The Jakuts are to a great extent a pastoral people, but as they trade in horses and cattle, and also carry on a brisk fur-trade with the Russians, they have attained a far higher level of civilization than is common among pastoral races. In summer they live in light conical tents (“urossy”), which are fixed upon poles, and covered with birch rind. These they pitch in the open plains and valleys, and then devote themselves to gathering supplies of hay against the coming winter. This is with them a very important labour, for their chief wealth is in their herds of cattle, and to find a sufficient provision for them in the bleak climate of the Lena basin, and on the borders of the Arctic World, is a task of great difficulty. Often, indeed, the supply fails before the return of spring, and the oxen must then be fed upon the young shoots and saplings of the birch and willow. When winter approaches, the Jakut removes from his tent into a warm, timber-built hut, or _jart_, which assumes the form of a truncated pyramid, and has an exterior covering of turf and clay. Its windows are made of thin sheets of ice; which, as soon as a thaw sets in, are replaced by fish-bladders or paper steeped in oil. The floor is of earth, very rarely boarded, and generally sunk two or three feet below the surface of the ground. The seats and sleeping-berths are arranged along the sides; the hearth, or _tscherwal_, occupies the centre, and its smoke finds an exit through an aperture in the roof. Clothes and weapons are suspended from the walls, and the general appearance of the interior is squalid and disorderly. Near the jart are stalls for the cows; but when the cold is very intense, they, like the Irishman’s pigs, find accommodation in-doors. As for the horses, they remain night and day in the open air, though the weather may be so severe that even mercury freezes; and they have no other food than the decayed autumn grass, which they find under the snow. The capacity of endurance which the Jakut horses exhibit is almost incredible. Like other quadrupeds in the Arctic regions, they change their hair in summer. Traversing, month after month, the dreary wilderness where the only vegetation is a scanty and half-rotten grass, they still retain their strength and energy; and notwithstanding the hard conditions of their lives, they do not age so quickly as our own more carefully-tended steeds. To aim at improving the Jakut horse would be, in the opinion of many travellers, to gild refined gold, and perfume “thrown on the violet.” He will continue a steady trot for hours, over roads of which no Englishman can form an idea, and stop to take his rest with no other food but the bark of the larch and willow, or a little hard grass, no covering protecting his foaming sides from the cold, and the temperature down at 40°.