230 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



ses exhibit a sad picture of disorder and filth. Near the yourt are stables for 

 the cows, but when the cold is very severe, these useful animals are received 

 into the family room. As for the horses, tliey remain night and day without 

 a shelter, at a temperature when mercury freezes, and are obliged to feed on 

 the withered autumnal grass which they find under the snow. These creatures, 

 whose powers of endurance are almost incredible, change their hair in summer 

 like the other quadrupeds of the Arctic regions. They keep their strength, 

 though travelling perhaps for months through the wilderness without any other 

 food than the parched, half-rotten gra^s met with on the way. They retain 

 their teeth to old age, and remain young much longer than our horses. " He 

 who thinks of improving the Jakut horse," says Von Middendorff, " aims at 

 something like perfection. Fancy the worst conceivable roads, and for nourish- 

 ment the bark of the larch and willow, with hard grass-stalks instead of oats ; 

 or merely travel on the post-road to Jakutsk, and see the horses that have 

 just run forty versts without stopping, and are covered with perspiration and 

 foam, eating their hay in the open air without the slightest covering, at a tem- 

 perature of —40°." 



But the Jakut himself is no less hardened against the cold than his faithful 

 horse. " On December 9," says Wrangell, " we bivouacked round a fire, at a 

 temperature of —28°, on an open pasture-ground, which afforded no shelter 

 against the northern blast. Her<e I had an excellent opportunity for admiring 

 the unpar.'ilkled powers of endurance of our Jakut attendants. On the long- 

 est w^inter journey they take neither tents nor extra covering along with them, 

 not even one of the larger fur-dresses. While travelling, the Jakut contents 

 himself with his usual dress ; in this he generally sleeps in the open air ; a 

 horse rug stretched out upon the snow is his bed, a wooden saddle his pillow. 

 With the same fur jacket, Avhich serves him by daytime as a dress, and which 

 he pulls off when he hes down for the night, he decks his back and shoulders, 

 while the front part of his body is turned towards the fire almost without any 

 covering. He then stops his nose and ears with small pieces of skin, and cov- 

 ers his face so as to leave but a small opening for breathing — these are all the 

 precautions he takes against the severest cold. Even in Siberia the Jakuts are 

 called ' men of iron.' Often have I seen them sleeping at a temperature of 

 —4° in the open air, near an extinguished bivouac fire, and with a thick ice- 

 rind covering their almost unprotected body." 



Most of the Jakuts have an incredible sharpness of vision. One of them 

 told Lieutenant Anjou, pointing to the planet Jupiter, that he had often seen° 

 yonder blue star devour a smaller one, and then after a time cast it out again.* 

 Their local memory is no less astonishing ; a pool of water, a large stone, a 

 solitary bush imprints itself deeply into their remembrance, and guides them 

 after a lapse of years through the boundless wilderness. In manual dexterity 

 they surpass all other Siberian nations, and some of their articles, such as their 

 poniards and their leather, might figure with credit in any European exhibi- 

 tion. Long before the Russian conquest they made use of the iron ore on the 



* Humboldt likewise mentions an artisan of Breslau whose sight was so sharp as to enable him to 

 point out the position of Jupiter's satellites. 



