Note {5} — Chapter XX

Note 5.—The country chiefly described in this chapter is probably that which the Russians, and also the Arabian Geographers, used to term Yugria, apparently the country of the Ostyaks on the Obi. The winter-dwellings of the people are not, strictly speaking, underground, but they are flanked with earth piled up against the walls. The same is the case with those of the Yakuts in Eastern Siberia, and these often have the floors also sunk 3 feet in the earth. Habitations really subterranean, of some previous race, have been found in the Samoyed country. (Klaproth’s Mag. Asiatique, II. 66.)