(good day, good day). Our first meeting with the inhabitants of this region, where we afterwards passed ten months, was on both sides very hearty, and formed the starting-point of a very friendly relation between the Chukches and ourselves, which remained unaltered during our stay.

On board, the vessel's tent-covered deck soon became a veritable reception-room for the whole population of the neighborhood. Dog-team after dog-team stood all day in rows, or, more correctly, lay snowed-up before the ice-built flight of steps to the deck of the Vega, patiently waiting for the return of the visitors or for the pemmican I now and then promptly ordered to be given the hungry animals. The report of the arrival of the remarkable foreigners must, besides, have spread with great rapidity, for we soon had visits even from distant settlements, and the Vega finally became the resting-place at which every passer-by stopped with his dog-team for some hours.

All who called on board were allowed to go about, without let or hindrance, on our deck, which was encumbered with a great many things. We had not, however, to lament the loss of the merest trifle. Honesty was as much at home here as in the homes of the reindeer Lapps. On the other hand, they soon became very troublesome by their beggary. Nor did they fail to take all possible advantage of what they doubtless considered the great inexperience of the Europeans. Small deceptions in this way were evidently not looked upon as blameworthy, but as meritorious. Sometimes, for instance, they sold us the same thing twice. They were always liberal in promises, which they never intended to keep, and often gave deceptive accounts of articles which were exposed for sale. None of the natives in the neighborhood of the Vega's winter station professed the Christian religion, none of them spoke any European language, though one or two knew a couple of English words, and a Russian word of salutation.

On the 20th of February three large Chukche sledges, laden with goods and drawn by sixteen or twenty dogs, stopped at the Vega. They said they came from the eastward, and were on their way to the market in the neighborhood of Nischni Kolymsk.

In the beginning of March there passed us a large number of sledges laden with reindeer-skins, and drawn by eight to ten dogs each. These trains were on a commercial journey from Irkaipij to Pak, on Behring Strait. We found among the foremen many of our acquaintances from the preceding autumn. Conversation during such visits became very lively and went on with little hin

drance, since two of us Chukche language.

were now somewhat at home in the

Sledges of considerable size, drawn by reindeer, began after the middle of March to pass the Vega in pretty large numbers. They were laden with reindeer-skins and goods bought at the Russian market-places, and intended for barter at Behring Strait.

The reindeer Chukches are better clothed and appear to be in better circumstances, and more independent than the coast Chukches, or, as they ought to be called in correspondence with the former name, the dog Chukches. As every one owns a reindeer herd, all must follow the nomad mode of living, but at the same time they carry on traffic between the savages in the northernmost parts of America and the Russian fur-dealers in Siberia, and many of them pass their whole lives in commercial journeys. The principal market is held annually during the month of March, on an island in the river Little Anjui, two hundred and fifty versts from Nischni Kolymsk. The bargain goes on in accordance with a normal price-list, mutually agreed upon by the Russian merchants and the oldest of the Chukches. At such markets there is said to be considerable confusion, to judge by the spirited description which Wrangel gives of it. This description, however, refers to the customs that prevailed sixty years ago.

Besides the traders, a large number of Chukches from Kolyutschin Island and other villages to the west travelled past us with empty sledges to which were harnessed only a few dogs. They returned in the course of a few days with their sledges fully laden with fish, which they said they had caught to the eastward.

On the 19th of April, at four o'clock A. M., the hunter Johnsen and I started for a short excursion eastward along the coast, with a view to pay a visit to the much frequented fishing station, Najtskaj, where our old friends from Pitlekaj had settled. At six o'clock A.M. we reached Rirajtinap, which formerly consisted of a great many tents, now had only one tent, Notti's, and it was poor enough. Among household articles in the tent I noticed a face-mask of wood, less shapeless than those which, according to Whymper's drawings, are found among the natives along the river Youcon, in the territory of Alaska; and, according to Dr. Simpson, among the West Eskimo, I learned afterwards that this mask came from Pak, Behring Strait, whither it was probably carried from the opposite American shore.

The village Irgunnuk is from three to four hundred metres from Rirajtonop, and consists of five tents, one of which two days be

fore had been removed from Yinretlen. The tents are, as usual, placed on earthy eminences.

The coast from Sigunnuk to Najtskaj runs in a straight line, is low, and only now and then interrupted by small earthy eminences, which all bear traces of old dwellings. Each of these heights has its special name. At noon we reached Najtskaj.

The day after our arrival at Najtskaj we visited the village Tjapka, which lies at a distance of six kilometres. The village contains thirteen tents, some of which are more roomy and better built than any Chukche tent I had previously seen. We lodged in a tent which belonged to Erere, a friendly man, whose face was always cheerful. His sleeping-chamber was so large that it could hold more than one family. We found the inmates there completely naked, Erere's wife not excepted.

Erere had five children. In all the tents which I have visited I have inquired the number of children. Only two or three wives had more than three; the average may be estimated at two.

In the beginning of July the ground became free of snow, and we could now form an idea of how the region looked in summer in which we passed the winter. Far away in the south the land rose with terrace-formed escarpments to a hill called by us Table Mount, which, indeed, was pretty high, but did not, by any steep or bold cliffs, yield such a picturesque landscape border as is seldom wanting in the portions of Spitzbergen, Greenland, and the northern part of Novaya Zemlya which I had visited; south Novaya Zemlya has, at least at most places, bold picturesque shorecliffs. If I except the rocky promontory of Yinretlen, where a cliff inhabited by ravens rises boldly out of the sea, and some cliffs situated farther in along the beach of Kolyutschin Bay, the shore in the immediate neighborhood of our wintering-station consisted everywhere only of a low beach formed of coarse sand. Upon this sand, which was always frozen, there ran parallel with the shore a broad bank or dune fifty to one hundred metres broad of fine sand not water-drenched in summer, and, accordingly, not bound together by ice in winter. It is upon this dune that the Chukches erect their tents. Marks of them are therefore met with nearly everywhere, and the dune, accordingly, is everywhere bestrewed with broken implements or refuse from the chase. Indeed, it may be said, without exaggeration, that the whole northeastern coast of the Siberian Polar Sea is bordered with a belt of sweepings and refuse of various kinds.

When, on the 16th July (1879), the reindeer Chukche Yettugin came on board, and, talking of collecting whalebones, in which we

had been engaged some days before, informed us that there was a mammoth bone at his tent, and that a mammoth's tusk stuck out at a place where the spring floods had cut into the bank of a river which flowed from Table Mount to Riraitinop, I did not hesitate to make an excursion to the place. Our absence from the vessel was reckoned at five or six days. It was my intention to go up the river in a skin-boat belonging to Notti to the place where the mammoth tusk was, and thence to proceed on foot to Yettugin's tent. Yettugin assured us that the river was sufficiently deep for flat-bottomed boats. But when we had travelled a little way into the country it appeared that the water had fallen considerably during the day Yettugin had passed on the vessel. So certain, however, was I that the ice-border would not yet, for a long time, be broken up, that I, immediately after my return from the excursion, which had been thus rendered unsuccessful, made arrangements for a new journey, in order, with other means of transport, to reach the goal.

While we were thus employed the forenoon of the 18th passed. We sat down to dinner at the usual time without any suspicion that the time of our release was now at hand. During dinner it was suddenly observed that the vessel was moving slightly. Polander rushed on deck, saw that the ice was in motion, ordered the boiler-fire to be lighted, the engine having long ago been put in order in expectation of this moment, and in two hours, by 3.30 P. M., on the 18th of July, 1879, the Vega, decked with flags, was under steam and sail again, on the way to her destination.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The Division of Chuckches-Their Population-Their Burials, Tents, Boats, etc.

THE CHUCKCHES.

IT may be mentioned that Steller and Krascheninnikov only touch in passing on the true Chuckches, but, instead, give very instructive and detailed accounts of the Koryaks, who are as nearly allied to the Chuckches as the Spaniards to the Portuguese, but yet differ considerably in their modes of life; and also that a part of these authors' statements regarding the Chuckches do not at all refer to that tribe, but to the Eskimo. It appears, indeed, that recently, after the former's national enmity had ceased, mixed races have arisen among these tribes; but it ought not to be for

gotten that they differ widely in origin, although the Chuckches, as coming at a later date to the coast of the Polar Sea, have adopted almost completely the hunting implements and household furniture of the Eskimo, and the Eskimo again, in the districts where they come in contact with the Chuckches, have adopted various things from their language.

Like the Lapps, and most of the European and Asiatic Polar races, the Chuckches fall into two divisions, speaking the same language and belonging to the same race, but differing considerably in their modes of life. One division consists of reindeer nomads, who with their often very numerous reindeer-herds wander about between Behring Straits and the Indigirka and the Penschina bays. They live by tending reindeer and by trades, and consider themselves the chief part of the Chuckche tribe. The other division of the race are the coast Chuckches, who do not own any reindeer, but live in fixed but easily-movable, and frequently-moved, tents along the coast between Chaun Bay and Behring Straits. But beyond East Cape there is found along the coast of Behring Sea another tribe nearly allied to the Eskimo. This is Wrangel's Onkilon, Lutke's Namollo. Now, however, Chuckches also have settled at several points on the line of coast, and a portion of the Eskimo have adopted the language of the superior Chuckche race. Thus the inhabitants of St. Lawrence bay spoke Chuckche, with a little mixture of foreign words, and differed in their mode of life and appearance only inconsiderably from the Chuckches, whom during the course of the winter we learned to know from nearly all parts of the Chuckche peninsula. The same was the case of the natives who came on board the Vega while we sailed past East Cape, and with the two families we visited in Konyan bay. But the natives in the northwest part of St. Lawrence Island talk an Eskimo dialect quite different from the Chuckche. There were, however, many Chuckche words incorporated with it. At Port Clarence, on the contrary, there lived pure Eskimo. Among them we found a Chuckche woman, who informed us that there were Chuckche villages also on the American side of Behring Strait, north of Prince of Wales Cape. They cannot, however, be very numerous or populous, as they are not mentioned in the account of the various English expeditions to those regions.

Lieutenant Nordquist collected from the numerous foremen, who visited at the Vega, information as to the names of the encampments which are to be found, at present, on the coast between Chaun Bay and Behring Strait, and the number of tents at