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A NEW ACCOUNT OF SAMOIEDIA, AND THE SAMOIEDES.
A NEW ACCOUNT OF SAMOIEDIA, AND THE SAMOIEDES.
From the Hift. Gen. des Voyages, XXIV. 66.
.THE account which we now publifh, fays the author *, deferves to be diftinguifhed
from the mafs of writings which fo frequently appear, for the novelty, the fingularity,
and truth which are united in it.
The perfon to whom we are indebted for it, is very well acquainted, although a
ftranger, with the vaft empire of Ruflia. He is a man of fenfe, for a long time em-
ployed in that country ; formerly in military, and at prefent in civil, affairs. :
To much acquired knowledge he joins all the qualities which conltitute a good ob-
ferver ; an ardent curiofity after all the productions of nature, much attention, and
great fagacity. The reading of his memoirs will be fufiicient for the conviction of fuch
an eulogium not being exceflive, but a {till greater number of proofs may be found,
in the Supplement which the fame writer has compofed for the Dictionnaire de Savary,
relative to the articles concerning Ruiflia; if, as it is to be wifhed, he determine on
prefenting them to the public. The truth and precifion which characterize all the
works from his pen, give them an inconteftible fuperiority over every thing which has
yet appeared on the fame fubject.
This collection of obfervations formed a part of the Memoirs fent to M. de Voltaire,
for his Hifoire de Empire de la Ruffie fous Pierre le Grand; but that illuftrious au-
thor made only a fuperficial ufe of it, any more than of the documents which his Ex-
cellency the Chamberlain Iwan Iwanowitch de Schuwatow had furnifhed him with by
direction of his court; this is at leaft what Dr. Bufching, fo well known by the im-
portant fervices he has rendered to geography, reproaches him with, in the preface to
his German tranflation of the Hiftory of Peter the Great by Mr. Voltaire.
The merit of this Memoir would induce us willingly to give it purely and fimply as
publifhed ; but we have thought, on oné fide, it were our duty to add fome obfervations
to it not foreign to the fubject, and, on the other, to retrench what relates to the Lap-
landers, to make ufe of hereafter when we fhall treat of thofe people, in an extract from
an excellent hiftory publifhed in German fome years ago by Profeflor Hoeg{troeng.
Among the number of hiftories of voyages, with which the public have been de-
luged, few are to be found in which the characters and manners of the feveral bar-
barous nations difperfed over the different parts of the globe, have been laid down in
a fatisfactory manner; and where thofe which we poflels have been fufficiently explicit
in refpect to any nation of barbarians, they agree fo ill the one with the other on facts,
that the reader who is anxious for inftruction, after perufal of them, can only doubt,
and keep his judgment fufpended.
Some yeprefent thefe people as a fpecies of animals of human fhape, to whom they
concede a favour in allowing them to refemble man in figure: and they are fpared,
when the poffefion of that good fenfe natural to mankind is not difputed, on account
of a difference exifting between their manners and our own; from the habitude of ob-
ferving foreigners only through the veil of thofe prejudices which men have in general
in favour of their own nation and their own particular cuftoms.
Other relations again prefent thefe favages as differing from us in too flight a degree,
and difguifed only by a mafk fomewhat whimfical and novel tous. From a fingular
® Memoire fur les Samoiedes. Konigfberg in Pruffia, 1762.
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