which, in other countries, is the painful indication and result of long-endured privation. And here, we must also remember, poverty and famine are not always inseparable companions. The shadow of hunger frequently darkens the rich man’s door, and a man might perish for want of food on a sack of gold. One winter, the wealthiest members of the community were reduced to the necessity of eating bread made of bark mixed with moss. Still, we see how wide a difference separates the stationary from the nomadic Lapp, and how impossible it is for a wandering population to acquire or appreciate the comforts of civilized life. A pastoral race, in the present age of the world, is, and must be, a decaying, because a barbarous race. If it touches the borders of civilization, it is only to become infected with its vices, and thus to hasten its inevitable decay. CHAPTER IX. THE SAMOJEDES AND OTHER TRIBES OF ARCTIC ASIA. The Samojedes are the immediate neighbours of the Lapps. Like them, they are nomads; but they are even less civilized, and have profited less by the arduous and enthusiastic labours of the Christian missionaries. They range over the forests and stony tundras of Northern Russia and Western Siberia; driving their reindeer herds from the banks of the Chatanga to the icy shores of the White Sea, or hunting the wild beasts in the dense woods which extend between the Obi and the Yenisei. They are sunk far deeper than the Lapps in a coarse and debasing superstition. It is true that they believe in a supreme deity--Num, or Jilibeambaertje, who resides in the air, and, like the Greek Zeus, sends down thunder and lightning, rain and snow; and they evince that latent capacity for poetical feeling which is indicated even by the most barbarous tribes in their description of the rainbow as “the hem of his garment.” They regard him, however, as so elevated above the world of man, and so coldly indifferent to humanity, that it is useless to seek to propitiate him either by prayer or sacrifice; and they have recourse, accordingly, to the inferior gods,--who, as they believe, have the direction of human affairs, and are influenced by incantations, vows, or special homage.