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Here merchants brought their goods; hunters, their furs; light-fingered gentry, offscourings from everywhere, horses to sell, or smuggled whiskey, or plunder that had been picked up in ways untold. The great meeting place for Russian fur traders was on a plain east of the Lena River, not far from Yakutsk, a thousand miles in a crow line from the Pacific.
They are hardy and reliable laborers, and live on the most amicable terms with the Russians. Before the opening of the Amoor the carrying trade from Yakutsk to Ohotsk was in their hands. As many as forty thousand horses used to pass annually between the two points, nearly all of them owned and driven by Yakuts.
He therefore asked permission to accompany the ambassador Golowkin, who was going to China overland; and the necessary credentials obtained, he started alone for Siberia, making acquaintance with the Samoyèdes, the Tongouses, Bashkirs, Yakontes, Kirghizes, and other of the Finnic and Tartar hordes which frequent these vast steppes, finally arriving at Yakutsk, where he was soon joined by Golowkin.
The traveller who starts from the Okhotsk Sea with the intention of going across Asia by way of Yakutsk and Irkutsk must make up his mind to be independent of roads; at least for the first fifteen hundred miles.
The pole of cold, oscillating diversely with the force of the lateral pressure from Yakutsk to the Lena estuary, is the meteorological centre round which the atmosphere revolves. Here are to a large extent prepared the elements of the climate of West Europe. Travellers speak of the Siberian winters with mingled feelings of terror and rapture.
The thermometer at Yakutsk, where several thousands of them are settled, averages during the three winter months thirty-seven degrees below zero; but this intense cold does not seem to occasion them the slightest inconvenience.
They include eagles, hawks, jays, magpies, crows, grouse, owls, woodpeckers, and some others. The birds of passage generally arrive at the end of April or during May, and leave in September or October. It is a curious fact that they come later to Nicolayevsk than to the town of Yakutsk, nine degrees further north. This is due to differences of climate and the configuration of the country.
A simple analysis of his story, "Makar's Dream," will show his psychological genius to greater advantage than could any critical essay. In the very heart of the dense woods of the "taiga," Makar, a poor little peasant, who has become half savage by association with the Yakutsk people, dreams of a better future.
A few Orochons stood apart from the Russians, but not less observant of the boat and those on board. Outside the village were three or four conical yourts belonging to the aboriginals. It is said this people formerly lived in the province of Yakutsk, whence they emigrated to the Amoor in 1825. One of their chiefs has a hunting knife with the initials of the Empress Catherine.
The poignant appeal of Szymanski's stories lies in the fact that they are based on personal experiences. He was banished to Yakutsk in Siberia for six years when he was quite a young man and had barely finished his studies at the University of Warsaw, at a time when every profession of radicalism, however moderate, was punished severely by the Russian authorities.
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