Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/942

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The steppes of the upper Yenisei have been inhabited from a very remote antiquity, and numberless kurgans, or burial mounds, graves, rock inscriptions and smelting furnaces of the successive inhabitants are scattered all over the prairies of Abakan and Minusinsk. The present population exhibit traces of all their predecessors. Numerous survivals of Turkish and Samoyedic tribes are found in the steppes and in the Sayans; but some of them are greatly reduced in numbers. The estimated population in 1906 was 657,900. It is almost entirely Russian, the rest (about 10%) consisting of Samoyedes, Tatars, Tunguses, Yakuts, Mongols and Ostyaks. The government is divided into five districts, the chief (owns of which are Krasnoyarsk, Achinsk, Kansk, Minusinsk and Yeniseisk.

YENISEISK, a town of Asiatic Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the right bank of the Yenisei, 170 m. N.N.W. of Krasnoyarsk, with which it has regular communication by steamer. Pop. 12,000. It is the centre of a gold-mining region, and has a public library and a natural history and archaeological museum. The town was founded in 1618.

YEOLA, a town of British India, in the Nasik district of Bombay, on the chord line of the Great Indian Peninsula railway, 18 m. from Manmad junction. Pop. (1901) 16,559. There are important manufactures of cotton and silk cloth and thread, and also of gold and silver wire. At the time of its foundation Yeola was under the emperor of Delhi; it subsequently passed into the hands of the rajas of Satara and then the Peshwas. Finally it was given in grant to Vithal, the ancestor of the present chief of Vinchur.

YEOMAN, a term of which the various meanings fall into two main divisions, first that of a class of holders of land, and secondly that of a retainer, guard, attendant or subordinate officer or official. The word appears in M.E. as ȝeman, ȝoman and yeman; it does not appear in O.E. Various explanations of the first part have been suggested, such as jung-mann, young man, and yeme-man, attendant, from yeme, care, but it is generally accepted that the first part is the same word as the Ger. Gau, district, province, and probably occurs in O.E. as géa in Súðri-géa, Surrey, i.e. southern district, and other place-names. Thus in O. Frisian is found gāman, a villager; Bavarian, gäumann, peasant. "Yeoman" thus meant a countryman, a man of the district, and it is this sense which has survived in the special use of the word for a class of landholders, treated below. For the transition in meaning to a guard of the sovereign's body and to officials of a royal household see. In the British royal household there are, besides the Yeomen of the Guard, a yeoman of the wine and beer cellar, a yeoman of the silver pantry and yeoman state porters. The term also occurs in the title of the first assistant to the Usher of the Black Rod, the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod. In the British navy there are petty officers in charge of the signalling styled "Yeomen of Signals." For the history and present organization of the "yeomanry cavalry" see and  (§ Army).

The extent of the class covered by the word "yeoman" in England has never been very exactly defined. Not only has the meaning of the word varied from century to century, but men writing about it at the same time have given to it different interpretations. One of the earliest pictures of a yeoman is that given by Chaucer in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Here, represented as a forester, he follows the esquire as a retainer or dependant. The yeomen of the ages succeeding Chaucer are, however, practically all occupied in cultivating the