330 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



included for the period from November to February, and in this 

 temperature, at which the quicksilver freezes, the Yakut children 

 may be seen gambolling naked in the snow. In midwinter 

 Mr R. Kennan met some of these "men of iron," as Wrangel 

 calls them, airily arrayed in nothing but a shirt and a sheepskin, 

 lounging about as if in the enjoyment of the balmy zephyrs of 

 some genial sub-tropical zone. 



Although nearly all are Orthodox Christians, or at least bap- 

 tized as such, they are mere Shamanists at heart, still conjuring 

 the powers of nature, but offering no worship to a supreme deity, 

 of whom they have a vague notion, though he is too far off to 

 hear, or too good to need their supplications. The world of 

 good and evil spirits, however, has been enriched by accessions 

 from the Russian calendar and pandemonium. Thanks to their 

 commercial spirit, the Yakut language, a very pure Turki idiom, is 

 even more widespread than the race, having become a general 

 medium of intercourse for Tungus, Russian, Mongol and other 

 traders throughout East Siberia, from Irkutsk to the Sea of 

 Okhotsk, and from the Chinese frontier to the Arctic Ocean 1 . 



To some extent W. RadlofT is right in describing the great 

 Kirghiz Turki family as "of all Turks most nearly 



The Kirghiz. 



allied to the Mongols in their physical characters, 

 and by their family names such as Kyptshak [Kipchak], Argyn, 

 Naiman, giving evidence of Mongolian descent, or at least of 

 intermixture with Mongols 2 ." But we have already been warned 

 against the danger of attaching too much importance to these tribal 

 designations, many of which seem, after acquiring renown on the 

 battle-field, to have passed readily from one ethnic group to another. 

 There are certain Hindu Kush and Afghan tribes who think 

 themselves Greeks or Arabs, because of the supposed descent of 

 their chiefs from Alexander the Great or the Prophet's family, and 

 genealogical trees spring up like the conjurer's mango plant in 

 support of such illustrious lineage. The Chagatai ( Jagatai) tribes, 

 of Turki stock and speech, take their name from a full-blood 

 Mongol, Chagatai, second son of Jenghiz-Khan, to whom fell 

 Eastern Turkestan in the partition of the empire. 



1 A. Erman, Reise inn die Erde, 1835, Vol. in. p. 51. 

 - Quoted by Peschel, Races of Man, p. 383. 



