With these qualities, the dog becomes in this country a very serviceable animal. Whatever, indeed, our horses and bullocks perform for us here in Britain, if we except carrying us on their backs and ploughing our arable land, the dogs perform for the Kamtschatkans. There is not much employment for them, however, in the summer; and at that season they are allowed to range about and secure their food, which they usually find in the rivers, in the best way they can. Some pains are at all times necessary to keep them in good temper and at peace with their neighbours, whether canine or human. And therefore all Kamtschatkans who keep a team near their houses are careful, when the snow is on the ground, to drive a number of stakes into the earth, or poles set up in the same manner as the frame of a hut or wigwam; and to these the dogs are attached singly or in pairs. But when paired, whether at the stakes or in harness, it is requisite that those yoked together should be not only of the same family, but of the same litter, or at all events they should have been paired when they were puppies. It is at no time safe to leave the greater part of them loose; and the younger dogs are described as the most dangerous in this way. They will not only at all times kill domestic fowls,—which the Kamtschatkans, therefore, are unable to breed,—and dogs of the smaller species that may chance to be brought to the place, but they have been known to destroy children. While they do not work they are tolerably fat, and have usually an allowance of half a dried salmon, or a portion weighing about two pounds, a day; but when they labour they are worse treated and more stinted than the Siberian horses, and receive only half the quantity of food apportioned to them when at rest; yet they will, under this treatment, perform journeys of three or four weeks’ duration with much less repose than the horses require. Nay, they will even, upon a journey of four or five days’ duration, work for fourteen or sixteen hours out of the twenty-four without tasting any food whatsoever, and without appearing to suffer any diminution of strength; and the universal opinion seems to be, that the less food they receive on this side of starvation, when travelling, the better.
Five of these dogs will draw a sledge carrying three full-grown persons and sixty pounds weight of luggage. When lightly loaded, such a sledge will travel from thirty to forty versts in a day over bad roads and through the deep snow, while on even roads it will accomplish eighty to one hundred and twenty. And herein lies the inestimable value of the Kamtschatkan dogs, for the horse would be useless in sledging: in the deep snow it would sink; and it would be unable, on account of its weight, to cross the rivers and streams which are covered only with a thin sheet of ice.
A KAMTSCHATKAN SLEDGE AND TEAM.
But travelling with dogs is by no means easy. Instead of the whip, the driver uses a crooked stick with iron rings, which, by their jingling, supply the leader of the team with the necessary signals. If the dogs show symptoms of relaxing in their efforts, the stick is cast among them to rouse them to greater speed; and the driver dexterously picks it up again as his sledge shoots by. In a snow-storm they keep their master comfortably warm, and will lie round about him quietly for hours. They are experienced weather-prophets too, for if, when resting, they dig holes in the snow, it is a certain sign of a storm.
The training of these dogs begins at a very early age. Soon after their birth they are placed with their mother in a deep pit, so as to see neither man nor beast; and after being weaned, they are still condemned to a total exclusion from “the madding crowd.” A probation of six months having expired, they are attached to a sledge with older dogs, and being extremely shy, they run at their very fastest. On returning home they undergo another period of pit-life, until they are considered perfectly trained, and capable of performing a long journey. They are then allowed to enjoy their summer freedom. Such a mode of training may render them docile and obedient, but it renders them also gloomy, mistrustful, and ill-tempered.
Siberia, so far as the valley of the Lena is concerned, and even eastward to the Kolima and westward to the Yenisei, is inhabited by the bold and vigorous race of the Jakuts. Their number is computed at about 200,000, and they inhabit the extensive but dreary province of Jakutsk, with a chief town of the same name.
The Jakuts are to a great extent a pastoral people, but as they trade in horses and cattle, and also carry on a brisk fur-trade with the Russians, they have attained a far higher level of civilization than is common among pastoral races. In summer they live in light conical tents (“urossy”), which are fixed upon poles, and covered with birch rind. These they pitch in the open plains and valleys, and then devote themselves to gathering supplies of hay against the coming winter. This is with them a very important labour, for their chief wealth is in their herds of cattle, and to find a sufficient provision for them in the bleak climate of the Lena basin, and on the borders of the Arctic World, is a task of great difficulty. Often, indeed, the supply fails before the return of spring, and the oxen must then be fed upon the young shoots and saplings of the birch and willow.
When winter approaches, the Jakut removes from his tent into a warm, timber-built hut, or jart, which assumes the form of a truncated pyramid, and has an exterior covering of turf and clay. Its windows are made of thin sheets of ice; which, as soon as a thaw sets in, are replaced by fish-bladders or paper steeped in oil. The floor is of earth, very rarely boarded, and generally sunk two or three feet below the surface of the ground. The seats and sleeping-berths are arranged along the sides; the hearth, or tscherwal, occupies the centre, and its smoke finds an exit through an aperture in the roof. Clothes and weapons are suspended from the walls, and the general appearance of the interior is squalid and disorderly.