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It covers a greater extent of ground probably than both of the other classes together, its representatives being found as far west as the Yenesei, and as far east as Anadyrsk, in 169° E. long. The only branches of this class that I have ever seen are the Lamutkis and the Tunguses.
They did not differ in any essential particular from the Wandering Koraks, whose customs, religion, and mode of life I have already described. The Lamutkis, however, were an entirely different race, and resembled the Chukchis only in their nomadic habits.
It is certain, however, that no one of the four great wandering tribes of north-eastern Siberia, Koraks, Chukchis, Tunguses, and Lamutkis, uses in any way the reindeer's milk. By two o'clock in the afternoon it began to grow dark, but we estimated that we had accomplished at least half of our day's journey, and halted for a few moments to allow our deer to eat.
When I left the settlement of Okhotsk, in the fall of 1867, there were more than seventy thousand squirrelskins there in the hands of one Russian merchant, and this was only a small part of the whole number caught by the Tunguses during that summer. The Lamutkis, who are first cousins to the Tunguses, are fewer in number, but live in precisely the same way.
I do not think that this class numbers all together more than six or eight thousand souls, although the estimates of the Russians are much larger. The second class comprises all the natives in eastern Siberia who are evidently and unmistakably of Mongolian origin, including the Tunguses, the Lamutkis, the Manchus, and the Gilyaks of the Amur River.
Few of the Tunguses or Lamutkis own many deer. Two or three hundred are considered to be a large herd, and a man who owns more than that is regarded as a sort of millionaire. Such herds as are found among the Koraks in northern Kamchatka, numbering from five to ten thousand, are never to be seen west of Gizhiga.
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