Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/771

Rh Y A K Y A K 725 progress, one noteworthy feature being the increase in their size, and another their enormous prime cost. More than thirty of those recently built exceed 500 tons, while double that number range from 300 to 500 tons ; two or three even exceed 1000 tons each. Admiralty warrants are granted to clubs and their members to fly the white, blue, or red ensign with device on it, such yachts being registered according to the provisions of the Merchant Ship ping Acts. The white man-of-war or St George s ensign, used by British war-ships, is flown by the Royal Yacht Squadron alone of yacht clubs. The ordinary red ensign of the merchant navy may be flown by any English vessel without permission of Government, as it is the national flag. Yachts with Admiralty warrants are en titled to certain privileges, such as exemption from excise and some other dues ; they may enter Government harbours without paying dues, and may make fast and lie to Government buoys when these are not required by any of H. M. ships ; they need not have their names painted on their sterns, thoiigh it is better that they should ; and their masters need not hold Board of Trade certificates. Literature. Vanderdecken, Yachts and Yachting (1802) ; H. C. Folkard, The Sailing Boat (1870); Stonehenge, British Rural Sports (1870); Dixon Kemp, Yacht Architecture (1885), Yacht Designing (1876), and Yacht and Boat Sailing (1878-80); Yacht-Racing Calendar (annual); Lloyd s Yacht Register (annual) ; and Hunt s Yacht List (annual). (E. D. B.) YAK. This animal is the Bos grunniens of Linnaeus and all subsequent zoologists, so called on account of the pig-like grunting sounds it makes. It is structurally more closely allied to the common ox than to the bison, with which group of the jBovidx it has been sometimes errone ously associated. It is only found in the lofty plateau of Asia between the Altai Mountains and the Himalayas, and occurs both wild and as the ordinary domestic animal of the inhabitants of that region, supplying milk, food, and raiment, as well as being used as a beast of burden. The wild yaks inhabit the most inaccessible parts of the moun tains, ranging up to an elevation of 20,000 feet, higher it is said, than any other animal, delighting in extreme cold, and finding their sustenance in the coarse, wiry grass which is almost the only vegetable production of those desolate regions. They cannot live to the south of the Himalayas beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the snow. Their size is that of a small ox. The horns are long, nearly cylindrical, smooth, and pointed at the ends, and with a peculiar and characteristic curve, being directed at first outwards, then upwards, forwards, and inwards, and finally a little backwards. Some of the domestic yaks are hornless. The most remarkable external character is the excessive growth and peculiar distribution of the hairy covering. The upper parts of the body and sides are clothed with a thick, soft, woolly hair, more fully de veloped along the middle of the back, especially on the shoulders, where it forms a great bunch ; on the sides it is comparatively short. From the upper parts of the limbs and the whole of the lower surface of the body a thick growth of long, straight pendent hair descends, in old animals sweeping the ground and almost concealing the somewhat short legs. The tail is profusely covered with a thick mass of such hairs. The calves are at first covered only with a soft, shortish woolly hair, of nearly uniform length all over. Domestic yaks vary considerably in size and appearance according to their treatment and the purpose for which they are bred. The finest are those used for carrying the native chiefs. Those employed for ploughing are very inferior -looking animals. They vary also in colour. The wild animals are nearly uniformly black ; the domestic yaks are often quite white. It is not uncommon to see the long hair on the ridge of the back, that on the tail, and the long flowing hair of the under parts white, whilst all the rest of the animal is black. The tails of the domestic yaks are used as orna mental standards by the Tartars, and are largely imported into India as chowries or fly-flaps. YAKUTSK, a province of Eastern Siberia, which includes nearly the whole of the basin of the Lena, and covers an area of 1,517,127 square miles (nearly one- third of Siberia and almost one-fifth of the entire Russian empire). It has the Arctic Ocean on the N., Yeniseisk on the W., Irkutsk, Transbaikalia, and Amur on the S., and is separated from the Pacific (Sea of Okhotsk) only by the narrow Maritime Province (see vol. xxii. pi. I.). The Vitim plateau, from 2500 to 3500 feet in altitude, Physical and bordered on the south-east by the Stanovoi Mountains, features, occupies the south-eastern portion of the province. Its moist, elevated valleys, intersected by ranges of flat, dome- shaped hills, which rise nearly 1000 feet above the plateau, are unsuited for agriculture, and form an immense desert of forest and marsh, visited only by Tungus hunters, save in the south-west, where a few settlements of gold-miners have lately sprung up. The high border-ridge of the plateau (see SIBERIA) stretches from the South Muya Mountains towards the north-east, thus compelling the river Atdan to make its great bend in that direction. The ridge is almost entirely unknown, having been crossed by only two geographers at points more than 500 miles apart. The alpine country fringing the plateau all along its north western border is better known in the south-west, where rich gold-mines are wrought in the spurs between the Vitim and the Lena ; and farther north-east it has been crossed by several geographers (Middendorff, Erman, the Siberian expedition) on their way from Yakutsk to the Sea of Okhotsk. The Lena, in that part of its course Avhere it flows north-east, waters the outer base of this alpine region. It is a wild land, traversed by several chains of mountains, all having a north-eastern direction and intersected by deep, narrow valleys, where wild mountain streams flow amidst immense boulders and steep cliffs. The whole is covered with dense forests, through which none but the Tunguses can find their way, and they only by means of marks made on the trees. The summits of the mountains, ranging from 4000 to 6000 feet, mostly rise above the limits of tree vegetation, but in no case pass the snow-line. Summits and slopes alike are strewn with crystalline rock debris, mostly hidden under thick layers of lichens, where only the larch, which sends out its roots horizontally, can find support and sustenance. Birch and aspen grow on the lower slopes ; and where strips of alluvium have been deposited in the narrow bottoms of the valleys thickets of poplar and willow make their ap pearance, or a few patches of grassy soil are occasionally found. These last, however, are so rare that all of them are known to the gold-diggers for scores of miles around their settlements, and hay has to be brought at consider able cost from the lowlands. All necessaries of life for the gold-diggings have to be shipped from Irkutsk down the Lena, and deposited at entrepots, whence they are