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One of the many yurtas had taken my fancy, for it was charmingly situated close to the woods in a corner of the raised banks of a long stretch of lake. It belonged to an aged Yakut, well deserving of the honourable designation 'ohonior', given to all the Yakut elders. The old man was living there with his equally aged wife and a young fellow, a distant relation of his.
When we had advanced ten versts on the ice, the old Cossack showed me the place where sixty years ago a few yurtas had stood which were called in geographical terms "Zaszyversk, town out of governmental bounds". "Stop," I cried, "let the young gentleman get out; here we are! This is the town of Zaszyversk...."
We traveled over a mile before making out distinctly the lines of a group of yurtas. But nobody came out to meet us and, what astonished us more, we were not surrounded by the angry black Mongolian dogs with fiery eyes. Still, from the distance we had seen the fire and so there must be someone there. We dismounted from our horses and approached on foot.
In the Mongol yurtas and at the fires of Buriat, Mongol, Djungar, Kirkhiz, Kalmuck and Tibetan shepherds still speak the legend born of this son of crusaders and privateers: "From the north a white warrior came and called on the Mongols to break their chains of slavery, which fell upon our freed soil.
This was my first summer in Yakutsk, and I responded to it with my whole being. Daily I went for walks to look at the beauty of the surrounding world, daily I took my sun bath. My walks usually led me to one of the Yakut yurtas; they are at long distances from each other, lonely and scattered over the whole country. You find them in whatever direction you may choose.
It was dark when our investigators returned and reported to us that about thirty Partisans had a camp some ten kilometers from us, occupying the yurtas of the Soyots. At the pass were two outposts, one of two soldiers and the other of three. From the outposts to the camp was a little over a mile. Our trail lay between the two outposts.
Over the buildings around floated the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian national flags with a single one of the Stars and Stripes above a small shop in the market; while over the nearby tents and yurtas streamed the ribbons, the squares, the circles and triangles of the princes and private persons afflicted or dying from smallpox and leprosy.
In the yurtas were only the host with two of his sons. I showed him my document and he exclaimed: "Noyon has the right of 'urga. Horses will be brought very soon." He jumped into his saddle, took two of my Mongols with him, providing them and himself with long thin poles, four or five metres in length, and fitted at the end with a loop of rope, and galloped away. My cart moved behind them.
Cold milk and kumis can be had in all these yurtas. It is true both have the nasty smell which the stranger in this part of the world calls 'Yakut odour'; but during the long winter when milk other than from Yakut yurtas was hard to procure, I had got used to this specific smell, so that now it only produced a mild nausea.
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