Sea.  When I left the settlement of Okhotsk, in the fall of 1867, there were more than seventy thousand squirrelskins there in the hands of one Russian merchant, and this was only a small part of the whole number caught by the Tunguses during that summer.  The Lamutkis, who are first cousins to the Tunguses, are fewer in number, but live in precisely the same way.  I never met more than three or four bands during two years of almost constant travel in all parts of north-eastern Siberia.

The third great class of natives is the Turkish.  It comprises only the Yakuts (yah-koots’) who are settled chiefly along the Lena River from its head-waters to the Arctic Ocean.  Their origin is unknown, but their language is said to resemble the Turkish or modern Osmanli so closely that a Constantinopolitan of the lower class could converse fairly well with a Yakut from the Lena.  I regret that I was not enough interested in comparative philology while in Siberia to compile a vocabulary and grammar of the Yakut language.  I had excellent opportunities for doing so, but was not aware at that time of its close resemblance to the Turkish, and looked upon it only as an unintelligible jargon which proved nothing but the active participation of the Yakuts in the construction of the Tower of Babel.  The bulk of this tribe is settled immediately around the Asiatic pole of cold, and they can unquestionably endure a lower temperature with less suffering than any other natives in Siberia.  They are called by the Russian explorer Wrangell, “iron men,” and well do they deserve the appellation.  The thermometer at Yakutsk, where several thousands of them are settled, averages during the three winter months thirty-seven degrees below zero; but this intense cold does not seem to occasion them the slightest inconvenience.  I have seen them in a temperature of -40 deg., clad only in a shirt and one sheepskin coat, standing quietly in the street, talking and laughing as if it were a pleasant summer’s day and they were enjoying the balmy air!  They are the most thrifty, industrious natives in all northern Asia.  It is a proverbial saying in Siberia, that if you take a Yakut, strip him naked, and set him down in the middle of a great desolate steppe, and then return to that spot at the expiration of a year, you will find him living in a large, comfortable house, surrounded by barns and haystacks, owning herds of horses and cattle, and enjoying himself like a patriarch.  They have all been more or less civilised by Russian intercourse, and have adopted Russian manners and the religion of the Greek Church.  Those settled along the Lena cultivate rye and hay, keep herds of Siberian horses and cattle, and live principally upon coarse black-bread, milk, butter, and horse-flesh.  They are notorious gluttons.  All are very skilful in the use of the “topor” or short Russian axe, and with that instrument alone will go into a primeval forest, cut down trees, hew out timber and planks, and put up a comfortable house, complete even to panelled doors and window-sashes.  They are the only natives in all north-eastern Siberia who can do and are willing to do hard continuous work.