From the Yablonoi mountains to Verkne Udinsk there are very few houses between the villages that form the posting stations.  The principal inhabitants are Bouriats, a people of Mongol descent who were conquered by Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century and made a respectable fight against the Russians in the seventeenth.  Since their subjugation they have led a peaceful life and appear to have forgotten all warlike propensities.  Their features are essentially Mongolian, and their manners and customs no less so.

Some of them live in houses after the Russian manner, but the yourt is the favorite habitation.  The Bouriats cling to the manners of their race, and even when settled in villages are unwilling to live in houses.  At the first of their villages after we passed the mountains I took opportunity to visit a yourt.  It was a tent with a light frame of trellis work covered with thick felt, and I estimated its diameter at fifteen or eighteen feet.  In the center the frame work has no covering, in order to give the smoke free passage.  A fire, sometimes of wood and sometimes of dried cow-dung, burns in the middle of the yourt during the day and is covered up at night.  I think the tent was not more than five and a half feet high.  There was no place inside where I could stand erect.  The door is of several thicknesses of stitched and quilted felt, and hangs like a curtain over the entrance.

[Illustration:  BOURIAT YOURTS.]

The eyes of the Bouriats were nearly always red, a circumstance explainable by the smoke that fills their habitations and in which they appear to enjoy themselves.  In sleeping they spread mats and skins on the ground and pack very closely.  Two or three times at the stations in the middle of the night I approached their dwellings and listened to the nasal chorus within.  Tho people are early risers, if I may judge by the hours when I used to find them out of floors.

As to furniture, they have mats and skins to sit upon by day and convert into beds at night.  There are few or no tables, and little crockery or other household comforts.  They have pots for boiling meat and heating water, and a few jugs, bottles, and basins for holding milk and other liquids.  A wooden box contains the valuable clothing of the family, and there are two or three bags for miscellaneous use.  In the first yourt I entered I found an altar that was doubtless hollow and utilized as a place of storage.  A few small cups containing grain, oil, and other offerings were placed on this altar, and I was careful not to disturb them.

Their religion is Bhudistic, and they have their lamas, who possess a certain amount of sanctity from the Grand Lama of Thibet.  The lamas are numerous and their sacred character does not relieve or deprive them of terrestrial labor and trouble.  Many of the lamas engage in the same pursuits as their followers, and are only relieved from toil to exercise the duties of their positions.  They perform the functions of priest, physician, detective officer, and judge, and are supposed to have control over souls and bodies, to direct the one and heal the other.  Man, woman, child, or animal falling sick the lama is summoned.  Thanks to the fears and superstitions of native thieves he can generally find and restore stolen articles, and has the power to inflict punishment.