Note 195.3 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

The Karakasses, too, of Eastern Siberia make to the mountains and rivers which they pass offerings of tobacco, a branch of a tree, a strip of a pelisse or some other trifle. The Kamtchadales and Teleouts offer pine-branches, pieces of meat, fish or cheese, packets of hair or horsehair, little furs or ribbons of cloth. The offerings dedicated to a mountain are suspended from a tree on some hill or other conspicuous place. The Tunguz call these trees Nalaktits.195.3 Erman, the German traveller in Siberia, records having seen in the woods between Churopchinsk and Aruilákhinsk trees, at different points along the road, hung thick with horse-hair. It was an ancient custom of the nomadic Yakuts, he was told, to put tufts of their horses’ hair on these trees, and many of the tufts “had so weather-beaten an appearance, that there could be no doubt of their antiquity.” Every horseman who passed added to them, and the custom was called by a name signifying propitiation for the Spirit of the Woods.195.4 In the Alazeï Mountains, on the road from Kolymsk to Verkhoiansk, is the tomb of a famous Tchuktchi sorceress. All who pass deposit offerings: on the cross they hang strips of cloth and horsehair; at its foot they lay pieces of meat and fish. He who forgets this act of homage is always punished. The devils cause him to lose his way, his horse breaks a limb, or his sledge is shattered.196.1 The Kirghiz honour a solitary poplar, said to be the only tree standing between Fort Orsk on the Ural river and the Sea of Aral. It is covered with shreds torn from the clothing of the tribesmen who have worshipped at it. A certain wild plum-tree is also reverenced in the same way. The number of rags and pieces of sheep-skin attached to it is constantly increasing.196.2 Every traveller from Marco Polo downward speaks of the practice as rife in Central Asia. Many of the Tartars are Mohammedans; and the shrine of every Mohammedan saint is adorned with rams’ horns and with long bits of dirty rag, a pious gift no pilgrim would omit to tie on some adjacent stick or tree.196.3