heir intense sociability they dread isolation, desiring always to be
within reach of the sound of human voices. By the magic of words, an
orator can enslave whole villages for days, weeks and months, the
population crowding round him, neglecting all its usual occupations,
and listening to his long discourses with unwearied rapture.

Sirko Sierowszewski, who spent twelve years in the midst of these
people, studying them closely, affirms in his classic work on the
Yakuts (published in 1896 by the Geographical Society of St.
Petersburg) that their language belongs to a branch of the Turko-Tartar
group, and contains from ten to twelve thousand words. It holds, in
the Polar countries, a position similar to that held by the French
tongue in the rest of the world, and may be described as the French of
the Arctic regions. The Yakuts are one of the most curious races of
the earth, and one of the least known, in spite of the hundreds of
books and pamphlets already published about them. Their young men
frequently appear as students at the University of Tomsk, though they
are separated from this source of civilisation by more than three
thousand miles of almost impassable country. The journey takes from
fifteen months to two years, and they frequently stop _en route_ in
order to work in the gold mines, to make money to pay for their
studies. These are the future regenerators of the Yakut country.

About thirty years ago there arrived among these care-free children of
nature a Russian functionary, a sub-prefect, who took up his residence
at Guigiguinsk, on the shores of the Arctic Sea. He was a tremendous
talker, though it is impossible to say whether this was the result of
his desire to found a new religious sect, or whether the sect was the
result of his passion for talking. At any rate, he harangued the
populace indefatigably, and they gathered from all quarters to listen
to the orator of the Tsar, and were charmed with him.

In one of his outpourings he declared that he was none other than
Nicholas, the principal god of the whole country, and his listeners,
who had never before beheld any but "little gods," were filled with
enthusiasm at the honour thus bestowed upon their particular district.
The sub-prefect ended by believing his own statements, and accepted in
all good faith the homage that was paid to him, in spite of
Christianity. A writer named Dioneo, in a book dealing with the
extreme north-east of Siberia, te