At the beginning of the cold season the Jackut exchanges his summer tent for his warm winter residence, or yourt, a hut built of beams or logs, in the form of a truncated pyramid, and thickly covered with turf and clay. Plates of ice serve as windows, and are replaced by fish-bladders or paper steeped in oil, as soon as the thaw begins. The earthen floor, for it is but rarely boarded, is generally sunk two or three feet below the surface of the ground. The seats and sleeping berths are ranged along the sides, and the centre is occupied by the _tschuwal_, or hearth, the smoke of which finds its exit through an aperture in the roof. Clothes and arms are suspended from the walls, and the whole premises exhibit a sad picture of disorder and filth. Near the yourt are stables for the cows, but when the cold is very severe, these useful animals are received into the family room. As for the horses, they remain night and day without a shelter, at a temperature when mercury freezes, and are obliged to feed on the withered autumnal grass which they find under the snow. These creatures, whose powers of endurance are almost incredible, change their hair in summer like the other quadrupeds of the Arctic regions. They keep their strength, though travelling perhaps for months through the wilderness without any other food than the parched, half-rotten grass met with on the way. They retain their teeth to old age, and remain young much longer than our horses. “He who thinks of improving the Jakut horse,” says Von Middendorff, “aims at something like perfection. Fancy the worst conceivable roads, and for nourishment the bark of the larch and willow, with hard grass-stalks instead of oats; or merely travel on the post-road to Jakutsk, and see the horses that have just run forty versts without stopping, and are covered with perspiration and foam, eating their hay in the open air without the slightest covering, at a temperature of -40°.”