Near the jart are stalls for the cows; but when the cold is very intense, they, like the Irishman’s pigs, find accommodation in-doors. As for the horses, they remain night and day in the open air, though the weather may be so severe that even mercury freezes; and they have no other food than the decayed autumn grass, which they find under the snow.
The capacity of endurance which the Jakut horses exhibit is almost incredible. Like other quadrupeds in the Arctic regions, they change their hair in summer. Traversing, month after month, the dreary wilderness where the only vegetation is a scanty and half-rotten grass, they still retain their strength and energy; and notwithstanding the hard conditions of their lives, they do not age so quickly as our own more carefully-tended steeds. To aim at improving the Jakut horse would be, in the opinion of many travellers, to gild refined gold, and perfume “thrown on the violet.” He will continue a steady trot for hours, over roads of which no Englishman can form an idea, and stop to take his rest with no other food but the bark of the larch and willow, or a little hard grass, no covering protecting his foaming sides from the cold, and the temperature down at 40°.
As the horse, so the master. The Jakut is the very personification of hardiness. He seems able to endure anything, and to attempt everything. On the longest winter-journey he carries neither tents nor extra coverings with him, not even one of the large fur-dresses, such as the Siberians generally use. He contents himself, in fact, with his usual dress; in this he generally sleeps in the open air: his bed, a horse-rug stretched upon the snow; his pillow, a wooden saddle. 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 defends 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 only a small aperture for breathing; these are all the precautions he takes against the severest cold. Even in Siberia the Jakuts are known as “iron men.”
The horse to the Jakut is as valuable and as important as the camel to the Arab or the reindeer to the Lapp. It is not only his steed, which seems incapable of weariness,—his beast of draught, patient under heavy loads,—but its skin provides him with articles of dress; with its hair he makes his fishing-nets; boiled horse meat is his favourite food, and sour mare’s milk, or koumis, his principal beverage. By mixing this milk with rye flour, or the inner rind of the fir or larch, he makes a thick porridge, which he flavours with berries, or dried fish, or rancid fat.
Before commerce had been diverted into the valley of the Amur, thousands of pack-horses, under the guidance of Jakuts, annually crossed the Stanowoi hills on the way to Ochotsk; a journey of terrible difficulty, which might appal the stoutest nerves. But the Jakut endures the extremes of cold and hunger with a wonderful equanimity. He fears neither the stormy winds, the darkened heavens, the depth of the treacherous morass, nor the darkness and silence of the forest. Nothing appals him but the unseen presence of “Ljeschei,” the spirit of the mountain and the forest. The traveller frequently comes upon a fir-crowned hillock, and from the branches of one of the oldest firs sees suspended innumerable tufts of horse-hair. What does it mean? He needs not to inquire, for, lo! his Jakut driver, dismounting from his steed, hastens to pluck a few hairs from his horse’s mane, and then, with much reverence, attaches them to the nearest bough, in order to propitiate the terrible Ljeschei. Even Jakuts who have been baptized, and are nominally enrolled among the Christian population, are guilty of this silly bit of superstition; while it is suspected, on good grounds, that they still cherish their belief in Schamanism, and their ancient dread of evil spirits. When we remember, however, the absurd beliefs and vulgar errors still lingering in many parts of our own land, we are unable to pass a very severe verdict on the credulity of the Jakuts.
When on the road they beguile the tedium of the way by singing songs of the most doleful character, corresponding to the habitual melancholy which they seem to have inherited from their forefathers; a melancholy suggested, probably, by the gloom of the landscape, the chilling aspect of the sky, the inclemency of the climate, and the prolonged battle in which their lives are passed. Their songs, not the less, are songs worthy of a bold and intelligent people, and, like the poetry of the Norsemen, are replete with images borrowed from nature. They constantly describe in glowing language the lofty magnificence of the snow-crowned mountains, the starry beauty of the night, the roll and rush of the river, the wail of the wind as it streams through a forest of pines. The Jakut minstrels are mostly improvisatores; and, to secure the favour of the Ljeschei, they will extol the charms of the wilderness over which it rules, as if that wilderness were a portion of Elysium.
The Jakut merchants are remarkable for their enterprise. Their capital is Jakutsk, on the Lena, and thence they extend their operations in all directions. In the rigour of winter they will lead their caravans to Ochotsk, or Kjachta, or Ostrownoje.
Yet the country they traverse is at all times a desert. The mean temperature of the year is only +14°. In November the thermometer sinks to -40°, or 72° below freezing-point. The Yana, at Nishni Kolymsk, freezes early in September; and lower down, where the current is sluggish, loaded horses can cross its frozen surface as early as the middle of August: yet the ice does not melt before June. The sun remains, it is true, about fifty-two days above the horizon; but its light, shrouded by almost continual mists, is attended by but little heat,—and its orb, compressed by refraction into an elliptical form, may be examined by the naked eye without inconvenience.
As the climate, so the vegetation. Dwarfish willow-shrubs, stunted grass, moss, and a few berry-bearing plants compose the flora of the cheerless tundras. There is greater abundance and more variety in the neighbouring and better sheltered valleys of the Aniuj; the poplar, birch, thyme, absinth, and low creeping cedar enliven their slopes; but even in these places Nature is most niggardly of her gifts. Such is not the case, however, with the fauna of Arctic Siberia. The forests are tenanted by numbers of reindeer, elks, bears, foxes, sables, and gray squirrels; while in the low grounds stone foxes make their burrows. With the return of spring come immense flights of swans, geese, and ducks, which build their nests in the most sequestered corners. The sea-coast is frequented by eagles, owls, and gulls; the brushwood by the white ptarmigan; the brooks by hundreds of little snipes. Even the songs of the finch are not wanting in spring, nor is the thrush wholly silent in autumn.