Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/414

398 of the Minusínsk museum had been gathered. Some of the standing monoliths were twelve or fifteen feet in height and three or four feet wide, and must have been brought, with great labor, from a distance. All of these standing stones and tumuli, as well as the bronze implements and utensils found in the graves and plowed up in the fields around Minusínsk, are attributed by the Russian peasants to prehistoric people whom they call the Chúdi, and if you go into almost any farmer's house in the valley of the upper Yeniséi and inquire for "Chúdish things" the children or the housewife will bring you three or four arrow-heads, a bronze implement that looks like one half of a pair of scissors, or a queer copper knife made in the shape of a short boomerang, with the cutting edge on the inner curve like a yataghan.

We reached the Káchinski ulús about eleven o'clock. I was disappointed to find that it did not differ essentially from a Russian village or a small settlement of semi-civilized Buriáts. Most of the houses were gable-roofed log buildings of the Russian type, with chimneys, brick ovens, and double glass windows, and the inhabitants looked very much like American Indians that had abandoned their hereditary pursuits and dress, accepted the yoke of civilization, and settled down as petty farmers in the neighborhood of a frontier village or agency. Here and there one might see a yurt, whose octagon form and conical bark roof suggested a Kirghis kibítka, and indicated that the builders' ancestors had been dwellers in tents; but with this exception there was nothing in or about the settlement to distinguish it from hundreds of Russian villages of the same class and type. Under the guidance of Mr. Safiánof, who was well acquainted with all of these Tatárs, we entered and examined two or three of the low octagonal yurts and one of the gable-roofed houses, but found in them little that was of interest. Russian furniture, Russian dishes, Russian trunks, and Russian samovárs had taken the places of