233 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



countries where reindeer or dogs can be attached to sledges. "Without the 

 Jakut and his horse, the Russian would never have been able to penetrate to 

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

 never would have settled on the Kolyma, nor have opened a commercial inter- 

 course with the Tchuktchi and the western Esquimaux. 



Before the possession of the Amoor had opened a new road to commerce^ 

 thousands of pack-horses used annually 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 neither the icy cold of the bivouac nor the 

 pangs of hunger, which, in spite of his wolfish voracity, he is able to support 

 with stoical fortitude. He fears neither the 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 firs an old tree from whose branches hang bunches of horse-hair. 

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

 and plucking 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 Ljeschei 

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

 of respect to the dethroned divinity of their fathers ; and there can be no 

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

 all sorts of evil spirits. 



While travelling they sing almost jDcrpetually melancholy tunes, correspond- 

 ing with the habitual gloom 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 his jassak, and is glad if the surplus allows him 

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



