retched
cabins give way gradually to houses, some of which are even elegantly
arranged in the interior. It is a great commercial center: from the
Anubra to Behring's Straits, from the banks of the Frozen Sea to Mount
Aldana, from Okhotsk and even Kamschatka, goods are brought hither,
consisting chiefly of furs, seals' teeth and mammoths' tusks, which
afford excellent ivory, all of which are sold in the summer to
itinerant traders, who give in return powerfully-flavored tobacco,
corn and flour, tea, sugar, strong drinks, Chinese silks and cottons,
cloth, iron and copper utensils, and glass.

The inhabitants of the town are chiefly traders, who buy of the
Yakouta hunters their furs at a cheap rate, and then sell them in
a mysterious kind of fashion to the agents who come from Russia in
search of them. During the annual fair they stow up their goods in
private rooms; and here the Irkoutsk men must come and find them.
These traders are the Russian inhabitants, the native Yakoutas being
the only artisans. In this distant colony of the human race, the
new-born child of a Russian is given to a Yakouta woman to nurse, and
when old enough, learns to read and write, after which he is brought
up to the fur trade, and his education is finished.

Ivan Ivanovitch was a young man born and bred at Yakoutsk. His parents
had given him the usual amount of tuition, and then allowed him for
a time to follow the bent of his inclination. Ivan took to the chase.
Passionately fond of this amusement, he had at an early age started
with the Yakouta trappers, and become learned in the search for
sables, ermines, and lynxes; could pursue the reindeer and elk on
skates; and had even gone to the north in quest of seals. He thus at
the age of twenty, knew the whole active part of his trade, and was
aware of all the good hunting-grounds on which the Siberians founded
their prosperity. But when he was called on to follow the more quiet
and sedentary part of his occupation, he was not one-half so quick.
His rough and rude life made town existence distasteful to him, and he
evinced all that superb contempt for shop-keeping which characterizes
the nomadic man, whether Red Indian, Arab, Tartar, or Siberian.

But Ivan was told he must make his way in the world. His parents who
died before he attained to manhood, left him a small fortune in rubles
and furs, which, if he chose to be industrious and persevering, might
pave the way to the highest position in