VOYAGE DOWN THE LENA. 



101 



time, and the reapers were in the fields ; but when he entered 

 Yakutsk the snow was six inches deep, and the boys were 

 whipping their tops on the ice. He debarked from his batteau 

 two miles above the town, and there mounted a sledge, 

 drawn by an ox, which had a Yakute on his back, and was 

 guided by a cord passing through the cartilage of his nose. 



YAKUTSK IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



At Yakutsk the Lena makes a bend and runs due north, 

 receiving on its right, 100 miles below Yakutsk, one of its 

 largest tributaries, the Aldan, which rises in the Stanovoi 

 range, bordering on the Sea of Okhotsk. Yakutsk is only 

 270 feet above the sea, and the current, henceforth, is slug- 

 gish. About fifty miles further the Lena receives its largest 

 tributary from the left, the Vitui, and then proceeds majesti- 

 cally through a flat country, with an enormous body of 

 water, to the Arctic Ocean, into which it enters among a 

 delta of barren islands formed of the debris brought down by 

 the river. In times of flood, uprooted trees and driftwood 



