With regard to the animal creation, the general law of polar uniformity was fully confirmed in Taimurland. The same lemmings were found which people the whole north of Asia and America, and as high as 75° N. lat. they found the traces of the snow-hare, which inhabits the complete circle of the Arctic regions of the globe. The Arctic fox, everywhere at home in the treeless wastes, is here also pursued by the northern glutton; and following the herds of the reindeer, the wolves, and the Samoïedes, roams up and down the tundra. The ptarmigan, which in Scandinavia and on Melville Island feeds on berries and buds, appears also as a summer visitor at the mouth of the Taimur in 75° 4´ N. lat., and the ivory gull of the northern European seas likewise builds its nest on the rocks of that distant shore. The more vigorous vegetation on the sheltered declivities of the Taimur provides food for a comparatively greater number of insects than is found on the coasts of Nova Zembla. Bees, hornets, and three different species of butterflies, buzzed or hovered round the flowers, and caterpillars could be gathered by dozens on the tundra, but their mortal enemies had pursued them even here; and ichneumon flies crept out of most of them. Two spiders, several flies, gnats, and tipulæ, a curculio, and half a dozen carabi completed Middendorff’s entomological list, to which, no doubt, further researches would have considerably added. Thus, at the northern extremity of Asia, as in every other part of the world, the naturalist finds the confirmation of the general law that, where the means of life are given, life is sure to come forth. CHAPTER XIX. THE JAKUTS. Their energetic Nationality.--Their Descent.--Their gloomy Character.--Summer and Winter Dwellings.--The Jakut Horse.-- Incredible Powers of Endurance of the Jakuts.--Their Sharpness of Vision.--Surprising local Memory.--Their manual Dexterity.-- Leather, Poniards, Carpets.--Jakut Gluttons.--Superstitious Fear of the Mountain-spirit Ljeschei.--Offerings of Horse-hair.-- Improvised Songs.--The River Jakut. The Jakuts are a remarkably energetic race, for though subject to the Muscovite yoke, they not only successfully maintain their language and manners, but even impose their own tongue and customs upon the Russians who have settled in their country. Thus in Jakutsk, or the “capital of the Jakuts,” as with not a little of national pride and self-complacency they style that dreary city, their language is much more frequently spoken than the Russian, for almost all the artisans are Jakuts, and even the rich fur-merchant has not seldom a Jakut wife, as no Russian now disdains an alliance with one of that nation.