Peter Kropotkin and John Thomas Bealby

“ An alpine country skirts the plateau all along its N.W. margin, and contains productive gold-mines in the spurs between the Vitim and the Lena. The latter stream drains the outer base of this alpine region. It is a wild land, traversed by several chains of mountains, all having a N.E. strike, and intersected by deep, narrow valleys, down which the mountain-streams tumble uncontrolled. The whole is clothed with dense forests, through which none but the Tunguses can find their way. ”

“ At Yakutsk the average temperature of the winter is −40.2°, and the soil is frozen to a depth of 600 ft. (Middendorff) . The Lena, both at Kirensk and at Yakutsk, is free from ice for only 161 days in the year, the Yana at Ust-Yansk for 105. At Yakutsk only 145 days and at Verkhoyansk only 73 have no snow; the interval between the latest frosts of one season and the earliest frosts of the next is barely 37 days.
The bulk of the inhabitants are Yakuts; there are some 20,000 Russians, many of them exiles, and a certain number of Tunguses, Tatars, Lamuts and Chukchis. ”

“ Fish is an important article of food, especially in the Kolyma region. In the N. hunting is important, the skins taken being principally those of squirrels, ermines, hares, foxes, Arctic foxes, and a few sables, beavers and bears. ”