CHARACTER OF THE JAKUTS.

257

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 Amur 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 cannot 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 everything 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 favour 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 improvisators, and to conciliate the favour of Ljeschei, they praise the desert through which they pass, as if it were a paradise.

Like the impoverished Samojede 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.

His distinguished Services as an Arctic Explorer-From Petersburgh to Jakutsk in 1820-Trade of Jakutsk-From Jakutsk to Nishne Kolymsk-The Badarany-Dreadful Climate of Nishne Kolymsk-Summer Plagues-VegetationAnimal Life-Reindeer Hunting--Famine-Inundations-The Siberian Dog--First Journeys over the Ice of the Polar Sea, and Exploration of the Coast beyond Cape Shelagskoi in 1821-Dreadful Dangers and Hardships-Matiuschkin's Sledge Journey over the Polar Sea in 1822-Last Adventures on the Polar Sea-A Run for Life-Return to St. Petersburgh.

THE

HE expeditions which had been sent out during the reign of the Empress Anna for the exploration of the Arctic shores of eastern Siberia, had performed their task so badly, as to leave them still almost totally unknown. To fill up this blank in geography, the Emperor Alexander ordered two new expeditions to be fitted out in 1820, for the purpose of accurately ascertaining the limits of these extreme frontiers of his immense empire. Of the one which, under Lieutenant Anjou, commenced its operations from the mouth of the Jana, and comprised within its range New Siberia and the other islands of the Lächow group, but

little has been communicated to the public, all his papers having been accidentally burnt; but the travels of Lieutenant. von Wrangell, the commander of the second expedition, have obtained a world-wide celebrity. Starting from the mouths of the Kolyma, he not only rectified the errors of the coast-line of Siberia, from the Indigirka in the west to Koliutschin Island in the east, but more than once ventured in a sledge upon the Polar Ocean, in the hopes of discovering a large country supposed to be situated to the northward of Kotelnoi and New Siberia.

Wrangell left St. Petersburg on March 23, 1820, and experiencing in his journey of 3,500 miles repeated alternations of spring and winter, arrived at Irkutsk, where the gardens were in full flower, on May 20.

After a month's rest, a short journey brought him to the banks of the Lena, on which he embarked on June 27, to descend to Jakutsk, which he reached on July 27. This small town of 4,000 inhabitants bears the gloomy stamp of the frigid north, for though it has a few good houses, its dwellings chiefly consist of the winter jurts of the Jakuts, with turf-covered roofs, doors of skins, and windows of tale or ice. The only sight' of this dreary place is the old ruinous ostrog or wooden fort built by the Cossacks, the conquerors of the country, in 1647. Jakutsk is the centre of the interior trade of Siberia. To this place are brought, in enormous quantities, furs of all kinds, walrus teeth and mammoth tusks, from distances of many thousand versts, to an amount of half a million of pounds.

The commercial sphere of the Jakutsk merchants is of an immense extent. During a cold of ten and twenty degrees they set out for the Lächow Isles, for the fair of Ostrownoje, for Ochotsk, or Kjachta. Jakutsk merchants were the first who ventured in crazy ships across the sea of Kamtschatka, and discovered the island of Kadjiak, eighty degrees of longitude from their home.

On September 12, Wrangell left Jakutsk, where regular travelling ends, as from thence to Kolymsk, and generally throughout Northern Siberia, there are no beaten roads. The utmost that can be looked for are foot or horse-tracks leading through morasses or tangled forests, and over rocks

and mountains. Travellers proceed on horseback through the hilly country, and on reaching the plains, use sledges drawn either by reindeer or dogs.

In this manner Wrangell crossed from the basin of the Lena to that of the Yana, never experiencing a higher temperature than +2°, and frequently enduring a cold of more than -12°, during the journey over the intervening hills, and then turning eastward, traversed the Badarany, a completely uninhabited desert, chiefly consisting of swamps. These Badarany never entirely dry up, even after the longest summer-drought. At that time a solid crust is formed, through which the horses frequently break, but they are preserved from totally sinking in the mire, by the perpetually frozen underground. Nothing can be more dismal and dreary than the Badarany. As far as the eye reaches, nothing is to be seen but a covering of dingy moss, relieved here and there on some more elevated spots by wretched specimens of dwarflarches. The winter is the only season for traversing this treacherous waste, but woe to the traveller should he be overtaken by a snow-storm, as for miles and miles there is no shelter to be found but that of some ruinous powarni, or post-station.

At length, fifty-two days after leaving Jakutsk, Wrangell arrived on November 2 at Nishne Kolymsk, the appointed head-quarters of the expedition, where he was welcomed with a cold of -40°, or 72° below the freezing point of water.

Even in Siberia the climate of this place is ill-reputed for its severity, which is as much due to its unfavourable position as to its high latitude (68° N.). The town stands on

a low swampy island of the Kolyma, having on the west the barren tundra, and on the north the Arctic Ocean, so that the almost constant north-west winds have full scope for their violence, and cause frequent snow-storms even in

summer.

The mean temperature of the whole year is only +14°. The river at Nishne Kolymsk freezes early in September, but lower down, where the current is less rapid, loaded horses can sometimes cross on the ice as early as August 20, nor does the ice ever melt before June.