The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1884-11-06
IN A DEER.SLED.
A Journey Among the Yakuts Of Northern
Siberia

4 Journey Among the Yakuts Of Northern
Siberia.
New York Telegram
Ihad thousand miles to 60 before I
should reach the Arctic ocean. found
some difficulty in first examining my.
self into my deer sled, and in few
hours aftefward quite rs great in get
ting out oft. The deer sled is long,
narrow affair, placed on high, wooden
runners; it is made extremely light, of
framework of slender birch, and is
covered with hood in order to protect
the head and face of the occupant from
the biting blasts. It is, in fact, in ap-
pearance a lengthened-out cradle, and
7 think about as comfortable.
At night one sleeps in it very
comfortable. I remember the first
night we were in the forest, the moon
shone brightly, the road was good, and
Yakut horses are trained to follow one
another faithfully, and only the leading
driver has any serious work to do.
When l was awake, however, found
the journey strangely weird and inter-
esting. You see before you nothing but
a mass of trees and slender underwood
no opening in which you can imagine
that road exists. But the leader en-
tiers the gloom of the forest fearlessly;
he darts on first to the right and then
b. ofk hot kxyy be nf
scarcely more than foot wider apart
than is needed through which your sled
is to pass. Now and then you lose
sight of the sled in advance of you, but
your horse knows the road, if you do
not attempt to drive, and he fol-
lows. Strange forms then the sleds
take on in the whitened gloom.
Yakuts do not put sleigh bells on the
harness. and you pass on so silently,
and the fitting things in front Of you,
of which you catch glimpses occasion
ally, seem to form part of some strange,
weired and ghostly procession. Soyou
pass ON for hours through the forest
Then white bleak space opens in front
of you, over which you pass in the
moonlight. It is the frozen surface of
a lake, of which there are scores among
the forests. Suddenly, when you have
passed the crest of hill you look
down toward the valley that seems
a mile away. You imagine that rockets
are being fred into the air by some I'M
known friends. They seem to be shot
up one after the other with great regu-
larity, and you can imagine for the mo-
ment that company of Cossacks has
been sent in advance to point out your
resting or camping place. But this is
an illusion. The valley is not a hun
dred yards away, and the rockets are
notl ing more than the sparks from the
blazing hearth of Yakut yourte.
Outside the Yakut yourte looks
very Insignificant affair. It is very low
covered with a layer of mud, and in
winter of snow, and has slabs of ice
propped up from the outside for win
dows, and doorway only just large
enough for cow to squeeze through,
and much too low for a man. Enter
the hut and you feel the grateful warmth
of the blazings piled upon the raised
hearth, and feel at once we'll disposed
towards the Inhabitants whoever they
may be. Once inside and you see that
the yourte is built Of stems of large
trees, the sides sloping upwards to-
ward the roof, which is also made of
large stems laid side by side and sup
ported by pillars rising from the floor.
In the centre of the yourte is the huge
raised hearth, slender stems of
trees plastered with mud forming
the smoke conductor, or chimney.
The logs are thrown in an upright po-
sition, so that they burn quickly and
throw out comfortable warmth around
the room, which may be from fifteen to
twenty yards square. Close beneath
the sloping sides are built rude benches,
divided off into compartments, each
about six feet long. There are the
sleeping hunks, privacy being only pos
IDLE when you have shawl or rug to
hang before your division. On these
benches you all sleep, Yakuts and
travellers, the yemschicks taking the
floor, and you sleep comfortably enough
in the blaze and warmth of the fire.
There is an inner apartment of the
yourte, kind of annex or dependence.
This is not given up to the family, or
even to the ladies of the house, but is
the unrestricted domain of the cows,
which. however, have to pass through
the living department to get to their
own.
Then there are the bellies of the family.
These are nothing if not ugly. In one
yourte there were three Yakut damsels,
their ages ranging from IL to 20. They
possessed but a single pipe, which they
passed around from one to the other.
If their brothers, the yemschiks. are
just going out on journey, they allow
each to take few energetic whiffs be-
fore their departure, and then go at
work themselves again. chatting and
looking after the boiling of the sour
milk at the same time. The pipe is
kept going almost necessarily from
morning till night, The girls are not,
as said before, handsome. Their faces
have too much cheek bone, their noses
are too fat, their eyes too straight slit,
and their habits in general too peculiar
for appreciation. Such Yakut
maiden is not long fancy free.
She is betrothod by her parents at
very early age, say 6 or Z, when all the
contracts for her future life are settled
and sealed. Ten or a dozen years later
the betrothed pair pilgrimage together
to the nearest Greek church, which
may be fifty or 100 miles away, and are
married. In the Yakut yourtes there
are also curious kind Of cradle that
attracted my attention, filed with hay,
cotton, wool and little baby. it was
a long little box, made of wood, mar
row down toward the place where the
feet should come, and provided with
various openings whose utility I could
not grasp until I learned that when
once young Yakut was properly fixed
in his place he is kept there for q week
or two, or perhaps longer.
All these Yakuts are Christians,
though I should not like to assert that
they understood very we'll the myster-
les of faith to which they were intro
duced in such summary fashion.
noticed when we started on our Jour-
neys that the mounted yemschik in front
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