2di THE POLAK WOKLU. 



countries wliere reititlet'i- or (U)gs can be attaclied to sledges. Without the 

 Jakut and his liorse, the Russian wouhl never have been able to penetrate to 

 the Sea of Ochotsk, and from tlience to the Aleutian chain ; but for him, they 

 never would have settled on tlie Kolyma, nor have opened a commercial intci- 

 course witli the Tcliuktchi and the western Esquimaux. 



Before tlie possession of the Anioor had opened a new road to commerce, 

 thousands of pack-horses used amuuiUy to cross the Stanowoi hills on the way 

 to Ochotsk ; and when we consider the dreadful hardships of the journey, we 

 can not wonder that the road was more thickly strewn with the skeletons of 

 fallen horses than the caravan routes through the desert with the bones of fam- 

 ished camels. But the Jakut fears neitlier the icy cold of the bivouac nor the 

 pangs of hunger, which, in S])ite of his wolfish voracity, he is able to suppoi-t 

 with stoical fortitude. He feai-s neither tlie storm on the naked hill, nor the 

 gloom of the forest, nor the depth of the morass ; and, bidding defiance to 

 every thing else, fears only the invisible power of "Ljeschei," the spirit of the 

 mountain and the wood. The traveller wonders when he sees on an eminence 

 crowned with iirs an old tree from whose branches hang bundles of horse-hair. 

 The Jakut who leads the caravan soon explains the mystery. He dismounts, 

 and })lucking a few hairs from the mane of his horse, attaches them with a great 

 show of respect to a branch, as an offering to propitiate the favor of Ljescliei 

 on the journey. Even those Jakuts wlio pass for Christians still pay this mark 

 of respect to the dethi-oned divinity of their fathers ; and there can be no 

 doubt that they still retain the old belief in Scharaanism, and an abject fear of 

 all sorts of evil spirits. 



While travelling they sing almost perpetually melancholy tunes, correspond- 

 in<r witli the habitual cloom of their national character. The text has more 

 variety and poetry, and generally celebrates the beauties of nature, the stately 

 growth of the pine, the murmuring of the brook, or the grandeur of the mount- 

 ain. The singers are mostly improvisatores, and to conciliate the favor of Lje- 

 schei, they praise the desert through which they pass as if it were a paradise. 



Like the impoverished Samoiede or Lapp, the indigent Jakut, who possess- 

 es neither cattle nor horses, settles near some stream. His only domestic ani- 

 mal is his dog, who carries the fish on a light sledge from the river-bank to his 

 hut, or follows him into the woods on his hunting expeditions. With the skins 

 of fur-bearing animals he pays h'lsjassrik, and is glad if the surplus allows hiiu 

 to indulge from time to time in the luxury of a pipe of Circassian tobacco. 



