JAKUTS.
The Jakuts are the most energetic of these races, having reached a higher civilization than the others in the same latitude, with the exception of Iceland, Finland, and Norway. They are a pastoral people, hospitable, possess considerable mechanical skill, and are so shrewd and cunning that no Russian can compete with them.
“Even in Siberia,” Wrangell says, “they are called ‘men of iron.’ Often have I seen them sleeping at a temperature of 4° in the open air, and with a thick ice rind covering their almost unprotected bodies.”
Though reserved and unsocial, they are kind to strangers that need assistance. They are the universal carriers to the east of the Lena. Bidding defiance to the cold and the storm, fearing neither the gloom of the forest nor the dangers of the icy stream, yet they are not emancipated from the old belief in Schamanism—the dread of evil spirits. They number about 200,000, and form the principal part of the population of the vast and dreary province of Jakutsk.
THE TUNGUSI.
This race having spread over East Siberia, driving before them the Jakuts, Jukahiri, Tchuktchi, and other aboriginal tribes, were conquered by the Russians, and are now as ignorant and uncivilized as they were two hundred and fifty years ago. Dr. Hartwig, deriving his information from Wrangell, the Arctic explorer, thus sketches the traits of this people:—
“According to their occupations, and the various domestic animals employed by them, they are distinguished by the names of Reindeer, Horse, Dog, Forest, and River Tungusi; but, although they are found from the basins of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Tunguska, to the western shore of the sea of Ochotsk, and from the Chinese frontiers and the Baikal to the Polar Ocean, their whole number does not amount to more than 30,000, and diminishes from year to year, in consequence of the ravages of the small-pox and other epidemic disorders transmitted to them by the Russians. Only a few rear horses and cattle, the reindeer being generally their domestic animal; and the impoverished Tunguse, who has been deprived of his herd by some contagious disorder, or the ravages of the wolves, lives as a fisherman on the borders of a river, assisted by his dog, or retires into the forests as a promyschlenik, or hunter.”