As the horse, so the master. The Jakut is the very personification of hardiness. He seems able to endure anything, and to attempt everything. On the longest winter-journey he carries neither tents nor extra coverings with him, not even one of the large fur-dresses, such as the Siberians generally use. He contents himself, in fact, with his usual dress; in this he generally sleeps in the open air: his bed, a horse-rug stretched upon the snow; his pillow, a wooden saddle. With the same fur jacket which serves him by daytime as a dress, and which he pulls off when he lies down for the night, he defends 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 covers his face so as to leave only a small aperture for breathing; these are all the precautions he takes against the severest cold. Even in Siberia the Jakuts are known as “iron men.” The horse to the Jakut is as valuable and as important as the camel to the Arab or the reindeer to the Lapp. It is not only his steed, which seems incapable of weariness,--his beast of draught, patient under heavy loads,--but its skin provides him with articles of dress; with its hair he makes his fishing-nets; boiled horse meat is his favourite food, and sour mare’s milk, or _koumis_, his principal beverage. By mixing this milk with rye flour, or the inner rind of the fir or larch, he makes a thick porridge, which he flavours with berries, or dried fish, or rancid fat.