Their energetic Nationality.—Their Descent.—Their gloomy Character.—Summer and Winter Dwellings.—The Jakut Horse.—Incredible Powers of Endurance of the Jakuts.—Their Sharpness of Vision.—Surprising local Memory.—Their manual Dexterity.—Leather, Poniards, Carpets.—Jakut Gluttons.—Superstitious Fear of the Mountain-spirit Ljeschei.—Offerings of Horse-hair.—Improvised Songs.—The River Jakut.

The Jakuts are a remarkably energetic race, for though subject to the Muscovite yoke, they not only successfully maintain their language and manners, but even impose their own tongue and customs upon the Russians who have settled in their country. Thus in Jakutsk, or the “capital of the Jakuts,” as with not a little of national pride and self-complacency they style that dreary city, their language is much more frequently spoken than the Russian, for almost all the artisans are Jakuts, and even the rich fur-merchant has not seldom a Jakut wife, as no Russian now disdains an alliance with one of that nation.

At Amginskoie, an originally Russian settlement, Middendorff found the greatest difficulty in procuring a guide able to speak the Russian language, and all the Tunguse whom he met with between Jakutsk and Ochotsk understood and spoke Jakut, which is thus the dominant language from the basin of the Lena to the extreme eastern confines of Siberia. In truth, no Russian workman can compete with the Jakuts, whose cunning and effrontery would make it difficult even for a Jew to prosper among them.

Though of a Mongolian physiognomy, their language, which is said to be intelligible at Constantinople, distinctly points to a Turk extraction, and their traditions speak of their original seats as situated on the Baikal and Angora, whence, retreating before more powerful hordes, they advanced to the Lena, where in their turn they dispossessed the weaker tribes which they found in possession of the country. At present their chief abode is along the banks of that immense river, which they occupy at least as far southward as the Aldan. Eastward they are found on the Kolyma, and westward as far as the Jenissei. Their total number amounts to about 200,000, and they form the chief part of the population of the vast but almost desert province of Jakutsk.

They are essentially a pastoral people, and their chief wealth consists in horses and cattle, though the northern portion of their nation is reduced to the reindeer and the dog. Besides the breeding of horses, the Russian fur-trade has developed an industrial form of the hunter’s state, so that among the Jakuts property accumulates, and we have a higher civilization than will be found elsewhere in the same latitude, Iceland, Finland, and Norway alone excepted. Of an unsocial and reserved disposition, they prefer a solitary settlement, but at the same time they are very hospitable, and give the stranger who claims their assistance a friendly welcome. Villages consisting of several huts, or yourts, are rare, and found only between Jakutsk and the Aldan, where the population is somewhat denser. Beyond the Werchojansk ridge the solitary huts are frequently several hundred versts apart, so that the nearest neighbors sometimes do not see each other for years.

In summer the Jakut herdsmen live in urossy, light conical tents fixed on poles and covered with birch rind, and during the whole season they are perpetually employed in making hay for the long winter.

In 62° N. lat., and in a climate of an almost unparalleled severity, the rearing of their cattle causes them far more trouble than is the case with any other pastoral people. Their supply of hay is frequently exhausted before the end of the winter, and from March to May their oxen must generally be content with willow and birch twigs or saplings.

At the beginning of the cold season the Jackut exchanges his summer tent for his warm winter residence, or yourt, a hut built of beams or logs, in the form of a truncated pyramid, and thickly covered with turf and clay. Plates of ice serve as windows, and are replaced by fish-bladders or paper steeped in oil, as soon as the thaw begins. The earthen floor, for it is but rarely boarded, is generally sunk two or three feet below the surface of the ground. The seats and sleeping berths are ranged along the sides, and the centre is occupied by the tschuwal, or hearth, the smoke of which finds its exit through an aperture in the roof. Clothes and arms are suspended from the walls, and the whole premises exhibit a sad picture of disorder and filth. Near the yourt are stables for the cows, but when the cold is very severe, these useful animals are received into the family room. As for the horses, they remain night and day without a shelter, at a temperature when mercury freezes, and are obliged to feed on the withered autumnal grass which they find under the snow. These creatures, whose powers of endurance are almost incredible, change their hair in summer like the other quadrupeds of the Arctic regions. They keep their strength, though travelling perhaps for months through the wilderness without any other food than the parched, half-rotten grass met with on the way. They retain their teeth to old age, and remain young much longer than our horses. “He who thinks of improving the Jakut horse,” says Von Middendorff, “aims at something like perfection. Fancy the worst conceivable roads, and for nourishment the bark of the larch and willow, with hard grass-stalks instead of oats; or merely travel on the post-road to Jakutsk, and see the horses that have just run forty versts without stopping, and are covered with perspiration and foam, eating their hay in the open air without the slightest covering, at a temperature of -40°.”

But the Jakut himself is no less hardened against the cold than his faithful horse. “On December 9,” says Wrangell, “we bivouacked round a fire, at a temperature of -28°, on an open pasture-ground, which afforded no shelter against the northern blast. Here I had an excellent opportunity for admiring the unparalleled powers of endurance of our Jakut attendants. On the longest winter journey they take neither tents nor extra covering along with them, not even one of the larger fur-dresses. While travelling, the Jakut contents himself with his usual dress; in this he generally sleeps in the open air; a horse rug stretched out upon the snow is his bed, a wooden saddle his pillow. With the same fur jacket, which serves him by daytime as a dress, and which he pulls off when he lies down for the night, he decks his back and shoulders, while the front part of his body is turned towards the fire almost without any covering. He then stops his nose and ears with small pieces of skin, and covers his face so as to leave but a small opening for breathing—these are all the precautions he takes against the severest cold. Even in Siberia the Jakuts are called ‘men of iron.’ Often have I seen them sleeping at a temperature of -4° in the open air, near an extinguished bivouac fire, and with a thick ice-rind covering their almost unprotected body.”

Most of the Jakuts have an incredible sharpness of vision. One of them told Lieutenant Anjou, pointing to the planet Jupiter, that he had often seen yonder blue star devour a smaller one, and then after a time cast it out again.13 Their local memory is no less astonishing; a pool of water, a large stone, a solitary bush imprints itself deeply into their remembrance, and guides them after a lapse of years through the boundless wilderness. In manual dexterity they surpass all other Siberian nations, and some of their articles, such as their poniards and their leather, might figure with credit in any European exhibition. Long before the Russian conquest they made use of the iron ore on the Wilui to manufacture their own knives and axes, which, either from the excellence of the material or of the workmanship, rarely break, even in the severest cold—a perfection which the best Sheffield ware does not attain. Since time immemorial they have been acquainted with the art of striking fire with flint and steel, an invention unknown even to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their leather is perfectly water-tight, and the women make carpets of white and colored skins, which are even exported to Europe. It is almost superfluous to mention that a people so capable of bearing hardships, so sharp-witted, and so eager for gain as the Jakuts must needs pursue the fur-bearing animals with which their forests abound with untiring zeal and a wonderful dexterity.

The horse renders the Jakut services not less important than those of the reindeer to the SamoÏede or the Lapp. Besides using it for carrying or riding, the Jakut makes articles of dress out of its skin, and fishing-nets of its hair; boiled horse-meat is his favorite food, and sour mare’s milk, or kumyss, his chief beverage. Of the latter he also makes a thick porridge, or salamat, by mixing it with rye-flour, or the inner rind of the larch or fir tree, to which he frequently adds dried fish and berries, and, to render it perfect, a quantity of rancid fat, of which he is immoderately fond. He is in fact a gross feeder, and some professional gluttons are capable of consuming such astonishing masses as to shame the appetite even of an Esquimaux. During his stay at Jakutsk, Sir George Simpson put the abilities of two distinguished artists to the test, by setting two pouds of boiled beef and a poud of melted butter before them. Each of them got a poud of meat for his share; the butter they were allowed to ladle out and drink ad libitum. The one was old and experienced, the other young and full of zeal. At first the latter had the advantage. “His teeth are good,” said the elder champion, “but with the assistance of my saint (crossing himself), I will soon come up to him.”

When about half of their task was finished, Sir George left his noble guests to the care and inspection of his secretary, but when he returned a few hours after, he was informed that all was consumed, while the champions, stretched out on the floor, confirmed the secretary’s report, and expressed their thanks for the exorbitant meal they had enjoyed by respectfully kissing the ground. After one of these disgusting feats, the gorged gluttons generally remain for three or four days plunged in a torpid state like boa snakes, without eating or drinking, and are frequently rolled about on the ground to promote digestion. It may also be noticed, as a proof of the low state of intellectual culture among the Jakuts, that at every wedding among the richer class two professed virtuosi in the art of gormandizing are regularly invited for the entertainment of the guests. One of them is treated at the bridegroom’s expense, the other at that of the bride, and the party whose champion gains the victory considers it as a good omen for the future.

The Jakuts, besides being a pre-eminently pastoral people, are also the universal carriers to the east of the Lena. For beyond Jakutsk, the only roads are narrow paths leading through swamps, dense forests, or tangled bushes, so that the horse affords the only means of reaching the more even and lower countries where reindeer or dogs can be attached to sledges. Without the Jakut and his horse, the Russian would never have been able to penetrate to the Sea of Ochotsk, and from thence to the Aleutian chain; but for him, they never would have settled on the Kolyma, nor have opened a commercial intercourse with the Tchuktchi and the western Esquimaux.

Before the possession of the Amoor had opened a new road to commerce, thousands of pack-horses used annually to cross the Stanowoi hills on the way to Ochotsk; and when we consider the dreadful hardships of the journey, we can not wonder that the road was more thickly strewn with the skeletons of fallen horses than the caravan routes through the desert with the bones of famished camels. But the Jakut fears neither the icy cold of the bivouac nor the pangs of hunger, which, in spite of his wolfish voracity, he is able to support with stoical fortitude. He fears neither the storm on the naked hill, nor the gloom of the forest, nor the depth of the morass; and, bidding defiance to every thing else, fears only the invisible power of “Ljeschei,” the spirit of the mountain and the wood. The traveller wonders when he sees on an eminence crowned with firs an old tree from whose branches hang bunches of horse-hair. The Jakut who leads the caravan soon explains the mystery. He dismounts, and plucking a few hairs from the mane of his horse, attaches them with a great show of respect to a branch, as an offering to propitiate the favor of Ljeschei on the journey. Even those Jakuts who pass for Christians still pay this mark of respect to the dethroned divinity of their fathers; and there can be no doubt that they still retain the old belief in Schamanism, and an abject fear of all sorts of evil spirits.

While travelling they sing almost perpetually melancholy tunes, corresponding with the habitual gloom of their national character. The text has more variety and poetry, and generally celebrates the beauties of nature, the stately growth of the pine, the murmuring of the brook, or the grandeur of the mountain. The singers are mostly improvisatores, and to conciliate the favor of Ljeschei, they praise the desert through which they pass as if it were a paradise.

Like the impoverished SamoÏede or Lapp, the indigent Jakut, who possesses neither cattle nor horses, settles near some stream. His only domestic animal is his dog, who carries the fish on a light sledge from the river-bank to his hut, or follows him into the woods on his hunting expeditions. With the skins of fur-bearing animals he pays his jassak, and is glad if the surplus allows him to indulge from time to time in the luxury of a pipe of Circassian tobacco.